Fidel Castro, the fiery apostle of revolution who brought the
Cold War to the Western Hemisphere in 1959 and then defied the United States
for nearly half a century as Cuba’s maximum leader, bedeviling 11 American
presidents and briefly pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war, died
Friday. He was 90.
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 that the Cuban
people he intends to resign in 2018.
