Fidel Castro was, by any standards, a towering figure. In his frail late years his presence still resonated across Latin America, even among generations that did not experience the exhilarating shock of the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

Before the revolution, Cuba symbolized colonialism at its most pernicious. Its war of liberation from Spain was appropriated by the United States, whose government claimed that victory as its own and rewrote the newly independent country’s constitution to ensure its dominance.

Cuba’s sugar was taken by the imperialist interests that maintained its subservient status. Its culture — the voice of slaves who refused to be silent — was emptied of its content and offered to tourists for their consumption.