Fidel Castro, leader of the Cuban Revolution, has died at the age of 90 on Friday night. Newsoftheworld.top traces his life in pictures.
With Fidel Castro disappears one of the latest political giants of the 20th century, a paternalistic autocrat who made a small Caribbean island a player in the standoff between American and Soviet superpowers, before leaving power for reasons of health.
"I never will retire from politics, power is a slave and I am his slave", said one who challenged its northern neighbor great for half a century before taking a step back from 2006.
Because over time, the "Barbudo" 32 years in 1959 that overthrew the dictatorship of General Fulgencio Batista and embodied the hopes of the revolutionary left turned into a ruthless autocrat with his opposition, ruling father in Cuba .
"Invincible patience. Iron discipline. The force of imagination allows him to overcome the unexpected", wrote of him in 2008 his friend, Nobel literature Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who died in April 2014 at age 87.
His opponents do not lack either qualifiers: dictator, megalomaniac, authoritarian, "a monster of selfishness, cynical and immoral" to his old friend, the journalist Norberto Fuentes, became one of his fiercest critics.
He was the last survivor of the Cold War
Last survivor of the Cold War, it was against all odds managing to keep up the only communist regime in the Western world, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union.
At great cost to the public, subject in the 90s in a "special period in peacetime" synonymous with terrible shortages, and without conceding a political easing of its regime.
The guerrilla leader
The son of a Spanish immigrant, a former pupil of the Jesuits entered history with weapons in hand, trying to seize 27 years in July 1953 of the Second Military square of the Moncada Barracks in Santiago Cuba (southeast), with a hundred conspirators.
The failure of the operation, which earned prison and exile to the young lawyer did not ruin his determination. Amnestied and released, he launched three years later a guerrilla 25 months will lower the Batista dictatorship and give the victory to his "bearded" in January 1959.
Therefore, to within 200 km of the United States, he played in the Cold War a revolution that will soon show his sympathy for Moscow.
John F. Kennedy, the second of the 11 US presidents he has challenged, did land the anti-Castro Bay of Pigs in 1961: stinging American defeat, Fidel Castro is a hero, a socialist David that will make the fight against Goliath imperialist his hobbyhorse.
inexhaustible speaker before the crowds, his image went around the world: cigar, beard, hat truss and do enter the pantheon of revolutionary, alongside Lenin and Mao.
Nikita Khrushchev made his colt and believes to install nuclear missiles in Cuba: the "missile crisis" of October 1962 brings the world to the edge of the Apocalypse. The agreement between the superpowers leaves bitter Fidel Castro and humiliated at not having been consulted.
It is then the instigator of the Third World guerrillas, defying Washington, but also the Kremlin on the occasion, while his comrade Ernesto "Che" Guevara leaves for a mission impossible in Bolivia where he was killed in 1967.
Visionary manager, Fidel Castro made a clean sweep in 1968 the last remnants of Cuban capitalism. Now Cuba is firmly secured to the USSR in 1975, Fidel Castro sent his troops beyond the Atlantic for an African adventure of 15 years on the battlefields of Angola and Ethiopia.
He led Cuba with an iron hand
Constrained by the fall of his Soviet patron to timid concessions to capitalism in the 1990s, it will be over soon found the alliance with Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president who died in 2013 that carried the flame for a few years a new " Castroism. "
Even disillusioned, a large part of the population remains "Fidelist" attached including two social showcases the plan: health and education.And it's always an iron hand he does ruthlessly silence any opposition, imprisoned or exiled.
The 21st century is not his. Since 2001, a series of health problems just call him to order. In July 2006, major surgery forced him to relinquish power to his younger brother Raul, his unwavering right arm and defense minister since 1959.
In February 2008, the handover is official. The Commander in Chief Fidel becomes a "soldier of ideas" and therefore merely to publish his "reflections" in the Cuban press and receive some visiting dignitaries.
As flamboyant on the public scene that secrecy about his private life, Fidel Castro has had at least eight children, five son with Dalia Soto del Valle, discreet woman with whom he lived until his death.
In April, at the close of the Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, he admitted, trembling voice: "Soon I finish in like other Our turn will come at all.".
He also evoked the legacy of Cuban communism, when the island is engaged since late 2014 in a historic rapprochement with former US enemy. A diplomatic turn operated by his brother and he never questioned, although he has repeatedly reminded his vis-à-vis distrust of Washington.
The newly elected president of the United States Donald Trump initially responded to a tweet on the death of Fidel Castro, "enemy" history of the United States since taking power on the island in 1959, before adopting a more hawkish tone.
The US president-elect Donald Trump chose Twitter to its first reaction to the death of the father of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro, reminiscent at first its reserves against the historic warming of relations between Washington and Havana. "Fidel Castro is dead," he first wrote on the social network, his favorite communication platform shortly after 8:00 local Florida (1400 GMT), where he spent the extended family weekend Thanksgiving.
In a statement released a few hours later, he was more bellicose, saying Saturday that he would do "everything" to help the "freedom" of the Cuban people after the death of Fidel Castro, which he said is "a dictator brutal that oppressed his people. "
Donald Trump is opposed to the removal of the embargo
The real estate mogul, who takes office on January 20, had also said it was for the time opposed the deletion of the financial and commercial embargo imposed on the island since 1962. Its lifting depends Congress which, controlled by Republicans, is opposed.
"All the concessions that Obama made to the Castro regime have been through presidential ordinances, which means that the next president can return it and I will do unless the Castro regime responds to our requests, not my demands, our demands ", said Donald Trump in September during a campaign speech before the election of 8 November that gave him the victory. "You know what those demands. These demands focus on the religious and political freedoms for the Cuban people and the release of political prisoners," added Republican.
Barack Obama has meanwhile reached out to the Cuban regime. "With the death of Fidel Castro, we extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people," wrote Obama in the White House statement. The President of the United States acknowledged that "for nearly six decades, the relationship between the United States and Cuba was marked by discord and deep political disagreements."
However, "under my presidency, we have worked hard to move forward and build a future in which the relationship between our two countries is not defined by our differences, but by what we share as neighbors and friends, "said President Obama commending the role played by the Cuban exile community for over half a century in the United States. "The Cuban people must know that he has a friend and partner in the United States," concluded the tenant of the White House had made in March 2016 historic visit to Cuba.
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