Cuba President

Fidel Alejendro Ruz Castro was born on August 13, 1926 on his parents’ sugar plantation near to Biran in the Oriente Province, now Holguin Province, Cuba. His father Angel Castro Y Argiz, a Galician came from an autonomous province in the northwest of Spain. His mother’s name was Lina Ruz Gonzalez. No one would have predicted that Fidel Castro Alejendro Ruz Castro would one day become the President of Cuba for more than 4 decades.

Fidel Alejendro Ruz attended Biran’s Primary school and Belen High school in Havana a religious institution where he excelled in sport activities and academic studies. His secondary schooling was influenced by fascist ideology. The young proud Castro was not sociable as he did not mingle in the Cuban society. At seventeen, his family name was changed with the civil marriage of his parents to Castro.

In 1945, Fidel Alejendro Ruz Castro, aged nineteen, joined the Faculty of Law at the University of Havana.

The tertiary institution was a bastion for political activists where flourished dreams of a better Cuba and immerged anti-Batista movements. Freedom of thought and expression as well as activities on the campus led to the development of Fidel Castro. The young Castro though participating in elections on Campus never won neither did he affirm himself a charismatic leader of any students’ movement. Three years later, his studies not yet finished, he left university to launch in illegal activities. He attended military training camps on the Cuban shores and in 1948 participated in the riots in Bogota, Colombia after Jorge E Gaitan the Liberal Party leader was killed. Cornered by the Colombian Police he took refuge in Cuban embassy and was repatriated in Cuba where he resumed his studies and graduated with a Juris Doctor degree.

On Campus he was exposed to the various ideologies. The tertiary institution being a crossroad on discussion of nation problems, he became a follower and disciple of Chibas Eduardo of Cuba Partido Orthodoxo. Chiba promoted an economically and politically independent Cuba where freedom and equality would reign. Fidel married Mira Diaz Balart a philosophy student and had a son.  His union to the Balart, an affluent family led him to form part of a privileged class in Batista Cuba.

In 1950, he began to practice his legal activities and got involved in the political life of Cuba.

Later in June 1952 he presented himself at the congress as a member of the Orthodoxo Party to the election that was never held due to the overthrow of the regime of Carlos Prio Socorras.

On July 26 1953, Fidel together with his comrades launched an attack against the Moncada Army Barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The attack failed and the surviving terrorists for some or and freedom fighters for others were jailed and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The faction was released some years later because of pressure from the United States and Amnesty international. On   December 2 1956, Fidel, his brother Raul and eighty revolutionaries disembark in Santiago de Cuba. After confrontation with the Cuban governmental forces, they retrenched in the Maestria mountains and prepared the revolution.  They soon gain control of rural Cuba. With growing opposition and dissenting voices in the city against Batista, Castro together with the followers of Carlos Prio Socorras launched attacks all through Cuba. In 1958 a student anti-Batista movement emerged and nearly ousted Batista of presidential palace. This strengthened Castro Position in the Cuban political arena where he stood as the liberator. Instead of loosening the grip of power, the government of Batista applied martial law, curfew and unpunished crimes persisted. After a last battle in December 1958 the revolutionaries took the government on 1^st January1959. A charismatic leader Fidel promised to conduct free election, eradicate corruption. But he avoided confessing that he was a communist leading the Cuban nation to believe in him. But a year later, there were reforms in all sectors, he confiscated land and nationalised businesses and lowered rents. 

In April 1961, the invasion by the American army and Cuban exiles at the bay of Pigs reinforced Castro position on the international scene. He officially affirmed his government to be socialist and continued reforms in view of a socialist Republic. By 1961, he merged all revolutionary groups against Batista and created the Communist party of Cuba, one-party system.