Fidel Castro was believed to have survived over 600 assassination attempts before his death from natural causes at the age of 90. The communist Cuban leader became a dictator after waging a guerrilla struggle to win power in Cuba, and his close links to Soviet Russia brought the US repeated anxieties during the Cold War. From poison pills to exploding cigars, the CIA repeatedly attempted to kill Fidel Castro, but in his final years as a ruler who spent longer in power in the last century than any other living person besides Queen Elizabeth, relations between Cuba and America finally began to normalise under President Obama. Fidel Castro’s death brings to an end the story of one of the 20th century’s last surviving dictators.
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Fidel Castro’s legacy is a divisive one. Cuba was politically aligned with the Soviet Union after the United States broke off relations with Cuba shortly after Castro came to power in 1959. Castro’s leadership saw censorship, political repression, and restrictions on freedom of assembly. Fidel Castro was a homophobic, communist tyrant, whose reign saw Cuba facilitate the incident that came closest to full scale nuclear war between the US and the USSR, with Russian nuclear weapons stored just 90 miles off the coast of Florida.
Born the son of a wealthy farmer in 1926, Castro was one of seven children, and he developed his politics while studying at the Univeristy of Havana. Fidel became an armed revolutionary socialist and was imprisoned before fighting a guerrilla war for control of Cuba.
The US were so concerned with Fidel Castro’s rule that in 1961 they sponsored the attempted invasion of Cuba by a paramilitary brigade. The Bay of Pigs Invasion, backed and funded by the CIA, failed within three days, and in response Fidel Castro’s government requested nuclear protection from the soviets. The resulting Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 is widely believed to be the closest that the world has come to full-scale nuclear conflict.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has praised Fidel Castro’s “heroism” and claimed that he was a “massive figure in the history of the whole planet” while Vladimir Putin has called him "a reliable friend of Russia".
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Fidel Castro’s reign saw food shortages and famine in Cuba. His time in power led to the exodus of approximately 10 per cent of Cuba’s population.
Castro’s fans cite his revolution as bringing new control to the people of Cuba, but there can be no denying his dictatorial approach to government. Castro’s government imprisoned critics, and engaged in torture. His Cuba was economically unsuccessful, and he finally relinquished power between 2006 and 2008 to his own brother.
History will remember Fidel Castro as a dangerous communist ideologue who brought the world to the verge of unimaginable conflict. Castro spent his life fighting against the US and avoiding being killed by America’s many plots. He ruled his country with cruel intolerance towards dissent, and a flagrant disregard for human rights.
