Obama’s 2½ day visit starting Sunday will be a crowning moment for the ambitious diplomatic experiment that he and President Raul Castro’s government announced barely a year ago.
Advertisement
Rodriguez gave a lengthy list of complaints Havana has with the Obama administration, including the ban on Cuban government accounts in USA banks and a prohibition on direct US investment in Cuba. He said they will not stop pushing for the nation to accept the American values of democracy and respect for human rights. Though Obama has been rolling back restrictions on Cuba through regulatory moves, he has been unable to persuade Congress to lift the USA trade embargo, a chief Cuban demand.
Joined by his family, Obama will stroll the streets of Old Havana and meet with President Raul Castro.
But none of that will clear up the fog that has rolled into the minds of the exiles who have been waiting for decades to see real change in their homeland and will soon see a USA president there.
He will meet dissidents, entrepreneurs and deliver a speech on Monday, March 21 that will be broadcast live on radio and television. The cultural rock icons will perform a highly anticipated free, open-air concert in Havana on March 25, which will be filmed as part of their South American tour.
-Started high-level exchanges and visits between US and Cuban officials. Change will take time, and it is hindered by Republican opposition to lifting the trade embargo or returning Guantanamo to Cuba, even though no American politician would accept the presence of a foreign military base on United States soil. “Strengthening the Cuban economy would be the real game changer”, explained Rachel DeLevie-Orey, Latin America analyst, at the Atlantic Council. The sooner ordinary Cubans are exposed to democratic ideals through reading, the more backward the Castro regime will appear.
Havana traffic faces off with roadwork ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit. “But with Cuba, we tend to say ‘No, no, it won’t work there.’ But it will work”. She wonders whether this infusion of US cash and commerce will really end up in the hands of the Cuban people, and not the government. In the United States, he wants Congress to lift the embargo. The U.S. also is removing the requirement that American vessels maintain a higher level of security for access to ships while in Cuban ports.
Yet many Americans still see Cuba as president John F. Kennedy’s “imprisoned island”, synonymous with conflagration, communism and repression.
Advertisement
China is also leading the construction of internet infrastructure in Cuba, a market that the USA has been battling to enter.
