Fidel Castro, 20th century revolutionary

By Anthony Boadle

HAVANA (Reuters) - Fidel Castro, who built a communist state on the doorstep of the United States from a guerrilla uprising and defied attempts to oust him by 10 U.S. presidents, retired on Tuesday after almost half a century at Cuba's helm.

The bearded revolutionary, whose cigar-smoking guerrillas ousted U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, has not appeared in public for 19 months since emergency intestinal surgery forced him to hand over power to brother Raul Castro on July 31, 2006.

Castro, 81, has kept himself in the minds of Cubans, however, through a prolific flow of sick bed articles that ranged from denunciations of the U.S. war in Iraq to claiming that U.S. capitalism threatens the survival of humanity.

He said on Tuesday he would not return to lead his country, closing one chapter of the 20th century.

Vilified by opponents as a totalitarian dictator, Castro is admired in many Third World nations for standing up to the United States and providing free education and health care.

The Jesuit-educated lawyer and charismatic orator sought to transform Cuba into an egalitarian society and achieved health and literacy levels on a par with industrialized nations.

But critics, led by the United States and the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who left to live abroad, maintained that he turned the Caribbean island into a police state and his rejection of free enterprise ruined the economy.

Castro survived a CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs, assassination attempts, Washington's longest trade embargo and the collapse of the Soviet Union that for three decades supplied Cuba with everything from guns to oil and butter.