Fidel Castro: The life of a revolutionary

Fidel Castro, the iconic cigar-chomping communist who seized power in Cuba in 1959, survived a CIA-sponsored invasion and ruled with a repressive hand for five decades until poor health forced him out in 2008, died Friday. He was 90.

A bitter enemy of Washington, Castro remained silent after his successor, brother Raul, and President Barack Obama agreed in December 2014 to restore diplomatic and economic ties that had been severed for half a century. Finally, six weeks after the announcement, Fidel gave a lukewarm endorsement of the rapprochement.

"I don't trust the policy of the United States nor have I had an exchange with them, but this does not mean ... a rejection of a peaceful solution to conflicts or the dangers of war," he said in a statement published on the website of Cuba's Communist Party newspaper Granma. Full diplomatic relations were restored on July 20, 2015, the U.S. Embassy in Havana reopened a month later and in March 2016, Obama became the first U.S. president to visit to Cuba since Calvin Coolidge made the trip 88 years earlier.

Born out of wedlock, Castro was the son of Angel Castro, a wealthy sugar plantation owner. Fidel was born five years before Raul. Their mother, Lina Ruz Gonzalez, was the maid to Angel's first wife. Angel and Lina eventually married.

In 1945, Fidel entered the University of Havana law school and became involved in nationalistic and anti-imperialist politics. On July 26, 1953, he tried to overthrow the government of President Fulgencio Batista by leading an attack on the Moncada military barracks. The plot failed, and he was captured and eventually sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Castro was released in 1955 as part of an amnesty deal with the government. He went to Mexico, where he met Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, plotting to wage a guerrilla campaign against the dictatorial Batista. On Dec. 2, 1956, Castro led another attack, near the eastern city of Manzanillo. It also failed, but the Castro brothers escaped and fled to the mountains. They were able to build support and eventually capture important parts of the country.

Batista's government collapsed on Jan. 1, 1959, and the dictator sought exile in the Dominican Republic. Castro became prime minister a month later, initiating economic reforms including factory nationalizations and land reform that targeted wealthy property owners.

Most of the rest of his life was synonymous with his country's history. Click ahead to see some of the important moments.

—By CNBC's Marty Steinberg

In the 1940s and '50s, Ernest Hemingway lived in Cuba. It's where he wrote seven books, including his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Old Man and the Sea." As Washington and Havana drifted apart a year after this 1959 photo, Hemingway abandoned Cuba due to escalating tensions with the regime over American ownership of property. He moved to Idaho, committing suicide there in 1961.

Castro pushed the country further to the left, signing an agrarian reform law that banned foreign ownership of land and limited the size of land holdings. In the midst of the Cold War, Castro looked East, establishing relations with the Soviet Union and signing a trade agreement with Moscow for oil. After U.S. oil companies in Cuba refused to refine the oil, Castro expropriated their Cuban operations. Washington responded by slapping an embargo on Cuban sugar.

During a September 1960 visit to the United Nations, Castro stayed at a hotel in Harlem, met with Malcolm X and other American radicals. In this photo, Castro and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev embraced each other at the U.N. on Sept. 20, 1960.

Castro and Guevara share a laugh in this photo, circa 1960.

In one of his last acts as president, Dwight Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations with Havana in January 1961. Three months later, on April 16, Castro declared Cuba a socialist state.

A day later, the island nation 90 miles off Florida came under yet another seaborne attack, this time by hundreds of Cuban exiles trying to land in the swampy south through the Bay of Pigs. Plans for the U.S.-backed invasion were hatched during the Eisenhower administration, and President John F. Kennedy authorized it only weeks after inauguration.

Two nights before the planned landing, eight B-26 bombers missed their targets on the Cuban air force, and on landing day, the exile force was overwhelmed by Castro's army. Nearly all 1,400 CIA-backed invaders surrendered or were killed. Months later, Castro declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and announced the government was adopting communist policies. The Kennedy administration imposed a full economic embargo on Cuba in early 1962.

In this April 24, 1961, photo, an anti-aircraft unit of the Cuban militia defends the Havana shore.

In October 1962, a U.S. spy plane found evidence that the Soviets were building nuclear missile sites on Cuba. After days of deliberations, Kennedy imposed a naval "quarantine" of Cuba and demanded destruction of the sites. (In this photo, Castro addresses his nation in a radio-television speech on Oct. 22, 1962.)

With the world on the brink of nuclear war, Khrushchev blinked, agreeing to remove the sites in exchange for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba. Washington also secretly agreed to remove nuclear missiles from Turkey, near the Soviet Union.

The Cuban missile crisis gave birth to improved relations between Washington and Moscow. In 1963, the original "hotline" was set up between the White House and Kremlin to be used during crises, and the countries signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that summer.

There was no thaw in U.S.-Cuban relations, however. Castro continued to back anti-Western groups in the Third World, providing military support for pro-Soviet forces in Africa and the Middle East. In this September 1973 photo, Castro inspects a rifle during a visit to North Vietnam.

Back home, Cuba's economy continued to suffer under the strain of the U.S. embargo. Cubans also lost civil liberties and the right to dissent as newspapers came under Castro's control. After thousands of Cubans sought asylum in the Peruvian Embassy, the government announced that anyone who wanted to leave Cuba could do so. During the subsequent Mariel boatlift from April to October 1980, up to 125,000 Cubans flooded into Florida, including a sizable number of criminals and mental patients.

In this photo, a boat arrives in Key West, Florida, in April 1980 with Cuban refugees from Mariel harbor.

Castro was known for his speeches: Five-hour orations were not uncommon. This photo shows Castro addressing delegates to the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1986. After a speech on Oct. 20, 2004, the then-78-year-old leader accidentally fell down, shattering his left kneecap, breaking his right arm.

After he left office in 2008, Castro wrote occasional columns for the Cuban media. Some of his "Reflections from Comrade Fidel" were as short as 51 words, The Associated Press reported in 2012.

Although Castro was the civilian leader, he loved to dress in his trademark green military uniform, as he did in this 1988 photo in Havana. By now, he had given up cigars. In later life, he often wore a blue and white running jacket in his public appearances.

Castro tries on a pair of sunglasses as he talks to the media during the November 1999 IX Ibero-American Summit in Havana. The leaders of 21 countries attended what was the largest international gathering hosted by Cuba in 20 years.

Castro was baptized and educated by Jesuits, but after the Cuban communist leader cracked down on the Roman Catholic Church, Pope John XXIII excommunicated him in 1962. In 1969, the Communist Party abolished Christmas Day as a public holiday. Within three decades, Castro relaxed the suppression of the church, and in 1996 he visited with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. Two years later, John Paul became the first pontiff to visit Cuba.

In this photo, Castro welcomes Pope John Paul II at Jose Marti International Airport on Jan. 21, 1998. During the flight to Cuba, the pope told the reporters traveling with him that he would urge the United States to lift the 36-year-old embargo on Cuba. "I will tell them: change, change," he said. Sixteen years later, Pope Francis helped broker the deal to normalize relations between Washington and Havana.

Pope Francis visited with the then-89-year-old Castro during the pontiff's visit to Cuba in September 2015. A Vatican official said the pope gave Castro copies of his two encyclicals and two books written by priests. Castro in turn gave Francis a book titled "Fidel and Religion," according to NBC News.

The aging Castro faced up to his mortality as his health declined. In accepting a sixth term as president in March 2003, he said: "I promise that I will be with you, if you so wish, for as long as I feel that I can be useful — and if it is not decided by nature before. Not a minute less and not a second more." On July 31, 2006, he temporarily handed power to his brother Raul (left) after undergoing an operation for gastrointestinal bleeding.

Two years later, on Feb. 19, 2008, the 81-year-old Fidel resigned from the presidency after 49 years in power.

"My wishes have always been to discharge my duties to my last breath," Castro wrote in his resignation letter. "To my dearest compatriots, who have recently honored me so much by electing me a member of the Parliament where so many agreements should be adopted of utmost importance to the destiny of our Revolution, I am saying that I will neither aspire to nor accept, I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor accept the positions of president of the state council and commander in chief."

During his visit to Cuba, Obama did not meet with the former Cuban president. A month later, Castro bade farewell to his comrades at the Communist Party congress, which takes place every five years.

"I'll be 90 years old soon. ... This may be one of the last times I speak in this room," Castro told the congress. "We must tell our brothers in Latin America and the world that the Cuban people will be victorious."