Cubans have made social gains but lost liberties under Castro

FIDEL CASTRO rose to power after an armed revolution he led drove out then-president Fulgencio Batispta.

The US was the first country to recognise Mr Castro, but his radical economic reforms and rapid trials of Batista supporters quickly unsettled US leaders.

Washington eventually slapped a trade embargo on the island and severed diplomatic ties. Mr Castro seized American property and businesses and turned to the Soviet Union for military and economic assistance.

On April 16, 1961, he declared his revolution to be socialist. The following day, he humiliated the US by capturing more than 1,100 exile soldiers in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

The world neared nuclear conflict on October 22, 1962, when US President John F Kennedy announced there were Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. After a tense week of diplomacy, Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev removed them.

Meanwhile, Cuban revolutionaries opened 10,000 schools, erased illiteracy, and built a universal healthcare system. Mr Castro backed revolutionary movements in Latin America and Africa. But former liberties were whittled away as labour unions lost the right to strike, independent newspapers were shut down and religious institutions were harassed.

Mr Castro continually resisted US demands for multi-party elections and an open economy despite American laws tightening the embargo in 1992 and 1996.

He characterised a US plan for American aid in a post-Castro era as a thinly disguised attempt at regime change and insisted his socialist system would survive long after his death.

Fidel Castro Ruz was born in eastern Cuba, where his Spanish immigrant father ran a prosperous plantation. His official birthday is August 13, 1926, although some say he was born a year later.

Talk of his mortality was long taboo on the island, but that ended on June 23, 2001, when he fainted during a speech in the sun. Although he quickly returned to the stage, many Cubans understood for the first time that their leader would one day die.

Mr Castro shattered a kneecap and broke an arm when he fell after a speech on October 20, 2004, but typically laughed off rumours about his health, most recently a 2005 report that he had Parkinson’s disease.

“They have tried to kill me off so many times,” Mr Castro said in a November 2005 speech about the Parkinson’s report, adding he felt “better than ever”.