Obituary: Fidel Castro, revolution's evergreen icon, dies after outlasting 9 US presidents

castro launched a guerrilla war against of Batista in 1956 alongside Che Guevara and took power in 1959.

By Staff Reporter
November 26, 2016 14:44 +08

Then Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro attends manoeuvres during the 19th anniversary of his and his fellow revolutionaries arrival on the yacht Granma, in Havana in this November 1976 file photo. REUTERS/Prensa Latina/File Photo

Cuban revolutionary leader and former president Fidel Castro has died aged 90. The communist revolutionary's death was announced on Cuban state-run TV by his brother and current leader Raul Castro. "The commander in chief of the Cuban revolution died at 22:29 hours this evening (03:29 GMT Saturday)," Raul said.

Castro, who moulded Cuba into a bulwark against western capitalism and valiantly defied the US efforts to topple him for half a centur,y, has been ailing for some time. He had passed on power to younger brother Raul in 2008.

Even as critics accused him of suppressing dissent, Castro remained the beloved leader of the country and a leading light to revolution everywhere in the world.

Castro was born in 1926 in the south-eastern Oriente Province of Cuba. He launched a guerrilla war against the government of Batista in 1956 alongside Che Guevara, and took power in 1959. His fledgling communist regime came under intense pressure from the US, which allegedly launched a series of assasination attempts against the leader of the Soviet-backed regime at its doorstep.

Mexican President Enrique said Castro was a friend of Mexico and a "promoter of a bilateral relationship based on respect, dialogue and solidarity."

Even as Castro's death sent his country into mourning, there have been reports that Cuban Americans in Miami's Little Havana celebrated his death. The Cuban Americans in the US are some of the fiercest critics of Castro, after having suffered oppression in their communist homeland.

President Barack Obama said in 2014 the US and Cuba should restore ties as neither country was "well-served by a rigid policy that's rooted in events that took place before most of us were born." However, Castro rejected the offer accusing Obama of ignoring the accomplishments of Communist rule.

Here's a Reuters Factbox on Fidel Castro:

* Fidel Castro led Cuba for five decades and was the world's third longest-serving head of state, after Britain's Queen Elizabeth and the King of Thailand. He temporarily ceded power to his brother Raul in July 2006 after undergoing intestinal surgery. The handover of power became official in 2008.

* In his last years, Castro occasionally appeared in public and in videos and pictures usually meeting with guests. He wrote hundreds of columns for the official media. Stooped and walking with difficulty, Castro was seen in public twice in 2012 and twice in 2013. He was seen in public on Jan. 8, 2014, at the opening of a cultural center, though photos of visiting dignitaries at the Castro home appeared after that.

* Castro holds the record for the longest speech ever delivered to the United Nations: 4 hours and 29 minutes, on Sept. 26, 1960, according to the U.N. website. One of his longest speeches on record lasted 7 hours and 30 minutes on Feb. 24, 1998, after the national assembly re-elected him to a five-year term as president.

* Castro claimed he survived 634 attempts or plots to assassinate him, mainly masterminded by the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S.-based exile organizations. They may have included poison pills, a toxic cigar, exploding mollusks, and a chemically tainted diving suit. Another alleged plan involved giving him powder that would make his beard fall out and so undermine his popularity.

* Despite the plots, a U.S.-backed exile invasion at the Bay of Pigs and five decades of economic sanctions, Castro outlasted nine U.S. presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower to Bill Clinton, stepping down while George W. Bush was in office.

* Castro used to chomp on Cuban cigars but gave them up in 1985. Years later he summed up the harm of smoking tobacco by saying: "The best thing you can do with this box of cigars is give them to your enemy."

* Time Magazine in 2012 named Castro as one of the 100 most influential personalities of all time.

* Castro had nine children from five women. His eldest son Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, who is the image of his father and is known as Fidelito, is a Soviet-trained nuclear scientist born in 1949 out of his brief marriage to Mirta Diaz-Balart. Daughter Alina Fernandez, the result of an affair with a Havana socialite when Castro was underground in the 1950s, escaped from Cuba disguised as a tourist in 1993 and is a vocal critic. Castro has five sons with his common-law wife since the 1960s, Dalia Soto del Valle. He also has a son and a daughter born to two other women with whom he had affairs before coming to power.