Former President Fidel Castro, who led a rebel army to improbable victory in Cuba, embraced Soviet-style communism and defied the power of 10 US presidents during his half century rule, has died at age With a shaking voice, President Raul Castro said on state television that his older brother died at p.
He ended the announcement by shouting the revolutionary slogan: "Toward victory, always! That will follow more than a week of honors, including a nearly nationwide caravan retracing, in reverse, his tour from Santiago to Havana with the triumph of the revolution in Castro's reign over the island-nation 90 miles from Florida was marked by the US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in and the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
The bearded revolutionary, who survived a crippling US trade embargo as well as dozens, possibly hundreds, of assassination plots, died 10 years after ill health forced him to hand power over to Raul.
Castro overcame imprisonment at the hands of dictator Fulgencio Batista, exile in Mexico and a disastrous start to his rebellion before triumphantly riding into Havana in January to become, at age 32, the youngest leader in Latin America. For decades, he served as an inspiration and source of support to revolutionaries from Latin America to Africa.
Here are some of his more memorable quotes about himself and communism in Cuba:. It is of no importance. History will absolve me. If I had to do it again, I would do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith.
