Fidel Castro remained at the helm of the Cuban government from the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 until he retired due to illness in 2006.
Fidel Castro held the reins of the Cuban government for just over 47 years.
Almost five decades in which the world registered great events that shaped the contemporary world.
From the rise and fall of world leaders, nations, and groundbreaking inventions, these were some of the revolutionary events that occurred around the world as Castro built his own revolution on the island.
1. The Assassination of a US President (1963)
During his tenure, Fidel Castro saw 12 leaders pass through the United States government, one of whom was assassinated.
John F. Kennedy was shot dead while taking a drive in an open-top car in Dallas, Texas.
This president’s administration had secretly participated in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion led by Cuban exiles with the intention of overthrowing Castro.
In addition to Kennedy, the Cuban leader saw Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George WH Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama pass through the White House and the election of Donald Trump.
2. Farewell to “Che” Guevara (1967)
Ernesto “Che” Guevara left Cuba to promote revolutions in other countries until he died in Bolivia in 1967.
Ernesto Guevara, known as “Che” because of his Argentine origin, was one of the most charismatic leaders of the Cuban Revolution and one of the most restless.
After the triumph in Cuba, he participated in the Castro government for a while, but he had the ideal of promoting revolutionary movements in other parts of the world.
Bolivia, under the military regime of Rene Barrientos, was one of the objectives of “Che” Guevara and the country he secretly entered in 1966 with the intent of establishing a revolutionary movement.
However, after several battles, Guevara was captured as a prisoner and executed in 1967.
3. Landing on the Moon (1969)
The Cuban Revolution had barely been in power for 10 years when the United States Space Agency, through the Apollo 11 mission, achieved the arrival of humans on the Moon.
Astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., and Michael Collins became the first humans to set foot on Earth’s satellite in 1969.
“One small step for one man, one giant leap for humanity,” Commander Armstrong said in a radio broadcast from the Moon on July 21 of that year.
The arrival of man on the Moon occurred in 1969 and in the midst of the Cold War in which Cuba played a role on the side of the Soviet Union.
4. Mao Zedong dies (1976)
The leader of the communist movement that came to power in China in 1949 died when Cuba had a few years of having formed its Communist Party, which remains in government to this day.
Mao Zedong founded the People’s Republic of China, which stipulates that the communist system based on Marxism-Leninism governs, as well as the Cultural Revolution movement.
He led the country until his death at the age of 82, in September 1976.
5. Life in vitro (1978)
Louise Brown is her name, and her birth in 1978 was one of the most important moments in science of the 20th century.
She was the first baby to be born thanks to the in vitro fertilization technique after her parents had been trying to conceive a child for nine years.
More than 5 million people around the world were able to be born thanks to this technique that revolutionized infertility treatments.
6. HIV Identification (1983)
The HIV virus was isolated and identified in 1983, but years before there had been cases of people who developed the syndrome.
While in Cuba the Castro government was trying to consolidate its system of government, relevant advances and medical discoveries were being made in the world.
One of them was the identification of one of the epidemics that have covered the world since the 1980s: the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
Although there were previous investigations, it was not until 1983 when the scientists led by the French Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi isolated and identified the HIV virus.
7. Tiananmen Massacre (1989)
A massive demonstration in Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, the capital of China, in favor of democracy and against corruption and the Chinese Communist Party led to a repression.
On June 4, under the orders of Deng Xiaoping and other Party veterans, troops and tanks from the People’s Liberation Army and the Police cleared Tiananmen Square.
Despite the government’s claim that no one was killed in the square itself, hundreds of people lost their lives (versions vary between 400 and 800) when police and army officers fired on unarmed protesters.
8. Fall of the Berlin Wall (1989)
The fall of the Berlin Wall was also a symbolic moment of the end of socialism in the German Democratic Republic.
One of the best-known physical divisions of a people in recent history is the Berlin Wall, which was torn down when Fidel Castro had been in power for 30 years.
On the night of Thursday, November 9, the announcement was made in the German Democratic Republic, with a socialist government, that the restrictions on leaving the territory had been lifted.
That brought thousands of people to the wall, which was built 28 years ago, who, in addition to crossing it freely for the first time, began its demolition.
As one of the events that marked the 20th century, the fall of the Berlin Wall not only marked the beginning of the end for the socialist government in Germany, but also the prelude to the fall of the Soviet Union.
9. The end of Augusto Pinochet (1990)
On September 11, 1973, Chilean Army General Augusto Pinochet led the coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende, a leader who built bridges with Cuba.
Pinochet has since led one of the longest military governments in Latin American history, from 1973 to 1990.
A 1988 plebiscite gave Chileans the opportunity to choose whether to ratify Pinochet in government, but the majority voted No.
After the 1989 presidential elections, Patricio Aylwin took office, bringing Chile back to democracy.
The moments that marked the 49 years in power of Fidel Castro
10. World Wide Web (1990)
In 2016, less than 5% of the Cuban population was connected to the Internet, one of the most revolutionary communications inventions in history.
The interconnection of computers had been going on since the 1970s, but it was not until the Englishman Tim Barners-Lee designed a common language that the foundations of the Internet that the world uses today were given.
World Wide Web (global network) is its name, hence the prefix for billions of pages in the world is www.
Many of those considered “internet users” actually only used the intranet provided by the Cuban State in computer clubs.
11. Dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991)
One of Cuba’s economic support feet, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), began its disintegration in the early 1990s.
The Treaty of Belavezha put an end to the agreement by which the USSR had been formed since 1922 and also meant the disintegration of the centralist government structure of Moscow.
With the end of the Soviet era, a political and economic counterweight to the United States in which Cuba had support, the Castro government began one of the toughest processes for the economy of his country called the Special Period.
12. Nelson Mandela president (1994)
Nelson Mandela led another of the most renowned revolutionary movements of the 20th century in South Africa.
This activist was imprisoned for 27 years after being accused of treason for his movement against black and white segregation, known as apartheid.
Far from being discouraged by his stay of almost three decades in jail, Mandela regained his freedom and continued his movement until the legal apparatus that supported apartheid was abolished.
In 1994 he became the first black president of South Africa in the first open elections, for which Mandela is known as the father of the nation.
Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela embraced warmly in 1998 at a meeting of the League of Non-Aligned Countries.
13. Supreme Leader of North Korea dies (1994)
Very few heads of state have held power for as long as Fidel Castro, and one of them is Kin Il-sung.
The founder of the People’s Republic of Korea, known as North Korea, seized power and established the communist government in his country since 1948.
He remained at the head of the government, as prime minister and president, until 1994 when he died.
14. Born in Dolly (1996)
Fidel Castro was close to turning 40 years in power when scientists achieved the first cloning of a mammal.
Dolly the sheep was born in July 1996 but the world only knew of her existence in February 1997, when the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland made the announcement.
15. September 11 attacks (2001)
On September 11, the United States experienced the worst terrorist attack in its history that caused the death of almost 3,000 people.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, the government and the people of the United States witnessed the largest extremist attack directed against their country.
Four planes were hijacked at different airports in the eastern US, two of which crashed into the World Trade Center towers, causing the highest number of deaths of the nearly 3,000 recorded that day.
Members of the extremist group Al Qaeda carried out the operation, but 15 years after the attacks, some of the detainees have still not been tried.
“The international fight against terrorism is not resolved by eliminating a terrorist here and another there, killing here and there, using similar methods and sacrificing innocent lives. It is resolved by ending, among other things, State terrorism and other forms repulsive to kill,” Castro said after the attacks.
