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Longtime Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has died. He was 90 years old.
Castro’s brother, Raul Castro, who began assuming power in 2006 and formally in 2008 after his brother stepped down to his deteriorating health, made the announcement last night (Nov. 25).
Reports the New York Times:
His death was announced by Cuban state television.
In declining health for several years, Mr. Castro had orchestrated what he hoped would be the continuation of his Communist revolution, stepping aside in 2006 when he was felled by a serious illness. He provisionally ceded much of his power to his younger brother Raúl, now 85, and two years later formally resigned as president. Raúl Castro, who had fought alongside Fidel Castro from the earliest days of the insurrection and remained minister of defense and his brother’s closest confidant, has ruled Cuba since then, although he has told the Cuban people he intends to resign in 2018.
Fidel Castro had held on to power longer than any other living national leader except Queen Elizabeth II. He became a towering international figure whose importance in the 20th century far exceeded what might have been expected from the head of state of a Caribbean island nation of 11 million people.
To say Castro was a polarizing political figure would be an understatement.
Reportedly, people took to the streets of Miami’s Little Havana to celebrate his death.
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