In July 1953, Castro led about 120 men in an attack on the Moncada army barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The assault failed, Castro was captured and sentenced to 15 years in prison, and many of his men were killed. The U.S.-backed Batista, looking to improve his authoritarian image, subsequently released Castro in 1955 as part of a general amnesty. Castro ended up in Mexico, where he met fellow revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara and plotted his return.
The following year, Castro and 81 other men sailed on the yacht “Granma” to the eastern coast of Cuba, where government forces immediately ambushed them. The estimated 18 survivors, including Castro, his brother Raúl and Guevara, fled deep into the Sierra Maestra Mountains in southeastern Cuba with virtually no weapons or supplies.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro (1926-) established the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere after leading an overthrow of the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. He ruled over Cuba for nearly five decades, until handing off power to his younger brother Raúl in 2008. During that time, Castro’s regime was successful in reducing illiteracy, stamping out racism and improving public health care, but was widely criticized for stifling economic and political freedoms. Castro’s Cuba also had a highly antagonistic relationship with the United States--most notably resulting in the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The two nations have no formal diplomatic relations, and the United States has enforced a trade embargo with Cuba since 1960, when U.S.-owned businesses in Cuba were nationalized without compensation.
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