He and fidel (and a lot of others) overthrew Baptista who was a dictator (kept in power by the help of the US government, who like their neighbours to be as rightwing as possible to ensure that they have someone who will trade with them).
Cuba was in a terrible state:
Health, education, poverty all at terrible levels.
Some huge percentage of women worked as prosititutes.
The country was very heavily stratifed along race lines.
After the revolution he worked in government (can't remember doing what), he was very into socialism and along with the rest of the new government strived to make an equal society - they did a lot for women (even creating a law that said that men had to help doing housework - not that it had much effect) they created anti-racism laws, increased education to stupiod levels, created an amazing health service (life expectancy higher than USA whereas before it was in the lowest in the world)
Che was killed (with the help of the USA)after trying to start a revolution in Bolvia.
So he became a hero. DIed young full of wonderful ideals.
The problem since has been that to keep to the socailist ideal is pretty hard when your neighbour wants to kill your precident and sets trade embargos on anyone who trades with you so apart from USSR cuba was pretty much cut off.
Also the government has been accountable for some terrible human rights breaches (freedom of speech, v.controlled economy, ropey legal system, big brotherish)
When I ws in cuba the feeling I got dfrom people was that they were pleased for what had been done but felt it was time to change and allow capatism into the country so that their levels of living and freedom to choose could rise.
god sorry about the essay.
Basically he robbed from the rich (and killed off a few of them)
gave to the poor,
died young
wore a fab hat and hence has made lots of money for capitalist pigs in the west!