Fidel Castro

(1926 - 2016)

In 1945 Fidel Castro began studying law at the University of Havana and became involved in politics. He was sentenced to fifteen years of prison for attempting to overthrow the dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1953; two years after his release, he fled to Mexico, where he resumed revolutionary activities. After years of guerrilla warfare, Batista fled Cuba in 1959, and Castro became prime minister, and then, in 1976, president—a role he kept until stepping down in 2008. Cuba became the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere, and Castro attempted to support communist revolutions across the globe while relying on the Soviet Union to maintain the economy at home in the face of increasingly stringent trade embargoes and tensions with the United States. After his death, the government passed a law prohibiting the use of his name on “institutions, streets, parks, or other public sites, or erecting busts, statues, or other forms of tribute.”