Castro is dead. His critics note that like Stalin and Hitler, Fidel Castro was a brutal dictator. In terms of population percentage, the number of political prisoners under Castro was proportionally three times greater than that of Stalin or Hitler.
Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976 and then as President from 1976 to 2008. He promised to make the lives of Cuban citizens better, but assigned Cuba to endless poverty with centralized control of the economy and one-party Communist rule.
The dates of 14 to 28 October 1962 marked what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, 13-days of nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over the placement of Soviet nuclear missiles on the island.
Castro was born on 13 August 1926 into the family of a wealthy Cuban rancher. The Cuban government broke the news of Castro's death saying that he had died quietly at 10:29 p.m. local time on Friday, 25 November 2016. Cuban state media announced that his cremation was scheduled for early Saturday and the government set the date for an official funeral on 4 December.
One very obvious difference was the message from outgoing American president Barrack Obama, versus president-elect Donald Trump. The Obama announcement was conciliatory to the Castro family and failed to mention Castro's reign of terror and death. The Trump announcement said, "Fidel Castro's legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights."
