Fidel had been in power since 1959 and held the title of President of Cuba since 1976. At the time of his operation in July 2006, he was 79 years old and the last governing communist leader from the Cold War era. Fidel felt proud to have not only thwarted the Bay of Pigs Invasion, failed CIA attempts to kill him, and acts of Cuban exile violence, but also outlived the Cold War and the USSR, and exhorting the Cuban people brave the crippling effects of the US embargo against Cuba (largely to whip up patriotic fury against the US) and the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. While the radical left (especially Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales) praised Castro as a tireless defender of the poor and oppressed in Latin America and Africa while standing up to US hegemony in the Americas, Fidel Castro's sworn enemies, namely the US and Cuban-Americans, saw him as a ruthless tyrant who broke his promise to restore democracy to Cuba by imposing a repressive communist government on the island that muzzled all opposition and wrecked the Cuban economy.