Story highlights Louis Perez: In death, Castro passes into status of historical subject impossible to discuss dispassionately for years to come

He says Castro defied America; even with his death Cuba not likely to bend to demands of US with incoming Trump administration

Louis A. Perez Jr. is the J. Carlyle Sitterson professor of history and the director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Among his books are "Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos" and "Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution." The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) Fidel Castro Ruz, the political personality, has died. Fidel Castro, the historical persona, has been born. He passes from the present into the past, to serve as an enduring historical subject of debate and dispute, about whom dispassion will be impossible for years to come. Fidel Castro was not a man about whom one is likely to be neutral.

Louis A. Perez

Fidel is a metaphor. He is a Rorschach blot upon which to project fears or hopes. A prism in which the spectrum of colors refracted out has to do with light that went in. He is a point of view, loaded with ideological purport and political meaning. A David who survived Goliath. A symbol of Third World intransigence against First World domination.

But it is also possible to discuss the historical "essences" of Fidel Castro. He emerged out of a history shaped by a century of Cuban national frustration, heir to a legacy of unfulfilled hopes for national sovereignty and self-determination, aspirations that put Cuba on a collision course with the United States. The collision of the early 1960s served to fix the trajectory of the 50 years of ruptured relations that followed.

Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Fidel Castro exhales cigar smoke during a March 1985 interview at his presidential palace in Havana, Cuba. Castro died at age 90 on November 25, 2016, Cuban state media reported. Click through to see more photos from the life of the controversial Cuban leader who ruled for nearly half a century: Hide Caption 1 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies A portrait of Castro in New York in 1955. He was in exile after being released as part of a general amnesty for political prisoners in Cuba. Two years earlier, he and about 150 others staged an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the regime of Fulgencio Batista. Hide Caption 2 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro with Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara during the early days of their guerrilla campaign in Cuba's Sierra Maestra mountains. Guevara, Castro and Castro's brother Raul organized a group of Cuban exiles that returned to Cuba in December 1956 and waged a guerrilla war against government troops. Hide Caption 3 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro and his revolutionaries hold up their rifles in January 1959 after overthrowing Batista. Hide Caption 4 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Crowds cheer Castro on his victorious march into Havana in 1959. Hide Caption 5 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Surrounded by rebels who came with him from the mountains, Castro gives an all-night speech. Hide Caption 6 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro, left, became Cuba's prime minister in February 1959. His brother Raul, right, was commander in chief of the armed forces. Hide Caption 7 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies During a visit to New York in 1959, Fidel Castro spends time with a group of children. Hide Caption 8 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies American talk-show host Ed Sullivan interviews Castro on a taped segment in 1959. Hide Caption 9 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro shakes hands with US Vice President Richard Nixon during a reception in Washington in 1959. Hide Caption 10 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro addresses the UN General Assembly in September 1960. Hide Caption 11 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro jumps from a tank in April 1961 as he arrives at Giron, Cuba, near the Bay of Pigs. That month, a group of about 1,300 Cuban exiles, armed with US weapons, made an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Castro. Hide Caption 12 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro announces general mobilization after the announcement of the Cuban blockade by President John F Kennedy in October 1962. Hide Caption 13 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro raises arms with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during a four-week visit to Moscow in May 1963. Hide Caption 14 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro in July 1964. Hide Caption 15 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro plays baseball in 1964. Hide Caption 16 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro addresses thousands of Cubans in Havana in 1968. Hide Caption 17 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies In 1977, Castro uses a map as he describes the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion to ABC correspondent Barbara Walters. Hide Caption 18 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Iraq's Saddam Hussein, center, with the Castro brothers during a visit to Cuba in January 1979. Hide Caption 19 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro greets Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Havana in April 1989. Hide Caption 20 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro visits Paris in March 1995. Hide Caption 21 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro meets with Pope John Paul II on an airport tarmac in Havana in January 1998. It was the first papal visit to Cuba. Hide Caption 22 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro puts his arm around South African President Nelson Mandela in May 1998 with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, left, and Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. They were in Geneva, Switzerland, for a conference of the World Trade Organization. Hide Caption 23 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro welcomes Russian President Vladimir Putin to Cuba in December 2000. Putin was the first Russian President to visit Cuba since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hide Caption 24 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro is helped by aides after he appeared to faint while giving a speech in Cotorro, Cuba, in June 2001. He returned to the podium less than 10 minutes later to assure the audience he was fine and that he just needed to get some sleep. Hide Caption 25 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies In July 2001, Castro talks with Elian Gonzalez, the young boy who was the focus of a bitter international custody dispute a couple of years earlier. Hide Caption 26 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro and former US President Jimmy Carter listen to the US national anthem after Carter arrived in Havana for a visit in May 2002. Hide Caption 27 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro at the May Day commemoration of Revolution Square in Havana in 2004. He held tightly to his belief in a socialist economic model and one-party Communist rule, even after the Soviet Union's end and most of the rest of the world concluded state socialism was an idea whose time had passed. Hide Caption 28 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro, left, and his brother Raul attend a session of the Cuban parliament in July 2004. Hide Caption 29 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro speaks in Havana in February 2006. Hide Caption 30 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro in Havana in September 2002. Several surgeries forced him to relinquish his duties temporarily to younger brother Raul in July 2006. Hide Caption 31 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies In footage from state-owned Cuban television, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez visits an ailing Castro in September 2006. That July, it was announced that Castro was undergoing intestinal surgery. Castro resigned as President in February 2008, and his brother Raul took over permanently. Hide Caption 32 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro smiles before delivering a speech in Havana in September 2010. He had remained mostly out of sight after falling ill in 2006 but returned to the public light that year. Hide Caption 33 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Pope Benedict XVI meets with Castro in Havana in March 2012. Hide Caption 34 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies In this picture provided by CubaDebate, Castro talks to Randy Perdomo, president of Cuba's University Students Federation, during a February meeting in Havana. Hide Caption 35 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro visits with 19 cheese masters on Friday, July 3, 2015, in a rare trip outside his Havana home. Hide Caption 36 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, left, visits with Fidel Castro during a meeting at Castro's home on February 14, 2016. Hide Caption 37 of 37

There was something deeply personal about the Cuba-U.S. estrangement. Fidel Castro offended American sensibilities. The sheer effrontery of Castro's challenge to the United States was breathtaking: defiant, strident, often virulent denunciations of the United States, hours at a time, day after day, stretching into weeks and months, and years.

Castro's invective was more than adequately reciprocated by American vilification. Fidel Castro was held personally responsible for almost all the challenges the United States faced in Central and South America, in the Caribbean, in Africa. Castro was transformed simultaneously into an anathema and phantasma, unscrupulous and perhaps unbalanced, possessed by demons and given to evil doings.

Read More