He resisted the USA for 50 years: Who is Fidel Castro?

Marxist-Leninist revolutionary Fidel Castro died on November 25, 2016. Fidel Castro, who last appeared in public in August 2016, handed over his position to his brother Raul Castro in 2008 due to health problems.

After the revolution, Castro was the prime minister of Cuba between 1959-76 and the president of Cuba between 1976-2008 and served as the First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party between 1961 and 2011.

The second of five children born to middle-class Spanish immigrant Ángel Castro y Argiz and his cook Lina Ruz González, Castro grew up in Mayarí, a poor region under the control of the United Fruit Company. He studied at Catholic schools in Santiago, the center of the province of Oriente, and at the Jesuit high school Belén Theological Seminary in Havana. He graduated from the University of Havana, where he started his education in 1945, as a lawyer in 1950.

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 2008. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1965 until 2011. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state; industry and business were nationalized, and socialist reforms were implemented throughout society.

As a student, he participated in an unsuccessful revolutionary movement against Rafael Trujillo's right-wing military junta in the Dominican Republic in 1947 and in urban uprisings in Bogotá in 1948. He joined the Cuban People's Party in 1947. After working as a lawyer between 1950 and 1952, he ran for the House of Representatives elections from the Cuban People's Party. But General Fulgencio Batista, one of the former presidents of Cuba, who overthrew the ruling government of Carlos Prío Socarrás on March 10, 1952, canceled the elections.

Castro, who formed a small group with the aim of overthrowing the Batista dictatorship in early 1953, raided the Moncada Barracks in Santiago with 165 of his friends on July 26; but he failed and was arrested. In the trial held at the Cuban Supreme Court in Santiago on October 16, 1953, 'Your honor, condemn me!' History will prove me right!' He made his famous defense, which ended with the sentence (La Historia Me Absolvera). At the end of the court, he was sentenced to 16 years. After serving 21 months in prison on Juventud Island, the remaining part of his sentence was pardoned by Batista's order.

THE CUBAN REVOLUTION AND THE ROLE OF CASTRO

He left Cuba in 1955, went to the USA, and founded a new organization called the 26 July Movement. Members of the organization, who received guerrilla warfare training under the direction of Alberto Bayo, a Cuban who participated in the Spanish Civil War, returned to Cuba on the yacht Granma on December 2, 1956, and landed in Oriente. Castro, who lost most of his friends in the clashes with government forces here, retreated to the Maestra Mountains in the southwest of Oriente with 12 of his friends, including his brother Raul Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara. He waged a guerrilla war against Batista's forces in these mountains for two years. Gradually losing political support and suffering a series of military defeats, Batista fled to the Dominican Republic on December 31, 1958. Castro entered Havana in the early days of 1959. Jurist Doctor Manuel Urrutia Leo became president and Castro became prime minister.

Castro's government first reduced prices and rents. He then initiated a radical land reform. Land exceeding 40 hectares was expropriated to be paid in 20 years and started to be operated as public farms. The Cuban Socialist People's Party (PSP), which initially opposed Castro but began to support the guerrilla movement in 1959, gained an influential position by improving its relations with Castro. Castro resigned due to pressure from Urrutia, who was uneasy about this situation, to postpone the land reform; but in the face of intense public reaction, Urrutia had to resign from his post. He was replaced by Osvaldo Doticos, and Castro became prime minister again.

Meanwhile, under the pressure of US companies that suffered from the expropriation of lands, the US government began to impose an economic embargo against Cuba. Cuba, a country whose economy is based on a single product, started selling sugar to the USSR, which it had always sold to the USA. When the refineries owned by US companies refused to process the crude oil purchased from the USSR in exchange for sugar, Castro nationalized these refineries. This development further opened the gap between the USA and Cuba. The Bay of Pigs Invasion, launched in April 1961 by Cubans who fled to the USA after the revolution and received weapons and financial support from the John Kennedy administration, ended in failure. With the Havana Declaration he published after the landing, Castro announced to the world for the first time that Cuba would follow socialist policies.

In 1962, the world came to the brink of nuclear war when the USSR deployed ballistic missiles in Cuba and John Kennedy imposed a naval blockade on Cuba. The crisis could only be overcome when the USA promised that it would no longer attempt to overthrow the government in Cuba and the USSR agreed to withdraw its nuclear weapons from Cuba in exchange for the removal of American missile launchers in Turkey. However, the Central Intelligence Organization (CIA) continued to prepare assassination plans against Castro.

Saying that Khrushchev made concessions during the Cuban Crisis, Castro followed an independent policy until 1968. He took a supportive stance towards the revolutions in South and Central America and Africa. During the same period, he became one of the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement. He followed a foreign policy oriented towards the USSR within the military and economic rapprochement process that started after 1968 in line with the improvement of relations with the USSR. In 1975, he sent Cuban soldiers to support the Angolan People's Liberation Front (MPLA) during the civil war in Angola. This was followed by Cuban soldiers sent to Ethiopia and other countries. In the 1980s, the number of Cuban soldiers abroad reached 40 thousand.

Castro, who served as the general secretary of the United Socialist Revolution Party (Cuban Communist Party after 1965), which emerged as a result of the merger with the Cuban Socialist People's Party in 1961, began to implement versatile and comprehensive policies within the country. At the end of the literacy campaign, the literacy rate rose to over 90%. Educational opportunities were expanded by opening new schools. Fundamental changes have been made in the distribution of wealth resources, national income, and health services. While unemployment was largely eliminated, everyone was obliged to work. Despite all this, since the efforts to transform the Cuban economy based on a single product (sugar) did not yield successful results, serious problems began to occur starting from the mid-1970s. Therefore, the financial support of the USSR became of great importance.

THE ACCEPTANCE OF HIS BROTHER RAUL

In the late 1990s, speculation began to emerge regarding Castro's age and well-being. Their illnesses made the situation even more difficult. Castro appointed his brother Raul as the country's interim leader on July 31, 2006. Raul had served as Castro's second-in-command for decades and was officially named his successor in 1997. On February 19, 2008, at the age of 81, Castro permanently gave up the Cuban presidency due to his deteriorating physical condition. He handed over power to his brother Raul, who was 76 years old at the time.

MARRIAGE

Castro married Mirta Diaz Balart, from a wealthy political family in Cuba. In 1949, they had a child named Fidel. The couple separated in 1955 and he married Dalia Soto for the second time in 1980.