Name _________________________________
You will read the following biography and select the ten
most important moments of Fidel Castro’s influence and list them in
chronological order. For each moment
or event you must write a paragraph explaining its importance.
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Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro orchestrated the Cuban Revolution and was the
head of Cuba's government until 2008.
Synopsis
Cuban dictator Fidel
Castro was born near Birán, Cuba, in 1926. Beginning in 1958 Castro and his
forces began a campaign of guerrilla warfare to successfully overthrow Cuban
dictator , and Castro became the country's new leader. His communist domestic
policies and military and economic relations with the Soviet Union led to
strained relations with the United States that culminated in the 1962 Cuban
Missile Crisis. He was also responsible for fomenting communist revolutions in
other countries around the world. Under Castro, improvements were made to
health care and education, while civil liberties were severely eroded. However,
the 1991 collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and its negative impact on
Cuba's economy led Castro to relax some restrictions over time. Amidst failing
health, in 2008 Fidel Castro officially handed over power to his brother Raúl Castro, but
still wielded some political influence in Cuba and abroad. Fidel Castro died on
November 25, 2016 at the age of 90.
Early Life
Fidel Alejandro
Castro Ruz was born on August 13, 1926, near Birán, in Cuba's eastern Oriente
Province. He was the third of six children, including his two brothers, Raúl
and Ramón; and three sisters, Angela, Emma and Agustina. His father, Ángel,
was a wealthy sugar plantation owner originally from Spain who did most of
his business with the American-owned United Fruit Company, which dominated the
agriculture in that region at the time. His mother, Lina Ruz González, had been
a maid to Ángel's first wife, Maria Luisa Argota, at the time
of Fidel's birth. By the time Fidel was 15, his father dissolved his first
marriage and wed Fidel's mother. At age 17, Fidel was formally recognized by
his father and his name was changed from Ruz to Castro.
Educated
in private Jesuit boarding schools, Castro grew up in wealthy circumstances
amid the poverty of Cuba but was also imbued with a sense of Spanish pride from
his teachers. From an early age, Castro showed he was intellectually gifted,
but he was also something of a troublemaker and was often more interested in
sports than studies. He attended Colegio Dolores in Santiago de Cuba and then
El Colegio de Belén in Havana, where he pitched for the school's baseball team
as well as played basketball and ran track. After his graduation in late 1945,
however, Castro entered law school at the University of Havana and became
immersed in the climate of Cuban nationalism, anti-imperialism and socialism,
focusing his energies more exclusively on politics.
Early Political
Insurrections and Arrests
By 1947, Castro had
become increasingly passionate about social justice and he traveled to the
Dominican Republic to join an expedition attempting the overthrow of the
country's dictator, Rafael Trujillo.
Though the coup failed before it got started, the incident did little to dampen
Castro's passion for reform, and he traveled to Bogotá, Colombia, the following
year to participate in the anti-government rioting there.
In 1947, Castro also
joined the Partido Ortodoxo, an anticommunist political party founded to reform
government in Cuba. Its founder, Cuban presidential candidate Eduardo Chibás,
lost the 1948 election but inspired Castro to be an ardent disciple. He pledged
to expose the government's corruption and warn the people about General Fulgencio
Batista, himself a former president, who was plotting a return to power. However,
Chibás's efforts were cut short after his supposed allies refused to provide
evidence of government wrongdoing. In August 1951, Chibás shot himself during a
radio broadcast.
Meanwhile, Castro
had married Mirta Díaz Balart, who was from a wealthy political family in Cuba.
They had one child, named Fidel, in 1949. The marriage exposed Castro to a
wealthier lifestyle and political connections. At the same time, however, he
developed an interest in the work of Karl Marxand
became intent on running for a seat in the Cuban congress. But in March 1952 a
coup led by General Fulgencio Batista successfully overthrew the government and
the upcoming election was cancelled, leaving Castro without a legitimate
political platform and little income with which to support his family.
Batista set himself
up as dictator, solidified his power with the military and Cuba's economic
elite and had his government recognized by the United States. In response, Castro
and fellow members of the Partido Ortodoxo organized a group they called
"The Movement" and planned an insurrection. On July 26, 1953,
Castro and approximately 150 supporters attacked the Moncada military barracks
outside of Santiago de Cuba in an attempt to overthrow Batista. However, the
attack failed and Castro was captured, tried, convicted and sentenced to 15
years in prison. His brother Raúl was also among those imprisoned.
Guerrilla War
Against Batista
While incarcerated, Castro renamed his group the "26th
of July Movement" and continued to coordinate its activities through
correspondence. He and his compatriots were ultimately released in 1955 under
an amnesty deal with the Batista government, and he traveled
with Raúl to Mexico, where they continued to plan their
revolution.
In Mexico, Castro met with other Cuban exiles, as well as
the Argentinian rebel Ernesto
"Che" Guevara, who believed that the plight of Latin
America's poor could be rectified only through violent revolution. He joined
Castro's group and became an important confidante, helping to shape Castro's
political beliefs.
On December 2, 1956, Fidel Castro returned to Cuba
aboard the boat Granma with little more than 80
insurgents and a cache of weapons near the eastern city of Manzanillo. In
short order, Batista's forces killed or captured most of the attackers. But
Castro, Raúl, Guevara and a handful of others were able to escape into the
Sierra Maestra mountain range along the island's southeastern coast. Over the
course of the next two years, Castro's steadily growing forces waged a
guerrilla war against the Batista government, organizing resistance groups in
cities and small towns across Cuba. Castro was also able to organize a parallel
government, carry out some agrarian reform and control provinces with
agricultural and manufacturing production.
Beginning in 1958, Castro and his forces mounted a series of
successful military campaigns to capture and hold key areas throughout Cuba.
Combined with a loss of popular support and massive desertions in its military,
Castro's efforts finally led to the collapse of Batista's government, and in
January 1959, Batista himself fled to the Dominican Republic. At the age of 32,
Castro had successfully concluded his guerrilla campaign to take control of
Cuba.
A provisional government was quickly created,
with Manuel Urrutia installed as president
and José Miró Cardona as prime minister. It quickly gained the
recognition of the United States, and Castro himself arrived in Havana to
cheering crowds and assumed the post of commander-in-chief of the military. In
February 1959, Miró suddenly resigned, and Castro was sworn in as
Cuba's prime minister. Meanwhile, hundreds of members of Batista's government
were tried and executed.
Turn to Communism
Castro implemented far-reaching reforms by nationalizing
factories and plantations in an attempt to end U.S. economic dominance on the
island. Among these reforms, it was announced that the new government would
base compensation to foreign companies on the artificially low property values
that the companies themselves had negotiated with past Cuban governments in
order to keep their taxes low. American companies soon felt the negative
effects of such measures, leading to a significant strain in relations between
the Cuba and the United States.
During
this time, Castro repeatedly denied being a communist, but to many Americans,
his policies closely resembled a Soviet-style control of both the economy and
government. In April 1959, Castro and a delegation visited the United States as
guests of the National Press Club. Castro hired a renowned public relations
firm to help promote his tour, but President Dwight Eisenhower, refused a meeting with
him.
That May, Castro
signed the first Agrarian Reform Act, which limited the size of land holdings
and forbade foreign property ownership. On the surface, the intent was to
develop a class of independent farmers. In reality, this program led to state
land control, with the farmers becoming mere government employees. By the end
of 1959, Castro's revolution had become radicalized, with purges of military
and government leaders—including President Urrutia—and the suppression of any
media critical of Castro's policies.
Castro's government
also began to establish relations with the Soviet Union. The USSR sent more
than 100 Spanish-speaking advisers to help organize Cuba's defense committee.
In February 1960, Cuba signed a trade agreement to buy oil from the Soviet
Union and established diplomatic relations. When U.S.-owned refineries in Cuba
refused to process the oil, Castro expropriated them, and the United States
retaliated by cutting Cuba's import quota on sugar, thus beginning what would
become a decades-long contentious relationship between the two countries.
Bay of Pigs and the
Cuban Missile Crisis
The year 1961 proved
to be pivotal in Castro's relationship with the United States. On January 3,
1961, outgoing president Dwight Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations with
the Cuban government. On April 14, Castro formally declared Cuba a socialist
state. Three days later, some 1,400 Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the remote Bay
of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow the Castro regime. The incursion ended in
disaster, with hundreds of the insurgents killed and more than 1,000 captured.
Though the United States denied any involvement, it was revealed that the Cuban
exiles had been trained by the Central Intelligence Agency and armed with
American weapons. Decades later, the National Security Archive revealed that
the United States had begun planning an overthrow of the Castro government as
early as March 1959. The invasion was conceived during the Eisenhower
administration and inherited by President John F. Kennedy,
who reluctantly approved its action but denied the invaders air support in the
hopes of concealing a U.S. role in the effort.
Castro,
in turn, was able to capitalize on the incident to consolidate his power and
further promote his agenda. On May 1 he announced an end to democratic
elections in Cuba and denounced American imperialism. Then at year's end,
Castro declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and announced the Cuban government
was adopting communist economic and political policies. On February 7, 1962,
the United States imposed a full economic embargo on Cuba.
In
the wake of the Bay of Pigs incident, Castro intensified his relations with the
Soviet Union by accepting further economic and military aid. In October 1962,
his increasing reliance on Soviet support brought the world to the brink of
nuclear war. Hoping to deter another U.S. invasion of Cuba, Castro and Soviet
Premier Nikita Khrushchev conceived the idea of placing nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles
off the coast of Florida. Khrushchev justified the move as a response to U.S. Jupiter
missiles that had been deployed in Turkey. However, an American U-2
reconnaissance plane discovered the base construction before the missiles were
installed and President Kennedy responded by demanding the removal of the
missiles, with orders for the U.S. Navy to search any vessels headed for the
island.
Over
13 anxious days of secret communications between Khrushchev, Kennedy and their
agents, the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for the United
States' public agreement not to invade Cuba. The Kennedy administration also
agreed to secretly remove the Jupiter missiles from Turkey. Both leaders saved
face and gained some admiration for restraint. Castro, on the other hand, was
humiliated: Both superpowers had completely left him out of the negotiations.
Furthermore, the United States was able to persuade the Organization of
American States to end diplomatic relations with Cuba, in response to Castro's
"shameful" actions.
Cuba Under Castro
But Castro wasn't
shamed for long. In 1965, he merged Cuba's Communist Party with his
revolutionary organizations, installing himself as head of the party. Within a
few years, he began a campaign of supporting armed struggle against imperialism
in Latin American and African countries. In January 1966, Castro founded the
Organization for Solidarity with the Peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America
to promote revolution and communism on three continents. In 1967, he also
formed the Latin American Solidarity Organization to foster revolution in
select Latin American countries.
In the 1970s, Castro
continued to promote himself as the leading spokesperson for Third World
countries by providing military support to pro-Soviet forces in Angola,
Ethiopia and Yemen. Though Cuba was still heavily subsidized by the Soviet
government during this period, those expeditions ultimately proved unsuccessful
and put a strain on the Cuban economy.
Meanwhile,
the U.S. agreement not to invade Cuba had not precluded attempting to topple
the Castro regime in other ways. Over the years, Castro was the target of
numerous CIA assassination attempts (an estimated 638 in all, according to
Cuban intelligence), ranging from exploding cigars to a fungus-infected
scuba-diving suit to a mafia-style shooting. Castro took great delight in the
fact that none of the attempts ever succeeded and was quoted as saying that if
avoiding assassination attempts was an Olympic sport, he would have won gold
medals.
Castro's regime has
been credited with opening 10,000 new schools and increasing literacy to 98
percent. Cubans enjoy a universal health-care system, which has decreased
infant mortality to 11 deaths in 1,000 (1.1 percent). But at the same time,
civil liberties were whittled away, as labor unions lost the right to strike,
independent newspapers were shut down and religious institutions were harassed.
Castro removed opposition to his rule though executions and imprisonments, as
well as through forced emigration.
During Castro's
rule, hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled the country, many settling just
across the Florida Straits in Miami. The largest of these exoduses occurred in
1980, when Castro opened up the port of Mariel to allow exiled Cubans living in
Miami to come claim their relatives. Upon their arrival, Castro also loaded the
ships with Cuban prison inmates, mental patients and other social undesirables.
In all, nearly 120,000 Cubans left their homeland in 1980 to find sanctuary in
the United States.
Collapse of the
Soviet Union
After the 1991
collapse of the Soviet Union sent Cuba's economy into a tailspin, Castro's
revolution began to lose momentum. Without cheap oil imports and an eager
Soviet market for Cuban sugar and other goods, Cuban unemployment and inflation
grew. The contraction of the Cuban economy resulted in 85 percent of its
markets disappearing.
Yet Castro was very
adept at keeping control of the government during dire economic times. He
pressed the United States to lift the economic embargo, but it refused. Castro
then adopted a quasi-free market economy and encouraged international
investment. He also legalized the U.S. dollar and encouraged limited tourism,
and in 1996 he visited the United States to invite Cuban exiles living there to
return to Cuba to start businesses.
In
2001, after massive damage was caused by Hurricane Michelle, Castro declined
U.S. humanitarian aid but proposed a one-time cash purchase of food from the
United States. George W. Bush's administration assented
and authorized the shipment. With the fuel supply running dangerously low,
Castro ordered 118 factories to be closed and sent thousands of Cuban doctors
to Venezuela in exchange for oil imports.
Shifting Power
In the late 1990s,
speculation began to arise over Castro's age and well-being. Numerous health
problems had been reported over the years, the most significant occurring in
2006, when Castro underwent surgery for gastrointestinal bleeding. In a
dramatic announcement, on July 31, 2006, Castro designated his brother Raúl as the
country's temporary leader. Raúl had served as Castro's second in command for
decades and had been officially selected as his successor in 1997. Following
Fidel Castro's surgery, his only appearances were in photographs and video
recordings of meetings.
On February 19,
2008, 81-year-old Fidel Castro permanently gave up the Cuban presidency due to
his deteriorating physical condition. He handed over power to Raúl, who was 76
years old at the time. The Cuban National Assembly officially elected Raúl
Castro as president of Cuba the same month, although Fidel Castro reportedly
remained first secretary of the Communist Party.
In April 2011, news
broke that Fidel Castro officially stepped down from his role within Cuba's
Communist Party. Raúl Castro easily won election as the party's new first
secretary, taking over for his brother and choosing famed revolutionary
José Ramón Machado Ventura to serve as the party's second in command.
Fidel Castro claimed that he had actually resigned the post five years earlier.
In his retirement,
Castro began writing a column about his experiences and opinions, called
"Reflections of Fidel," and in 2007 his autobiography My Lifewas
published. From mid-November to early January of 2012, however, Castro
failed to publish any columns. This sudden silence sparked rumors that Castro
had taken a turn for the worse. But these stories soon proved to be unfounded,
as Castro put out a flurry of articles later that January.
Though
not involved in the day-to-day affairs of running Cuba, Fidel Castro still
maintained a certain degree of political influence both at home and abroad. He
continued to meet with foreign leaders, such as Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2012, during their visits to Cuba. Pope Benedict arranged a special audience with Castro at the end of his trip in March
2012, seeking to obtain greater religious freedom for Catholics living in the
communist nation, and in September 2015 Pope Francis met privately with
Castro as well. However, when Barack Obama became the first
sitting American president to visit Cuba in almost 90 years, he did not meet
with Fidel Castro, who later denounced the goodwill mission in his column,
citing a mistrust of U.S. motivations and writing, "We don't need the empire
to gift us anything."
Fidel
Castro died on November 25, 2016 at the age of 90. His brother and
successor Raúl Castro made the announcement of this death on Cuban
state television.
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