Castro, Fidel

Castro, Fidel (b. Mayari, Oriente, Cuba, 13 August 1926) Son of a wealthy sugar planter, Castro initiated revolutionary action on 26 July 1953 against the Batista regime, which he overthrew on 1 January 1959. On 20 August 1960, the US embargoed exports to Cuba in protest against Castro’s nationalization of 26 US firms with $1 billion in assets. Castro proclaimed Cuba a Communist-bloc nation and suspended all further elections on 1 May 1961. US efforts to depose him failed at the Bay of Pigs invasion. Soviet efforts to emplace ICBMs failed in the Cuban missile crisis. Cuban efforts to export its revolution led to sanctions by the Organization of American States (OAS) from 1964 to 1975. He sent Cuban troops to assist Marxist regimes in Angola, Ethiopia, and Grenada. In 1979 he was elected chair of the Nonaligned Nations Movement. He stimulated a large Cuban immigration of political refugees to the US. Castro faced increasing difficulty in governing Cuba after 1991, when the economic collapse of the USSR led to an end of the $5 billion in subsidies it had provided him.