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Cuba’s Fidel Castro dead at 90

Cuban icon Fidel Castro speaking at a rally in 2006.

Cuban icon Fidel Castro speaking at a rally in 2006.

Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary leader who built a communist state on the doorstep of the United States and for five decades defied US efforts to topple him, has died at age 90, state-run Cuban Television said.

Castro was in poor health since an intestinal ailment nearly killed him in 2006.

The bearded Fidel Castro took power in a 1959 revolution and ruled Cuba for 49 years with a mix of charisma and iron will, creating a one-party state and becoming a central figure in the Cold War.

He was demonised by the United States and its allies but admired by many leftists around the world, especially socialist revolutionaries in Latin America and Africa.

Transforming Cuba from a playground for rich Americans into a symbol of resistance to Washington, Castro outlasted nine US presidents.

He fended off a CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 as well as countless assassination attempts.

His alliance with Moscow helped trigger the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, a 13-day showdown with the United States that brought the world the closest it has been to nuclear war.

Wearing green military fatigues and chomping on cigars for many of his years in power, Castro was famous for long, fist-pounding speeches filled with blistering rhetoric, often aimed at the United States.

At home, he swept away capitalism and won support for bringing schools and hospitals to the poor.

But he also created legions of enemies and critics, concentrated among Cuban exiles in Miami who fled his rule and saw him as a ruthless tyrant.

Castro attends a gala for his 90th birthday at the 'Karl Marx' theatre in Havana earlier this year.

Castro attends a gala for his 90th birthday at the ‘Karl Marx’ theatre in Havana earlier this year.

In the end it was not the efforts of Washington and Cuban exiles nor the collapse of Soviet communism that ended his rule.

Instead, illness forced him to cede power to his younger brother Raul.
In his final years, Fidel Castro no longer held leadership posts. He wrote newspaper commentaries on world affairs and occasionally met with foreign leaders but he lived in semi-seclusion.

His death – which would once have thrown a question mark over Cuba’s future – seems unlikely to trigger a crisis as Raul Castro is firmly ensconced in power.

In April, Fidel Castro gave a rare speech on the final day of the country’s Communist Party congress.

He acknowledged his advanced age but said Cuban communist concepts were still valid and the Cuban people “will be victorious”.

SOME  MEMORABLE CASTRO QUOTES:

* “Condemn me. It is of no importance. History will absolve me.” — Castro in 1953, when the young lawyer was defending himself over his assault on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba.

* “I’m not thinking of cutting my beard, because I’m accustomed to my beard and my beard means many things to my country. When we fulfill our promise of good government I will cut my beard.” — Castro in a 1959 interview, 30 days after the revolution which brought him to power.

* “I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure (Jesus Christ).” — Castro in 1985.

* “One of the greatest benefits of the revolution is that even our prostitutes are college graduates.” — Castro to director Oliver Stone in the 2003 documentary Comandante.

* “I realised that my true destiny would be the war that I was going to have with the United States.” — Castro’s opening quote in “Looking for Fidel,” Stone’s second documentary on the Cuban leader from 2004.

* “I’m really happy to reach 80. I never expected it, not least having a neighbour, the greatest power in the world, trying to kill me every day,” he said in 2006, a month before his birthday.

KEY EVENTS IN CUBA UNDER CASTRO:

January 1, 1959 – Castro’s rebels take power as dictator Fulgencio Batista flees Cuba.

June 1960 – Cuba nationalises U.S.-owned oil refineries after they refuse to process Soviet oil.

October 1960 – Washington bans exports to Cuba, other than food and medicine.

April 16, 1961 – Castro declares Cuba socialist state.

April 17, 1961 – Bay of Pigs: CIA-backed Cuban exiles stage failed invasion.

February 7, 1962 – Washington bans all Cuban imports.

October 1962 – U.S. blockade forces removal of Soviet nuclear missiles from Cuba. US President John F Kennedy agrees privately not to invade Cuba.

April 1980 – Mariel boatlift: Cuba says anyone can leave; 125,000 Cubans flee.

December 1991 – Collapse of Soviet Union devastates Cuban economy.

August 1994 – Castro declares he will not stop Cubans trying to leave; 40,000 take to sea heading for United States.

July 31, 2006 – Castro announces has had operation, temporarily cedes power to brother Raul.

February 19, 2008 – Castro resigns as president.

April 19, 2011 – Castro is replaced by his brother Raul as first secretary of the Communist Party, the last official post he held.

April 19, 2016 – Castro delivers a valedictory speech at the Communist Party’s seventh Congress, declaring that “soon I’ll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain.”

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