Fidel Castro: A Life In Pictures

Fidel Castro as a young Marxist activist in 1953. 

Surrounded by members of his leftist guerrilla movement, Castro (center) waves to crowds in Cienfuegos shortly after ousting Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. 

Castro (center) delivers a speech in Havana in 1959. Fellow revolutionaries Camilo Cienfuegos (right) and Ernesto Che Guevara (left) stand beside him. 

Castro wears a chapka near Moscow during an official visit to the Soviet Union in January 1964. 

Fidel Castro poses under a portrait of Vladimir Lenin before having talks with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev (fourth from left). 

Castro (right) meets with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1970.

Castro (front) managed a spot of hunting while on a visit to Romania in May 1972 when the country was ruled by communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. 

Castro (right) and then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev exchange documents during a treaty signing ceremony in Havana in 1989. 

A dove rests on Castro's shoulders as he addresses Cuban youth in 1989 during celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of the country's communist revolution. 

Fidel Castro (center) with guides and security agents at the Great Wall of China while on a state visit in December 1995. 

Castro talks to Pope John Paul II during the latter's visit to Havana in January 1998. 

Castro (center) is helped by his bodyguards after he fell over at the end of a speech following a graduation ceremony in central Cuba in October 2004.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez pays a visit to an ailing Castro in Havana in September 2006. Despite his failing health, the Cuban leader outlived Chavez, who died of complications from cancer in 2013. 

Holding a Cuban flag, Castro listens to a speaker during the May Day parade in Havana's Revolution Square in 2005.

A frail-looking Fidel Castro at the Cuban Communist Party congress in Havana earlier this year.

Cuba's current president, Raul Castro, announces the death of his brother, Fidel, on state television on November 26.