Castro undergoes surgery, relinquishes power

Strained ties with U.S.
In Washington, White House spokesman Peter Watkins said: “We are monitoring the situation. We can’t speculate on Castro’s health, but we continue to work for the day of Cuba’s freedom.”

Castro rose to power after an armed revolution he led drove out then-President Fulgencio Batista. The United States was the first country to recognize Castro, but his radical economic reforms and rapid trials of Batista supporters quickly unsettled U.S. leaders.

Washington eventually slapped a trade embargo on the island and severed diplomatic ties. Castro seized American property and businesses and turned to the Soviet Union for military and economic assistance.

On April 16, 1961, Castro declared his revolution to be socialist. The following day, he humiliated the United States by capturing more than 1,100 exile soldiers in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

The world neared nuclear conflict on Oct. 22, 1962, when President John F. Kennedy announced there were Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. After a tense week of diplomacy, Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev removed them.

Meanwhile, Cuban revolutionaries opened 10,000 new schools, erased illiteracy, and built a universal health care system. Castro backed revolutionary movements in Latin America and Africa.

But former liberties were whittled away as labor unions lost the right to strike, independent newspapers were shut down and religious institutions were harassed. Over nearly five decades, hundreds of thousands of Cubans have fled Castro’s rule, many of them settling just across the Florida Straits in Miami.

Medical history
Castro continually resisted U.S. demands for multiparty elections and an open economy despite American laws tightening the embargo in 1992 and 1996.

He characterized a U.S. plan for American aid in a post-Castro era as a thinly disguised attempt at regime change and insisted his socialist system would survive long after his death.

Fidel Castro Ruz was born in eastern Cuba, where his Spanish immigrant father ran a prosperous plantation. His official birthday is Aug. 13, 1926, although some say he was born a year later.

Talk of Castro’s mortality was long taboo on the island, but that ended June 23, 2001, when he fainted during a speech in the sun. Although Castro quickly returned to the stage, many Cubans understood for the first time that their leader would one day die.

Castro shattered a kneecap and broke an arm when he fell after a speech on Oct. 20, 2004, but typically laughed off rumors about his health, most recently a 2005 report that he had Parkinson’s disease.

“They have tried to kill me off so many times,” Castro said in a November 2005 speech about the Parkinson’s report, adding he felt “better than ever.”

But the Cuban president also said he would not insist on remaining in power if he ever became too sick to lead: “I’ll call the (Communist) Party and tell them I don’t feel I’m in condition ... that please, someone take over the command.”

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