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The Future of U.S.-Cuban Relations

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In the process of restoring U.S.-Cuban relations, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will travel to Cuba in March 2016. He will be the first American President since Calvin Coolidge in 1928 to visit Cuba.

The President’s trip will be a huge step toward changing policies that are rooted in the Cold War.  In 1960, Fidel Castro signed a trade treaty with the Soviet Union.  In 1961 President Dwight D. Eisenhower severed diplomatic relations in order to oppose Castro’s communism regime, which the U.S. worried could infiltrate the western hemisphere. Severing relations marked an end to America trying to resolve its differences with Castro’s government through diplomacy.  Cuba is only 90 miles from Florida, but for the past 55 years this distance has been insurmountable as the United States isolated Cuba politically and economically.

But, today President Barack Obama is working with  President Raúl Castro of Cuba to re-establish relations. This effort began in 2015 when  the U.S. restored diplomatic relations and Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Cuba to raise the American flag over our Embassy (which had been closed in Cuba since 1961). In addition, there have been recent changes in U.S. policies and regulations allowing for greater travel and commerce between our countries; this month the United States and Cuban governments reached an agreement that will restore direct flights between our countries for the first time in over 50 years.

 

 

Next President Obama will travel to Cuba. The hope of the White House is to open up more opportunities for U.S. businesses and travelers to engage with Cuba, and the White House hopes that the Cuban government will also open up more opportunities for Cuban citizens to benefit from that engagement.  President Obama hopes that “ultimately we believe that Congress should lift an embargo that is not to advancing the Cuban people’s individual well-being and human rights.”  At the same time, the President hopes that normalized relations between America and Cuba will lead to progress on human rights for Cuban citizens, such as freedom of speech and assembly, those rights that are seen as universal rights. President Obama plans to further discussions on these matters with President Raúl Castro.

The President’s message is that “Yes, we have a complicated and difficult history with Cuba. But we need not be defined by it.”

 

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