Fidel Castro Ruz, Cuba's enduring "maximum leader," has held power since 1959.Castro was born on Aug. 13,1926. On a farm in Mayari municipality in the province of Oriente. He attended good Catholic schools in Santiago de Cuba and Havana, where he took to the spartan regime at a Jesuit boarding school, Colegio de Belen. In 1945 he enrolled at the University of Havana, graduating in 1950 with a law degree. He married Mirta Diaz-Balart in 1948, but they were divorced in 1954. He was a member of the social-democratic Orthodox party in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Castro was an early and vocal opponent of dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. On July 26,1953, Castro led an attack on the Moncada army barracks that failed but brought him national prominence. Then on January 1, 1959 Batista fled because the United States supported Castro. This helped pave the way for Castro rise to power.Then over time he became the leader. Castro remained the unchallenged leader, and masses ---whose living he improved---rallied behind him. Promises of elections were unfulfilled, foreign-owed properties confiscated, and opponents of the regime killed or driven into exile. Thousands of middle-class and professional Cubans left the island once it became clear that a Communist revolution was under the way. The U.S. then supported the Bay of Pigs invasion but it failed in 1961. In December 1961 he publicly declared that "I have been a Marxist-Leninist all along, and will remain one until I die". Cuba then allied with the Soviet Union, which gave Cuba massive economics, technical, and military assistance.
All info came from Grolier,1993