HAVANA: Fidel Castro, who temporarily handed power to his brother Raul on Monday, has for four decades defied US attempts to oust him and has clung on as the last Communist leader in Latin America.

Castro has outlasted a tough US economic embargo, a US-abetted invasion attempt and 10 US presidents since his 1959 revolution, which ended decades of US dominance that followed the United States’ 1898 victory in the Spanish-American war.

But an intestinal ailment forced him to undergo surgery and cede power to his brother Raul, the defence chief, for the first time in his 47-year rule.

After seizing power, Castro became an icon of international socialism, sending as many as 15,000 soldiers to help Soviet-backed troops in Angola in 1975, and dispatching forces to Ethiopia in 1977.

A driving force behind the Non-Aligned Movement, Castro has been an energetic symbol to developing countries that a sovereign nation, however small, could thumb its nose at US policy and appear to get away with it.

The Jesuit-educated lawyer, who came to power at age 32, was the perpetual thorn in the paw of the United States, which was alarmed and embarrassed by Castro’s establishment of a Cold War Communist-bloc nation in the Americas, just 144 kilometres off its southeast flank.

Known here for his fiery, long-winded oratory, the tempestuous Cuban president drove his economic policy forward, fixing the blame for hardship on the US economic embargo Washington hoped would foment rebellion against him. The United States had invaded before, Castro reminded Cubans constantly, and could do so again at any time.

Castro’s July 26 revolutionary movement was named for his failed 1953 raid on the Moncada barracks in the city of Santiago, in which most of his 160 followers at the time were killed and Castro was taken prisoner. He later fled to Mexico and returned on the ship “Granma” for another ill-fated attack in December 1956, some two years before finally driving pro-American dictator Fulgencio Batista into exile.

Born on August 13, 1926, to a prosperous Galician immigrant landowner and a Cuban mother of humble background, Castro was a quick study and a promising baseball player who as a youth dreamed of playing in the US big leagues.

Known here widely as “Fidel,” or “The Commander,” Castro broke off diplomatic ties with Cuba’s giant neighbour to the north in January 1961 and expropriated US companies’ assets totalling more than one billion dollars.

In April 1961, he weathered an invasion effort by some 1,300 CIA-trained Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs.

Only sketchy details are known about Castro’s private life. In 1948 he married Mirta Diaz-Balart, of a wealthy and influential family. They divorced two years later after having a son, “Fidelito.”

Castro in 1952 met Naty Revuelta and had daughter, Alina, in 1956.

Since the 1980s, he has been reportedly married to Dalia Soto del Valle, with whom he has had five children: Angel, Antonio, Alejandro, Alexis and Alex.

—AFP