Presidency of Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro, President of Cuba (1976-2008) served as The Prime Minister of the Republic of Cuba (1959-1976) and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) president of Cuba (1975-1979). He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (1961-2011). During this time he participated in many foreign wars including the Angolian Civil War, Mozambique Civil War, Ogaden War; as well as Latin American revolutions. Castro also faced other difficulties as the President of Cuba, for instance the economic crisis that occurred during the Reagan era. As well as the deteriorating relationship between the Soviet Union and Cuba due to Glastnost and Perestroika (1980-1989). Beginning in the 1990s Castro led Cuba in an era of peace known as the Special Period, which lasted a decade. During this decade Castro made many changes to the Cuban economy. Castro reformed Cuban Socialism due to the withdrawal of the Soviet's backing against the United States. However Castro received aid from Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, this decade is known as The Pink Tide era (2000-2006). On July 31, 2006 Castro passed his duties as the President of Cuba to his brother Raúl due to health reasons. Castro denounced his positions as President of the Council of State and Commander and Chief at the February 24 National Assembly meetings in a letter dated February 18, 2008.

Foreign wars and NAM Presidency: 1975–1979

"There is often talk of human rights, but it is also necessary to talk of the rights of humanity. Why should some people walk barefoot, so that others can travel in luxurious cars? Why should some live for thirty-five years, so that others can live for seventy years? Why should some be miserably poor, so that others can be hugely rich? I speak on behalf of the children in the world who do not have a piece of bread. I speak on the behalf of the sick who have no medicine, of those whose rights to life and human dignity have been denied."

— Fidel Castro’s message to the UN General Assembly, 1979

Castro considered Africa to be "the weakest link in the imperialist chain", in November 1975 he ordered 230 military advisors into Southern Africa to aid the Marxist MPLA in the Angolan Civil War. When the U.S. and South Africa stepped up their support of the opposition FLNA and UNITA, Castro ordered a further 18,000 troops to Angola, which played a major role in forcing a South African retreat. Traveling to Angola, Castro celebrated with President Agostinho Neto, Guinea's Ahmed Sékou Touré and Guinea-Bissaun President Luís Cabral, where they agreed to support the Mozambique's communist government against RENAMO in the Mozambique Civil War. In February, Castro visited Algeria and Libya and spent ten days with Muammar Gaddafi before attending talks with the Marxist government of South Yemen. From there he proceeded to Somalia, Tanzania, Mozambique and Angola where he was greeted by crowds as a hero for Cuba’s role in opposing Apartheid-era South Africa.

In 1977 the Ogaden War broke out as Somalia invaded Ethiopia; although a former ally of Somali President Siad Barre, Castro had warned him against such action, and Cuba sided with Mengistu Haile Mariam's Marxist government of Ethiopia. He sent troops under the command of General Arnaldo Ochoa to aid the overwhelmed Ethiopian army. After forcing back the Somalis, Mengistu then ordered the Ethiopians to suppress the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, a measure Castro refused to support. Castro extended support to Latin American revolutionary movements, namely the Sandinista National Liberation Front in its overthrow of the Nicaraguan rightist government of Anastasio Somoza Debayle in July 1979. Castro’s critics accused the government of wasting Cuban lives in these military endeavors; the anti-Castro Carthage Foundation-funded Center for a Free Cuba has claimed that an estimated 14,000 Cubans were killed in foreign Cuban military actions.

Fidel Castro speaking in Havana, 1978.

In 1979, the Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was held in Havana, where Castro was selected as NAM president, a position he held till 1982. In his capacity as both President of the NAM and of Cuba he appeared at the United Nations General Assembly in October 1979 and gave a speech on the disparity between the world’s rich and poor. His speech was greeted with much applause from other world leaders, though his standing in NAM was damaged by Cuba's abstinence from the U.N.'s General Assembly condemnation of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Cuba's relations across North America improved under Mexican President Luis Echeverría, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Carter continued criticizing Cuba's human rights abuses, but adopted a respectful approach which gained Castro’s attention. Considering Carter well-meaning and sincere, Castro freed certain political prisoners and allowed some Cuban exiles to visit relatives on the island, hoping that in turn Carter would abolish the economic embargo and stop CIA support for militant dissidents.

Reagan and Gorbachev: 1980–1989

U.S. President Reagan and Soviet Premier Gorbachev were the two major players on the world stage in the 1980s, and would heavily affect Castro’s governance of Cuba.

By the 1980s, Cuba's economy was again in trouble, following a decline in the market price of sugar and 1979's decimated harvest. Desperate for money, Cuba's government secretly sold off paintings from national collections and illicitly traded for U.S. electronic goods through Panama. Increasing numbers of Cubans fled to Florida, who were labelled "scum" by Castro. In one incident, 10,000 Cubans stormed the Peruvian Embassy requesting asylum, and so the U.S. agreed that it would accept 3,500 refugees. Castro conceded that those who wanted to leave could do so from Mariel port. Hundreds of boats arrived from the U.S., leading to a mass exodus of 120,000; Castro’s government took advantage of the situation by loading criminals and the mentally ill onto the boats destined for Florida. In 1980, Ronald Reagan became U.S. President and then pursued a hard line anti-Castro approach, and by 1981, Castro was accusing the U.S. of biological warfare against Cuba.

Although despising Argentina's right wing military junta, Castro supported them in the 1982 Falklands War against the United Kingdom and offered military aid to the Argentinians. Castro supported the leftist New Jewel Movement that seized power in Grenada in 1979, sent doctors, teachers, and technicians to aid the country’s development, and befriended the Grenadine President Maurice Bishop. When Bishop was murdered in a Soviet-backed coup by hardline Marxist Bernard Coard in October 1983, Castro cautiously continued supporting Grenada's government. However, the U.S. used the coup as a basis for invading the island. Cuban soldiers died in the conflict, with Castro denouncing the invasion and comparing the U.S. to Nazi Germany. Castro feared a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua and sent Arnaldo Ochoa to train the governing Sandinistas in guerrilla warfare, but received little support from the Soviet Union.

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became Secretary-General of the Soviet Communist Party. A reformer, he implemented measures to increase freedom of the press (glasnost) and economic decentralisation (perestroika) in an attempt to strengthen socialism. Like many orthodox Marxist critics, Castro feared that the reforms would weaken the socialist state and allow capitalist elements to regain control. Gorbachev conceded to U.S. demands to reduce support for Cuba, with Cuba–Soviet Union relations deteriorating. When Gorbachev visited Cuba in April 1989, he informed Castro that perestroika meant an end to subsidies for Cuba. Ignoring calls for liberalisation in accordance with the Soviet example, Castro continued to clamp down on internal dissidents and in particular kept tabs on the military, the primary threat to the government. A number of senior military officers, including Ochoa and Tony de la Guardia, were investigated for corruption and complicity in cocaine smuggling, tried, and executed in 1989, despite calls for leniency. On medical advice given him in October 1985, Castro gave up regularly smoking Cuban cigars, helping to set an example for the rest of the populace. Castro became passionate in his denunciation of the Third World debt problem, arguing that the Third World would never escape the debt that First World banks and governments imposed upon it. In 1985, Havana hosted five international conferences on the world debt problem.

Castro’s image painted onto a now-destroyed lighthouse in Lobito, Angola, 1995.

By November 1987, Castro began spending more time on the Angolan Civil War, in which the Marxists had fallen into retreat. Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos successfully appealed for more Cuban troops, with Castro later admitting that he devoted more time to Angola than to the domestic situation, believing that a victory would lead to the collapse of apartheid. Gorbachev called for a negotiated end to the conflict and in 1988 organized a quadripartite talks between the USSR, U.S., Cuba and South Africa; they agreed that all foreign troops would pull out of Angola. Castro was angered by Gorbachev’s approach, believing that he was abandoning the plight of the world’s poor in favour of détente. In Eastern Europe, socialist governments fell to capitalist reformers between 1989 and 1991 and many western observers expected the same in Cuba. Increasingly isolated, Cuba improved relations with Manuel Noriega's right-wing government in Panama – despite Castro's personal hatred of Noriega – but it was overthrown in a U.S. invasion in December 1989. In February 1990, Castro's allies in Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas, were defeated by the U.S.-funded National Opposition Union in an election. With the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the U.S. secured a majority vote for a resolution condemning Cuba's human rights violations at the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland. Cuba asserted that this was a manifestation of U.S. hegemony, and refused to allow an investigative delegation to enter the country.

The Special Period: 1990–2000

Castro in front of a Havana statue of Cuban national hero José Martí in 2003.

With favourable trade from the Eastern bloc ended, Castro publicly declared that Cuba was entering a "Special Period in Time of Peace." Petrol rations were dramatically reduced, Chinese bicycles were imported to replace cars, and factories performing non-essential tasks were shut down. Oxen began to replace tractors, firewood began being used for cooking and electricity cuts were introduced that lasted 16 hours a day. Castro admitted that Cuba faced the worst situation short of open war, and that the country might have to resort to subsistence farming. By 1992, the Cuban economy had declined by over 40% in under two years, with major food shortages, widespread malnutrition and a lack of basic goods. Castro hoped for a restoration of Marxism–Leninism in the USSR, but refrained from backing the 1991 coup in that country. When Gorbachev regained control, Cuba-Soviet relations deteriorated further and Soviet troops were withdrawn in September 1991. In December, the Soviet Union was officially dismantled as Boris Yeltsin abolished the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and introducing a capitalist multiparty democracy. Yeltsin despised Castro and developed links with the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation. Castro tried improving relations with the capitalist nations. He welcomed western politicians and investors to Cuba, befriended Manuel Fraga and took a particular interest in Margaret Thatcher's policies in the U.K., believing that Cuban socialism could learn from her emphasis on low taxation and personal initiative. He ceased support for foreign militants, refrained from praising FARC on a 1994 visit to Colombia and called for a negotiated settlement between the Zapatistas and the Mexican government in 1995. Publicly, he presented himself as a moderate on the world stage.

"We do not have a smidgen of capitalism or neo-liberalism. We are facing a world completely ruled by neo-liberalism and capitalism. This does not mean that we are going to surrender. It means that we have to adopt to the reality of that world. That is what we are doing, with great equanimity, without giving up our ideals, our goals. I ask you to have trust in what the government and party are doing. They are defending, to the last atom, socialist ideas, principles and goals."

— Fidel Castro explaining the reforms of the Special Period

In 1991, Havana hosted the Pan-American Games, which involved construction of a stadium and accommodation for the athletes; Castro admitted that it was an expensive error, but it was a success for Cuba's government. Crowds regularly shouted "Fidel! Fidel!" in front of foreign journalists, while Cuba became the first Latin American nation to beat the U.S. to the top of the gold-medal table. Support for Castro remained strong, and although there were small anti-government demonstrations, the Cuban opposition rejected the exile community’s calls for an armed uprising. In August 1994, the most serious anti-Castro demonstration in Cuban history occurred in Havana, as 200 to 300 young men began throwing stones at police, demanding that they be allowed to emigrate to Miami. A larger pro-Castro crowd confronted them, and joined by Castro who informed the media that the men were anti-socials misled by U.S. media. The protests dispersed with no recorded injuries. Fearing that dissident groups would invade, the government organised the "War of All the People" defence strategy, planning a widespread guerrilla warfare campaign, and the unemployed were given jobs building a network of bunkers and tunnels across the country.

Castro recognised the need for reform if Cuban socialism was to survive in a world now dominated by capitalist free markets. In October 1991, the Fourth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party was held in Santiago, at which a number of important changes to the government were announced. Castro would step down as head of government, to be replaced by the much younger Carlos Lage, although Castro would remain the head of the Communist Party and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. Many older members of government were to be retired and replaced by their younger counterparts. A number of economic changes were proposed, and subsequently put to a national referendum. Free farmers' markets and small-scale private enterprises would be legalised in an attempt to stimulate economic growth, while U.S. dollars were also made legal tender. Certain restrictions on emigration were eased, allowing more discontented Cuban citizens to move to the United States. Further democratisation was to be brought in by having the National Assembly’s members elected directly by the people, rather than through municipal and provincial assemblies. Castro welcomed debate between proponents and opponents of the reforms, although over time he began to increasingly sympathise with the opponent’s positions, arguing that such reforms must be delayed.

Castro’s government decided to diversify its economy into biotechnology and tourism, the latter outstripping Cuba's sugar industry as its primary source of revenue in 1995. The arrival of thousands of Mexican and Spanish tourists led to increasing numbers of Cubans turning to prostitution; officially illegal, Castro refrained from cracking down on prostitution, fearing a political backlash. Economic hardship led many Cubans to turn towards religion, both in the forms of Roman Catholicism and the syncretic faith of Santeria. Although he had long considered religious belief to be backward, Castro softened his approach to the Church and religious institutions He recognised the psychological comfort it could bring, and religious people were permitted for the first time to join the Communist Party. Although he viewed the Roman Catholic Church as a reactionary, pro-capitalist institution, Castro decided to organise a visit to Cuba by Pope John Paul II, which took place in January 1998; ultimately, it strengthened the position of both the Church in Cuba, and Castro’s government.

In the early 1990s, Castro embraced environmentalism, campaigning against the waste of natural resources and global warming and accused the U.S. of being the world’s primary polluter. His government’s environmentalist policies would prove highly effective; by 2006, Cuba was the only nation in the world which met the WWF's definition of sustainable development, with an ecological footprint of less than 1.8 hectares per capita and a Human Development Index of over 0.8 for 2007. Similarly, Castro also became a proponent of the anti-globalisation movement. He criticized U.S. global hegemony and the control exerted by multinationals. Castro also maintained his devout anti-apatheid beliefs, and at the July 26 celebrations in 1991, Castro was joined onstage by the South African political activist Nelson Mandela, recently released from prison. Mandela would praise Cuba’s involvement in battling South Africa in Angola and thanked Castro personally. He would later attend Mandela’s inauguration as President of South Africa in 1994. In 2001 he attended the Conference Against Racism in South Africa at which he lectured on the global spread of racial stereotypes through U.S. film.

The Pink Tide: 2000–2006

"As I have said before, the ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry but they cannot kill ignorance, illnesses, poverty or hunger."

— Fidel Castro’s speech at the International Conference on Financing for Development, 2002

Castro meeting with center-left Brazilian President Lula da Silva, a significant "Pink Tide" leader.

Mired in economic problems, Cuba would be aided by the election of democratic socialist and anti-imperialist Hugo Chávez to the Venezuelan Presidency in 1999. In 2000, Castro and Chávez signed an agreement through which Cuba would send 20,000 medics to Venezuela, in return receiving 53,000 barrels of oil per day at preferential rates; in 2004, this trade was stepped up, with Cuba sending 40,000 medics and Venezuela providing 90,000 barrels a day. That same year, Castro initiated Mision Milagro, a joint medical project which aimed to provide free eye operations on 300,000 individuals from each nation. The alliance boosted the Cuban economy, and in May 2005 Castro doubled the minimum wage for 1.6 million workers, raised pensions, and delivered new kitchen appliances to Cuba's poorest residents. Some economic problems remained; in 2004, Castro shut down 118 factories, including steel plants, sugar mills and paper processors to compensate for the crisis of fuel shortages.

Evo Morales of Bolivia has described him as "the grandfather of all Latin American revolutionaries". In contrast to the improved relations between Cuba and a number of leftist Latin American states, in 2004 it broke off diplomatic ties with Panama after centrist President Mireya Moscoso pardoned four Cuban exiles accused of attempting to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro in 2000. Diplomatic ties were reinstalled in 2005 following the election of leftist President Martín Torrijos.

Castrp's improving relations across Latin America were accompanied by continuing animosity towards the U.S. However, after massive damage caused by Hurricane Michelle in 2001, Castro successfully proposed a one-time cash purchase of food from the U.S. while declining its government's offer of humanitarian aid. Castro expressed solidarity with the U.S. following the 2001 September 11 attacks, condemning Al Qaeda and offering Cuban airports for the emergency diversion of any U.S. planes. He recognized that the attacks would make U.S. foreign policy more aggressive, which he believed was counter-productive.

Castro amid cheering crowds supporting his presidency in 2005.

At a summit meeting of sixteen Caribbean countries in 1998, Castro called for regional unity, saying that only strengthened cooperation between Caribbean countries would prevent their domination by rich nations in a global economy. Caribbean nations have embraced Cuba’s Fidel Castro while accusing the US of breaking trade promises. Castro, until recently a regional outcast, has been increasing grants and scholarships to the Caribbean countries, while US aid to those has dropped 25% over the past five years. Cuba has opened four additional embassies in the Caribbean Community including: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Suriname, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. This development makes Cuba the only country to have embassies in all independent countries of the Caribbean Community.

Castro was known to be a friend of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and was an honorary pall bearer at Trudeau’s funeral in October 2000. They had continued their friendship after Trudeau left office until his death. Canada became one of the first American allies openly to trade with Cuba. Cuba still has a good relationship with Canada. In 1998, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien arrived in Cuba to meet President Castro and highlight their close ties. He is the first Canadian government leader to visit the island since Pierre Trudeau was in Havana in 1976.

Stepping down: 2006–2008

See also: 2006 Cuban transfer of presidential duties

Poster advertising a Mass to pray for Castro’s health that was posted on a wall in Bogotá, Colombia, in 2007.

On July 31, 2006, Castro delegated all his duties to his brother Raúl; the transfer was described as a temporary measure while Fidel recovered from surgery for an "acute intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding". In February 2007, Raúl announced that Fidel’s health was improving and that he was taking part in important issues of government. Later that month, Fidel called into Hugo Chávez’s radio show Aló Presidente, and in April, Chávez told press that Castro was "almost totally recovered". On April 21, Castro met Wu Guanzheng of the Chinese Communist Party's Politburo, with Chávez visiting in August, and Morales in September. As a comment on Castro’s recovery, U.S. President George W. Bush said: "One day the good Lord will take Fidel Castro away". Hearing about this, the atheist Castro ironically replied: "Now I understand why I survived Bush’s plans and the plans of other presidents who ordered my assassination: the good Lord protected me." The quote would subsequently be picked up on by the world’s media.

In a letter dated February 18, 2008, Castro announced that he would not accept the positions of President of the Council of State and Commander in Chief at the February 24 National Assembly meetings, stating that his health was a primary reason for his decision, remarking that "It would betray my conscience to take up a responsibility that requires mobility and total devotion, that I am not in a physical condition to offer". On February 24, 2008, the National Assembly of People’s Power unanimously voted Raúl as president. Describing his brother as "not substitutable", Raúl proposed that Fidel continue to be consulted on matters of great importance, a motion unanimously approved by the 597 National Assembly members.