Where did Fidel Castro grow up and live?

📍Punto Cero compound, Calle 232, Jaimanitas, Playa, Havana, Cuba

1959 – 2016

“I was born Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz on the 13th of August 1926 in Birán, Holguín province, Cuba, the son of a prosperous sugar plantation owner. I studied law at the University of Havana, became a revolutionary, led the guerrilla campaign from the Sierra Maestra mountains, and entered Havana on the 8th of January 1959 as the leader of a successful revolution. I governed Cuba for nearly fifty years. Havana was my city — the Malecón, the old city, the revolutionary squares. I survived over six hundred assassination attempts, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Missile Crisis, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Whatever history decides about what I built, no one can say I built it without courage.”

👍 LovedThe Sierra Maestra campaign and the discovery that a small determined force could defeat a corrupt government. Havana's extraordinary architecture and revolutionary energy. The loyalty of the Cuban people through decades of difficulty.

👎 DislikedThe executions of the early revolutionary period. The one-party state that denied Cubans the political freedoms I had fought for in my youth. The poverty that fifty years of revolution did not end.

Map showing where Fidel Castro lived — Punto Cero compound, Calle 232, Jaimanitas, Playa, Havana, Cuba

🗺️ Approximate location today

📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons

Sources: Szulc, T. Fidel: A Critical Portrait (1986), William Morrow; Castro, F. & Ramonet, I. Fidel Castro: My Life (2007), Scribner