Cuba's Ramon Castro, brother to revolutionary Fidel Castro, dies

Fidel Castro exhales cigar smoke during a March 1985 interview at his presidential palace in Havana, Cuba. Click through the gallery to see more photos from his life:

Ramon Castro has died at age 91.

The older brother of Fidel, 89, and Raul Castro, 84, knew little renown, as he declined an active role in the struggle that heaved the two, and communism, to power in Cuba in 1959.

Ramon Castro wore a long beard and was at times mistaken for leader Fidel Castro, who was about the same height and stature, but he preferred tilling the earth to stirring armed revolution. He was a farmer like his father Angel Castro.

33 photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro

In 1977, Castro uses a map as he describes the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion to ABC correspondent Barbara Walters.

Iraqi Vice President Saddam Hussein, center, stands with the Castro brothers during a visit to Cuba in January 1979.

Castro shakes hands with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Havana in April 1989.

Castro gestures during a tour of Paris in March 1995.

Castro walks with Pope John Paul II on an airport tarmac in Havana in January 1998. It was the first time a pope had ever visited Cuba.

Castro puts his arm around South African President Nelson Mandela in May 1998, near 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.

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.

Castro is helped by aides after he appeared to faint two hours into 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.

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.

Castro and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter listen to the U.S. national anthem after Carter arrived in Havana for a visit in May 2002.

Castro, left, and his brother Raul attend a Parliament session in July 2004.

Castro speaks in Havana in February 2006.

This TV grab from state-owned Cuban television shows Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez paying a visit to an ailing Castro in September 2006. In July of that year, it was announced that Castro was undergoing intestinal surgery. Because of his health, Castro resigned as President in February 2008.

Castro smiles before delivering a speech in Havana in September 2010.

Pope Benedict XVI meets with Castro in Havana in March 2012.

In this picture provided by CubaDebate, Castro talks to Randy Perdomo, president of Cuba's University Students Federation, during a February meeting in Havana.

Castro visits with 19 cheese masters on Friday, July 3, 2015, in a rare trip outside his Havana home.

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 approximately 150 others staged an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the regime of Fulgencio Batista.

Castro lights his cigar near Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara during the early days of their guerrilla campaign in the Sierra Maestra Mountains of Cuba. 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.

Castro and the revolutionaries hold up their rifles in January 1959 after overthrowing Batista.

Castro is cheered by crowds on his victorious march to Havana.

Surrounded by rebels who came with him from the mountains, Castro gives an all-night speech.

Castro, left, became Cuba's prime minister in February 1959. His brother Raul, right, was commander in chief of the armed forces.

During a visit to New York in 1959, Fidel Castro spends time with a group of children.

American talk-show host Ed Sullivan interviews Castro on a taped segment in 1959.

Castro shakes hands with U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon during a reception in Washington in 1959.

Castro addresses the U.N. General Assembly in September 1960.

Castro jumps from a tank in April 1961 as he arrives at Giron, Cuba, near the Bay of Pigs. That month, a group of approximately 1,300 Cuban exiles, armed with U.S. weapons, made an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Castro.

Castro replies to a U.S. naval blockade on October 23, 1962.

Castro holds the hand of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during a four-week visit to Moscow in May 1963.

Castro speaks to thousands of Cubans in Havana in 1968.

Ramon Castro died Tuesday in Havana, state media reported in a short article. It did not name a cause. His body was cremated, and his ashes will be taken to the Castro family farm in Biran.

The different brother

The eldest brother contrasted in other ways with the famous revolutionaries, said Brian Latell, senior researcher at the University of Miami and a former CIA officer tasked with studying Cuba.

Obama to go to Cuba

Ramon Castro showed little interest in getting an education or in ideological pursuits, but at times he sent the two revolutionaries supplies.

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"Once, however, expecting a shipment of arms or ammunition from Ramon, Fidel complained that his brother had merely sent him an expensive watch he had no need for," Latell wrote in "After Fidel."

After the revolution, Ramon Castro was an agricultural official and could be seen driving around Havana on a tractor.

He had become proud of his brothers' communist government, said Washington Post reporter Sally Quinn, who interviewed him in 1977.

She described him as "a redneck, Cuban style. He is a simple man with little of the refinement of his most prominent brother," she wrote. "His politics are simple."

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