Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary who overthrew the U.S. backed Batista dictatorship in 1959 and spent the next five decades defying American imperial power from 90 miles off its shore. He nationalized foreign-owned industries, returning Cuba's resources to its people, and built free universal healthcare and education systems that became models for the developing world, all while surviving a U.S. embargo, a CIA-sponsored invasion, and countless assassination attempts. To much of the Global South, he was proof that a small nation could stand sovereign and unbowed against the worlds most powerful superpower.