Fidel Castro has died — love him or loathe him the Cuban leader changed the world
Fidel Castro, Cuba’s iconic former president who was one of the world’s longest serving leaders, has died aged 90. His death was announced yesterday by his brother and successor as president Raul Castro on Cuban state television. Clearly affected by his brother’s death, Raul announced that Fidel would had died and would be cremated on Saturday, and that there would be several days of mourning for the former leader. “The commander in chief of the Cuban revolution died at 22:29 hours this evening,” he told viewers. He ended his announcement by shouting the revolutionary slogan: “Towards victory, always!”
Fidel Castro handed over most of his presidential powers to Raul in 2006, following years of health issues. He formally stood down as president two years later.
Before that he had been the leader of the Caribbean island nation for nearly 50 years. To many Cubans he was a great champion of the people who liberated them from the tyrannical leadership of Fulgencio Batista and helped the nation make great leaps in the quality of education and healthcare — the latter of which has often been compared favourably even to the United States of America. Literacy rates improved from around 60 per cent under Batista to over 96 per cent under Castro.
But to his detractors he was a despotic leader who imprisoned all those that disagreed with him and refused to give up power long after his time was due. News of his death was celebrated by Cuban exiles in Florida. While he is applauded by some for standing up to America and giving back its fruit plantations to the people of the island nation, the resulting US embargo was extremely damaging to the quality of life of ordinary Cubans and was only removed once Fidel handed over power to his more moderate brother, who, alongside US president Barack Obama, finally ended decades of what the Cubans referred to as “el bloqueo” (the blockade).
Even after the embargo was lifted Fidel Castro admitted that he didn’t trust the Americans, a sign that he might not have been as willing to negotiate as his brother was. “We don’t need the empire to give us any presents,” he wrote in a letter published by state media when Obama visited the country last year.
Castro’s dislike for the United States is quite understandable of course. Not only was the superpower responsible for the years of hardship that el bloqueo brought, but US governments also sponsored the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles and reportedly attempted to assassinate the Cuban leader over 600 times.
While there are many that revile Castro for bringing the Cold War to America’s doorstep and arguably bringing the US and USSR close to nuclear war, his popularity within the island nation and among communists in Latin America and Africa is hard to dispute. Like him or loathe him, Fidel Castro was a man who stood up to the world’s most powerful nation and helped change the world, spreading communism throughout the two continents, often sending Cuban soldiers to train foreign revolutionaries.
Key Dates
1926: Fidel Alejandro Castro was born as the illegitimate son of a wealthy farmer in Cuba’s Oriente province
1953: He was imprisoned after leading a failed uprising against Fulgencio Batista’s Cuban regime
1955: He was released from prison two years later in an amnesty deal
1956: Alongside his close friend Ernesto “Che” Guevara, he began a guerilla war against Batista’s government
1959: Castro’s forces defeated Batista and he was sworn in as Cuba’s prime minister
1961: His Cuban forces defeated the CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion
1962: He sparked the Cuban Missile Crisis by allowing the USSR to deploy nuclear missiles on the Caribbean island
1992: He reached an agreement with the US over Cuban refugees
2006: He handed over much of his powers to his brother Raul, due to suffering from diverticulitis
2008: He formally resigned as president, passing the role to his younger brother
