LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Fidel Castro
built 500 days ago
Fidel Castro has been the undisputed leader of Cuba since 1959, when his Marxist revolutionary forces toppled the regime of Fulgencio Batista. Castro was educated in Catholic schools and studied law at the University of Havana. In 1953 he was involved in a first unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Batista. Imprisoned, then exiled to Mexico, Castro returned to Cuba in 1956 to again lead a revolution. He joined forces with revolutionary Ernest "Che" Guevara and overthrew Batista in 1959. Çastro led Cuba in overcoming U.S. opposition (including assassination attempts and the famous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion ordered by John F. Kennedy) largely through the support of the now-defunct Soviet Union.
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Fidel Castro is the President for life of Cuba. After taking power, the United States isolated Cuba and Castro turned increasingly to the Soviet Union for help and announced his ideological identification with communism. In the closing weeks of the Eisenhower Administration, the United States had broken diplomatic relations with Cuba; if they had honored the Cuban revolution from the start, Castro would not have needed to go to the Soviet bloc nations for trade. Castro appropriated American property in Cuba, imprisoned and expelled American citizens, and proceeded with a far-reaching social and economic revolution that bore no resemblance to the typical palace revolutions of Latin America.
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Fidel Castro will have a special place in this century because of his role in Cuban, Latin America, and Third World history. He represented a wave of revolutionary experiments, and tried to integrate a Cuban historical tradition with European revolutionary theory. He has made important contributions to revolutionary strategy and tactics, while elucidating a Third World perspective of world affairs. He, like his guerrilla fighters, have aged. The elan and magic of earlier heroism no longer touches those who have been born since 1959, as it did their parents. It is doubtful that Fidel
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At home, Fidel Castro has overseen the implementation of various economic policies, leading to the rapid centralization of Cuba's economy, land reform, collectivization and mechanization of agriculture, and the expropriation of leading Cuban industries. Opponents claim that these changes have had disastrous consequences and transformed Cuba into a third-world nation[9], as Cuba's GDP has failed to keep up with countries that were in a similar position during the 1950s despite the generous subsidies of the Soviet Union until the 1990s.[10] Conversely, supporters attribute the U.S. embargo for some or all of Cuba's shortcomings, but maintain that Cuba's economy has expanded and grown at a more than acceptable rate since the revolution. In 2006, the Cuban government reported that Cuba achieved 12.5% growth,[11] which included trade and social services as part of GDP estimation; an unusual practice. Excluding those categories, which is the more conventional practice, economic growth is estimated to be at 9.5%.[12]
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Fidel Castro's opposition to the US influence and socialist ideology brought forth a collision between the two nations. He seized US owned businesses in Cuba and established contacts with the USSR to provide for an ally. Therefore, the US broke all the former relations and began planning an invasion of Cuba in 1960, after having put a partial trade embargo on the nation (prohibiting all import except food and medication). The CIA trained Cuban exiles, which landed on the Bay of Pigs April 17th, 1961, was attempting to built up a counterrevolution in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban leader. But the Bay of Pigs invasion failed as the people backed up around Fidel Castro and his politics. The US now attempted a military invasion from within the nation, where agents working for the US government tried to assassinate Fidel Castro several times.
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At Havana's exclusive El Colegio de Belén, Fidel Castro studied under Jesuit priests. It was the 1940s, and the experience of the Spanish Civil War was still fresh. Spanish Nationalists under Francisco Franco had identified with the Fascists, and anti-Americanism ran high within their ranks. Castro's Jesuit teachers imbued the young Fidel with the idea of Hispanidad, stressing the superiority of Spanish values of honor and pride as opposed to the materialistic values of the Anglo-Saxon world. Once he entered the University of Havana, Castro came in contact with the writings of nationalist professors who believed Cuba's destiny had been thwarted by the intervention of the United States. The intervention of 1898, the Platt Amendment and U.S. economic domination had combined to strip Cuba of its independence and national pride.
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Fidel Castro