Fidel Castro was born on August 13, 1926 in Mayari, Cuba. He grew up in a wealthy family because his parents ran a sugar cane plantation. Throughout his childhood, Fidel went to many Catholic schools and graduated at the University of Havana in 1945. While in the University of Havana, he majored in law and joined many political groups for justice in Cuba. However, the government put an end to one of these groups in 1947 so Fidel took place in many meetings to stop the Ninth International Conference of American States.
By 1950, Fidel graduated with a degree of law and was seen as a major political figure in Cuba. After a long period of waiting, Fidel became a member of the Orthodoxo Party and tried to take part in Cuban Congress. However, his dreams came to a halt when Fulgencio Batista gained control of the Cuban government to prevent the spread of the Orthodoxos Party. Fulgencio's rule caused many unnecessary deaths to political figures to prevent spread of the party. Fidel began to take military action against Batista and eventually became the leader of many organizations throughout Cuba.
To his disadvantage, Batista's government sent in an even stronger force which killed many and put an end to most of the organizations and Fidel was put in prison for 15 years. After a year, Batista released Fidel out of jail along with some other politicians. At this point, Fidel moved to Mexico where he met Che Guevara who was studying medicine in Mexico City. They quickly joined forces and developed a group of 82 men and trained them for war. The group was known as the 26th of July. In one of his first speeches as a premier, Fidel promised a government filled with honesty and no corruption of power. He also kept most of the ideas from the Cuban Constitution of 1940.
In 1959, Fidel went around the world to gain acknowledgement. He also went to the United States to bring peace. When he met with Vice President Nixon, they had completely different views of government and Nixon compared his rule to a dictatorship. When Castro returned to Cuba, he developed a socialist economy, which put Cuba and the US in a rivalry. Fidel demanded that any American businesses in Cuba should be stopped which caused the US to lose lots of money and cut of the trade relationship between the two countries. Since the US lost so much money, more tension was created and something catastrophic was getting close. Fidel formed an alliance with Cuba, the Soviet Union, and China to gain weapons and aid for protection against the United States.
This posed a big threat because since Cuba is close, a nuclear bomb could hit American soil within minutes. When the United States sent in forces to attempt to take him out of control in 1961, he managed to retaliate and keep a strong dictatorship style government. In 1962, after a long compromise over the missiles in Cuba, they were finally removed and this ended the Cuban Missile Crisis. We however still had missiles in Russia which gave us the upper hand in the long run. The Cuban Missile crisis is the closest the United States had come to being in a dangerous nuclear position
Throughout Cuba's alliance with the Soviet Union, no benefits were made and all they received was a close nuclear war with the US. After the Soviet Union fell Cuba did not continue to receive economic aid stopped receiving most of its economic aid. Today, although his health is slowly fading to this day, Fidel believes that Cuba will one day rise again and gain more political power than ever before.
