Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (born August 13, 1926) has been the head of state of Cuba since 1959, when he commanded the attack that overthrew Fulgencio Batista. He mandated the transformation of Cuba into a socialist republic.
Castro, in his long tenure as leader of Cuba has been variously described as a totalitarian despot and a charismatic liberator, both widely hated and widely popular, courageous and cowardly, a benevolent dictator, an astute politician and an autocratic totalitarian murderer, a dedicated socialist ideologue and a pragmatic nationalistic power monger. Few leaders in history have received such a wide range of praise and criticism.
Castro then got attention in Cuban political life through his fervent nationalism and his critiques of Batista and US corporate and political influence in Cuba. He gained an ardent, but limited, following and also drew the attention of the authorities. His leadership of the 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks, his subsequent trial, incarceration and exile to Mexico led to the guerrilla invasion of Cuba in December 1956. Since his accession to power in 1959 he has invoked both praise and condemnation (at home and internationally).
Outside of Cuba, Castro has been defined by his relationship with both the United States and with the former Soviet Union. Ever since the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 by the United States, his government has had an openly antagonistic relationship with the US, and a simultaneous closeness with the Soviet bloc. This was true until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, after which his priorities shifted from supporting foreign intervention to partnerships with regional socialist movements such as that of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
Domestically, though the economy has been generally weak, Fidel Castro has overseen the implementation of various policies which saw the rapid centralization of Cuba's economy - land reform, collectivization of agriculture, nationalization of leading Cuban industries, and the expansion of publicly funded health care and education. Many accredit these moves with bettering the lot of Cuban citizens, while others dispute the results and point not only to general economic depredation that exists in Cuba today, but the criminalization of political dissent that has come along with it.