Fidel Castro

Cuban politician, author and revolutionary (1926–2016)

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Lived 1926–2016, aged 90

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Wikipedia
156 languages
Cross-language footprint
Global rank
#110
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Era
1926–2016
Aged 90
Known for
JFK
1991

Summary

Updated 2026-08-29

Led Cuba for nearly five decades as a Marxist revolutionary who turned the island into a one-party communist state ninety miles from the United States, survived assassination attempts and an economic embargo, and placed Soviet nuclear weapons on Cuban soil in 1962.

Biography

About

Born in 1926 to a wealthy Spanish farmer in Birán, Castro studied law at the University of Havana and adopted leftist anti-imperialist ideas. After a failed 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks and imprisonment, he went to Mexico and formed the 26th of July Movement with his brother Raúl and Che Guevara. The group waged guerrilla war from the Sierra Maestra and overthrew Fulgencio Batista in 1959. As prime minister and later president, Castro nationalized industry, expanded healthcare and education, suppressed internal dissent, and aligned with the Soviet Union through the Cuban Missile Crisis…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro

said2 Jan 1961

A revolution is not a trail of roses.... A revolution is a fight to the death between the future and the past.

— Speech on the second anniversary of the triumph of the revolution (2 January 1961)

Fidel Castro

said17 Jul 1959

I am not a communist and neither is the revolutionary movement, but we do not have to say that we are anticommunists just to fawn on foreign powers.

— Resignation announcement (17 July 1959)

Fidel Castro

said24 May 1959

I am not a dictator, and I do not think I will become one. I will not maintain power with a machine gun.

— I Won't Be a Dictator, interview with Ruth Lloyd (January 1959), printed in The Spokesman-Review (24 May 1959)

Fidel Castro

said8 Jan 1959

Weapons for what? (¿Armas, para qué?) To fight against whom? Against the revolutionary government, that has the support of the whole people? ... Weapons for what?

— Speech in Havana (8 January 1959)

Fidel Castro

said8 Jan 1959