Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (born August 13, 1926) is a Cuban revolutionary leader who led his country from January 1959 until February 2008. He took power in an armed revolution that overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and was shortly thereafter sworn in as the Prime Minister of Cuba. In 1965 he became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and led the transformation of Cuba into a one-party socialist republic. In 2008, a very ill Castro officially gave up the office of the presidency, turning power over to his brother. At the time it was believed he was very near death, but as of this writing his health remains stable, and he even continues to be involved in politics, though not in any formal role. He writes lengthy essays commenting on the issues of the day, which are then published by the state-run newspapers.

Fidel Castro in The Gladiator
Fidel Castro permitted the Soviet Union to place nuclear missiles in Cuba as a deterrent to US invasion in 1962. The United States was initially aggressive in resisting this action, but ultimately backed down. This act signaled to the rest of the world that the US was not as committed to fighting the Cold War as it claimed.

Literary Comment
This is somewhat speculative, as Castro is not specifically named in the text. However, the Cuban Missile Crisis is the earliest obvious Point of Divergence, and so it is logical to assume that Castro was in power.

Fidel Castro in Southern Victory
Fidel was a citizen of the Confederate state of Cuba. Much more tolerant and favorable to black people than the other Confederate States, Cuba was home to many whites who did not stand idly by while Jake Featherston's men suppressed, and eventually mass-killed their black neighbors. During the Second Great War, Fidel, although only about 16 years old, was respected as a leader of a band of anti-Freedom Party guerrillas. In 1943, he met sailors from the USS Josephus Daniels who delivered weapons as part of the orders Sam Carsten had to help foment revolution.

See also Inconsistencies in Turtledove's Work

Fidel Castro in A World of Difference
When the Tsiolovsky landed in Hogram's domain on Minerva in 1989, the temperature was one degree Celsius. Shota Rustaveli, accustomed to the temperate climes of Georgia, was disheartened at the thought of enduring such cold weather. The other Soviet cosmonauts, all Russians, laughed at him for this.

Dr. Katerina Zakharova pointed out that most of their stay would be in much colder temperatures, cold even by Russian standards: it was early afternoon on a spring day and the latitude of Hogram's castle on the Minervan globe was roughly equal to that of Havana on Earth's globe.

Later, Rustaveli would generally become accustomed to Minerva's temperatures, but it still bothered him from time to time. At one point, he reflected that he doubted Comrade Castro would find the weather very much like a Havana spring.