Secretary of State John Kerry is headed to Havana to re-open the U.S. embassy there Friday.
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But it’s not the first time the Cuban government has clamped down on dissidents since December, when Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced the two countries would restore diplomatic relations after 54 years.
According to an Associated Press count that matches tallies by leading dissidents, more than 20 U.S. lawmakers have visited Cuba since February without meeting the opposition groups that were once obligatory for congressional delegations.
For her part, Ayler Gonzalez said that 52 members of the Ladies in White were in Gandhi Park, including their leader Berta Soler, as were another 39 dissidents and activists including political organizer Angel Moya, musician Gorki Avila and independent journalists Claudio Fuentes and Camilo Ernesto Olivera.
Thanks to an embargo with no teeth, along with $6 billion in revenue flowing to Cuba from recent Cuban immigrants who came to this country to escape the harsh realities of a failed economic system, the Cuban government has managed to keep the lid on its bubbling financial cauldron. That’s why we have this mask on. “Because it’s his fault”, he said. Previously, they were limited to the Havana area.
All were released after about four and a half hours in custody, the dissident group said.
“Around midnight we heard a lot of noise and we said what is this”, she recalled.
Roberta Jacobson, undersecretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, visited Cuba in January but only met with dissidents at the end of her trip.
Meanwhile, Washington was the dissident movement’s biggest benefactor.
The Obama administration says it’s normalizing ties with Cuba after greater than 50 years of hostility did not shake the communist state’s maintain on energy.
“Rather than negotiate with Cuba from a position of strength, the Obama Administration chose to give away too much up front in exchange for the regime’s empty promises of future discussions”.
“The issue of promoting democracy has been pushed to the background and instead the conversation is focused on promoting business opportunities and foreign investment”.
The small town of Playa Girón on Cuba’s southern coast has it all – pristine beaches, vibrant coral reefs and a laid back pace of life.
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The thaw has laid bare fresh disagreements in the opposition community, long weakened by its own internal divisions. The method has resulted in unilateral steps by Obama to ease the financial embargo on Cuba and final month’s formal upgrading of each nations’ pursuits sections into full-fledged embassies. Members of the Cuban-American congressional delegation also oppose additional funding to run an embassy.
