Former Cuban President Fidel Castro Dead at 90

Cuban President Raul Castro announced late Friday night that this his brother, former Cuban president Fidel Castro has died. It was announced on Cuban state media. He was 90.

“Today, November 25, at 10:29 p.m., the Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro Ruz passed away,” Raul Castro said in an address during the 11 o’clock news on Cuban TV. “In compliance with the expressed will of Companion Fidel, his remains will be cremated. In the early hours of Saturday 26, the funeral organizing committee will provide our people with detailed information on the organization of the posthumous Homage to the founder of the Cuban Revolution. Ever onward to victory!”

Castro — whose rise as a revolutionary made him the face of socialist rebellion for more than half a century, and whose Soviet ties led to the Cuban missile crisis — also rose to power as leader of a guerrilla army that overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. He remained in office for almost 40 years, until health problems and intestinal surgery forced him to hand over control to his younger brother, Raul, in 2006. He officially resigned as president two years later.

His public appearances from then on were rare, but he was seen in the summer of 2010, looking frail, going on TV and addressing Parliament, warning about rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran. He also was photographed in March 2012 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI during the pontiff’s visit to Cuba.

In April of 1961, just three months after President John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, Kennedy gave the go-ahead to a U.S.-sponsored force of about 1,300 Cuban exiles to land on Cuba’s southern coast, known as the Bay of Pigs. Their mission was to overthrow Castro.

The invading forces had no chance against Cuban forces and the defeat proved to be a major embarrassment for the Kennedy administration. After the botched invasion, Castro consolidated his power. At the end of 1961, he declared Cuba to be a communist state with a Marxist-Leninist program.

In October 1962, the tension between Cuba and the United States reached a crisis point when Soviet missiles with nuclear warheads capable of reaching the United States were discovered in Cuba. A U.S.-imposed naval blockade led to several days of international anxiety, with growing fears of a nuclear war until the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw its missiles.

The Cuban missile crisis further hardened Castro’s anti-U.S. stance. In 1964, Cuba remained the sole communist nation in the Western Hemisphere, surrounded by countries that imposed strict sanctions on the island state. But in the early 1990s, it started to suffer a severe economic decline triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

To deal with the crisis, Castro was forced to move toward a more market-based economy. He still offered his people free education and health care, but Cubans were plagued by a housing crunch, a crumbling infrastructure and high unemployment. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled the regime, with many settling in Miami, Fla.

By the turn of the century, speculation was growing about Castro’s health, and there were rumors he was near death when he fell off a stage after giving a speech at a rally in October 2004. But the real downward spiral began with the surgery for intestinal bleeding in July 2006, when he temporarily handed power to his brother, Raul.

In February 2008, he permanently resigned as president, and the Cuban National Assembly officially elected Raul Castro, who had been his brother’s closest confidante for decades.