Castro planned to campaign for a parliamentary seat in the election of 1952, but General Fulgencio Batista overthrew the government of then-President Carlos Prio Socarras in a coup d’etat, and cancelled the election. When Castro protested that Batista had violated the constitution, the court rejected his claim. Castro launched an attack against the military at Moncada Barracks, Santiago de Cuba, on July 26, 1953, but was arrested and imprisoned until 1955. After his release from prison, he traveled to Mexico, where he organized the 26th of July revolutionary movement. On December 2, 1956 he invaded the north coast of Oriente province, and with his brother Raúl, the revolutionary Che Guevara and nine other rebels, Castro hid out in the Sierra Maestra Mountains and 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 established a totalitarian socialist state for Cuba, with 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 hardship for the middle and upper classes, many of whom fled to the United States. In 1960 Castro confiscated oil refineries, sugar mills, and electric utilities that had belonged to the United States. The U.S. government retaliated 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.

U.S./Cuban relations continued deteriorating when in 1962, the U.S. government discovered that the Soviet Union was setting up long-range ballistic missiles on Cuban soil with Castro’s permission. President John F. Kennedy instituted a naval blockade of Cuba that lasted until Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles. Castro has supported revolutionary movements in various Latin American countries and in Africa and has become a symbol of revolution. Under a new constitution in 1976, he became president of Cuba. The end of the Cold War as well as Cuba’s increased economic difficulties and the country’s ongoing international isolation have diminished Castro’s stature as an effective leader.