Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (American Spanish: [fiˈðel aleˈxandɾo ˈkastɾo ˈrus]  audio ; born August 13, 1926), commonly known as Fidel Castro, is a Cuban politician and revolutionary who governed the Republic of Cuba as its Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976 and then its President from 1976 to 2008. Politically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 until 2011. Under his administration Cuba became a one-party communist state; industry and business were nationalized, and state socialist reforms were implemented throughout society. Internationally, Castro was the Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1979 to 1983 and from 2006 to 2008.

Born in Birán as the son of a wealthy farmer, Castro adopted leftist anti-imperialist politics while studying law at the University of Havana. After participating in rebellions against right-wing governments in the Dominican Republic and Colombia, he planned the overthrow of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista, launching a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953. After a year's imprisonment, he traveled to Mexico where he formed a revolutionary group, the 26th of July Movement, with Che Guevara and his brother Raúl Castro. Returning to Cuba, Castro took a key role in the Cuban Revolution by leading the Movement in a guerrilla war against Batista's forces from the Sierra Maestra. After Batista's overthrow in 1959, Castro assumed military and political power as Cuba's Prime Minister. The United States was alarmed by Castro's friendly relations with the Soviet Union, and unsuccessfully attempted to remove him by assassination, economic blockade, and counter-revolution, including the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. Countering these threats, Castro formed an alliance with the Soviets and allowed them to place nuclear weapons on the island, sparking the Cuban Missile Crisis – a defining incident of the Cold War – in 1962.

The Real Fidel Castro

The Real Fidel Castro is a biography of the Cuban revolutionary and politician Fidel Castro, written by the British diplomat Sir Leycester Coltman (1938–2003) and first published by Yale University Press in 2003. A diplomat for the government of the United Kingdom, Coltman had been appointed to the position of British ambassador to Cuba from 1991 through to 1994, during which time he got to know Castro personally. He died shortly before his biography's publication.

The biography looks at Castro's life from its beginning up until the start of the 21st century, when Castro was in his final years of the presidency, a position that he would relinquish in 2008. The book is accompanied by anecdotes about Castro and his relationship with other politicians, supplied by Coltman from his years in the diplomatic service.

The Real Fidel Castro was reviewed in the mainstream press in both the United Kingdom and United States.

Reception

U.K. press reviews

"From [Coltman's account], Castro emerges more as a liberal utopian of the 19th century than a 20th-century totalitarian, a Garibaldi more than a Joseph Stalin. [The Real Fidel Castro] explain[s] why the heart of "old Europe" still beats in sympathy with Fidel. He remains a figure from all our yesterdays, grey-bearded but eternally youthful, a man who effortlessly changed his slogan from "Socialism or death", suitable for the violent 20th century, to the more emollient "A better world is possible", appropriate for the more pacifistic revolutionaries of the present era."