Fidel Castro, who defied US for 50 years, dies at 90 in Cuba
HAVANA (AP) — Fidel Castro, who led his bearded rebels to victorious revolution in 1959, embraced Sovietstyle communism and defied the power of 10 U.S. presidents during his half-century of rule in Cuba, has died at age 90.
With a shaking voice, President Raul Castro said on state television that his older brother died at 10:29 p.m. Friday, Nov. 25. He ended the announcement by shouting the revolutionary slogan: "Toward victory, always!"
Castro's reign over the island nation 90 miles (145 kilometers) from Florida was marked by the U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Castro, who outlasted a crippling U.S. trade embargo as well as dozens, possibly hundreds, of assassination plots, died 10 years after a life-threatening illness led him to turn over power to his brother.
Castro overcame imprisonment at the hands of dictator Fulgencio Batista, exile in Mexico and a disastrous start to his rebellion before triumphantly riding into Havana in January 1959 to become, at age 32, the youngest leader in Latin America. For decades he was a source of inspiration and support to revolutionaries from Latin America to Africa, even as Cubans who fled to exile loathed him with equal measure.
His commitment to socialism was unwavering, though his power finally began to fade in mid-2006 when a gastrointestinal ailment forced him to hand over the presidency to Raul in 2008, provisionally at first and then permanently. Castro's defiant image lingered long after he gave up his trademark Cohiba cigars for health reasons and his tall frame grew stooped.
"Socialism or death" remained Castro's rallying cry even as Westernstyle democracy swept the globe and other communist regimes in China and Vietnam embraced capitalism, leaving this island of 11 million peo- ple an economically crippled Marxist curiosity.
He survived long enough to see his brother negotiate an opening with U.S. President Barack Obama on Dec. 17, 2014, when Washington and Havana announced they would move to restore diplomatic ties for the first time since they were severed in 1961. He cautiously blessed the historic deal with his lifelong enemy in a letter published after a monthlong silence. Obama made a historic visit to Havana in March 2016.
Raul has announced plans to retire as president when his current term ends on Feb. 24, 2018. Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, a relatively younger leader, is seen as a possible successor, although Raul has said he would stay on as head of the Communist Party.
Obama said that the United States extended "a hand of friendship to the Cuban people" and that "history will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him."
Cubans "will recall the past and also look to the future. As they do, the Cuban people must know that they have a friend and partner" in America.
President-elect Donald Trump called Castro "a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades." He said he hoped the death would clear the way "toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve."
He said his administration will do all it can to help Cubans "begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty."
Fidel Castro Ruz was born Aug. 13, 1926, in eastern Cuba's sugar country, where his Spanish immigrant father first worked recruiting labor for U.S. sugar companies and later built up a prosperous plantation of his own.
Castro attended Jesuit schools and then the University of Havana, where he received law and social science degrees. His life as a rebel began in 1953 with a reckless attack on the Moncada military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago. Most of his comrades were killed, and Fidel and his brother Raul went to prison.
Fidel turned his trial defense into a manifesto that he smuggled out of jail, famously declaring, "History will absolve me."
Freed under a pardon, Castro fled to Mexico and organized a rebel band that returned in 1956, sailing across the Gulf of Mexico to Cuba on a yacht named Granma. After losing most of his group in a bungled landing, he rallied support in Cuba's eastern Sierra Maestra mountains.
Three years later, tens of thousands spilled into the streets of Havana to celebrate Batista's downfall and catch a glimpse of Castro as his rebel caravan arrived in the capital on Jan. 8, 1959.
The U.S. was among the first to formally recognize his government, cautiously trusting Castro's early assurances he merely wanted to restore democracy, not install socialism.
Within months, Castro was imposing radical economic reforms. Members of the old government went before summary courts, and at least 582 were shot by firing squads over two years. Independent newspapers were closed and in the early years, homosexuals were herded into camps for "re-education."
In 1964, Castro acknowledged holding 15,000 political prisoners. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans