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Vote: | A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past. |
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Vote: | A revolution is not a bed of roses. |
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Vote: | Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away. |
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Vote: | I am a Marxist Leninist and I will be one until the last day of my life. |
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Vote: | I am not a communist and neither is the revolutionary movement. |
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Vote: | I began revolution with 82 men. If I had do it again, I'd do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action. |
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Vote: | I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action. |
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Vote: | I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure, Jesus Christ. |
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Vote: | I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened. |
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Vote: | I would not vote for the mayor. It's not just because he didn't invite me to dinner, but because on my way into town from the airport there were such enormous potholes. |
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Vote: | If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism. |
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Vote: | In the Third World, there are 1.3 billion poor people. In other words, one out of every three inhabitants lives in poverty. |
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Vote: | Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour. |
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Vote: | More than 820 million people in the world suffer from hunger; and 790 million of them live in the Third World. |
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Vote: | The revenues of Cuban state-run companies are used exclusively for the benefit of the people, to whom they belong. |
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Vote: | The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters. |
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Vote: | The universities are available only to those who share my revolutionary beliefs. |
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Biography
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Fidel Castro Ruz (born August 13, 1926), has led Cuba since 1959, when, leading the 26th of July Movement, he overthrew the regime of Fulgencio Batista, and transformed Cuba into the first Communist Party-led State in the Western Hemisphere. During his more than 40-year rule, he has emerged as one of the most controversial political figures in the world. Internationally, his leadership has been marked by tensions with the United States that peaked in the Cuban Missile Crisis and a close partnership with the Soviet Union. Domestically, he has overseen the implementation of radical land reforms, uncompensated nationalization of leading Cuban industries, programs that greatly increased the nation's literacy rate and provided universal healthcare. Castro initially won the support of poorer Cubans but disillusioned and alienated many people in the middle and upper classes, many of whom fled the country for the nearby city of Miami in the United States. Castro has indicated that his brother, Raúl Castro, would assume authority over Cuba should he become ill (url)
Early life
Castro was born in Birán, near Mayarí, in the modern-day province of Holguín (then a part of the now-defunct Oriente province), into a wealthy farming family. The son of Ángel Castro y Argiz, an immigrant from Galicia, Spain, and his cook Lina Ruiz González, Castro was educated at Jesuit schools, including the La Salle private school and the preparatory school Colegio Belén, both in Havana, graduating in 1945, before going to the University of Havana to study law.
At university, Castro became involved in the often violent political disputes engaged in by the students as a part of the Insurrectional Revolutionary Union (UIR). In the summer of 1947, he was apart of a group who attempted a sea journey to the Dominican Republic in order to overthrow the dictatorship of that country, but they were prevented from succeeding by the intervention of the Cuban police. He also became known through local radio, and through the Alerta newspaper.
In 1948, Castro traveled to Bogotá in Colombia as a delegate of the University Student Federation (FEU) at the IX Interamerican Conference. During his visit, the famous liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán was assassinated, and he had to flee the country as a suspected collaborator of the Colombian Communist party in the killing. That same year, Castro married Mirta Díaz Balart, a philosophy student from another wealthy Cuban family. During this period he became known for his nationalist views and his opposition to the United States' influence in Cuba.
In 1950, Castro graduated and began practicing law in a small partnership. He intended to stand for parliament in June 1952 for the "Orthodox Party", of which he had become leader in 1951 after the suicide of its founder Eduardo Chibás, but a coup d'état on March 10, led by General Fulgencio Batista, overthrew the government of Carlos Prío Socarrás and the elections were cancelled. Castro broke with the Orthodox party and charged Batista with violating the Constitution in court, but his petition was refused.
Attack on Moncada Barracks
A member of the group Radical Action (AR), Castro responded to Batista's moves by organizing an armed attack on the Moncada Barracks in Oriente province on July 26, 1953. During the ill-fated attack, more than sixty of the one hundred thirty-five militants were killed. In a coordinated attack 150 kilometers away in Bayamo, twelve of the twenty-two assailants were killed. A widely held belief by many Cuban historians is that although Castro's group took part in the Moncada attack, Castro himself was not involved in the fighting. Instead, Castro and his inner circle safely hid themselves at a nearby location to avoid the actual bloodshed. While attacking the barracks, Castro's unit also committed a plethora of atrocities like killing members of Batista's military who where sleeping or incapacitated in the Moncada's infirmary.
Castro escaped into the mountains but on August 1 was taken prisoner along with his brother Raúl Castro and various other members of the group. Due to the intervention of the Archbishop of Havana they avoided being executed. During the trial, Castro used the closing arguments in the case to deliver a impassioned speech, "History Will Absolve Me" (url), in which he defended his actions and explaining his political views, but was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. In 1954, while still in prison, he divorced Díaz Balart, with whom he had a child called Fidelito. He was released in a general amnesty in May 1955 and went into exile in Mexico on July 7.
...(more on Wikipedia)
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Fidel Castro".
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