On This Day: Fidel Castro becomes Cuban PM as he ousts his own puppet Cardona six weeks after revolution

FEBRUARY 16, 1959: Cuban communist revolution leader Fidel Castro appointed himself prime minister after forcing puppet premier Jose Miro Cardona to quit on this day in 1932.

Castro had given liberal Cardona the job only six weeks earlier after his rebel forces overthrew the government of brutal right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista.

But the insurgent leader had decided that being head of Cuba’s army was not enough and so became premier and made his fellow former lawyer ambassador of Spain.

Initially, Castro had appointed a host of moderates to senior government roles and denied that he was a communist – as seen in a News of the Day newsreel.

But by 1961, he steadily grabbed more power for himself and eventually turned his rebel 26th of July Movement into the Communist Party.

In that year he announced that Cuba, an island nation of 11million people, would now be ruled as a Soviet-style one-party state that would not tolerate opposition.

Cardona and 1.2million others have since fled the island, mostly to neighbouring Florida, where they are partially enticed by the offer of instant U.S. citizenship.

Batista, whose U.S-backed regime killed up to 20,000 civilian opponents after staging a military coup in 1952, fled to the neighbouring Dominican Republic and later Spain.

Castro organised a planned economy that gave land to peasants, guaranteed jobs for urban workers and provided free healthcare and education and subsidised food.

In doing so, he angered Washington by nationalising U.S. owned businesses, including the sugar plantations that dominated the island economy.

It also began sponsoring global revolutions by sending troops and arms overseas to aid other communist rebels.

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Washington broke off diplomatic relations, launched a trade embargo and in 1961 organised the failed Bay of Pigs by Cuban nationalists.

The height of tensions between the two countries came during the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis after the USSR station nuclear weapons on the island.

U.S.- Cuban diplomatic relations have never resumed and Washington continues to enforce sanctions that even clamp down on foreign nation that trade with the island.

Yet Castro would also rule with a iron fist and, according to Human Rights Watch, developed a 'repressive machinery' that deprives Cubans of their 'basic rights'.

Emigration is mostly illegal – so those who try to flee are locked up – and Cuban law restricts freedom of speech and censors press.

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Public protests are also banned and since Cuba was officially atheist, the Catholic Church – the island’s main religion -  was also heavily proscribed until 1992.

Amnesty International claims that 216 people have been executed for political crimes since 1959 – and some organsation claim there have been as many as 17,000 victims.

Human Rights Watch believes the situation has improved slightly since Castro, whose health has been ailing, passed power to his brother Raul in 2008.

Fidel Castro remains a highly divisive figure, around the world, with many lauding him as a champion of anti-imperialism after standing up to U.S. domination.

Since the fall of its main ally, the Soviet Union – which triggered a 33% decline it’s the Cuban economy between 1990 and 1993 – the has island has found new backers.

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He forged alliances with the Latin America’s 'Pink Tide' – chiefly oil-rich Venezuela and Bolivia – whose leaders have also rallied again U.S. 'imperialism'.

But opponents argue that Castro, who is now 87, was a ruthless dictator who squashed human rights and ruined an economy that before 1959 had been as rich as Italy.