Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born in Birán in eastern Cuba in 1926, the son of a wealthy landowner, and trained as a lawyer. He led a failed attack on the Moncada barracks in 1953, was jailed until 1955, and then organized a guerrilla war from the Sierra Maestra. After Batista fled at the end of 1958, Castro became prime minister, nationalized industry and land, and in 1961 declared the revolution socialist. He survived the Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1962 missile crisis, and governed until illness forced him to hand power to his brother Raúl in 2006 to 2008. He died in Havana in 2016.

Admirers, including Nelson Mandela, honored Castro for resisting the United States, supporting the fight against apartheid in southern Africa, and building health and education systems that Amnesty International described as substantial improvements. Critics describe him as a dictator who ruled a one-party state for decades without free elections. Revolutionary tribunals executed more than 300 Batista officials in the first two months of 1959, and historian Hugh Thomas estimated that perhaps 5,000 executions had taken place by 1970. Tens of thousands of suspected opponents were arrested after the Bay of Pigs, gay men and dissidents were sent to UMAP labor camps, and Human Rights Watch said his government built a repressive machinery that denied Cubans basic rights. Some 1.2 million Cubans left for the United States between 1959 and 1993.