Speaking in Havana, Cuba Tuesday, President Obama said the United States will “do whatever is necessary” to bring the culprits behind the Brussels terrorist attacks to justice. “Havana is only 90 miles from Florida, but to get here we had to travel a great distance – over barriers of history, theology, barriers of pain and separation”.
Advertisement
He reiterated his call for the U.S. Congress to lift the economic embargo on Cuba, calling it an “outdated burden on the Cuban people” – a condemnation that was enthusiastically cheered by the crowd at Havana’s Grand Theater.
His speech was the high point of a 48-hour trip made possible by his agreement with Castro in December 2014 to cast aside decades of hostility that began soon after Cuba’s 1959 revolution, and work to normalize relations.
A White House official said earlier in the morning that counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco informed the president about the explosions in Brussels and that US officials have been and will continue to be in close contact with their Belgian counterparts.
Though stressing that he takes no part in government decisions, Alex said that Cuba’s position has been “clear” with respect to the changes that can occur with the normalization of relations with the United States.
Born in Havana in 1963, Alex Castro became his father’s personal photographer after studying for a technical career in the former Soviet Union, and, as he said in the interview, he has no political ambitions.
Asked what he thought about the president’s visit, Ryan said: “Not much”.
The issue of political prisoners is hugely important to Cuban-Americans and to the worldwide community. Obama said. “My dad wasn’t a Hall of Famer”.
Obama pointedly stopped short of what some of his critics had demanded – that he echo U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s famous exhortation in a 1987 speech in West Berlin for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
“You have two Cuban Americans in the Republican Party running against the legacy of a black man who was president while arguing that they’re the best person to beat the Democratic nominee who will either be a woman or a democratic socialist”, Obama said. Those words certainly must have irritated Raul Castro and his other government hosts and encouraged those Cubans who are working for political change on their island.
That was when Obama called for an end to the United States embargo of Cuba, a trade prohibition that’s strangled Cuba’s economy since it was imposed by the Eisenhower Administration in 1960.
President Obama’s speech to the Cuban people, delivered live from the Gran Teatro in Havana, presented both a risk and an opportunity.
Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump pointed out Raul Castro’s absence at the airport for Obama’s arrival, suggesting that the Cuban president had no respect for Obama. He was closing his visit by joining baseball-crazed Cubans at the Latin American Stadium for a game between the Tampa Bay Rays of Major League Baseball’s American League and Cuba’s national team.
Advertisement
“Forget all the politics – we are going to enjoy this as a game, nothing more”, Mendoza said.
