Celebrations and tears as Fidel Castro dies aged 90

Ironically, Castro was a fan of America’s favourite sport, baseball, and US novelist Ernest Hemingway, whom he met in 1960. he had a foreign policy which was global, but particularly important in Southern Africa in supporting Angola against the apartheid regime.”

Mr Castro led a guerrilla coup in 1959 to overthrow the regime of the US- backed former Cuban president Fulgencio Batista and remained hostile to Washington throughout his life.

Mr Castro’s government quickly imposed a one- party system that remains to this day and hundreds of political prisoners and gay people were sent to jail and labour camps.

Celebrations in Miami, while Moscow mourns Castro.

The Cuban leader made education and medical care freely available for all in what had been a dirt- poor country, and Cuba’s infant mortality rates compared favourably with most Western countries.

As US President Barack Obama moved to heal relations with Havana in recent years, Mr Castro responded: “We don’t need the empire to give us anything.”

And when he closed the congress of the Cuban Communist Party in April he called on his countrymen to maintain socialist ideals in the face of closer ties with the US.

Mr Castro’s last appearance in public was at an event to mark his birthday in August.

The gala celebrated key moments in his life, including repelling the US- backed attempt to invade in the Bay of Pigs in 1961.

It was a defining moment in the Cold War, which reached its peak a year later when the world came to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

As its greatest ally, the Soviet Un i o n , c o l l a p s e d , Cu b a remained a pariah communist state and became one of the world’s poorest nations.

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