2-991-321 - Heritage Imagined/Heritage Images

AI IMAGE - Portrait of Fidel Castro, 1970s, (2023). Marxist-Leninist Cuban nationalist, revolutionary and politician Fidel Castro (1926-2016) was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008. He served as prime minister, president, and first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba. Castro converted Cuba into a one-party, socialist state under Communist Party rule, the first in the Western Hemisphere. Policies introducing central economic planning and expanding healthcare and education were accompanied by state control of the press and the suppression of internal dissent. Western critics call him a dictator whose administration oversaw human rights abuses, the exodus of many Cubans, and the impoverishment of the country's economy. His supporters, on the other hand, view him as a champion of socialism and anti-imperialism whose revolutionary government advanced economic and social justice while securing Cuba's independence from US power.