Cuba’s Castro brothers through the years

The men who have run Cuba for nearly six decades began life in a remote, rural part of the island known as Biran, sons of a wealthy farmer.

Both Fidel and Raul Castro turned to radical politics at a young age as they went to school first in the eastern city of Santiago, later at the University of Havana.

They burst into prominence in 1953 leading a quixotic, failed attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago hoping to topple the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Both were imprisoned, were freed in an amnesty and went into exile in Mexico, where they organized a guerrilla band that returned to Cuba by boat, the Granma, in 1956.

Despite initial setbacks, the bearded guerrillas operating in the eastern mountains steadily gained support across the country. On Jan. 1, 1959, Batista fled and Fidel Castro became the unquestioned leader of Cuba, with his younger brother put in charge of the armed forces.

A family photograph of the Castro brothers, from left, Fidel, Raul and Ramon, on the wall of the room they shared as children in Biran, Cuba, June 10, 2016. Biran is the birthplace of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and his brother, President Raul Castro. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

The 1953 mug shots of Fidel Castro, left, and his brother Raul, are framed and on display at the Siboney Museum, the former farmhouse where they planned the attack on the Moncada military barracks, near Santiago, Cuba, July 19, 2003. Freed in an amnesty, the two brothers fled to Mexico and began recruiting a tiny rebel army. (AP Photo/Jose Goitia)

Fidel Castro, the young anti-Batista guerrilla leader, center, his brother Raul Castro, left, and Camilo Cienfuegos, pose for a photo while in the mountains of eastern Cuba, March 14, 1957. Fidel led his young guerrillas to an improbable victory in 1959. (AP Photo/Andrew St. George)

Fidel Castro’s government initially executed or imprisoned many foes, and veered to Soviet-backed socialism in the early 1960s. Cuba backed revolutions across Latin America, and while most of those failed, the Castros’ resistance to U.S. domination inspired millions across the continent and beyond.

Fidel Castro’s control survived repeated U.S. plots to overthrow or kill him, and even the hardships that followed the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which had kept the island’s economy afloat. But illness finally forced Fidel to turn over power in 2006 to Raul, who formally became president two years later.

Fidel died in 2016 and Raul, who turns 87 in June, has announced that he will step aside as president this month — though he plans to remain in what is probably a more important position: head of Cuba’s lone permitted party, the Communist Party.

This combination of photos shows Fidel Castro smoking a cigar in Havana on April 29, 1961, left, and his brother Raul Castro, right, in an undisclosed location in Cuba in 1959. At age 32, Fidel became the youngest leader in Latin America and put his younger brother Raul in charge of the armed forces. (AP Photos)

Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, right, President Osvaldo Dorticos, center, and Armed Forces Chief, Commander Raul Castro, watch a military parade in Havana, Jan. 2, 1966. Dorticos, who was named Cuba's president in 1959, resigned in 1976. Fidel officially became Cuba's president ruling for more than five decades. (AP Photo)

Cuba's Defense Minister Raul Castro, from left, his brother President Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega, coordinator of the Junta of National Reconstruction of Nicaragua, attend a celebration marking the 20th anniversary of the failed military invasion Bay of Pigs, in Havana, April 21, 1981. The Castro brothers backed revolutionary movements in many parts of Latin America, including Nicaragua where Cuban-inspired revolutionaries toppled the Somoza dictatorship in 1979. (AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi)

Cuban President Fidel Castro and his brother Raul, head of the Cuban Armed Forces, watch as the first group of Cubans returns home from Grenada, in Havana, Nov. 2, 1983. Raul, who has spent most of his life by the side of his larger-than-life brother, has always seemed more comfortable behind the scenes. (AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi)

Cuban President Fidel Castro, left, joins hands with his younger brother Raul Castro, chief of the Cuban Armed Forces and first vice president, after the two were reelected in the Third Cuban Communist Party Congress session in Havana, Feb. 8, 1986. Fidel ruled for nearly five decades as Cuba's "Maximum Leader". (AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi)

Cuban President Fidel Castro and his brother, Defense Minister Gen. Raul Castro, left, escort Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev during a welcoming ceremony at the airport, in Havana, April 3, 1989. Life in Cuba changed dramatically after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulting in a crisis known as the Special Period. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Cuban President Fidel Castro and his brother Raul Castro, first vice president and head of the Cuban Armed Forces, wait for heads of state at an official lunch for visiting leaders of the Group 77 Summit in Havana, April 13, 2000. The brothers rarely appeared in public together and even less out of military uniform. (AP Photo/Jose Goitia)

Cuban leader Fidel Castro delivers a speech seated next to his brother, Defense Minister and first Vice President Raul Castro, during a final session at the National Assembly, in Havana, Dec. 20, 2001. Part of Fidel’s nearly five-decade rule was characterized by meandering, hours-long speeches. (AP Photo/Jose Goitia)

Cuban President Fidel Castro, left, seated next to his brother Defense Minister Raul Castro and first Vice President, speaks during the inauguration of the ninth session of the National Assembly, in Havana, Nov. 2, 2002. Fidel’s commitment to socialism never wavered. (AP Photo/Cristobal Herrera)

Cuba's acting President Raul Castro sits next to the chair usually occupied by his older brother Fidel Castro, at a parliament year-end session in Havana, Dec. 22, 2006. A severe gastrointestinal illness in 2006 nearly killed Fidel, forcing him to turn power over to his younger brother. (AP Photo/Javier Galeano)

Fidel Castro, supported by Cuban President Raul Castro, right, and second secretary of the Central Committee, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, makes a rare public appearance at the closing ceremonies of the 7th Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, in Havana, April 19, 2016. Castro came to say goodbye to the Communist Party he put in power a half-century ago. (Ismael Francisco/Cubadebate via AP)

Women hold a portrait of the late Fidel Castro, and of his brother Cuba's President Raul Castro, as they wait to see the arrival of the caravan transporting Fidel's ashes from Havana, in Santiago, Cuba, Dec. 3, 2016. (AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan)

Cuba's President Raul Castro receives the ashes of his older brother Fidel Castro from an honor guard before placing them into a niche in his tomb, at the Santa Ifigenia cemetery in Santiago, Cuba, Dec. 4, 2016. The tomb stands to the side of a memorial to the rebel soldiers killed in an attack that the Castros led on Santiago's Moncada barracks on July 26, 1953. (Marcelino Vazquez Hernandez/ACN via AP)

Images of revolutionary hero Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos , Fidel Castro, Cuban President Raul Castro, adorn a wall, in Havana,  March 15, 2016. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Cuba's President Raul Castro listens to the playing of national anthems during his welcome ceremony at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, March 17, 2015. Castro will step down as president on April 19, 2018 after a decade in office. However Castro will remain first secretary of the Communist Party, considered the country’s “highest guiding force.” (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

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Curated by Anita Baca in Mexico City

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