• President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, 1926

   

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (August 13, 1926 - November 25, 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011. Politically a Marxist - Leninist, under his administration the Republic of Cuba was converted into a one party socialist state, with industry and business being nationalized under state ownership and socialist reforms implemented in all areas of society. On the international stage, he also served as the Secretary General of the Non - Aligned Movement from 1979 to 1983.

Born the illegitimate son of a wealthy farmer, Castro became involved in leftist anti - imperialist politics whilst studying law at the University of Havana. Subsequently involving himself in armed rebellions against right wing governments in the Dominican Republic and Colombia, he went on to conclude that the U.S. - backed Cuban President Fulgencio Batista, who was widely seen as a dictator, had to be overthrown; to this end he led a failed armed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953. Imprisoned for a year, he then traveled to Mexico, and with the aid of his brother Raúl Castro and friend Che Guevara, he assembled together a group of Cuban revolutionaries, the July 26 Movement. Returning with them to Cuba, he took a key role in the Cuban Revolution, leading a successful guerrilla war against Batista's forces, with Batista himself fleeing into exile in 1959.

Castro subsequently became Commander in Chief of the armed forces and shortly thereafter became Prime Minister. His involvement in the overthrow of Batista, as well as a suspected relationship with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, alarmed the United States, who through the CIA organized the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 to overthrow his government, before proceeding to orchestrate repeated assassination attempts against him and implement an economic blockade of Cuba. To counter this threat, Castro forged an alliance with the Soviet Union and allowed them to store nuclear weapons on the island, leading to the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Adopting Marxism - Leninism as his guiding ideology, in 1961 Castro proclaimed the socialist nature of the Cuban revolution, and in 1965 became First Secretary of the newly founded Communist Party, with all other parties being abolished. He then led the transformation of Cuba into a socialist republic, nationalizing industry and introducing free universal healthcare and education, as well as suppressing internal opposition. A keen internationalist, Castro then introduced Cuban medical brigades who worked throughout the developing world, and aided a number of foreign revolutionary socialist groups in the hope of toppling world capitalism.

In 1976 he became President of the Council of State as well as of the Council of Ministers. Following the collapse of key ally the Soviet Union in 1991, Castro led Cuba into its economic "Special Period", before then taking the country into the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas in 2006 and forging economic and political alliances with other nations in the Latin American "Pink Tide". Amidst failing health, in 2006 Castro transferred his responsibilities to Vice President Raúl Castro, who was then elected President when Fidel stepped down in 2008.

Castro was a controversial and highly divisive world figure, being lauded as a champion of anti - imperialism, humanitarianism, environmentalism and the world's poor by his supporters, but his critics have accused him of being a dictator whose authoritarian administration has overseen multiple human rights abuses. Nonetheless, he has had a significant influence on the politics of a number of other world leaders, namely Nelson Mandela, Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales, and he is widely admired for leading his country's resistance to imperialism.

Fidel's father, Ángel Castro y Argiz (1875 – 1956) was a Spaniard born to a poor peasant family in rural Galicia, northwest Spain. Working as a manual laborer on local farms, in 1895 he was conscripted into the Spanish army to fight in the Cuban War of Independence against the Cuban forces who wished to secede from the Spanish Empire. Wishing to gain greater influence in the Caribbean, the United States subsequently declared war on Spain, leading to the Spanish - American War of 1898, in which the U.S. seized control of Cuba, setting up their own American government on the island. In 1902, the Republic of Cuba was proclaimed, however it remained only partially independent of the U.S., which retained economic and political dominance over it. For a time, Cuba enjoyed economic growth, and Ángel Castro decided to migrate there permanently in search of employment. Doing so, he undertook various jobs, eventually earning enough money to set up his own business growing sugar cane on a farm in Birán, near Mayarí in Oriente Province.

Ángel took a wife, María Luisa Argota, with whom he had two daughters, but they separated after several years and he began a relationship with a household servant who was thirty years his junior. This woman, Lina Ruz González (September 23, 1903 – August 6, 1963), came from an impoverished Cuban family of Canarian descent, but became Ángel's domestic partner, bearing him three sons and four daughters.

Fidel was Lina's third child, being born at his father's farm on August 13, 1926, and was given his mother's surname of Ruz rather than his father's because he had been born out of wedlock, something that carried a particular social stigma at the time. Although he was from a prosperous background, with his father's business proving ever more profitable, his father ensured that he grew up alongside the children of the farm's workforce, many of whom were Haitian economic migrants of African descent, something that Fidel would later relate prevented him from absorbing "bourgeois culture" at an early age. Aged six, Fidel, along with his elder siblings Ramón and Angela, was sent to live with their teacher in Santiago de Cuba, and it was here that the children dwelt in cramped conditions and in relative poverty, often failing to have enough to eat because of their tutor's poor economic situation. Aged eight, Fidel was then baptized into the Roman Catholic Church (something usually performed soon after birth), although later gave up his faith in Christianity, becoming an atheist. Being baptized enabled Fidel to begin attending the La Salle boarding school in Santiago, but here he often got into trouble with the school authorities for misbehavior, and so he was instead sent to the privately funded, Jesuit run Dolores School in Santiago.

In 1945 he transferred to the more prestigious Jesuit run El Colegio de Belén in Havana. Although Fidel took an interest in history and debating at Belén, he did not excel academically, instead devoting much of his time to playing sport, including swimming, mountain climbing, table tennis, athletics, basketball and baseball. Meanwhile, Ángel Castro finally dissolved his first marriage when Fidel was fifteen, allowing him to marry Fidel's mother; Fidel was formally recognized by his father when he was seventeen, when his surname was legally changed from Ruz to Castro.

In late 1945, Castro began studying law at the University of Havana. Here he became immediately embroiled in the student protest movement, which in Cuba at that time was particularly volatile: under the regimes of center - left Cuban Presidents Gerardo Machado (1925 – 1933), Fulgencio Batista (1933 – 1944) and Ramón Grau (1944 – 1948) there had been a government crackdown on student protesters, with student leaders being killed or terrorized by violent gangs. This led to a form of gangsterismo culture within the university that was dominated by a variety of violent and often armed student groups who spent much of their time fighting one another and running criminal enterprises rather than opposing the government. Becoming surrounded by this gang culture, Castro focused on political objectives, unsuccessfully campaigning for the position of President of the Federation of University Students (FEU). To do so he put forward a platform of "honesty, decency and justice" and emphasized his opposition to political corruption, something that he increasingly associated with the involvement of the U.S. government in Cuban politics. He became passionate about anti - imperialism and opposing American intervention in the Caribbean, joining the University Committee for the Independence of Puerto Rico and the Committee for Democracy in the Dominican Republic.

He was in contact with members of several different student leftist groups at the time, including the Popular Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Popular – PSP), the Socialist Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Socialista Revolucionaria – MSR) and the Insurrectional Revolutionary Union (Unión Insurrecional Revolucionaria – UIR), although did not adopt the Marxist ideas of the former and mistrusted some of MSR's connections to the Grau government. Castro himself had become highly critical of the corruption and violence of Grau's regime, delivering a public speech on the subject in November 1946 that earned him a place on the front page of several newspapers. Instead, it was to the UIR that he grew closest to, although whether he ever became a member or not has remained unknown. In 1947, Castro joined a newly founded socialist party, the Party of the Cuban People (Partido Ortodoxo), which had been formed by veteran politician Eduardo Chibás (1907 – 1951). A charismatic figure, Chibás attracted many Cubans with his message of social justice, honest government, and political freedom. The Partido Ortodoxo publicly exposed corruption and demanded governmental and social reform. Though Chibás lost the election, Castro, considering Chibás his mentor, remained committed to his cause, working fervently on his behalf.

Meanwhile, the student gang violence had escalated after Grau had employed several prominent gang leaders, including members of the MSR, as officers in the police force, and Castro soon received a threat urging him to either leave the university and its political arena or be killed. He did not give in to the threat, instead going around with a gun and surrounded himself with friends who were similarly armed. Various accusations would arise in later years alleging that Castro carried out gang related assassination attempts at this time, including of prominent UIR member Lionel Gómez, MSR leader Manolo Castro and university policeman Oscar Fernandez, but these are supported by "scant evidence" and remain unproven.

In June 1947, Castro learned of a planned international expedition to invade the Dominican Republic and overthrow its right wing president, Rafael Trujillo, a military general widely seen as a dictator who had overseen a system of "repressive brutality" through the use of a violent secret police which routinely murdered and tortured opponents. An ally of the United States, Trujillo angered many across the world when he ordered the Parsley Massacre that killed 20,000 – 30,000 impoverished Haitian migrants. Castro had become a heavy critic of Trujillo's regime, rising to the presidency of the University Committee for Democracy in the Dominican Republic, and decided to join the military expedition, which was led by General Juan Rodríguez, a Dominican exile, and supported by Grau's Cuban government which feared Trujillo's militaristic behavior. The invasion was carried out on July 29, 1947, by around 1,200 men, most of whom were exiled Dominicans or Cubans, although other volunteers came from across Latin America. However, both Dominican and U.S. intelligence had gained foreknowledge of the event, and it was soon quashed by the Dominican army and the Cuban government, who had been pressured by the U.S. to cease their support for it. Whilst Grau's government immediately arrested many of those involved, Castro managed to escape the police by jumping off of the naval frigate he was aboard and swimming to shore in the dark of night.

The botched mission only served to further Castro's opposition to the Grau administration, and returning to Havana, he took a leading role in the student protests that were centered against the killing of a high school pupil by government bodyguards. The protests, accompanied by a U.S. imposed crackdown on those considered to be communists, led to violent clashes between protesters and police in February 1948, in which Castro was badly beaten. It was at this point that his public speeches took on a distinctively leftist slant, condemning the social and economic inequalities of Cuba under the Grau government, something that was in contrast to his former public criticisms, which had centered around condemning corruption and U.S. imperialism. Castro's biographer Leycester Coltman would later remark that "Castro was not yet expressing a Marxist viewpoint, but he was moving in that direction."

After a quick visit to Venezuela and Panama, in April 1948 Castro traveled to the city of Bogotá in Colombia with a number of other Cuban students on a trip sponsored by the government of Argentine President Juan Perón, whose anti - imperialist politics impressed Castro. Once there, the assassination of popular leftist leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala led to widespread rioting that came to be known as the Bogotazo. Leaving three thousand dead, the riots revolved around clashes between rightist Conservatives, who then controlled the country's government and who were backed by the army, and leftist Liberals who were supported by a number of Colombian socialist groups. Castro, along with his fellow Cuban visitors, joined in in support of the Liberal cause by stealing guns from a police station, but subsequent police investigations came to the conclusion that neither Castro nor any of the other Cubans had been involved in the killings.

Returning to Cuba, Castro became a prominent figure in the widespread protests against the government's attempts to raise bus fares, with buses being the only form of transport available to most students and workers. It was also in 1948 that Castro married Mirta Díaz Balart, a student from a wealthy Cuban family through whom he was exposed to the lifestyle of the Cuban elite. The relationship was a love match and was disapproved of by both of their families. Mirta's father gave them tens of thousands of dollars to spend in a three month honeymoon in New York City, and the couple also received a U.S. $1,000 wedding gift from the military general and former president Fulgencio Batista, a friend of Mirta's family.

That same year, Grau decided not to stand for re-election, and his party instead nominated Carlos Prío Socarrás as their presidential candidate. Prío would go on to win the election, becoming President of Cuba. However, he faced widespread protests when members of the MSR, which by this time was allied to the police force, assassinated Justo Fuentes, a "self - taught black man" and prominent member of the UIR who was a friend and ally of Castro's. In response, Prío agreed to try to quell the gangs, but found them to be too powerful to control.

Castro had begun to move further to the left in his political views, being influenced by the writings of prominent Marxists like Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin. He came to interpret the problems facing Cuba as being an integral part of capitalist society, or the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", rather than the failings of corrupt politicians. Coming to believe the Marxist idea that true political change could only be brought about by a revolution led by the working class, Castro set about visiting Havana's poorest neighborhoods, witnessing the nation's huge social and racial inequalities, and became active in the University Committee for the Struggle against Racial Discrimination.

In September 1949, Mirta gave birth to a son, Fidelito, and so the couple moved to a larger flat in Havana. Despite the need to care for his family, Castro continued to put himself at risk, staying active in the city's political arena and joining a new organization, the September 30 Movement, which contained within it both communists and members of the Partido Ortodoxo. The group's purpose was to oppose the influence of the violent gangs within the university; despite his promises, President Prío had failed to control the situation, instead offering many of their senior members jobs in government ministries. Castro volunteered to deliver a speech for the Movement on November 13, in which he exposed the government's secret deals with the gangs and identified many of their key members. Attracting the attention of the national press, the speech angered the gangs, and Castro was forced to go into hiding, first in various rural areas and then in the U.S. Returning to Havana several weeks later, Castro laid low and focused on his university studies, graduating from university as a Doctor of Law in September 1950.

Now a Doctor of Law, Castro became a professional lawyer, founding his own legal partnership with two fellow leftist students, Jorge Azpiazu and Rafael Resende, whose intention was to focus on helping poor Cubans in asserting their rights. It was a financial failure, with its main client being a timber merchant who paid them in timber to furnish their office. Castro cared little for money or material goods, something his wife found difficult, particularly when their furniture was repossessed and their electricity cut off, in both instances because Castro had failed to pay his bills.

Castro remained active in politics, taking part in a high school protest in Cienfuegos in November 1950 that involved students fighting a four hour battle with police in protest at the Education Ministry's ban on the founding of student associations in schools. He was arrested and charged with using violence against police officers, but the magistrate later dismissed the charges. He also became an active member of the Cuban Peace Committee, a part of the international campaign led by British intellectual Bertrand Russell to oppose western involvement in the Korean War. His hopes for Cuba still largely centered around Eduardo Chibás and his left wing Partido Ortodoxo; however Chibás had made a mistake when he accused Education Minister Aureliano Sánchez of purchasing a Guatemalan ranch with misappropriated funds, but was unable to substantiate his allegations. The government used this as an opportunity to go on the offensive against Chibás, accusing him of being a liar and a troublemaker. In 1951, while running for president again, Chibás shot himself in the stomach during a radio broadcast in an attempt to issue a "last wake - up call" to the Cuban people. Castro was present and accompanied him to the hospital where he died of his injuries.

Although his political views were further left than the Partido Ortodoxo, Castro believed that those parties on the far left, namely the PSP, were too unpopular to achieve a revolutionary leftist movement in Cuba, and for this reason remained in the Ortodoxo. Seeing himself as the heir to Chibás, Castro wanted to run for Congress in the June 1952 elections, but senior party members feared his radical reputation and refused to nominate him. Instead he gained the support of enough Ortodoxo members in Havana's poorest districts to be nominated as a candidate for the House of Representatives, and put all his energies into campaigning. It was at the time that Castro held a meeting with General Fulgencio Batista, the former president who had recently returned to politics by winning a seat in the Senate and founding the Unitary Action Party; although they both opposed the Prío administration, their meeting never got beyond "polite generalities" with no indication that they would later become bitter enemies.

The Ortodoxo had gained a considerable level of support, and there was a "fair chance that the Ortodoxos and Castro would both have succeeded in the election." However, this was quashed in March 1952 when General Batista seized power in a military coup, removing the widely discredited President Prío from office, who then fled to Mexico. Subsequently declaring himself president, Batista cancelled the planned presidential elections, describing his new system as "disciplined democracy": Castro, like many others, instead saw it as the establishment of a one man dictatorship with no benefit to the Cuban populace. Although in his earlier democratic terms as president Batista had taken a center - left stance, he now moved to the right and went on to solidify his ties with the United States, severing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, suppressing trade unions and persecuting socialist groups in Cuba. Intent on opposing the Batista administration, Castro brought several legal cases against them, arguing that Batista had committed sufficient criminal acts to warrant at least 100 years imprisonment and accusing various ministers of breaching labor laws. These came to nothing, leading Castro to begin thinking of alternative ways to oust the new government.

Dissatisfied with the Ortodoxo's policy of non - violent opposition to Batista's regime, Castro formed a group known simply as "The Movement". Consisting of both a civil and a military committee, the former conducted political agitation through an underground newspaper, El Acusador (The Accuser), while the latter armed and trained recruits to take violent action against Batista. With Castro as the Movement's head, the organization was based upon a clandestine cell system, with each cell containing ten members, none of whom knew the whereabouts or activities of the other cells. A dozen individuals formed the nucleus of the movement, many of whom were also dissatisfied Ortodoxo members, although from July 1952 the Movement went on a recruitment drive, and within a year it had around 1,200 members, organized into over a hundred cells, with the majority of members coming from the poorer districts of Havana. Although Castro's political ideology was that of revolutionary socialism, he avoided an alliance with the communist PSP, fearing that this would frighten away the political moderates who were members of the Movement, but did keep in contact with some of the PSP's members, who included his brother and fellow conspirator Raúl. He would later relate that the members of the Movement were on the whole simply anti - Batista, and few had strong socialist or anti - imperialist views, something which Castro attributed to "the overwhelming weight of the Yankees' ideological and advertising machinery" which he felt had suppressed class consciousness amongst Cuba's working class.

Castro's Movement was not the only militant group that wanted to oust Batista. One of the Orthodoxo's founding members, the Professor of Philosophy Rafael García Bárcena, had founded the National Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Nacional Revolucionaria – MNR). Consisting largely of middle class members, it contrasted with Castro's predominantly working class support base. In March 1953, the MNR had planned to attack and seize control of the barracks at Camp Colombia, but police had been alerted to the plot, with the conspirators being rounded up and tortured. In all, fourteen people were sentenced to imprisonment for the attack. Meanwhile, Castro had been having similar ideas, stockpiling weapons in order to lead the armed wing of the Movement in an attack on the Moncada Barracks, a military garrison just outside Santiago de Cuba in Oriente. The plan was for Castro's members to dress in army uniforms and arrive at the base in cars on July 25, the festival of St James, when many of the officers would be on leave or celebrating in the nearby town. The rebels would then seize control of the barracks before the alarm could be raised, raid the armory and then escape before the army could bring in reinforcements. Supplied with a wealth of new weaponry, Castro believed that the Movement could arm local supporters and spark a revolution in Oriente, which was dominated by a population of impoverished cane cutters. The plan was to then seize control of a radio station in Santiago, from which the Movement could broadcast their manifesto and promote widespread uprisings against Batista. In doing so, Castro's plan was directly emulating those of the 19th century Cuban independence fighters who had raided Spanish barracks, and in keeping with this Castro saw himself as the heir to independence leader and national hero José Martí, both leading national liberation struggles against foreign dominance.

Castro had gathered together 165 members of the Movement to take part in the mission, 138 of which were stationed in Santiago, with the other 27 instead positioned in Bayamo. The majority of them were young men from Havana and Pinar del Río, and Castro ensured that, with the exception of himself, none of the volunteers had children. The plan had been carefully orchestrated, and Castro ordered his troops not to cause bloodshed unless they met armed resistance. The attack took place on July 26, 1953, but before it had even begun it ran into trouble; of the sixteen cars that had set out from Santiago, one broke down on the way and two others got separated from the main convoy. When they eventually reached the barracks, further problems arose and soon the alarm was raised by the guards, with most of the rebels being pinned down outside of the base by machine gun fire. Those that managed to get inside faced heavy resistance, and four of them were killed by gunfire before Castro, realizing that he was heavily outnumbered, ordered his men to retreat. In the attack, the rebels had suffered 6 fatalities and 15 other casualties, whilst the government forces had faced a heavier toll, with 19 dead and 27 wounded. Meanwhile, some of the other rebels had taken over a civilian hospital, but as the main attack on the barracks failed, government soldiers stormed the hospital, rounding up the rebels, before torturing them for information and finally summarily executing 22 of them without trial. Those rebels that had been able to escape, and who included both Fidel and his brother Raúl, had assembled at their base, the Siboney Farm, where some debated surrender, while others wished to flee to Havana. Accompanied by 19 comrades, Castro however decided to set out for the rugged Gran Piedra mountains several miles to the north, where they could establish a guerrilla base and continue their revolutionary activities.

In response to the Moncada attack, Batista's government ordered a violent crackdown on all dissent (orchestrated by both the army and the SIM police), declaring martial law and imposing strict censorship on the media. Government propaganda began broadcasting misinformation about the event, claiming that the rebels had murdered patients in the civilian hospital and asserting that the Movement was a communist group financed by the exiled President Prío (ignoring the fact that the latter was a fierce anti - communist). Despite this censorship, news and photographs soon spread of the army's use of torture and summary executions in Oriente, causing widespread public and even some governmental disapproval.

Over the next few days all of the rebels hiding in the mountains were rounded up by government forces and transported to a prison north of Santiago, although Castro was not executed on the spot as many of his comrades had been. Believing that Castro had been incapable of planning the attack by himself, the government accused politicians from the Ortodoxo and communist PSP of being involved in masterminding the attack, and in all 122 defendents, amongst them Castro, were put on trial on September 21 at the Palace of Justice in Santiago. Although censored from reporting on it, journalists were permitted to attend the proceedings, which proved an embarrassment for the Batista administration. Acting as his own defence council, Castro convinced the three presiding judges to overrule the army's decision to keep all defendants handcuffed in court, before proceeding to argue that the charge with which they were all accused – of 'organizing an uprising of armed persons against the Constitutional Powers of the State' – was incorrect, for they had risen up not against the Constitutional Powers of the State but against Batista, who had seized power in an unconstitutional manner. When asked who was the intellectual author of the attack, Castro claimed that it was the long deceased national icon José Martí, before quoting some of Martí's works that justified uprisings against tyrannical regimes.

As the trial went on, knowledge of the torture that army officers inflicted on their captives emerged. These included castration using a razor and the gouging out of eyes with bayonets; the judges agreed that full investigations into these crimes would have to be undertaken. These revelations proved to be a great embarrassment to the army, who tried unsuccessfully to prevent Castro from testifying any further by claiming that he was too ill to leave his cell. The trial came to an end on October 5, with all of the politicians and many of the rebels being acquitted, although 55 were sentenced to prison terms of between 7 months and 13 years. Castro was sentenced separately, on October 16, during which he proceeded to deliver a speech that would later be printed under the title of History Will Absolve Me. Although the maximum penalty for leading an uprising was a 20 year prison sentence, Castro was sentenced to 15 years, being imprisoned in the hospital wing of the Model Prison (Presidio Modelo) on the Isla de Pinos, sixty miles off of Cuba's southwest coast.

Imprisoned in the Presidio Modelo with 25 of his fellow conspirators, Castro devoted himself to politics once more, changing the name of the Movement to the "July 26 Movement", in memory of the date of the failed Moncada attack. Forming a school for prisoners, the Abel Santamaría Ideological Academy, Castro organized five hours a day of teaching, with himself and other Movement members lecturing on such subjects as ancient and modern history, philosophy and the English language. Making use of the prison library and gifts from friends outside of prison, he continued reading widely, enjoying the works of Marx, Lenin, and Martí but also reading books by Sigmund Freud, Immanuel Kant, William Shakespeare, Axel Munthe, Somerset Maugham and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, analyzing most of them within a Marxist framework. He corresponded with those outside of prison, trying to maintain control over his Movement without giving too much away to the prison censors, who read all of his letters, and also organized the publication of his History Will Absolve Me speech. Although at first having a fair amount of freedom within the prison, this came to an end after prison inmates embarrassed the guards by singing anti - Batista songs on a visit by the President in February 1954. In retaliation, the prison authorities removed most of the privileges that Castro and other prisoners were allowed, locking Castro up in solitary confinement indefinitely.

Meanwhile, Castro's wife Mirta, who did not share his obsession with political activism, had gained employment in the Ministry of the Interior, thereby working for Batista's government. She had been encouraged to do so by her brother, who had been a friend and ally of Batista for many years. This was kept a secret from Castro, who eventually found out through a radio announcement. Appalled, he raged that he would rather die "a thousand times" than "suffer impotently from such an insult". Both Fidel and Mirta initiated divorce proceedings, with Mirta taking custody of their son Fidelito; this angered Castro, who did not want his son growing up in a bourgeois environment.

In 1954, Batista's government went ahead with their earlier promises and held presidential elections, but no politician had risked standing against Batista lest they face violent reprisals. Batista won comfortably, buy the election was widely recognized as fraudulent. It had however allowed some political opposition to be openly voiced, and supporters of Castro and his Movement had begun agitating for an amnesty for all those imprisoned over the Moncada incident. Some government politicians suggested that such an amnesty would provide good publicity, and the Congress and Batista eventually agreed. Backed by the U.S. government and major corporations, Batista believed that Castro would be no political threat to his regime, and on May 15, 1955 the prisoners were released.

Returning to Havana, Castro was met by his supporters, being carried along on the shoulders of students, and set about giving various radio interviews and press conferences. Now a single man again, Castro had sexual affairs with a number of women, including one of his devout supporters, Naty Revuelta, who conceived him a child named Alina, and another of his supporters, Maria Laborde, who conceived another child, Jorge Angel Castro. He also set about to strengthen his anti - Batista revolutionary Movement, welcoming members of the now defunct MNR into it, and establishing an eleven person National Directorate of the 26 July Revolutionary Movement (or MR-26-7). Despite these structural changes, there was still dissent within the group, with some members questioning Castro's autocratic leadership. Castro dismissed their proposals for the leadership to be transferred to a democratic board, arguing that a successful revolution could not be run by a committee. Some of them subsequently abandoned the MR-26-7, labeling Castro a caudillo (dictator), although the majority accepted his reasoning and remained loyal.

In 1955, a series of bomb attacks and violent demonstrations against Batista's administration led to a crackdown on dissent in Cuba, with Castro being placed under armed guard by his supporters as protection from possible assassination attempts. His brother Raúl was accused of one bomb attack and fled the county, with Fidel deciding to follow on July 7. Those members of the MR-26-7 that remained in Cuba were left with orders to prepare cells for revolutionary action in all of the country's main towns and cities, and await Castro's return, when he would bring with him an army to topple Batista. He sent a letter to the country's political leaders and the press, declaring that he was "am leaving Cuba because all doors of peaceful struggle have been closed to me. Six weeks after being released from prison I am convinced more than ever of the dictatorship's intention, masked in many ways, to remain in power for twenty years, ruling as now by the use of terror and crime and ignoring the patience of the Cuban people, which has its limits. As a follower of Martí, I believe the hour has come to take our rights and not beg for them, to fight instead of pleading for them."

The Castro brothers and a number of other MR-26-7 members traveled to Mexico, a country with a long history of offering asylum to left wing exiles. Raul had befriended one such exile, an Argentine doctor and Marxist - Leninist named Ernesto "Che" Guevara (1928 – 1967), who was a proponent of guerrilla warfare and who was keen to join the Cuban Revolution as a part of his deeply held belief in overthrowing U.S. imperialism in Latin America. Upon meeting Guevara, Fidel took a liking to him, later describing him as being "a more advanced revolutionary than I was." Another socialist revolutionary whom Castro began associating with was the Cuban born Spaniard Colonel Alberto Bayo (1892 – 1967), who had fought for the leftist Republican side in the Spanish Civil War during the 1930s, before being exiled upon the victory of the fascist General Francisco Franco and his Falange. Bayo agreed to teach Fidel's rebels the skills in guerrilla warfare that they would need if they were to return to Cuba to battle Batista, clandestinely meeting them at various premises.

In desperate need of money to finance his activities, Castro went on a tour of the United States in search of wealthy sympathizers, including the exiled former President Prío (who contributed the considerable sum of $100,000), during which time he was monitored by agents of Batista's government who at one point allegedly orchestrated a failed plot to kill him. These agents also bribed Mexican police to arrest Castro and other MR-26-7 members in the country, but ultimately the revolutionaries were all released, particularly as several members of the Mexican government sympathized with their cause. Castro had also kept in contact with the MR-26-7 agents who had remained in Cuba, where they had succeeded in getting a large clandestine support base in several towns in Oriente. Other militant groups had also sprung up to oppose Batista within the country, primarily from the ranks of the student movement; most notable of these was the Revolutionary Directorate (DR), which had been founded by the Federation of University Students (FEU) President José Antonio Echevarría. Echevarría traveled to Mexico City to meet with Castro, but the two disagreed widely on tactics, with Castro opposing with the young student's policy of supporting indiscriminate assassinations of anyone in the government.

Purchasing a decrepid old yacht, the Granma, it was on the 25 November 1956 that Castro set sail from Tuxpan in Veracruz, Mexico, with a group of 81 revolutionaries, armed with 90 rifles, 3 machine guns, around 40 pistols and 2 hand held anti - tank guns. The 1,200 mile crossing to Cuba was harsh, and in the overcrowded conditions of the ship (which was designed to hold around 20 passengers), many of the men suffered from seasickness, and food supplies began to run low. At some points they had to bail water caused by a leak, and at another a man fell overboard, delaying their journey. The plan had been for the journey to take five days, and on the Granma's scheduled day of arrival, 30 November, members of the MR-26-7 in Cuba under the leadership of Frank Pais led an armed uprising against government buildings in Santiago, Manzanillo and several other towns. However, the crossing in the Granma ultimately lasted for seven days, and with Castro and his men unable to provide immediate back-up, Pais and those MR-26-7 members under his leadership dispersed to their homes after two days of intermittent attacks, having "suffered very few casualties and arrests".

The Granma landed in Cuba on 2 December 1956, crashing in a mangrove swamp at Playa Las Coloradas, close to Los Cayuelos. Batista's forces had been expecting them, and within several hours of their arrival they were bombarded from a naval vessel. Fleeing inland, they headed for the Sierra Maestra in Oriente, a large forested mountain range from where they could lead a guerrilla war against Batista. At daybreak on 5 December they were unexpectedly attacked by a detachment of Batista's Rural Guard; in the confusion, the rebels scattering into different groups which continued making their journey to the Sierra Maestra independently. With only two comrades, Castro made it to the mountains, along the way meeting up with others who had survived the attack; ultimately it was discovered that of the 82 rebels who had arrived on the Granma, only 19 had made it to the Sierra Maestra, the rest being killed or captured by Batista's forces.

Setting up an encampment in the thick jungle of the Sierra Maestra, the survivors, who included Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Raúl Castro and Camilo Cienfuegos, began launching attacks on small army posts in the region in order to steal weaponry. In January 1957 they attacked the outpost near to the beach at La Plata, defeating the soldiers stationed there. Being a doctor, Guevara treated the soldiers for any injuries, but the revolutionaries executed the local mayoral (land company overseer) Chicho Osorio, who was despised by the local peasants and who had boasted of killing one of the MR-26-7 rebels several weeks previously. The execution of Osorio aided the rebels in gaining the trust of local people, who typically hated the mayorals as enforcers of the much despised wealthy landowners. Nonetheless, the locals were initially unenthusiastic in their support for the guerrillas, viewing them with suspicion as outsiders. As trust grew between the two communities, some locals joined the rebels, although the majority of new recruits came from urban areas, traveling to the Sierra Maestra in order to aid the revolutionary effort. With rising levels of support and increasing number of volunteers joining the rebel army, which now numbered over 200, in July 1957 Castro eventually divided his men into three columns, keeping charge of one and giving control of the others to his brother and Che Guevara. The MR-26-7 members operating in urban areas continued agitating against the government, sending supplies to the Sierra Maestra rebels and on 16 February 1957 Castro met with other leading members of the group to discuss tactics; it was here that he met Celia Sánchez, who would become a close friend.

The Cuban Revolution was not contained to the MR-26-7, and across Cuba militant groups were beginning to rise up against Batista. Most notably, Echevarría and his DR had been carrying out bombings and acts of sabotage, leading the police to respond with mass arrests, the torture of suspects and extra - judicial killings. In March 1957 the DR launched an attack on the presidential palace, with Batista himself narrowly surviving. The rebels were eventually defeated, and Echevarría was shot dead by police in the street as he attempted to issue a radio broadcast. His death would prove beneficial for Castro, removing a charismatic rival to his leadership of the anti - Batista movement. Although already a Marxist - Leninist, Castro kept his beliefs a secret from many of the MR-26-7, something in contrast to Guevara and Raúl, whose beliefs were well known. In this way he hoped to gain a wider support base amongst those of other political persuasions, and in 1957 he met with leading members of the Partido Ortodoxo. Castro and the Ortodoxo leaders Raúl Chibás and Felipe Pazos drafted and signed a document called the Sierra Maestra Manifesto in which they laid out their plans for a post Batista Cuba. Rejecting the idea that Cuba should be run by a provisional military junta following Batista's demise, it demanded that a provisional civilian government be set up that was "supported by all" and which would implement agrarian reform, industrialization and a campaign to wipe out illiteracy before introducing "truly fair, democratic, impartial, elections".

Batista's government censored the Cuban media, and so Castro felt it would be beneficial to reach out and contact foreign media sources in order to spread his message. A U.S. journalist from the New York Times named Herbert Matthews came to interview Castro, attracting international interest to the rebel's cause and turning him into a celebrity. The New York Times front page story presented Castro as a romantic and appealing revolutionary, and exaggerated the number of troops and resources that he had at his command, with Matthews declaring that "Batista cannot possibly hope to suppress the Castro revolt". Soon, other reporters followed in Matthews' footsteps by travelling to the Sierra Maestra to interview Castro, sent by such news agencies as CBS, while a reporter from Paris Match stayed with the rebels for around 4 months, documenting their daily routine. The number of attacks that Castro's guerrilla's undertook against military outposts in and around the mountains increased, forcing the government to withdraw from all its posts in the region. By the spring of 1958 the rebels controlled all of the mountainous areas in Oriente province, controlling a hospital, schools, a printing press, slaughterhouse, land mine factory and a cigar making factory.

President Batista was coming under increasing pressure by 1958. His army's military failures in Oriente, coupled with his censorship of the media and the repressive techniques of torture and extra - judicial killings employed by the police and armed forces were being increasingly criticized both at home and abroad. Influenced by a wave of anti - Batista sentiment amongst their citizens, the U.S. government made the decision to stop supplying him with weaponry, which he had been using against the rebels, leading him to instead begin buying arms from the United Kingdom. The opposition used this as an opportunity to rise up across the country, proposing a general strike which would be accompanied by armed attacks from the MR-26-7. The strike began on 9 April, and while receiving strong support in the center and east of Cuba, in Havana and other urbanized western parts of the country most workers continued working as usual.

Batista's response was to launch an all - out attack on Castro's guerrilla forces, known as Operation Verano. The army began aerial bombardment of forested areas and villages that were suspected of aiding and hiding the militants, whilst 10,000 soldiers under the command of General Eulogio Cantillo surrounded the Sierra Maestra, driving north to the areas where the rebels were camped. Despite their massive superiority of numbers and weaponry, the army were at a disadvantage, having no experience with guerrilla warfare or the mountainous region. Castro, who by this time had around 300 men at his command, avoided open confrontation, instead using land mines and ambushes to halt the enemy offensive. The army suffered heavy losses and a number of embarrassments; in June 1958 a battalion was trapped in a valley by the rebels and forced to surrender. Their weapons were confiscated, and they were handed over to the Red Cross. In the summer, the MR-26-7 went on the offensive, pushing the government forces back, out of the mountain range and into the lowlands, with Castro using his columns in a pincer movement to surround the main army concentration in Santiago. By November, Castro's forces had most of Oriente and Las Villas under his control, and although the capitals of Santiago and Santa Clara remained in government hands, their grip on them was slipping.

The U.S. government had come to realize that Batista would probably lose the war, and fearing that Castro, under the influence of known Marxist - Leninists like Che Guevara, would displace U.S. interests with socialist reforms, they decided to support Batista's removal in support of a military junta led by centrist or right wing officers, believing that General Cantillo, who then commanded most of the country's armed forces, would be best placed to lead it. After being approached with this proposal, Cantillo decided to secretly meet with Castro to see if they could bring an end to the fighting, and ultimately it was agreed that the two would call a ceasefire, following which Batista would be apprehended and tried as a war criminal. Double crossing Castro, Cantillo warned Batista of the revolutionary's intentions. Wishing to avoid a war crimes tribunal, Batista resigned on 31 December 1958, informing the armed forces that they were now under the Cantillo's control. With his family and closest advisers, Batista then fled into exile, taking with him an amassed fortune of more than US$ 300,000,000. The following morning Cantillo entered the presidential palace in Havana, proclaimed the Supreme Court judge Carlos Piedra to be the new President, and began appointing new members of the government.

Still in Oriente, Castro was furious at Cantillo's actions, recognizing it as the establishment of a military junta. He told his troops to end the ceasefire and continue on the offensive against government forces. The MR-26-7 put together a plan to oust the Cantillo - Piedra junta, freeing the high ranking military officer Colonel Barquin from the Isle of Pines prison (where he had been held captive for plotting to overthrow Batista), and commanding him to fly to Havana to place Cantillo under house arrest. While there was widespread celebrations as news of Batista's downfall spread across Cuba on 1 January 1959, Castro gave an order to MR-26-7 members to take on the responsibility of policing the country, in order to prevent the widespread looting and vandalism that he had witnessed in the Bogotazo.

Whilst Cienfuegos and Guevara led their columns of soldiers into Havana onto 2 January, Castro entered Santiago, where he accepted the surrender of the Moncada Barracks, before giving a speech to the assembled crowds in which he invoked the 19th century wars of independence against the Spanish Empire. He proceeded to speak out against the Cantillo - Piedra junta but highlighted that the majority of soldiers in the armed forces were honorable, and that only the few who had committed human rights abuses would be brought to justice. He also praised the role that women had played in the MR-26-7, and proclaimed that they would have equal rights in the new Cuba. Castro immediately became a heroic figure to the Cuban people, striking a "Christ like figure" and wearing a medallion of the Virgin Mary, with cheering crowds meeting him at every town on his way to Havana. Along the way he gave speeches, press conferences and interviews, with U.S. and other foreign reporters noting that the public adulation of Castro was on an unprecedented scale.

While still in the Sierra Maestra, Castro had made it clear that the lawyer Manuel Urrutia Lleó (1901 – 1981) should be the new Cuban president and leader of a provisional civilian government. An established figure, Urrutia had defended several revolutionaries, including members of the MR-26-7, in court during the Batista administration, and it was for this reason that Castro believed he would make a good leader, being both connected to the Cuban establishment and favorable to the revolutionary cause. Following the house arrest of Cantillo and the ensuing collapse of the junta, Urrutia proclaimed himself to be provisional president, based purely on the support of Castro and his rebels rather than on any democratic consensus. On January 8, 1959, Castro's army rolled victoriously into Havana, and he would shortly thereafter declare that "power does not interest me, and I will not take it." In Havana, Castro set up both home and office in the penthouse of the Havana Hilton Hotel, there meeting with journalists, foreign visitors and government ministers. He also began secretly meeting with leading members of the Cuban Communist Party, believing that they had the intellectual capacity to form a socialist government where the MR-26-7 did not. He nonetheless kept his true political persuasions a secret from the public eye, and repeatedly denied being a communist.

Popular uproar across Cuba demanded that those figures of the Batista administration who had been complicit in the widespread torture and killing of civilians be brought to justice. Castro helped to set up trials of such individuals across the country, resulting in hundreds of executions. Critics, in particular from the U.S. press, argued that many of these did not meet the standards of a fair trial, and condemned Cuba's new government as being more interested in vengeance than justice. Castro retaliated strongly against such accusations, proclaiming that "revolutionary justice is not based on legal precepts, but on moral conviction". In a show of support for this "revolutionary justice", he organized the first Havana trial to take place before a mass audience at the Sports Palace; when a group of aviators accused of bombing a village were found not guilty, he ordered a retrial in which they were instead found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Fidel Castro sought to oust liberals and democrats, such as José Miró Cardona and Manuel Urrutia Lleó. In February professor José Miró Cardona had to resign because of Castro's attacks. On February 16, 1959, Castro was sworn in as Prime Minister of Cuba. Professor Miró soon went into exile in the United States, and would later participate in the Bay of Pigs Invasion against Castro's form of government. President Manuel Urrutia Lleó and many of Cuba's revolutionary leaders wanted to restore the suspended Cuban Constitution of 1940 along with freedom of the press, and hold free and open elections, but Castro opposed free elections. Castro's slogan was "Revolution first, elections later". Freedom of the press or open, free elections have never been held in Cuba to this day.

Between April 15 and April 26, Castro and a delegation of industrial and international representatives visited the U.S. as guests of the Press Club. Castro hired one of the best public relations firms in the United States for a charm offensive visit by Castro and his recently initiated government. Castro answered impertinent questions jokingly and ate hot dogs and hamburgers. His rumpled fatigues and scruffy beard cut a popular figure easily promoted as an authentic hero. He was refused a meeting with President Eisenhower. After his visit to the United States, he would go on to join forces with the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev.

On May 17, 1959, Castro signed into law the First Agrarian Reform, which limited landholdings to 993 acres (4.02 km²) per owner and forbade foreign land ownership.

Castro started to organize attacks on President Manuel Urrutia Lleó. Castro himself resigned as Prime Minister of Cuba and later that day appeared on television to deliver a lengthy denouncement of Urrutia, claiming that Urrutia "complicated" government, and that his "fevered anti - Communism" was having a detrimental effect. Castro's sentiments received widespread support as organized crowds surrounded the presidential palace demanding Urrutia's resignation, which was duly received. On July 23, Castro resumed his position as premier and appointed Osvaldo Dorticós as the new president.

As early as July 1959, Castro's intelligence chief Ramiro Valdés contacted the KGB in Mexico City. Subsequently, the USSR sent over one hundred mostly Spanish speaking advisors, including Enrique Líster Forján, to organize the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.

In February 1960, Cuba signed an agreement to buy oil from the USSR. When the U.S. owned refineries in Cuba refused to process the oil, they were expropriated, and the United States broke off diplomatic relations with the Castro government soon afterward. To the concern of the Eisenhower administration, Cuba began to establish closer ties with the Soviet Union. A variety of pacts were signed between Castro and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, allowing Cuba to receive large amounts of economic and military aid from the USSR.

In June 1960, Eisenhower reduced Cuba's sugar import quota by 7,000,000 tons, and in response, Cuba nationalized some US$ 850 million worth of U.S. property and businesses. Health care was socialized. The new government took control of the country by nationalizing industry, redistributing property, collectivizing agriculture and creating policies that would benefit the poor. While popular among the poor, these policies alienated many former supporters of the revolution among the Cuban middle and upper classes.

By the early autumn of 1960, the U.S. government was engaged in a semi - secret campaign to remove Castro from power.

In September 1960, Castro created Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, which implemented neighborhood spying in an effort to weed out "counter - revolutionary" activities.

By the end of 1960, all opposition newspapers had been closed down and all radio and television stations were in state control, run under the Leninist principle of Democratic Centralism. Moderates, teachers and professors were purged. He was accused of keeping about 20,000 dissidents held captive and tortured under inhuman prison conditions every year.

Groups such as homosexuals were locked up in concentration camps in the 1960s, where they were subject to medical - political "re-education". Castro's admiring description of rural life in Cuba ("in the country, there are no homosexuals") reflected the idea of homosexuality as bourgeois decadence, and he denounced "maricones" (faggots) as "agents of imperialism". Castro stated that "homosexuals should not be allowed in positions where they are able to exert influence upon young people". However, in August 2010, Castro called the sending of openly gay men to labor camps without charge or trial "moments of great injustice, great injustice!" saying that "if someone is responsible, it's me."

Loyalty to Castro became the primary criteria for all appointments on the island. The Communist Party strengthened its one party rule, with Castro as the Prime Minister.

In the 1961 New Year's Day parade, Castro exhibited Soviet tanks and other weapons. The Soviet Union awarded him the Lenin Peace Prize later that year.

The Bay of Pigs Invasion (known as La Batalla de Girón, or Playa Girón in Cuba), was an unsuccessful attempt by a US trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba with support from US government armed forces, to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro.

The plan was launched in April 1961, less than three months after John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency in the United States. The Cuban armed forces, trained and equipped by Eastern Bloc nations, defeated the exile combatants in three days.

On May 1, 1961, Castro declared Cuba a socialist state and officially abolished multiparty elections. Critics noted that Castro feared elections would eject him from power. On the same day Castro announced to the hundreds of thousands in his audience that:

The revolution has no time for elections. There is no more democratic government in Latin America than the revolutionary government. ... If Mr. Kennedy does not like Socialism, we do not like imperialism. We do not like capitalism.

In a nationally broadcast speech on December 2, 1961, Castro declared that he was a Marxist - Leninist and that Cuba was adopting Communism. On February 7, 1962, the US imposed an embargo against Cuba. This embargo was broadened during 1962 and 1963, including a general travel ban for American tourists.

Tensions between Cuba and the U.S. heightened during the 1962 missile crisis, which nearly brought the U.S. and the USSR into nuclear conflict. Khrushchev conceived the idea of placing missiles in Cuba as a deterrent to a possible U.S. invasion and justified the move in response to U.S. missile deployment in Turkey. After consultations with his military advisors, he met with a Cuban delegation led by Raúl Castro in July in order to work out the specifics. It was agreed to deploy Soviet R-12 MRBMs on Cuban soil; however, American Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance discovered the construction of the missile installations on October 15, 1962 before the weapons had actually been deployed.

The U.S. government viewed the installation of Soviet nuclear weapons 90 miles (145 km) south of Key West as an aggressive act and a threat to U.S. security. As a result, the U.S. publicly announced its discovery on October 22, 1962, and implemented a quarantine around Cuba that would actively intercept and search any vessels heading for the island. Nikolai Sergevich Leonov, who would become a General in the KGB Intelligence Directorate and the Soviet KGB deputy station chief in Warsaw, was the translator Castro used for contact with Russians during this period.

In a personal letter to Khrushchev dated October 27, 1962, Castro urged him to launch a nuclear first strike against the United States if Cuba were invaded, but Khrushchev rejected any first strike response. Soviet field commanders in Cuba were, however, authorized to use tactical nuclear weapons if attacked by the United States. Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a U.S. commitment not to invade Cuba and an understanding that the US would secretly remove American MRBMs targeting the Soviet Union from Turkey and Italy, a measure that the U.S. implemented a few months later.

Fabian Escalante, who was long tasked with protecting the life of Castro, estimated the number of assassination schemes or attempts by the CIA to be 638. Some such attempts allegedly included an exploding cigar, a fungal infected scuba diving suit, and a mafia style shooting. Some of these plots are depicted in a documentary entitled 638 Ways to Kill Castro. One of these attempts was by his ex-lover Marita Lorenz whom he met in 1959. She allegedly agreed to aid the CIA and attempted to smuggle a jar of cold cream containing poison pills into his room. When Castro realized, he reportedly gave her a gun and told her to kill him but her nerve failed. Castro once said, in regards to the numerous attempts on his life he believes have been made, "If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal."

According to the Family Jewels documents declassified by the CIA in 2007, one such assassination attempt before the Bay of Pigs invasion involved Johnny Roselli and Al Capone's successor in the Chicago Outfit, Salvatore Giancana and his right hand man Santos Trafficante. It was personally authorized by the then US attorney general Robert Kennedy.

Giancana and Miami Syndicate leader Santos Trafficante were contacted in September 1960 about the possibility of an assassination attempt by a go-between from the CIA, Robert Maheu, after Maheu had contacted Johnny Roselli, a member of the Las Vegas Syndicate and Giancana's number two man. Maheu had presented himself as a representative of numerous international business firms in Cuba that were being expropriated by Castro. He offered US$ 150,000 for the "removal" of Castro through this operation (the documents suggest that neither Roselli nor Giancana and Trafficante accepted any sort of payments for the job). According to the files, it was Giancana who suggested using a series of poison pills that could be used to doctor Castro's food and drink. These pills were given by the CIA to Giancana's nominee Juan Orta, whom Giancana presented as being an official in the Cuban government who was also in the pay of gambling interests, and who did have access to Castro.

After a series of six attempts to introduce the poison into Castro's food, Orta abruptly demanded to be let out of the mission, handing over the job to another, unnamed participant. Later, a second attempt was mounted through Giancana and Trafficante using Dr. Anthony Verona, the leader of the Cuban Exile Junta, who had, according to Trafficante, become "disaffected with the apparent ineffectual progress of the Junta". Verona requested US$ 10,000 in expenses and US$ 1,000 worth of communications equipment. However, it is unknown how far the second attempt went, as the entire program was canceled shortly thereafter due to the launching of the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

José María Aznar, former Spanish Prime Minister, wrote that the embargo was Castro's greatest ally, and that Castro would lose his presidency within three months if the embargo was lifted. Castro retained control after Cuba became bankrupt and isolated following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The synergic contraction of Cuban economy resulted in eighty - five percent of its markets disappearing, along with subsidies and trade agreements that had supported it, causing extended gas and water outages, severe power shortages, and dwindling food supplies.

In 1994, the island's economy plunged into what was called the "Special Period"; teetering on the brink of collapse. Cuba legalized the US dollar, turned to tourism, and encouraged the transfer of remittances in US dollars from Cubans living in the USA to their relatives on the Island. After massive damage caused by Hurricane Michelle in 2001, Castro proposed a one time cash purchase of food from the U.S. while declining a U.S. offer of humanitarian aid.

The U.S. authorized the shipment of food in 2001, the first since the embargo was imposed. During 2004, Castro shut down 118 factories, including steel plants, sugar mills and paper processors to compensate for the crisis due to fuel shortages, and in 2005 directed thousands of Cuban doctors to Venezuela in exchange for oil imports.

Following the establishment of diplomatic ties to the Soviet Union, and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Cuba became increasingly dependent on Soviet markets and military and economic aid. Castro was able to build a formidable military force with the help of Soviet equipment and military advisors. The KGB kept in close touch with Havana, and Castro tightened Communist Party control over all levels of government, the media, and the educational system, while developing a Soviet style internal police force. Castro's alliance with the Soviet Union caused something of a split between him and Guevara. In 1966, Guevara left for Bolivia in an ill fated attempt to stir up revolution against the country's government.

Cuba's relations with the Soviet Union became strained when Cuba continued to recognise Israel as an independent state; the Soviet Union and its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc (with the exception of the Socialist Republic of Romania) had broken off diplomatic ties with Israel the earlier year. Relations became even more sour when Alexei Kosygin, the Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, visited Cuba in the aftermath of the 1967 Glassboro Summit Conference. During the visit Kosygin pressured Castro to end diplomatic relations with Israel; Castro responded by demanding that the Soviet Union end diplomatic relations with the United States.

On August 23, 1968, Castro made a public gesture to the USSR that caused the Soviet leadership to reaffirm their support for him. Two days after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia to repress the Prague Spring, Castro took to the airwaves and publicly denounced the Czech rebellion. Castro warned the Cuban people about the Czechoslovakian 'counterrevolutionaries', who "were moving Czechoslovakia towards capitalism and into the arms of imperialists". He called the leaders of the rebellion "the agents of West Germany and fascist reactionary rabble." In return for his public backing of the invasion, at a time when many Soviet allies were deeming the invasion an infringement of Czechoslovakia's sovereignty, the Soviets bailed out the Cuban economy with extra loans and an immediate increase in oil exports.

In 1971, despite an Organization of American States convention that no nation in the Western Hemisphere would have a relationship with Cuba (the only exception being Mexico, which had refused to adopt that convention), Castro took a month long visit to Chile, following the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba. The visit, in which Castro participated actively in the internal politics of the country, holding massive rallies and giving public advice to Salvador Allende, was seen by those on the political right as proof to support their view that "The Chilean Way to Socialism" was an effort to put Chile on the same path as Cuba.

When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Cuba in 1989, the camaraderie between Havana and Moscow was strained by Gorbachev's implementation of economic and political reforms in the USSR. "We are witnessing sad things in other socialist countries, very sad things", lamented Castro in November 1989, in reference to the changes that were sweeping such communist allies as the Soviet Union, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland. The subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 had an immediate and devastating effect on Cuba.

"As I have said before, the ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness, poverty or hunger."

— Fidel Castro, 2002

On November 4, 1975, Castro ordered the deployment of Cuban troops to Angola in order to aid the Marxist MPLA - ruled government against the South African backed UNITA opposition forces. Moscow aided the Cuban initiative with the USSR engaging in a massive airlift of Cuban forces into Angola. On Cuba's role in Angola, Nelson Mandela is said to have remarked "Cuban internationalists have done so much for African independence, freedom, and justice."

Cuban troops were also sent to Marxist Ethiopia to assist Ethiopian forces in the Ogaden War with Somalia in 1977. In addition, Castro extended support to Marxist Revolutionary movements throughout Latin America, such as aiding the Sandinistas in overthrowing the Somoza government in Nicaragua in 1979. It has been claimed by the Carthage Foundation funded Center for a Free Cuba that an estimated 14,000 Cubans were killed in Cuban military actions abroad. Castro never disclosed the amount of casualties in Soviet African wars, but one estimate is 14,000, a high number for the small country.

Juan Antonio Rodríguez Mernier, a former Cuban Intelligence Major who defected in 1987, says the regime made large amounts of money from drug trafficking operations in the 1970s. The cash was to be deposited in Fidel's Swiss bank accounts "in order to finance liberation movements". Norberto Fuentes, a defected member of the Castro brothers' inner circle, has provided details about these operations. According to him, an operation conducted in cooperation with the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine helped Cuban intelligence to steal one billion by robbing banks in Lebanon during the 1975 – 76 civil war. Gold bars, jewelry, gems, and museum pieces were carried in diplomatic pouches via air route Beirut - Moscow - Havana. Castro personally greeted the robbers as heroes.

Cuba and Panama restored diplomatic ties in 2005 after breaking them off a year prior when Panama's former president pardoned four Cuban exiles accused of attempting to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro in 2000. The foreign minister of each country re-established official diplomatic relations in Havana by signing a document describing a spirit of fraternity that has long linked both nations. Cuba, once shunned by many of its Latin American neighbours, now has full diplomatic relations with all but Costa Rica and El Salvador.

Although the relationship between Cuba and Mexico remains strained, each side appears to make attempts to improve it. In 1998, Fidel Castro apologized for remarks he made about Mickey Mouse which led Mexico to recall its ambassador from Havana. He said he intended no offense when he said earlier that Mexican children would find it easier to name Disney characters than to recount key figures in Mexican history. Rather, he said, his words were meant to underscore the cultural dominance of the US. Mexican president Vicente Fox apologized to Fidel Castro in 2002 over statements by Castro, who had taped their telephone conversation, to the effect that Fox forced him to leave a United Nations summit in Mexico so that he would not be in the presence of President Bush, who also attended.

At a summit meeting of sixteen Caribbean countries in 1998, Castro called for regional unity, saying that only strengthened cooperation between Caribbean countries would prevent their domination by rich nations in a global economy. Caribbean nations have embraced Cuba's Fidel Castro while accusing the US of breaking trade promises. Castro, until recently a regional outcast, has been increasing grants and scholarships to the Caribbean countries, while US aid has dropped 25% over the past five years. Cuba has opened four additional embassies in the Caribbean Community including: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Suriname, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. This development makes Cuba the only country to have embassies in all independent countries of the Caribbean Community.

Castro was known to be a friend of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and was an honorary pall bearer at Trudeau's funeral in October 2000. They had continued their friendship after Trudeau left office until his death. Canada became one of the first American allies openly to trade with Cuba. Cuba still has a good relationship with Canada. In 1998, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien arrived in Cuba to meet President Castro and highlight their close ties. He is the first Canadian government leader to visit the island since Pierre Trudeau was in Havana in 1976.

The European Union accuses the Castro regime of "continuing flagrant violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms". In December 2001, European Union representatives described their political dialogue with Cuba as back on track after a weekend of talks in Havana. The EU praised Cuba's willingness to discuss questions of human rights. Cuba is the only Latin American country without an economic co-operation agreement with the EU. However, trade with individual European countries remains strong since the US trade embargo on Cuba leaves the market free from American rivals.

In 2005, EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel ended his visit to Cuba optimistic that relations with the communist state will become stronger. The EU is Cuba's largest trading partner. Cuba's imprisonment of 75 dissidents and the execution of three hijackers have strained diplomatic relations. However, the EU commissioner was impressed with Fidel Castro's willingness to discuss these concerns, although he received no commitments from Castro. Cuba does not admit to holding political prisoners, seeing them rather as mercenaries in the pay of the United States.

Castro is seen as an icon by leaders of recent socialist governments in Latin America. Hugo Chávez of Venezuela is a long time admirer and reached agreements with Cuba to provide subsidized petroleum in exchange for Cuban medical assistance. Evo Morales of Bolivia has described him as "the grandfather of all Latin American revolutionaries".

According to Article 94 of the Cuban Constitution, the First Vice President of the Council of State assumes presidential duties upon the illness or death of the president. Raúl Castro was the person in that position for the last 32 years of Fidel Castro's presidency.

Due to the issue of presidential succession and Castro's longevity, there have long been rumors, speculation and hoaxing about Castro's health and demise. In 1998 there were reports that he had a serious brain disease, later discredited. In June 2001, he apparently fainted during a seven hour speech under the Caribbean sun. Later that day he finished the speech, walking buoyantly into the television studios in his military fatigues, joking with journalists.

In January 2004, Luis Eduardo Garzón, the mayor of Bogotá, said that Castro "seemed very sick to me" following a meeting with him during a vacation in Cuba. In May 2004, Castro's physician denied that his health was failing, and speculated that he would live to be 140 years old. Dr. Eugenio Selman Housein said that the "press is always speculating about something, that he had a heart attack once, that he had cancer, some neurological problem", but maintained that Castro was in good health.

On October 20, 2004, Castro tripped and fell following a speech he gave at a rally, breaking his kneecap and fracturing his right arm. He was able to recover his ability to walk and publicly demonstrated this two months later.

In 2005, the CIA said it thought Castro had Parkinson's disease. Castro denied such allegations, while also citing the example of Pope John Paul II in saying that he would not fear the disease.

On July 31, 2006, Castro delegated his duties as President of the Council of state, President of the Council of Ministers, First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party and the post of commander in chief of the armed forces to his brother Raúl Castro. This transfer of duties was described at the time as temporary while Fidel recovered from surgery he underwent due to an "acute intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding". Fidel Castro was too ill to attend the nationwide commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Granma boat landing on December 2, 2006, which also became his belated 80th birthday celebrations. Castro's non - appearance fueled reports that he had terminal pancreatic cancer and was refusing treatment, but on December 17, 2006 Cuban officials stated that Castro had no terminal illness and would eventually return to his public duties.

However, on December 24, 2006, Spanish newspaper El Periódico de Catalunya reported that Spanish surgeon José Luis García Sabrido had been flown to Cuba on a plane chartered by the Cuban government. Dr. García Sabrido is an intestinal expert who further specializes in the treatment of cancer. The plane that Dr. García Sabrido's traveled in also was reported to be carrying a large quantity of advanced medical equipment. On December 26, 2006, shortly after returning to Madrid, Dr. García Sabrido held a news conference in which he answered questions about Castro's health. He stated that "He does not have cancer, he has a problem with his digestive system", and added, "His condition is stable. He is recovering from a very serious operation. It is not planned that he will undergo another operation for the moment." Although most Cubans acknowledge that they are aware Castro is seriously ill, most also seem worried about a future without Castro.

On January 16, 2007, the Spanish newspaper, El País, citing two unnamed sources from the Gregorio Marañón hospital — who employs Dr. García Sabrido — in Madrid, reported Castro was in "very grave" condition, having trouble wound healing, after three failed operations and complications from an intestinal infection caused by a severe case of diverticulitis. However, Dr. García Sibrido told CNN that he was not the source of the report and that "any statement that doesn't come directly from [Castro's] medical team is without foundation." Also, a Cuban diplomat in Madrid said the reports were lies and declined to comment, while White House press secretary Tony Snow said the report appeared to be "just sort of a roundup of previous health reports. We've got nothing new." On January 30, 2007, Cuban television and the paper Juventud Rebelde showed fresh video and photos from a meeting between Castro and Hugo Chávez said to have taken place the previous day.

In mid February 2007, it was reported by the Associated Press that Acting President Raúl Castro had said that Fidel Castro's health was improving and he was taking part in all important issues facing the government. "He's consulted on the most important questions", Raúl Castro said of Fidel. "He doesn't interfere, but he knows about everything." On February 27, 2007, Reuters reported that Fidel Castro had called into Aló Presidente, a live radio talk show hosted by Hugo Chávez, and chatted with him for thirty minutes during which time he sounded "much healthier and more lucid" than he had on any of the audio and video tapes released since his surgery in July. Castro reportedly told Chávez, "I am gaining ground. I feel I have more energy, more strength, more time to study", adding with a chuckle, "I have become a student again." Later in the conversation, he made reference to the fall of the world stock markets that had occurred earlier in the day and remarked that it was proof of his contention that the world capitalist system is in crisis.

Reports of improvements in his condition continued to circulate throughout March and early April. On April 13, 2007, Chávez was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that Castro has "almost totally recovered" from his illness. That same day, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Roque confirmed during a press conference in Vietnam that Castro had improved steadily and had resumed some of his leadership responsibilities. On April 21, 2007, the official newspaper Granma reported that Castro had met for over an hour with Wu Guanzheng, a member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party who was visiting Havana. Photographs of their meeting showed the Cuban president looking healthier than he had in any previously released since his surgery.

As a comment on Castro's recovery, U.S. President George W. Bush said: "One day the good Lord will take Fidel Castro away", Hearing about this, Castro, who is thought to be atheist, ironically replied: "Now I understand why I survived Bush's plans and the plans of other presidents who ordered my assassination: the good Lord protected me."

In January 2009 Castro asked Cubans not to worry about his lack of recent news columns, his failing health, and not to be disturbed by his future death. At the same time pictures were released of Castro's meeting with the Argentine president Cristina Fernández on January 21, 2009.

"I'm really happy to reach 80. I never expected it, not least having a neighbor – the greatest power in the world – trying to kill me every day."

— Fidel Castro, July 21, 2006

On February 24, 2008, the National Assembly of People's Power unanimously chose his brother, Raúl Castro, as Fidel's successor as President of Cuba. In his first speech as Fidel's successor, he proposed to the National Assembly of People's Power that Fidel continue to be consulted on matters of great importance, such as defence, foreign policy and "the socioeconomic development of the country". The proposal was immediately and unanimously approved by the 597 members of the National Assembly. Raúl described his brother as "not substitutable". Castro had already given up the post of First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba on July 31, 2006.

Since his retirement, Castro has written a regular column in Granma called "Reflections", in which he writes on world affairs, and has occasionally made pre-taped appearances on television greeting visitors such as Hugo Chávez in his room. In July 2010, he made his first public appearance greeting workers at a science center and gave his most prominent television interview since falling ill, on the Cuban program Mesa Redonda speaking for an extended period about tensions between the United States, Iran and North Korea.

On August 7, 2010, Castro gave his first speech to the Cuban National Assembly in four years. He addressed the body for ten minutes on international affairs and then remained to listen and respond to questions for a further 70 minutes. In his comments he urged the United States not to go to war with Iran or North Korea and warning about the dangers of a nuclear holocaust. When asked whether Castro may be re-entering government, Culture minister Abel Prieto told the BBC, "I think that he has always been in Cuba's political life but he is not in the government... He has been very careful about that. His big battle is international affairs."

On April 19, 2011, Castro resigned from the Communist Party central committee, thus stepping down as leader of the party. Raúl Castro was selected as his successor.

Castro has proclaimed himself to be "a Socialist, a Marxist, and a Leninist". As a socialist, Castro believes strongly in converting Cuba, and the wider world, from a capitalist system in which business and industry is owned by private individuals and organisations, into a socialist system in which all business and industry are owned by the state on behalf of the populace. In the former, there is a class divide between the wealthy classes who control the means of production (i.e. the factories, farms, media, etc) and the poorer working classes who labor on them, whilst in the latter, socialists argue, this class divide would be obliterated as society becomes more egalitarian.

Marxism is the socio - political theory developed by German sociologists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the mid 19th century. It holds as its foundation the idea of class struggle; that society mainly changes and progresses as one socio - economic class takes power from another. Thus Marxists believe that capitalism replaced feudalism in the Early Modern period as the wealthy industrial class, or bourgeoisie, took political and economic power from the traditional land owning class, the aristocracy and monarchy. In the same process, Marxists predict that socialism will replace capitalism as the industrial working class, or proletariat, seize power from the bourgeoisie through revolutionary action. In this way, Marxism is believed by its supporters to provide a scientific explanation for why socialism should, and will, replace capitalism in human society.

Leninism refers to the theories put forward by Russian revolutionary, political theorist and politician Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party who was a leading figure in the October Revolution that overthrew the Russian capitalist government and replaced it with a socialist alternative in 1917. Taking Marxism as its basis, Leninism revolves around putting forward ideas for how to convert a capitalist state into a socialist one. Castro used Leninist thought as a model upon which to convert the Cuban state and society into a socialist form.

Castro has described two historical figures as being particular influences on his political viewpoints; the Cuban anti - imperialist revolutionary José Martí (1853 – 1895) and the German sociologist and theorist Karl Marx (1818 – 1883). Commenting on the influence of Martí he related that "above all", he adopted his sense of ethics because:

When he spoke that phrase I'll never be able to forget – 'All the glory in the world fits into a grain of corn' – it seemed extraordinarily beautiful to me, in the face of all the vanity and ambition that one saw everywhere, and against which we revolutionaries must be on constant guard. I seized upon that ethics. Ethics, as a mode of behavior, is essential, a fabulous treasure.

The influence which Castro took from Marx on the other hand was his "concept of what human society is", without which, Castro argued, "you can't formulate any argument that leads to a reasonable interpretation of historical events."

By wearing military style uniforms and leading mass demonstrations, Castro projected an image of a perpetual revolutionary. He was mostly seen in military attire, but his personal tailor, Merel Van 't Wout, convinced him to occasionally change to a business suit. Castro is often referred to as "Comandante", but is also nicknamed "El Caballo", meaning "The Horse", a label that was first attributed to Cuban entertainer Benny Moré, who on hearing Castro passing in the Havana night with his entourage, shouted out "Here comes the horse!"

During the revolutionary campaign, fellow rebels knew Castro as "The Giant". Large throngs of people gathered to cheer at Castro's fiery speeches, which typically lasted for hours. Many details of Castro's private life, particularly involving his family members, are scarce as the media is forbidden to mention them. Castro's image appears frequently in Cuban stores, classrooms, taxicabs, and national television. Despite this, Castro has stated that he does not promote a cult of personality.

In his biography of the Cuban leader, entitled The Real Fidel Castro (2003), the Briton Leycester Coltman described the Cuban as being "fiercely hard - working, dedicated[,] loyal... generous and magnanimous" but also noted that he could be "vindictive and unforgiving" at times. He went on to note that Castro "always had a keen sense of humour and could laugh at himself" but could equally be "a bad loser" who would act with "ferocious rage if he thought that he was being humiliated." In her book, Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder and the Cold War in the Caribbean (2011), the British historian Alex Von Tunzelmann commented that "though ruthless, [Castro] was a patriot, a man with a profound sense that it was his mission to save the Cuban people", contrasting him strongly to his Haitian contemporary François Duvalier.

By his first wife Mirta Díaz - Balart, whom he married on October 11, 1948, Castro has a son named Fidel Ángel "Fidelito" Castro Díaz - Balart, born on September 1, 1949. Díaz - Balart and Castro were divorced in 1955, and she remarried Emilio Núñez Blanco. After a spell in Madrid, Díaz - Balart reportedly returned to Havana to live with Fidelito and his family. Fidelito grew up in Cuba; for a time, he ran Cuba's atomic energy commission before being removed from the post by his father. Díaz - Balart's nephews are Republican U.S. Congressmen Lincoln Diaz - Balart and Mario Diaz - Balart, vocal critics of the Castro government.

Fidel has five other sons by his second wife, Dalia Soto del Valle: Antonio, Alejandro, Alexis, Alexander "Alex" and Ángel Castro Soto del Valle.

While Fidel was married to Mirta, he had an affair with Natalia "Naty" Revuelta Clews, born in Havana in 1925 and married to Orlando Fernández, resulting in a daughter named Alina Fernández - Revuelta. Alina left Cuba in 1993, disguised as a Spanish tourist, and sought asylum in the United States. She has been a vocal critic of her father's policies. Alina was assisted by Elena Diaz - Verson Amos, wife of AFLAC founder John Amos. Alina lived with Elena in Columbus, Georgia, for several years.

By an unnamed woman he had another son, Jorge Ángel Castro. Fidel has another daughter, Francisca Pupo (born 1953) the result of a one night affair. Pupo and her husband now live in Miami.

His sister Juanita Castro has been living in the United States since the early 1960s. When she went into exile, she said "I cannot longer remain indifferent to what is happening in my country. My brothers Fidel and Raúl have made it an enormous prison surrounded by water. The people are nailed to a cross of torment imposed by international Communism."

According to Washington Post, Fidel Castro's letters from prison suggest that he " was a man of unusual spiritual depth – and a fervent believer in God. Addressing the father of a fallen comrade, he writes: " I will not speak of him as if he were absent, he has not been and he will never be. These are not mere words of consolation. Only those of us who feel it truly and permanently in the depths of our souls can comprehend this. Physical life is ephemeral, it passes inexorably. . . . This truth should be taught to every human being – that the immortal values of the spirit are above physical life. What sense does life have without these values? What then is it to live? Those who understand this and generously sacrifice their physical life for the sake of good and justice – how can they die? God is the supreme idea of goodness and justice.""

Castro was baptized and raised a Roman Catholic as a child but did not practice as one. In Oliver Stone's documentary Comandante, Castro states "I have never been a believer", and has total conviction that there is only one life. Pope John XXIII excommunicated Castro in 1962 after Castro suppressed Catholic institutions in Cuba. Castro has publicly criticized what he sees as elements of the Bible that have been used to justify the oppression of both women and people of African descent throughout history.

In 1992, Castro agreed to loosen restrictions on religion and even permitted church going Catholics to join the Cuban Communist Party. He began describing his country as "secular" rather than "atheist". Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in 1998, the first visit by a reigning pontiff to the island. Castro and the Pope appeared side by side in public on several occasions during the visit. Castro wore a dark blue business suit rather than fatigues in his public meetings with the Pope and treated him with reverence and respect. In December 1998, Castro formally re-instated Christmas Day as the official celebration for the first time since its abolition by the Communist Party in 1969. Cubans were again allowed to mark Christmas as a holiday and to openly hold religious processions. The Pope sent a telegram to Castro thanking him for restoring Christmas as a public holiday.

Castro attended a Roman Catholic convent blessing in 2003. The purpose of this unprecedented event was to help bless the newly restored convent in Old Havana and to mark the fifth anniversary of the Pope's visit to Cuba. The senior spiritual leader of the Orthodox Christian faith arrived in Cuba in 2004, the first time any Orthodox Patriarch has visited Latin America in the Church's history: Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I consecrated a cathedral in Havana and bestowed an honor on Fidel Castro. His aides said that he was responding to the decision of the Cuban Government to build and donate to the Orthodox Christians a tiny Orthodox cathedral in the heart of old Havana. After Pope John Paul II's death in April 2005, an emotional Castro attended a mass in his honor in Havana's cathedral and signed the Pope's condolence book at the Vatican Embassy. He had last visited the cathedral in 1959, 46 years earlier, for the wedding of one of his sisters. Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino led the mass and welcomed Castro, who was dressed in a black suit, expressing his gratitude for the "heartfelt way the death of our Holy Father John Paul II was received (in Cuba)."

In his 2009 spoken autobiography, Castro said that that Christianity exhibited "a group of very humane precepts" which gave the world "ethical values" and a "sense of social justice", before relating that "If people call me Christian, not from the standpoint of religion but from the standpoint of social vision, I declare that I am a Christian."

Various leftist governments across the world have granted Castro awards for his work in promoting socialism and providing international humanitarian aid. The Juche government of North Korea for instance awarded him "the Golden Medal (Hammer and Sickle) and the First Class Order of the National Flag", whilst Muammar Gaddafi's Arab socialist government of Libya bestowed upon him a "Libyan human rights award". On a visit to South Africa in 1998 he was warmly received by President Nelson Mandela. President Mandela gave Castro South Africa's highest civilian award for foreigners, the Order of Good Hope. Castro fulfilled his promise of sending 100 medical aid workers to Botswana, according to the Botswana presidency. These workers play an important role in Botswana's war against HIV/AIDS. According to Anna Vallejera, Cuba's first ever Ambassador to Botswana, the health workers are part of her country's ongoing commitment to proactively assist in the global war against HIV/AIDS.

In Harlem, Castro is seen as an icon because of his historic visit with Malcolm X in 1960 at the Hotel Theresa.

After the fall of apartheid and the independence of Namibia, the country's capital, the city of Windhoek, renamed many streets, including one that now bears the name of Fidel Castro Street.

Many observers refer to Castro as a dictator and his rule was the longest to-date in modern Latin American history.

The Human Rights Watch organization has suggested that Castro constructed a "repressive machinery" which "continues to deprive Cubans of their basic rights".

In their book, Corruption in Cuba, Sergio Diaz - Briquets and Jorge F. Pérez - López Servando state that Castro "institutionalized" corruption and that "Castro's state run monopolies, cronyism, and lack of accountability have made Cuba one of the world's most corrupt states". Servando Gonzalez, in The Secret Fidel Castro, calls Castro a "corrupt tyrant".

In 1959, according to Gonzalez, Castro established "Fidel's checking account", from which he could draw funds as he pleased. The "Comandante's reserves" were created in 1970, from which Castro allegedly "provided gifts to many of his cronies, both home and abroad". Gonzalez asserts that Comandante's reserves have been linked to counterfeiting business empires and money laundering.

As early as 1968, a once close friend of Castro's wrote that Castro had huge accounts in Swiss banks. Castro's secretary was allegedly seen using Zürich banks. Gonzalez wrote that Cuba's paucity of trade with Switzerland contrasts oddly with the National Office of Cuba's relatively large office in Zurich. Castro has denied having a bank account abroad with even a dollar in it.

A KGB officer, Alexei Novikov, stated that Castro's personal life, like the lives of the rest of the Communist elite, is "shrouded under an impenetrable veil of secrecy". Among other things, he asserted that Castro has a personal guard of more than 9,700 men and three luxurious yachts.

In 2005, American business and financial magazine Forbes listed Castro among the world's richest people, with an estimated net worth of US$ 550 million. The estimates, which the magazine admitted were "more art than science", claimed that the Cuban leader's personal wealth was nearly double that of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, despite anecdotal evidence from diplomats and businessmen that the Cuban leader's personal life was notably austere. This assessment was drawn by making economic estimates of the net worth of Cuba's state owned companies, and used the assumption that Castro had personal economic control. Forbes later increased the estimates to US$ 900 million, adding rumors of large cash stashes in Switzerland. The magazine offered no proof of this information, and according to CBS News, Castro's entry on the rich list was notably brief compared to the amount of information provided on other figures. Castro, who had considered suing the magazine, responded that the claims were "lies and slander", and that they were part of a US campaign to discredit him. He declared: "If they can prove that I have a bank account abroad, with US$ 900m, with US$ 1m, US$ 500,000, US$ 100,000 or US$ 1 in it, I will resign." President of Cuba's Central Bank, Francisco Soberón, called the claims a "grotesque slander", asserting that money made from various state owned companies is pumped back into the island's economy, "in sectors including health, education, science, internal security, national defense and solidarity projects with other countries."