Fidel Castro

Known for ActingBorn 1926-08-13Died 2016-11-25Birán, Cuba

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who served as Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and President from 1976 to 2008. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 until 2011. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state; industry and business were nationalized, and state socialist reforms were implemented throughout society. Born in Birán, Oriente, the son of a wealthy Spanish farmer, Castro adopted leftist and anti-imperialist ideas while studying law at the University of Havana. After participating in rebellions against right-wing governments in the Dominican Republic and Colombia, he planned the overthrow of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista, launching a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953. After a year's imprisonment, Castro traveled to Mexico where he formed a revolutionary group, the 26th of July Movement, with his brother Raúl Castro and Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Returning to Cuba, Castro took a key role in the Cuban Revolution by leading the Movement in a guerrilla war against Batista's forces from the Sierra Maestra. After Batista's overthrow in 1959, Castro assumed military and political power as Cuba's Prime Minister. The United States came to oppose Castro's government and unsuccessfully attempted to remove him by assassination, economic blockade, and counter-revolution, including the Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961. Countering these threats, Castro aligned with the Soviet Union and allowed the Soviets to place nuclear weapons in Cuba, resulting in the Cuban Missile Crisis – a defining incident of the Cold War – in 1962. Adopting a Marxist–Leninist model of development, Castro converted Cuba into a one-party, socialist state under Communist Party rule, the first in the Western Hemisphere. Policies introducing central economic planning and expanding healthcare and education were accompanied by state control of the press and the suppression of internal dissent. Abroad, Castro supported anti-imperialist revolutionary groups, backing the establishment of Marxist governments in Chile, Nicaragua, and Grenada, as well as sending troops to aid allies in the Yom Kippur, Ogaden, and Angolan Civil War. These actions, coupled with Castro's leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1979 to 1983 and Cuba's medical internationalism, increased Cuba's profile on the world stage. Following the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991, Castro led Cuba through the economic downturn of the "Special Period", embracing environmentalist and anti-globalization ideas. In the 2000s, Castro forged alliances in the Latin American "pink tide" – namely with Hugo Chávez's Venezuela – and formed the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas. In 2006, Castro transferred his responsibilities to Vice President Raúl Castro, who was elected to the presidency by the National Assembly in 2008. Description above from the Wikipedia article Fidel Castro, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.Read more

Movies & web series

JFK Assassination: A New Perspective

Mário

Algiers, the Mecca of Revolutionaries (1962-1974)

Laissez-faire

Che, Today and Always

El Diálogo de América

Rat Pack

Tasmanian Devil: The Fast and Furious Life of Errol Flynn

The Cuban Game

Andança: Os Encontros e as Memórias de Beth Carvalho

Faith of the Century: A History of Communism

Laboratory Greece

The Man Who Saved the World

Kordavision: The man who shot Che Guevara

Jack Paar: Smart Television

Reel Radicals: The Sixties Revolution in Film

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

Bobby Kennedy for President

Cuba: In the Shadow of Doubt

The Day That Lasted 21 Years

Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

The Fog of War

Palme

The Adventures of Errol Flynn

A Grin Without a Cat

Castro's Revolution vs. The World

Explained

Cuba and the Cameraman

ReMastered: Massacre at the Stadium

Another Day of Life

The War on Democracy

How to Become a Tyrant

JFK

La Case du siècle

I Am Cuba, the Siberian Mammoth

Nobody

537 Votes

The JFK Conspiracy

The Padilla Affair

The First Year

The Century of Icons

Becoming Cousteau

The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien

Karl Marx und seine Erben

¡Cuba Sí!

Spycraft

RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy

Cuba: Battle of the 10,000,000