Fidel Castro was the leader of the Cuban Revolution and one of the towering revolutionary figures of the twentieth century. For half a century he led a small island nation in defiance of the most powerful empire on earth, ninety miles from its shores. Born in eastern Cuba in 1926, the son of a landowner, he studied law at the University of Havana and joined the struggle against the corrupt politics of a country dominated by US capital. When Fulgencio Batista seized power in a coup in 1952, Castro led the armed assault on the Moncada barracks on July 26, 1953. At his trial he delivered the defense later published as "History Will Absolve Me."

After prison and exile in Mexico, Castro returned to Cuba aboard the Granma in 1956 with Che Guevara, Raúl Castro, and a small band of fighters. From the Sierra Maestra, with the support of the peasantry and urban organizers, the Rebel Army brought down the dictatorship on January 1, 1959. The revolution carried out agrarian reform, nationalized foreign-owned industries, taught the entire country to read in 1961, and built free, universal health care and education. The United States answered with invasion, sabotage, and blockade. Cuban intelligence counted 638 plots and attempts on Castro's life, many tied to the CIA, and Castro declared the revolution socialist and led the Cuban people in its defense.

Under Castro, Cuba became a beacon of internationalism. It hosted the Tricontinental Conference of 1966, and its doctors and teachers served across the Global South. It sent troops to Angola, where they helped defeat the armies of apartheid South Africa, a victory Nelson Mandela credited with hastening the end of apartheid. Castro led the Non-Aligned Movement and guided Cuba through the hardship that followed the fall of the Soviet Union without abandoning socialism. He died in 2016. His legacy endures in the dignity of a people who refused to surrender their sovereignty, and in the example of a revolution that showed the world another path was possible.