Cuban President Raul Castro announced the death of his brother, who ruled the island nation from 1959 to 2006 before transferring his responsibilities.<\/p>\n
A divisive and iconic figure, Castro is known to some as a champion of socialism whose revolutionary regime protected Cuba\u2019s sovereignty in the face of American imperialism, while critics brand him a dictator with a decades-long administration plagued with human rights abuses.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Castro was a time-tested, formidable leader who survived a military invasion, a full-blown international missile crisis, a withering U.S. economic embargo, and numerous assassination attempts.<\/p>\n
In April, he delivered a rare speech during the nation\u2019s Communist Party congress, praising his brother for his \u201cmagnificent effort\u201d and promising victory for the Cuban people.<\/p>\n
Castro was born Aug. 13, 1926, in the southeastern Oriente Province of Cuba.<\/p>\n
He was imprisoned for two years for leading an abortive rebellion against the regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1953.<\/p>\n
He then launched a guerilla war against the government, eventually overthrowing Batista in 1959 and being sworn in as prime minister.<\/p>\n
Two years later, he survived a CIA-sponsored invasion by a paramilitary group made up of 1,400 exiles who attempted to enter the country from the south coast at the Bays of Pigs.<\/p>\n
Beginning in 1958 during the Batista regime and expanded on a few roll-outs, a comprehensive embargo was imposed by the U.S. on Cuba, crippling its economy.<\/p>\n
To this day the embargo continues but the diplomatic ties, cut off for decades, were reestablished in 2014, along with some easing of limitations on travel and economic policies.<\/p>\n
In 1962, the world came the closest it ever did to a nuclear war during the Cold War period after Cuba allowed the Soviet Union to deploy missiles on its soil in retaliation for a similar deployment by the U.S. in Italy and Turkey. A fortnight of fear later, the two superpowers of the time agreed to withdraw deployments and establish a nuclear hotline.<\/p>\n
In 1976, Castro was elected President of Cuba by the parliament, in what would be a decades-long tenure.<\/p>\n
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989, Cuba declared the dawn of the \u201cSpecial Period in Time of Peace\u201d, a euphemism for a severe economic crisis that saw one third of the country\u2019s GDP wiped out and its petroleum imports reduced to one tenth of pre-1990 numbers.<\/p>\n
In 1991, Cuba hosted the Pan-American Games, becoming the first Latin American country to beat the U.S. in total gold medals in what turned into an international display of the public support Castro enjoyed.<\/p>\n
In 1992, he reached a deal with the U.S. over Cuban refugees, under which Washington would accept 3,500 Cubans. What transpired instead was more like an exodus, with tens of thousands boarding the Florida-bound boats that came from the U.S.<\/p>\n
In 2006, Castro underwent surgery on his intestines, and delegated his presidential responsibilities to his brother Raul, who was sworn in as president in 2008.<\/p>\nError, group does not exist! Check your syntax! (ID: 10)<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fidel Castro, the former leader of Cuba died late Friday. Castro, Cuba\u2019s leader of revolution, was 90.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":58498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,63,118],"tags":[3901,2000,13537],"class_list":["post-58495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-hot","tag-cuba","tag-fidel-castro","tag-havana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}