Early life of Fidel Castro

The early life of Cuban revolutionary and politician Fidel Castro, born Lina Castro, spans the firstyears of his life, from 1926 to 1952. Born in Birn, Oriente Province, Castro was the illegitimate son of ngel Castro y Argiz, a wealthy farmer and landowner, and his mistress Lina Ruz Gonzlez. First educated by a tutor in Santiago de Cuba, Fidel Castro then attended two boarding schools before being sent to El Colegio de Beln, a school run by Jesuits in Havana. In 1945 he began studying law at the University of Havana, where he first became politically conscious, becoming a staunch antiimperialist and critic of United States involvement in the Caribbean. Involved in student politics, he was affiliated to Eduardo Chibs and his Partido Ortodoxo, achieving publicity as a vocal critic of the proU.S. administration of President Ramn Grau and his Partido Autntico.

Castros father, ngel Castro y Argiz , was born to a poor peasant family in Galicia, a province in northwest Spain. A farm laborer, in 1895 he was conscripted into the Spanish Army to fight in the Cuban War of Independence and the ensuing SpanishAmerican War of 1898, in which the U.S. seized control of Cuba. In 1902, the Republic of Cuba was proclaimed however it remained economically and politically dominated by the U.S. For a time, Cuba enjoyed economic growth, and ngel migrated there in search of employment. After various jobs, he set up a business growing sugar cane at Las Manacas farm in Birn, near Mayar, Oriente Province. ngel took a wife in 1911, Mara Luisa Argota Reyes, with whom he had five children before separating. He then began a relationship with Lina Ruz Gonzlez , a household servant of Canarian descent who was twentyseven years his junior she bore him three sons and four daughters, legally marrying in 1943.

Source: Wikipedia