Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary whose rallying cry became ‘socialism or death’, dies at 90

Feidel Castro being received by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Home Minister Zail Singh at Delhi airport. Former President Fidel Castro, who led a rebel army to improbable victory in Cuba, embraced Soviet-style communism and defied the power of 10 US presidents during his half century rule, has died at age 90. The bearded revolutionary, who survived a crippling US trade embargo as well as dozens, possibly hundreds, of assassination plots, died eight years after ill health forced him to formally hand power over to his younger brother Raul, who announced his death late Friday, Nov. 25, 2016, on state television. (Express photo)

In in this Feb. 6, 1959 file photo, Cuba's leader Fidel Castro speaks to a crowd during his triumphant march to Havana after the fall of the Batista regime. (AP Photo)

In this May 1, 1963 file photo, Cuba's leader Fidel Castro, left, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev clasp hands at the Lenin mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square on May Day in Moscow, Russia. (TASS via AP)

In this March 1985 file photo, Cuba's leader Fidel Castro exhales cigar smoke during an interview at the presidential palace in Havana, Cuba. (AP Photo)

In this April 1961 file photo, Cuba's leader Fidel Castro, bottom, looks out from a tank during the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. (AP Photo)

In this Jan. 1959 file photo, Cuba's leader Fidel Castro addresses a crowd in a park in front of the presidential palace in Havana, Cuba. (AP Photo)

In this Feb. 26, 1957 file photo, Cuba's leader Fidel Castro stands in an unknown location in Cuba. (AP Photo)

In this March 14, 1957 file photo, Fidel Castro, the young anti-Batista guerrilla leader, center, is seen with his brother Raul Castro, left, and Camilo Cienfuegos, right, while operating in the Mountains of Eastern Cuba. (AP Photo)

In this March 28, 2012 file photo made available by the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano, Pope Benedict XVI, right, meets with Cuba's leader Fidel Castro in Havana, Cuba. (AP Photo)

In this Nov. 10, 1971 file photo, Cuba's leader Fidel Castro, center left, rides with Chile's President Salvador Allende through a crowd waving communist flags in Santiago, Chile. (AP Photo)

In this July 17, 1959 file photo, Cuba's leader Fidel Castro, center, and Oklahoma Creek Indian missionary W.A. Reiford, right, wear war bonnets as Cuban Capt. Antonio Nunez Jimenez looks on. Reiford went to Havana to open an orphanage. (AP Photo)

In this April 19, 2016 file photo, Fidel Castro sits as he clasps hands with his brother, Cuban President Raul Castro, right, and second secretary of the Central Committee, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura moments before the playing of the Communist party hymn during the closing ceremonies of the 7th Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, in Havana, Cuba. (AP Photo)

n this Jan. 25, 1998 file photo, Cuba's leader Fidel Castro, left, greets former Pope John Paul II at the Jose Marti International Airport in Havana. (AP Photo)

In this Aug.18, 1999 file photo, Cuba's leader Fidel Castro gestures at a speaking event as he explains that he does not understand why he is not blind after all the camera flashes he has received in Havana, Cuba. (AP Photo)

In this 1960 file photo, Cuba's leader Fidel Castro plays golf at the Colinas de Villa real club in Havana, Cuba. (AP Photo)

In this Oct. 1967 file photo, Cuba's leader Fidel Castro, top right, delivers a speech during a rally in Bayamo, Cuba. (AP Photo)