“It chips away at a more than half-century-old embargo policy that has hurt ordinary Cubans, put USA commercial interests at a disadvantage compared to those of other countries, and poisoned the U.S. relationship with the rest of the continent”. On the streets of Havana many Cubans who caught the president’s speech were jubilant.
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“We stand ready to provide whatever support the Belgian government may require”, Kerry said in the statement.
President Obama was referring to the first game at Fenway Park after the bombings in 2013.
The president’s critics at home have called his visit a premature reward to the Castro government. Cuba wants to Major League Baseball to work with Cuba to allow peloteros, or baseball players, play in both countries.
Throughout Havana on Sunday, people lined the streets as the USA president’s motorcade rolled by following his arrival, with crowds waving, cheering, blowing kisses and chanting Obama’s name.
President Obama on Wednesday joked that Republicans believe he would have turned the United States into communist Cuba if constitutional limits on power didn’t exist.
Obama’s last day in Cuba was shadowed by the horrific attacks in Brussels, where scores of people were killed in explosions at the airport and a metro station.
Even as Obama urged change, he pledged to Cubans that they had no reason to fear USA attempts to strong-arm them.
President Barack Obama concluded his groundbreaking trip to Cuba with a speech to the island’s people that celebrated democracy in the presence of Raúl Castro, leader of a decaying system of authoritarianism and control.
“Americans and Cubans share a love of baseball”, the White House said Tuesday.
On the last day of a landmark trip that has seen him press for democracy on the communist-run island, Obama hosted more than a dozen figures from Cuba’s embattled civil society, the White House said. Though Cuba has been criticized for briefly detaining demonstrators thousands of times a year, its practice of handing down long prison sentences has diminished dramatically in recent years. He praised their courage and said America’s own history is proof of how change can come.
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Among those who would take exception to that assessment would be die-hard Cuban exiles and their relatives, including Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz and former contender Marco Rubio, who want to keep the United States and Cuba mired in the Cold War. “Creo en el pueblo cubano”, he said, then repeating himself in English: “I believe in the Cuban people”. The Democrat candidates included Hillary Clinton, who could become the first female president of the USA, and Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist.
