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Fidel Castro Biography
in full Fidel Castro Ruz
(1926–)
Political Figure. Born Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz on August 13, 1926, (although some say he
was born a year later), near Birán in Cuba's eastern Oriente province. Fidel Castro was the
third of six children: two brothers, Raul and Ramon, and four sisters, Antelita, Juanita,
Emma, and Augustina. His father, Angel, was a wealthy sugar plantation owner originally
from Spain. His mother, Lina Ruz Gonzalez, had been a maid to Angel's first wife, Maria
Luisa Argota, at the time of Fidel's birth. By the time Fidel was 15, his father dissolved his
first marriage and wed Fidel's mother. At 17, Fidel was formally recognized by his father and
his name was changed from Ruz to Castro.
Educated in private Jesuit boarding schools, Castro grew up in wealthy circumstances amid
the poverty of Cuba's people. He was intellectually gifted but more interested in sports than
studies. He attended El Colegio de Belen and pitched for the school's baseball team. After his
graduation in late 1945, Castro entered law school at the University of Havana and became
immersed in the political climate of Cuban nationalism, anti-imperialism, and socialism.
In 1947, Castro became increasingly passionate about social justice. He traveled to the
Dominican Republic to join an expedition attempting the overthrow of the dictator Rafael
Trujillo. The coup failed before it got started, but the incident didn't dampen Castro's passion
for reform.
Soon after his return to the university in Havana, Castro joined the Partido Ortodoxo, an
anticommunist political party founded to reform government corruption in Cuba. Its goals
were nationalism, economic independence, and social reforms. Its founder, Cuban
presidential candidate Eduardo Chibas, lost the 1948 election. Despite the loss, Chibas
inspired Castro to be an ardent disciple. Chibas considered another run for president again in
1951. He hoped to expose the government's corruption and warn the people about General
Fulgencio Batista, a former president who was planning a return to power. But the
presidential hopeful's effort was cut short after supposed allies refused to provide evidence of
government wrongdoing. Chibas shot himself during a radio broadcast after his inability to
keep his promise.
In 1948, Castro married Mirta Diaz Balart, who was from a wealthy family in Cuba. They
had one child, Fidelito. The marriage exposed Castro to a wealthier lifestyle and political
connections. Castro pursued his political ambitions as a candidate for a seat in the Cuban
parliament, but a coup led by General Fulgencio Batista successfully overthrew the
government and cancelled the election. Castro found himself without a legitimate political
platform and little income with which to support the family. His marriage to Mirta eventually
ended in 1955.
Batista set himself up as dictator, solidified his power with the military and Cuba's economic
elite, and got his government recognized by the United States. Castro, along with fellow
members of the Ortodoxo party who expected to win in the 1952 election, organized an
insurrection. On July 26, 1953, Castro and approximately 150 supporters attacked the
Moncada military barracks in an attempt to overthrow Batista. The attack failed and Castro
was captured, tried, convicted, and sentenced to 15 years in prison. But the incident fostered
an ongoing opposition to the government and made Castro famous throughout Cuba.
Castro was released in 1955 under an amnesty deal with the Batista government. He went to
Mexico, where he met Ernesto "Che" Guevara. There he devised a new strategy to overthrow
the Batista regime based on guerrilla warfare. Guevara believed that the plight of Latin
America's poor could be rectified only through violent revolution. He joined Castro's group
and became an important confidante, shaping Castro's political beliefs.
On December 2, 1956, Castro returned to Cuba with a boatload of 81 insurgents near the
eastern city of Manzanillo. In short order, Batista's forces killed or captured most of the
attackers. Castro, his brother Raul, and Guevara were able to escape into the Sierra Maestra
mountain range along the island's southeastern coast. Over the course of the next two years,
Castro's forces waged a guerrilla war against the Batista government, organizing resistance
groups in cities and small towns across Cuba. He was also able to organize a parallel
government, carry out some agrarian reform, and control provinces with agricultural and
manufacturing production.
Beginning in 1958, Castro and his forces mounted a series of successful military campaigns
throughout Cuba to capture and hold key areas of the country. Along with the loss of popular
support and massive desertions in the military, Batista's government collapsed due to Castro's
efforts. In January of 1959, Batista fled to the Dominican Republic. At the age of 32, Fidel
Castro successfully concluded a classic guerrilla campaign to take control of Cuba.
A new government was created with Jose Miro Cardona as prime minister, and it quickly
gained the recognition of the United States. Fidel Castro arrived in Havana to cheering
crowds and assumed the post of commander-in-chief of the military. In February 1959, Miro
suddenly resigned, and Castro was sworn in as prime minister.
Castro implemented far-reaching reforms by nationalizing factories and plantations in an
attempt to end U.S. economic dominance on the island. Major American companies felt the
negative effects of the reforms, causing friction between Cuba and the United States. For
example, the Castro government announced it was going to base compensation to foreign
companies on the artificially low property values that the companies themselves had
negotiated with past Cuban governments in order to keep their taxes low.
During this time, Castro repeatedly denied being a communist, but to many Americans his
policies looked like Soviet-style control of the economy and government. In April 1959,
Castro and a delegation visited the United States as guests of the National Press Club. Castro
hired a renowned public relations firm to help promote his tour. President Dwight
Eisenhower, however, refused a meeting with him.
In May, Castro signed the First Agrarian Reform Law, which limited the size of land
holdings and forbade foreign property ownership. The intent was to develop a class of
independent farmers. In reality, this program led to state land control with the farmers
becoming mere government employees. By the end of 1959, Castro's revolution had become
radicalized with purges of military leaders and the suppression of any media critical of
Castro's policies.
Castro's government also began to establish relations with the Soviet Union. The USSR sent
more than 100 Spanish-speaking advisers to help organize Cuba's defense committee. In
February 1960, Cuba signed a trade agreement to buy oil from the Soviet Union and
established diplomatic relations. U.S.-owned refineries in Cuba refused to process the oil, so
Castro expropriated the refineries. The United States retaliated by cutting Cuba's import
quota on sugar. This began a decades-long contentious relationship between the two
countries.
The year 1961 proved to be pivotal in Castro's relationship with the United States. On
January 3, 1961, outgoing president Dwight Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations with
the Cuban government. On April 16, Castro formally declared Cuba a socialist state. The
following day 1,400 Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow
the Castro regime. The incursion ended in disaster; hundreds of the insurgents were killed
and nearly 1,000 captured. Though the United States denied any involvement, it was revealed
that the Cuban exiles were trained by the Central Intelligence Agency and armed with U.S.
weapons. Decades later, the National Security Archive revealed that the United States had
begun planning an overthrow of the Castro government as early as October 1959. The
invasion was conceived during the Eisenhower administration and inherited by President
John F. Kennedy, who reluctantly approved its action but denied the invaders air support in
hopes of hiding any U.S. participation.
Fidel Castro was able to capitalize on the incident to consolidate his power and further
promote his agenda. On May 1, Castro announced an end to democratic elections in Cuba and
denounced American imperialism. Then at year's end, Castro declared himself a MarxistLeninist and announced the Cuban government was adopting communist economic and
political policies. On February 7, 1962, the United States imposed a full economic embargo
on Cuba, a policy that continues to this day.
Castro intensified his relations with the Soviet Union by accepting further economic and
military aid. In October 1962, his increasing reliance on Soviet aid brought the world to the
brink of nuclear war. Wanting to deter another U.S. invasion of Cuba, Soviet Premier Nikita
Khrushchev conceived an idea of placing nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast
of Florida. He justified the move as a response to U.S. Jupiter missiles deployed in Turkey.
An American U2 reconnaissance plane discovered the missile base construction before the
missiles were installed. President Kennedy responded by demanding the removal of the
missiles with orders for the U.S. Navy to search any vessels headed for the island.
Over the course of several anxious days of secret communications between Khrushchev,
Kennedy, and their agents, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for the
United States' public agreement not to invade Cuba. The Kennedy administration also agreed
to secretly remove the Jupiter missiles from Turkey. Both leaders saved face and gained some
admiration for restraint. Castro, on the other hand, was humiliated: Both superpowers
completely left him out of the negotiations. Furthermore, the United States was able to
persuade the Organization of American States to end diplomatic relations with Cuba, in
response to Castro's "shameful" actions.
But Castro wasn't shamed for long. In 1965, he merged Cuba's Communist Party with his
revolutionary organizations, placing himself as head of the party. Within a few years he
began a campaign of supporting armed struggle against imperialism in Latin American and
African countries. In 1966, Castro founded the Asia-Africa-Latin America People's Solidarity
Organization to promote revolution on three continents. In 1967, he formed the Latin
America Solidarity Organization to foster revolution in select Latin American countries. In
the 1970s, Castro promoted himself as the leading spokesperson for Third World countries by
providing military support to pro-Soviet forces in Angola, Ethiopia, and Yemen. Though
Cuba was heavily subsidized by the Soviet government, those expeditions ultimately proved
unsuccessful and put a strain on the Cuban economy.
The U.S. agreement not to invade Cuba didn't preclude toppling the Castro regime in other
ways. Castro was the target of CIA assassination attempts (an estimated 638 in all, according
to Cuban intelligence) over the years. These ranged from exploding cigars, to a fungusinfected scuba-diving suit, to a mafia-style shooting. He took great delight in the fact that
none of the attempts ever succeeded. Castro was reported as saying that if avoiding
assassination attempts was an Olympic sport, he would have won gold medals.
Castro's regime has been credited with opening 10,000 new schools and increasing literacy to
98 percent. Cubans enjoy a universal health care system, which has decreased infant
mortality to 11 deaths in 1,000 (1.1 percent). But civil liberties have been whittled away as
labor unions lost the right to strike, independent newspapers shut down, and religious
institutions harassed. Castro removed opposition to his rule though executions and
imprisonments, as well as through forced emigration.
Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have fled Castro's rule, many settling just across the
Florida Straits in Miami. The largest of these occurred in 1980 when Castro opened up the
port of Mariel to allow exiled Cubans living in Miami to come claim their relatives. Castro
also loaded the ships with Cuban prison inmates, mental patients, and other social
undesirables. In all, 120,000 Cubans have left their homeland for sanctuary in the United
States.
After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union sent Cuba's economy into a tailspin, Castro's
revolution began to lose momentum. Without cheap oil imports and an eager Soviet market
for Cuban sugar and a few other goods, Cuban unemployment and inflation grew. The
contraction of the Cuban economy resulted in 85 percent of its markets disappearing.
Yet Castro has been very adept at keeping control of the government during these dire
economic times. He pressed the United States to lift the economic embargo, but it refused.
Castro then adopted a quasi–free market economy and encouraged international
investment. He legalized the U.S. dollar and encouraged tourism. He visited the United States
in 1996 and invited Cuban exiles living in there to return to Cuba to start businesses.
In 2001, after the massive damage caused by Hurricane Michelle, Castro declined U.S.
humanitarian aid but proposed a one-time cash purchase of food from the United States. The
George W. Bush Administration complied, authorizing the shipment of food. With the fuel
supply running dangerously low, Castro ordered 118 factories to be closed and sent thousands
of Cuban doctors to Venezuela in exchange for oil imports.
In the late 1990s, speculation began to arise over Fidel Castro's age and wellbeing. Numerous
health problems have been reported over the years, the most significant occurring in July
2006, when Castro had surgery for gastrointestinal bleeding. In a dramatic announcement,
Castro designated his brother Raul as the country's temporary leader. Raul served as Fidel's
second in command for decades, and was officially selected as Fidel's successor in 1997.
Since his surgery, the public has seen Fidel only in photographs and video meetings.
On February 19, 2008, 81-year-old Fidel Castro permanently gave up the Cuban presidency
due to his deteriorating physical condition. He handed over power to his 76-year-old brother
Raul. The Cuban National Assembly officially elected Raul Castro as president of Cuba the
same month, although Fidel remains First Secretary of the Communist Party. The world waits
to hear of the next—and possibly final—chapter in the life of Fidel Castro.
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