US Secretary of State John Kerry chaired here on Friday the formal ceremony of raising the American flag in the recently reopened US embassy in Cuba, after 54 years of animosity between the two neighbours.
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Kerry is scheduled to spend just 10 hours in Havana, during which time he is to meet with Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the most senior Catholic clergyman on the Communist-ruled island, and with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.
“We remain convinced the people of Cuba would be best served by a genuine democracy, where people are free to choose their leaders, express their ideas and practice their faith”, Kerry said.
Numerous invited guests took selfies by a new sign that read “Embassy of the United States”.
The majority of Cubans in Havana were born after the revolution, and the building that holds U.S. embassy staff was long considered the home of the enemy.
The three Marines who lowered the U.S. Flag down at the Embassy in 1961 were also on hand to watch it be raised once again.
Mr Kerry said that the current administration wanted to lift the trade embargo now in place on the island, though this is something the Republican-controlled US Congress has so far stopped from happening. The letter makes no mention of the reopening of the United States embassy.
High-ranking Cuban officials, US business executives and Cuban-Americans who pushed for rebuilding relations with Cuba gathered inside the former US Interests Section, newly emblazoned with the letters “Embassy of the United States of America”.
As a military band played The Star-Spangled Banner, they carefully raised the Stars and Stripes up the gleaming flagpole at 10:37 a.m., where it drooped in a hazy sky.
“There will be hiccups along the way but it’s a start”, he told reporters travelling with him on the whirlwind one-day trip.
The sunlit ceremony at the embassy overlooking the Malecon, the broad esplanade along Havana’s seafront, was a major symbolic step on a path that opened last December when President Barack Obama and President Raul Castro announced they would seek to normalize ties.
He said during the war the US kept its territory and industries, and the richest and most well-armed country on earth, while other countries counted their dead. Cuba’s future, he said, “is for Cubans to shape”.
Cuba have said that relations will be fully restored once the embargo is lifted.
Not on the guest list, dissidents in Havana.
The United States for its part says Cuba owes $7 billion to American citizens and companies whose property was seized after Castro came to power. Only a little more than half of people in Mexico approve of the renewed relationship between Cuba and the U.S. and of the U.S. ending its trade embargo.
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Washington imposed a full trade ban against Cuba in 1962.
