Fidel Castro is remembered in Cuba 98 years after his birth

Havana. The memory and legacy of the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro (1926-2016), are being remembered on Tuesday on the island, on the occasion of the 98th anniversary of his birth.

“98 years after his birth, in these difficult times, keeping the thoughts of Commander in Chief Fidel alive and eternal will be the greatest monument we can build for him,” underlines a message from the Presidencia Cuba website on its account on the social network X​​​.

Fidel Castro was born in the town of Birán, in the current province of Holguín, about 735 kilometers east of Havana, on August 13, 1926, the son of a Galician emigrant, a former soldier in the Spanish colonial army on the island, who became a wealthy landowner.

He completed his early studies in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, where he also enrolled in religious schools such as Los Hermanos de La Salle and the Colegio Dolores, run by the Jesuit Order. In 1942 he entered the Colegio Belén (also run by the Jesuits) in Havana, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Literature.

He studied at the university from 1945 to 1950, graduating as a lawyer from the University of Havana, where he began to get involved in the social and revolutionary struggles of his time, initially within the Federation of University Students (FEU) and in the ranks of the Cuban People’s Party (Orthodox).

In 1953, leading a hundred young people, he organized and led the attack on the Moncada barracks, the island’s second military fortress, located in the city of Santiago de Cuba, with the aim of starting an armed struggle to overthrow the dictatorship of General Fulgencio Batista (1952-1958), failing in the attempt and ending up in prison along with the survivors of the assault.

After a political amnesty in 1955, he left prison and went to Mexico, where he once again organized a rebel movement, landing on the Cuban coast in December 1956 with 82 expeditionaries, beginning the armed struggle with the nascent Rebel Army, a guerrilla group that managed to definitively overthrow General Batista on January 1, 1959.

Having become Prime Minister of the new revolutionary government in 1959, a position he held until 1976, Fidel Castro held the reins of power on the island until 2008, when he resigned from his posts as President of the Councils of State and Ministers due to his failing health.

During this period he achieved international relevance and chaired the Non-Aligned Movement in two periods (1979-1983 and 2006-2008).

Fidel Castro died at the age of 90, on November 25, 2016, and his remains rest in the Santa Ifigenia cemetery, in Santiago de Cuba.

Confrontation with Washington

His ideological radicalism made him, for both his followers and his enemies, one of the most important political figures of the international left in the 20th century, and his figure and the strength of his political legacy are still present, both in Cuba and in many countries where his image and thought guide popular and progressive movements that fight for a more equitable society.

Accused of being a dictator by the US government and vilified by Cuban exiles living in the US, Fidel Castro enjoyed widespread sympathy and recognition, even among those who did not agree with socialism as a political-social project, but considered themselves “Fidelistas.”

He was the “thorn in the side of the US”, becoming one of the most outspoken critics of Washington, to whom he “planted his flag” from his time as a guerrilla fighter in the late 1950s until his death.

During 11 administrations in the White House – from Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961) to Barack Obama (2009-2017), the name of Fidel Castro hovered around the Oval Office like a real headache, both in the implementation of restrictive policies against Cuba and on the world stage.

According to official data provided by Cuban and foreign investigators, 638 assassination attempts were planned against him, most of them attributed to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and opposition groups of Cuban emigrants residing in that nation.