Targeted as an object of particular hatred by successive US administrations, Fidel Castro survives in power as a lone remnant from the gallery of internationally known communist figures of the Cold War era. The leader of the Cuban revolution in 1959, he has been in power longer than any other current nonhereditary ruler in the world, although despite his age he still presents himself as the fatigue-clad, bearded revolutionary. He still runs a one-party state, but the pope's visit in January 1998 marked the beginning of an improvement in his regime's international relations, and its partial emergence from the isolation it had suffered since the collapse of communism elsewhere.
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