Fidel Castro

Few leaders split opinion by geography so sharply. In much of Latin America and Africa, Castro is remembered for defying the United States, for Cuban doctors sent abroad and for troops that fought South Africa in Angola, which Nelson Mandela publicly thanked him for. Among Cuban exiles in Miami, his death in 2016 was celebrated in the streets. Inside Cuba the official reverence sits beside political prisoners, a single legal party and an economic crisis that drove record emigration in the 2020s.