Episode 20: Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (born August 13, 1926) is a communist Cuban politician, one of the primary leaders of the Cuban Revolution, the Prime Minister of Cuba from February 1959 to December 1976, and then the President of the Council of State of Cuba until his resignation from the office in February 2008. He currently serves as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, a position he has held since its inception in 1965.
His political career continued with nationalist critiques of the president, Fulgencio Batista, and of the United States' political and corporate influence in Cuba.
He then led the failed 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks, after which he was captured, tried, incarcerated, and later released. He then traveled to Mexico to organize and train for an invasion of Cuba to overthrow Batista's government, which began in December 1956.
Castro subsequently came to power as a result of the Cuban revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Batista, and shortly thereafter became Prime Minister of Cuba.
'The Bay of Pigs Invasion (known as La Batalla de Girón, or Playa Girón in Cuba), was an unsuccessful attempt by a US-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba with support from US government armed forces, to overthrow Castro's Cuban government in April 1961. The Cuban armed forces, trained and equipped by Eastern Bloc nations, defeated the exile combatants humiliatingly in three days.
In 1965 he became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and led the transformation of Cuba into a one-party socialist republic. In 1976 he became President of the Council of State as well as of the Council of Ministers. he also held the supreme military rank of Comandante en Jefe ("Commander in Chief") of the Cuban armed forces.
On February 24, 2008, the National Assembly elected Raúl Castro to succeed him as the President of Cuba.
Read more about this topic: International Terrorism Since 1945
Famous quotes containing the words fidel castro, episode and/or fidel:
“History will absolve me.
[La historia me absolver .]”
—Fidel Castro (b. 1926)
“The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for a popular decision.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“I had to say something
To strike him very weird,
So I yelled out,
“I like Fidel Castro and his beard.””
—Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941)