Klobuchar on the State Department plane headed to Cuba with Senator Flake (left), U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont, middle) and Secretary of State John Kerry (right).
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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry chaired here on Friday the formal ceremony of raising the American flag in the recently reopened U.S. embassy in Cuba, after 54 years of animosity between the two neighbors.
While Kerry said the US would not alter the Cuba Adjustment Act (the Wet Foot, Dry Foot policy), which promotes most times risky migration of Cubans into the US, Rodriguez said instead of politicising migration, Cuba and US should support cultured migration where human rights were respected knowing that freedom of travel was a fundamental right.
The Obama administration has faced months of criticism in the US over its decision to normalize relations with the Castro government. Things took a twisted turn during the Bush regime, however, when the U.S. turned the building’s facade into a billboard that broadcast pro-democracy messages in Spanish.
“It would be great if everything said were actually accomplished”.
“Cuba isn’t a place where there’s racial discrimination, police brutality or deaths resulting from those problems”, Rodriguez said. Therefore, communist government understood that American embargo and the isolation of Cuba’s economy must be managed in a way that the revolutionary ideals could be preserved by Cuba’s new generation that no longer remembers why or how the two countries became enemies. Every year, thousands of people from other countries, mainly Canada and Western Europe, go to Cuba as medical tourists, often because the treatment is less expensive there or because long waiting periods abound in their native country.
Mr Kerry described the hoisting of the flag as a “historic moment” speaking during the ceremony on Friday.
Cuban dissident Antonio Rodiles is not holding his breath.
“Yes, that’s positive for the cause”, he said.
Do you think he will close the Cuban embassy in Havana? No!
Others watched it all at home or at work. The issue of compensations is of fundamental importance to Havana because of American claims for the Cuban property confiscated after the revolution of 1959.
The trade embargo imposed on Cuba in 1961 remains in effect.
“With a salary, I can’t sustain myself”.
But a crowd of cheering, flag-waving Cubans proved more colorful, including one man who showed his enthusiasm by wearing American flag shorts and a matching sleeveless T-shirt. Many see a country in disrepair with limited communications and very little economic opportunity. “We’re not sure what we can say anymore without getting in trouble”. Cuba needs to balance the economic, social and political situation with the rest of the world and not be dominated by the US.
“Right now the Saudis, the Russians and we have sat together and tried to define whether we can find agreement on who the opposition is”, he noted.
The former diplomat told KSBY he now hopes to lead an educational tour group to Cuba in the near future. “The US”, said Melanio Martinez, 79.
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.
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Among the invited guests for the brief ceremony on the plaza outside the embassy was Havana’s Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino. But Cuba’s government refuses to cash the checks, made out to a nonexistent treasurer, because it sees the U.S. occupation of Guantanamo as illegal. “This is a population of seniors”.
