The U.S. embassy in Havana still looked like it did when it was shuttered in 1961, when Fidel Castro’s close relationship with the Soviet Union drove the United States to cut diplomatic ties with the island nation.
Advertisement
Secretary of State John Kerry called Friday for “genuine democracy” in Cuba as the American flag was raised over a US embassy in Havana for the first time in 54 years.
Hundreds of Cubans outside the embassy cheered as Kerry spoke, the United States Army Brass Quintet played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the flag rose alongside the building overlooking the Malecon seaside promenade. The event was broadcast on local television stations in Cuba.
“So I started thinking about that and how to make that something not about separation, but about unification.” he continued, “And so it’s the sea that separates us, but it’s also the sea that unites us”. “One of the things we negotiated is the ability of our diplomats to be able to meet with people in Cuba, and not to be restrained”, he said.
A vintage vehicle passes by a podium with the seal of the US Embassy in Havana where the Embassy opening and flag raising ceremony will take place on August 14, 2015.
“I wouldn’t want to miss it”, Marcos Rodriguez, 28, said as he waited outside the embassy.
That would be news to the U.S. travelers and businesses eager to engage Cuba on the same terms as the rest of the world.
Washington is also seeking to resolve billions of dollars in half-century-old American claims over property confiscated after the Cuban revolution.
“Cuba is owed compensation equivalent to damages, which total numerous millions of dollars, as our country has stated with irrefutable arguments and information throughout all our speeches at the United Nations”, Castro was quoted as saying, in a reference to Cuba’s economic hardship under the long- running U.S. embargo.
Poet Richard Blanco has been commissioned to compose and perform a poem at the reopening of the US embassy in Havana, Cuba.
After Raul Castro and US President Barack Obama announced in December that their two countries had agreed to restore diplomatic relations, it took Fidel Castro more than a month to express lukewarm approval for the historic reconciliation. As a compromise, dissidents and other Cubans were invited to the residence of the U.S. mission’s chief later in the day.
The seven-story building in Havana and Cuba’s mansion in Washington were closed from 1961 until 1977, when they reopened as interests sections.
Advertisement
Roberta Jacobson, undersecretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, visited Cuba in January but only met with dissidents at the end of her trip. “Then I think it’s very particular conversations begin”. Kerry is the highest ranking official to visit Cuba since the Eisenhower Administration severed diplomatic ties at the height of the Cold War.
