Raúl Castro
Raúl Castro was president of Cuba from 2008 to 2018 and first secretary of the Communist Party from 2011 to 2021, Fidel's younger brother by five years and his shadow for half a century, the defence minister for forty-nine years, from 1959 to 2008, the longest of any in the world, who built the armed forces that fought in Angola and Ethiopia and the military conglomerate that runs the hotels. When Fidel fell ill in July 2006 and handed him the government provisionally and then in February 2008 for good, he made the reforms Fidel would not. The farmers were given idle state land, the half-million self-employed licensed to run restaurants and taxis and guest-houses, the exit permits abolished in 2013, the sale of houses and cars allowed, the mobile phones and the internet. There was the restoration of relations with the United States negotiated in secret through the Vatican and announced with Obama on 17 December 2014, which brought Obama to Havana in March 2016 and which Trump reversed. He was also the man who had the dissidents harassed rather than jailed and who kept the party's monopoly intact. He was born in Birán in 1931, the third son of the Galician planter, and was a Communist before Fidel was. He went with him to the Moncada barracks in 1953 and to prison, to Mexico, where he introduced Fidel to Che Guevara, and on the Granma in 1956. He commanded the second front in the Sierra Cristal in 1958, where he kidnapped American servicemen to stop the bombing. After the victory he ran the executions at Santiago and the army. He was Fidel's designated successor from 1959 and his first vice-president from 1976. He was the one who told the Soviets in 1962 that Cuba would take the missiles. The two terms he had set himself as a limit ended in April 2018 when he handed the presidency to Díaz-Canel and in April 2021 when he handed him the party. It was the first time since 1959 that no Castro held either. He has lived since in Santiago, near the rock in which Fidel's ashes are set, and is at ninety-five the last of the Sierra.
- Lived: 1931 CE – ?
- Nationality: Cuban
- Roles: head of state, revolutionary, politician
