Author: Fidel Castro

Born in eastern Cuba in 1926, FIDEL CASTRO began his political activity while attending the University of Havana in the mid-1940s. After Fulgencio Batista’s coup d’état of 10 March 1952, Castro organised a revolutionary movement to initiate armed struggle against the US-backed dictatorship. In 1953, he led an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada army garrison in Santiago de Cuba. Castro and other survivors were imprisoned. He was released in 1955 together with his comrades as a result of an amnesty campaign. Following his release, the 26 July Movement was formed. On 2 December 1956, along with eighty-one other fighters, he landed in south-eastern Cuba aboard the yacht “Granma”. On 1 January 1959, Batista was forced to flee Cuba. In February 1959 Castro became prime minister, a position he held until December 1976. He was president of the Council of State and Council of Ministers from 1976 to 2008, commander in chief of Cuba’s armed forces from 1959 to 2008, and first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba from its founding in 1965 to 2011.