Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro (1926-2017) was a Cuban-American politician, baseball player and confectionary. He began his sporting career playing for the Santiago Parrots in American Havana in 1947 at the age of twenty, but in spite of his sporting success, he soon found himself at odds with Douglas MacArthur's regime, which doubled down on its authoritarianism with the onset of the Cold War. As an outspoken left-wing critic of the National Salvation Front government, he soon found himself facing persecution, with threats being levelled against him and members of his family by the Americuban Mafia. After being dropped from the [team] under government pressure in spite of his popularity and prowess on the field, he fled from Havana to Miami, United Republics on a raft on 16 March 1952. The UASR government, by then aware of Castro as a public figure in Cuba, was keen to welcome him, no doubt aware of the potential propaganda value of his defection. He was soon able to resume his sporting career, and was recruited by the Metropolis Yankees ahead of the next baseball season. He quickly became a star player and one of the most recognized faces within baseball in the UASR, recieving the MVP (Most Valuable Player) award for the Spartacus Division for 1954 and 1955 back-to-back.

He emerged as one of the most visible public spokespersons on behalf of Florida's Cuban refugee community following the 1956 Miami riots, and regularly used his position to oppose xenophobia and to promote proletarian internationalism. After retiring from baseball in 1961, he turned his energy towards his adopted hometown of Miami. Like many other Cuban-Americans, he sided with the internationalist Liberation faction during the split of the Workers' Communist Party in the 1950s, and he was elected to his district soviet under the Liberation banner in 1958. In 1962, he was elected as a delegate to Florida's Congress of Soviets, before running as Liberation's candidate for Mayor of Miami in 1970, becoming the first Cuban to serve in that office.