‘History will absolve me’

Born on August 13, 1926, in Biran in eastern Cuba, Castro was the son of a Spanish immigrant who became a wealthy landowner.

Angry at social conditions and Batista’s dictatorship, Castro launched his revolution on July 26, 1953, with a failed assault on the Moncada barracks in the eastern city of Santiago.

“History will absolve me,” he declared during his trial.

He was sentenced to 15 years in prison but was released in 1955 after a pardon that would come back to haunt Batista. Castro went into exile in Mexico and prepared a small rebel army to fight Batista. It included Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who became his comrade in arms. On November 25, 1956, Castro and a ragtag band of 81 followers set sail from the Mexican port of Tuxpan aboard an overloaded yacht called Granma, reaching Cuba in early December.

Only 12, including Fidel, Raul and Guevara, escaped a government ambush when they landed in eastern Cuba.

Taking refuge in the rugged Sierra Maestra mountains, they built a guerrilla force of several thousand fighters who, along with urban rebel groups, defeated Batista’s military in just over two years.

Early on, at the height of the Cold War, Castro allied Cuba to the Soviet Union, which protected the Caribbean island and was its principal benefactor for three decades. The alliance brought in $4 billion worth of aid annually, including everything from oil to guns, but also provoked the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the United States discovered Soviet missiles on the island.

Convinced that the United States was about to invade Cuba, Castro urged the Soviets to launch a nuclear attack.

Cooler heads prevailed. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and US President John F Kennedy agreed the Soviets would withdraw the missiles in return for a US promise never to invade Cuba. The United States also secretly agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey.