(CNN)The death of Fidel Castro, the long-ruling strongman of the Cuban Revolution and nemesis of many US presidents, brings to a close one of the most polarizing periods of the 20th century. Beloved and cherished by many in Cuba and around the world, hated by many more who fled the Island or simply endured his repressive and intolerant rule in silence or from behind bars, Castro became a larger than life figure in the context of the Cold War.

The leader of a small ragtag team of militias, Castro managed to inspire followers among Cuba's poor and downtrodden at a time when Havana had become the jewel of the Caribbean and the playground of the world's rich and famous. His followers' fervent belief in the justice of their cause and their cunning on the battlefield proved no match for the Cuban political and economic elite of the day who were corrupt and repressive.

But what may have been a local conflict soon became a surrogate for the global struggle between East and West, capitalism and communism, with the tiny sliver of an island perched under Uncle Sam's nose, and its bombastic leader, the symbol of that struggle.
Symbolism, in the end, was what gave Cuba its importance on the international stage. The Soviet Union saw it as the perfect stage to threaten the United States and placed nuclear missiles on the island less than 100 miles from the US mainland and minutes from major US cities. Once the crisis was defused, Cuba itself never represented any national security threat to the United States. Yet its ties to other repressive and terrorist regimes, its support of leftist guerrilla movements, and Castrol's willingness to speak out against what he saw as the excesses of US-led global imperialism and capitalism, made him a hero to those across Latin America who were facing right-wing military regimes and battling what became known as "savage capitalism."

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