AllMovie

Part of the Biography television series from A&E, this documentary reviews the career and personal life of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. As a youth, Castro worked in the family's sugar cane fields. He got an education culminating in a doctorate in law from the University of Havana, 1950. Castro planned to campaign for a parliamentary seat in the election of 1952, but General Fulgencio Batista overthrew the government and canceled the election. Castro then gathered support for a guerrilla campaign that would ultimately topple Batista in 1959. After Batista fled the country, Castro assumed power and established a Communist dictatorship with close ties to the Soviet Union. Castro nationalized industry and collectivized agriculture. He executed and imprisoned thousands of political opponents after he assumed power. The new Cuba benefited the working class, but was a hard on the middle and upper classes, many of whom fled to the United States. The U.S. government retaliated to confiscations of U.S. property by imposing an economic embargo on Cuba and helped in 1961 to engineer an unsuccessful attempt to destabilize the Cuban government and overthrow Castro in what became known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Castro has supported revolutionary movements in various Latin American countries and in Africa and has become a symbol of revolution.