As for Cuba during Castro's rule:
The world neared nuclear conflict on Oct. 22, 1962, when President John F. Kennedy announced there were Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. After a tense week of diplomacy, Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev removed them.
Meanwhile, Cuban revolutionaries opened 10,000 new schools, erased illiteracy, and built a universal health care system. Castro backed revolutionary movements in Latin America and Africa.
But former liberties were whittled away as labor unions lost the right to strike, independent newspapers were shut down and religious institutions were harassed.
The United States and most Cubans in Miami don't like Castro. Others in the world have a different opinion:
He has won friends by sending 20,000 Cuban doctors abroad to treat the poor, mainly in Venezuela, but some as far afield as Pakistan, Indonesia and East Timor. Some 260,000 patients from Latin America and the Caribbean have undergone free eye surgery in Cuba since 2005 in a joint program with Venezuela.
Castro was greeted by crowds like a rock star in Argentina this month. Anti-globalization youths see him as a hero, along with revolutionary Che Guevara.
The article asks whether he is a "socialist beacon or ailing despot?" I'd have to say he's a little of both.
As for Raul Castro, Reuters has this "fact box."