White House spokeswoman Katherine Vargas said the retired Marines were being reunited “to raise the flag again … at the ceremonial opening of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba”.
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A Marine from Memphis who lowered the flag over the U.S. Embassy in Cuba for the final time half a century ago returned to Havana on Friday for a ceremony marking the embassy’s reopening.
“We are gathered here because our leaders made a courageous decision to stop being prisoners of history”, Secretary of State John Kerry declared.
“The United States will be able to do much more to protect and serve U.S. citizens in Cuba and encourage a better future for the Cuban people with an American flag flying over our embassy in Havana”, he said in a statement. And he says no one should “fear the ideas of other people”.
In Miami, Miguel Saavedra, who arrived in the U.S. from Cuba in the early 1960s as a teenager, helped organize a small protest Friday against the restoration of ties.
Before Kerry spoke, Rodriguez Parilla addressed the crowd, first in Spanish then in English, saying Cuba is open to increased cooperation with the United States but have some concerns.
But issues remain, with Cuban leader Fidel Castro blasting the US for not lifting its trade embargo.
President Obama and Democratic supporters, including Hillary Clinton, have said that the time has come to reopen ties with Cuba.
It was a few days into January 1961 when three Marines at the U.S. Embassy in Havana were given a sad task: Take down the American flag.
Kerry said that the United States hoped to inspire political change in Cuba, which is still a communist country, BBC reported.
The two countries were locked for decades in hostilities that outlived the Cold War.
“Cuba is not a place where there are acts of racial discrimination or police brutality that result in deaths; nor is it under Cuban jurisdiction the territory where people are tortured or held in a legal limbo”, Rodriguez said. The Cuban embassy in Washington, D.C., raised its flag on July 20. His latest article was published today, after three months of absence.
“It truly shows the administration’s priorities when there’s space at the flag-raising ceremony for business interests and anti-embargo lobbyists, yet there’s no space for Cuban dissidents”.
Opponents to restoring relations with Cuba have pointed to ongoing mass arrests and the suppression of opposition under President Castro. “Let’s put the past behind us, let bygones be bygones, that’s all nice, but this is not a two-way street here, it’s just a one-way street in full speed by the U.S. and nothing coming back”, said Nicolas Gutierrez.
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Josefina Vidal, Cuba’s head negotiator in the ongoing talks with the United States, was the highest-ranking Cuban official at the ceremony, and Kerry was not scheduled to meet with Raul Castro or his ailing older brother, revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
