Hello and welcome to our live coverage of Barack Obama’s historic trip to Cuba, the first by a U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge arrived in Havana by battleship in 1928.
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Monday’s bilateral discussion at the Palace of the Revolution was not the first meeting between Obama and Castro, brother of former president Fidel Castro, but this was the most meaningful by far.
Obama came to Havana hoping his visit would spur Cuba to offer gestures of good faith and meaningful change, undermining critics who accuse Obama of kowtowing to an authoritarian government.
America did not agree with how they ran the country. Civil rights advocates said there were signs of a crackdown on some of the most outspoken of them in advance Obama’s arrival, and authorities have not let up on their arrests of protesters who take part in weekly demonstrations. “I will raise these issues directly with President Castro”, he told the Cuban dissident group the Ladies in White in a March 10 letter.
He laid a wreath at the foot of a memorial to Cuban independence hero and poet José Marti, located in the center of La Plaza de la Revolución, a square as important and revered in Cuba as Moscow’s Red Square.
Shortly after his arrival, Obama delivered a speech at the reopened USA embassy in Havana, where he identified the visit as “historic”.
“This is an historic visit, and it’s an historic opportunity to engage with the Cuban people”, Obama said.
Obama is set to meet Cuban dissidents during his visit, a move our correspondent Newman said would have been considered “intolerable” by the government in the past.
Mr Castro has said Cuba will not waver from its 57-year-old revolution and government officials have said the United States needs to end its economic embargo and return the Guantanamo Bay naval base before normal relations can be restored.
A smiling Obama then emerged from Air Force One with his wife Michelle and their two daughters Sasha and Malia, clutching umbrellas to shield themselves from a warm afternoon rain shower.
US President Barack Obama stands near a portrait of Abraham Lincoln as he is guided on a tour of Old Havana.
The presidential trip to Havana is the culmination of a three-year effort to restore ties to the island, which sits 90 miles from Key West, Florida, but has always been off-limits for most American visitors.
“I applaud President Obama for making history by traveling to Cuba and moving relations between our two countries into a new era”.
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But Obama’s more practical goal is to do everything he can to make sure his Cuba engagement cannot be rolled back, even if a Republican wins the White House in the November 8 election. Also in Cuba with Obama is U.S. Rep. James McGovern (D-Worcester), long an advocate of opening relations with the regime.
