Born August 13, 1926
Mayarí, Cuba

Cuban president

Cuba's proximity to the United States, only 90 miles (145 kilometers) from the Florida Keys, and its hard-line pro–Soviet Union communist government led successive U.S. presidential administrations to fear the island, both as a base for subversive activities throughout the Western Hemisphere and as a platform for a Soviet attack on the United States. These fears led to the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and American efforts to isolate the Cuban government and assassinate its leader, Fidel Castro. In the early twenty-first century, Cuba still operated under communism, a governmental system in which a single political party, the Communist Party, controls nearly all aspects of society. In a communist economy, private ownership of property and businesses is banned so that goods produced and wealth accumulated...