DeWald
Brandon Dewald
December , 2004
Professor ____________
Business ____________
Leadership Qualities: Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro was born on August 13, 1926. As a child, he lived on a farm in the town of Mayari in the province of Oriente. His father was the owner of a 23,000-acre plantation. While he was young, Castro worked in his family’s sugar cane fields. He was raised a Catholic, and attended Catholic schools throughout his childhood. In 1945 he enrolled at the University of Havana. During his schooling, Castro expressed his academic interests in politics, sociology, history, and agriculture. Fidel Castro excelled in many areas of academics. However, Fidel graduated in 1950 with a law degree. While in college, he married Mirta Diaz-Balart in 1948, but they soon divorced after a short lived marriage six years later in 1954. A year after they were married, they had a son, Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, born in 1949. After a callous end to the marriage that resulted in divorce, Fidel had his son kidnapped and taken to Mexico.
During the 1940's Fidel Castro became exceptionally knowledgeable of Cuban politics. In 1951 he was a leader in the growing populist political movement led by the Partido del Pueblo Cubano, an anti-Communist nationalist group. At this time, Fidel was expecting to gain the presidency through an election, and planned to run for Congress. Unfortunately, on March 10, 1952, the constitutional government was overthrown by Fulgencio Batista, a strong military influence in Cuba since 1933. Because of this, Fidel Castro, and a group of followers organized a rebellion. He led a civilian armed attack against the Moncada military barracks on July 26, 1953. The attack failed and Castro was sentenced to prison. He was imprisoned from 1953 to 1955. In May 1955, he was pardoned and Castro went into exile in Mexico. He “began to train an expeditionary force. In late 1956 he landed with 82 in southern Oriente to initiate guerrilla war. The movement grew, and from the Sierra Maestra Mountains Fidel organized a parallel government, carried out a mini-agrarian reform, established controlled territories with agricultural and manufacturing production, set up a radio station, and even created a small air force” (unm.edu) It was this guerrilla movement in Latin America that was the first to defeat the military. “On January 1, 1959, the Cuban revolution began under his leadership with the largest popular support of any political movement in the history of the country” (unm.edu) On that day, Fidel Castro over threw the Batista regime. “Widely hailed as a liberator, Castro proved to be a charismatic, though sometimes ruthless, leader.” (encyclopedia.com) While Castro was in power, he gained much of the support of the population. Many of his followers have expressed great admiration for the leader of the revolution, and he remains the center of politics and the economy of Cuba and its people. On the other hand, once the new Cuba was established, the working class was the main beneficiary. This created a hardship for the middle and upper classes, many of whom fled to the United States.
