Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro led the guerrilla movement that overthrew Cuba's Batista government, entering Havana on 8 January 1959, and he governed Cuba first as prime minister and then president until illness forced him to hand power to his brother Raul in 2006; he died on 25 November 2016. His government's literacy campaign brought Cuba's literacy rate above ninety five percent within a few years, and its public health system achieved one of Latin America's highest doctor to patient ratios and a sharply reduced infant mortality rate, with Cuban doctors later sent abroad on medical missions. The same government suppressed independent press and organized political dissent, jailed opponents and censored artistic expression, and economic hardship together with that repression drove sustained emigration, including the 1980 Mariel boatlift and later waves of Cubans leaving for Florida as refugees.