Ãngel Castro y Argiz
Ángel María Bautista Castro Argiz ( born December 5, 1875 in Lugo, Spain, † October 21, 1956 in Biran, Cuba ) was a landowner, who became known as the father of the revolution leader and later President Fidel and Raúl Castro.
Life
The childhood spent Ángel Castro in Láncara, a city in the Galician province of Lugo. His family was at that time very poor. He lived with his parents and five siblings, of which he was the second oldest in a house with a single room without partitions.
In 1895 he came first as soldier of the Spanish military under General Weyler in the war of independence to Cuba and fought there against the Cuban insurgents. After the Spanish defeat, he initially returned to Spain. Some years later (1906 ) he returned to Cuba to settle here. Known described him as lightning clever organizational skills, as disciplined and hard worker, but also grumpy, generous and humanitarian.
He slapped his first as head of a squad of track workers by and built rail lines between sugar factories and railway junctions near Banes in the province of Oriente. Later he succeeded with the help of wealthy friends, who granted him credit to buy land in Biran, on which he cultivated sugarcane. At the time of his death he owned 777 acres of land. He had leased more 9712 hectares. 1911 Ángel Castro married his first wife, María Reyes Argota, with whom he had five children: Manuel Castro Argota ( 1913-1914 ), María Purple Perfidia Argota Castro, Pedro Emilio Castro Argota (* 1914), Antonia María Dolores Castro Argota (* 1915) and Georgina de la Caridad Castro Argota ( born 1918 ). 1917 the family moved Ruz González from the region of Pinar del Río in this area. With a young woman from this large family, Lina Ruz González, who worked as a housekeeper in Ángel Castro's house, he began a relationship that sprang from the other seven children: Ángela, Ramón, Fidel, Raúl, Juana, Emma and Agustina. He married but it was only in 1941 (her oldest son was 17 years old). In 1943, he also acknowledged the children resulting from this relationship.
Furthermore, there is proof that he for one year moved Fidel's birth date forward in order to enable this inclusion in a school.
Death
He died in his hometown Birán from an intestinal hemorrhage, only 42 days before the landing of the revolutionaries in Los Cayuelos in today's Granma province on December 2, 1956. Upon his death his son Ramón continued his farm, this took care of him even before his death. However, the farm was expropriated relatively shortly after the government takeover by Fidel in 1959 in the context of land reform.