Fidel Castro: A life in pictures YOUR PICTURE GALLERY IS NOW LOADING... [image: Castro as a schoolboy] Fidel Castro was born in 1926 to a wealthy sugar planter. He turned to revolutionary politics as a young man.
[image: Fidel Castro among 22 Cuban exiles arrested for plotting the assassination of President Fulgencio Batista, picture taken Mexico City. Che Guevara sits second from left.] After two years in jail for mounting a failed coup, he went into exile in Mexico. (Castro is standing on right of woman in white.) [image: Castro in the Sierra Maestra Mountains] In 1956, Castro and about 80 guerrillas sailed from Mexico to Cuba, where they staged attacks on the government and built up support from their camp in the Sierra Maestra mountains. [image: Castro victorious after the Cuban revolution] Castro finally assumed power in Cuba on New Year's Day, 1959, after ousting Fulgencio Batista. Fulgencio Batista *(1901-1973)* [image: The image "http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/batista/batista3.gif"; cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.] [image: Cuban leader Fidel Castro, lower right, sits inside a tank near Playa Giron, Cuba, during the Bay of Pigs invasion] In 1961, Castro led his troops against 1,500 Cuban exiles. The exiles were supported by the CIA, who landed in the Bay of Pigs with the purpose of ousting his government. [image: US President John F Kennedy] Perhaps Castro's biggest test came in 1962, when US President Kennedy warned him to remove Soviet missiles from Cuba. [image: Castro with Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev] In the end, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and Castro removed the missiles, and the threat of nuclear war was averted. [image: Playing baseball] He enjoyed sports, even the US game of baseball, playing here at a teachers' college in the Sierra Maestra in 1962. [image: Castro making an impassioned speech] Many liberal Cubans considered him an oppressive dictator. [image: Cubans on a homemade raft] Thousands fled their homeland for the US, often on dangerous makeshift rafts. [image: Castro in his office, 2001] But Fidel Castro retained enough public support to become one of the world's longest-serving leaders. [image: Fidel Castro is shown on television, talking on the telephone] After intestinal surgery in 2006, he handed day-to-day power to his brother Raul. Then he made only rare recorded appearances, before stepping down in February 2008.(BBC)
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