Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro was a Cuban revolutionary, politician, and statesman whose 49-year service as the Prime Minister and President of Cuba across 1959–2008 produced one of the longest-serving non-royal heads of government in modern world history — and one of the foundational figures of late-20th-century Cold-War-era international Marxist-Leninist political movement. He was born Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz on August 13, 1926, in Birán, Holguín Province, Cuba, into a wealthy Cuban Spanish-immigrant sugar-plantation family. His father Ángel Castro y Argiz was a Galicia-born Spanish-immigrant Cuban-sugar-plantation owner, and his mother Lina Ruz González was a homemaker.

His education at the El Colegio de Belén Jesuit school in Havana (1942–1945) and the University of Havana School of Law (LL.B. and Doctor of Jurisprudence, 1950) launched his early-career path. His 1947 founding-membership in the Cuban People's Party (Partido Ortodoxo) and his subsequent 1952 first Cuban national-government congressional candidacy produced his early-career Cuban political-public-profile.

His July 26, 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba — the abortive armed uprising against the Cuban government of Fulgencio Batista — produced his subsequent 1953–1955 Cuban Isle of Pines Presidio Modelo prison sentence (although Batista's May 1955 amnesty produced his early release). His July 1955 emigration to Mexico — across which he founded the 26th of July Movement (named for his July 26, 1953 Moncada Barracks attack date) — and his subsequent December 2, 1956 Granma yacht-launched return to Cuba launched his 1956–1959 Cuban Sierra Maestra-area Cuban Revolution guerrilla-warfare campaign.

His January 1, 1959 capture of Havana by the Cuban Revolution forces and his subsequent February 16, 1959 first Prime-Minister-of-Cuba appointment launched his 1959–2008 49-year Cuban-government leadership. The April 16, 1961 declaration of the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution and his subsequent late-1961 alliance with the Soviet Union (which produced the October 14–28, 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis) produced his Cold-War-era international political public profile. His December 2, 1976 second-position transition to the Cuban Communist Party First Secretary and the President of the State Council and the President of the Council of Ministers extended his Cuban-government leadership. He retired on February 19, 2008, due to complications from his ongoing 2006 intestinal surgery, and was succeeded by his younger brother Raúl Castro. He died on November 25, 2016, at age 90, in Havana, Cuba.

His name Fidel derives from the Latin Fidelis meaning "faithful." Fidel has been climbing in American naming since the 2000s.