Fidel Castro was born August 13, 1926 at Birán in the province of Holguín, is a masterpiece of Cuban State, former president of Cuba. It was one of the main leaders of the Cuban revolution (which overthrew the dictatorial regime of General Fulgencio Batista), and has successively been Prime Minister of the island from February 1959 to December 1976, then President of the State Council of Cuba - or head of state - since the creation of this function and also chairman of the Council of Ministers (head of government), until his resignation for health reasons in February 2008 On 24 February 2008, the National Assembly elected his brother Raúl Castro to succeed him as head of state. The latter assumed interim power since 31 July 2006. Fidel Castro has held the position of First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, creating it in 1965 until 19 April 2011, when Raúl Castro also succeeded him in that position critics and organizations defending human rights denounce his government as a dictatorship many observers including Amnesty International have criticized the authoritarian excesses academic and writer Jacobo Machover even speaks of "absolute power "This view is contested by his supporters: Castro enjoys a certain popularity among politicians from left (Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales) and intellectuals (Eduardo Galeano, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel) in Latin America, Africa (Nelson Mandela) in Europe (Danielle Mitterrand, Jack Lang, Jean-Luc Mélenchon) and even the US, where the Rev. Jesse Jackson, former candidate for the Democratic nomination for the US presidential election, declared in 1984 that Fidel Castro was "the most honest politician and bravest that [he has] ever met" Fidel Castro, his brother, Lieutenant Raul Castro and Dr. Ernesto Guevara (the "Che") gave the revolution officially nationalist from a "Marxist-Leninist" orientation in the early 1960s, when his confrontation with US authorities at the time. The country then approached the Soviet Union (USSR). Following the revolution, the Cuban government, under the leadership of Castro, his brother and Che Guevara, gradually instituted a one-party socialist republic. The Cuban constitution guarantees that the party takes no position on the elections and that he does not designate candidates, these are proposed by citizens at meetings of workers and neighborhoods. He is also member of Santiago since 1976, and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba since its refounding in 1965. Re-elected unopposed every five years Fidel Castro has been in power face ten US presidents: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson , Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George HW Bush, Clinton and GW Bush.
