7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7

Thatcher Foundation to support free enterprise and
democracy—particularly in the newly liberated countries
of central and eastern Europe. In 1995 she became a mem-
ber of the Order of the Garter. Following a series of minor
strokes, Thatcher retired from public speaking in 2002.

Fidel Castro

(b. Aug. 13, 1926, near Birán, Cuba)

A

symbol of Communist revolution in Latin America,
Fidel Castro Ruz transformed Cuba into the first
Communist state in the Western Hemisphere.
Castro was born on his family’s sugar plantation at
Mayarí in Oriente Province in southeastern Cuba. As a
boy he worked in the sugar fields. He attended Jesuit
schools and Belén College in Havana.In 1945 he entered
the School of Law of the University of Havana. In 1947 he
played a minor role in an attempt to overthrow the dicta-
tor in the Dominican Republic. He escaped capture and
returned to the university to study law, receiving his degree
in 1950. Castro began to practice law and worked on behalf
of the poor in Havana. He was a candidate for Cuba’s leg-
islature when General Fulgencio Batista overthrew the
government in 1952. He organized a rebellion against
Batista in 1953, but it failed, and Castro was captured and
served time in prison. He and his brother Raúl were
released in a political amnesty in 1955, and they went to
Mexico to continue their campaign against the Batista
regime. There Fidel Castro organized Cuban exiles into a
revolutionary group called the 26th of July Movement.
On Dec. 2, 1956, Castro and an armed expedition of 81
men landed on the eastern coast of Cuba, from the yacht
Granma. All of them were killed or captured except Fidel
and Raúl Castro, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and nine others,