Protesters swarmed as Obama visits Cuba

• As Sunday-morning mass ended at Havana’s Santa Rita church, several dozen women in white Tshirts filed out, assembled in rows and began walking silently down the street. A block away, hundreds of uniformed security personnel and plain-clothed men and women stood waiting.

They met at the corner in a melee of shouting and manhandling. The women in white went limp on the pavement, shouting “Freedom, freedom, freedom!” and throwing leaflets into the air. The security teams half-dragged, half-carried them to waiting buses.

A number of men marching with the women were chased, thrown to the curb and handcuffed. As the buses drove away, the protesters lifted defiant fists through the windows while the plainclothed crowd chanted “This is Fidel’s street!”

The Sunday-morning demonstration of the Ladies in White dissident group is a regular occurrence in Havana. The size of the security force and the fact that the entire operation was conducted in front of international television cameras hours before the arrival here of U.S. President Barack Obama were not.

Obama landed in Cuba several hours later, a trip that took more than half a century to arrive only 150 kilometres from U.S. shores.

Stepping off Air Force One under drizzly skies, the president greeted several senior Cuban officials — but not its president, Raúl Castro. The Obamas, including the president’s wife Michelle, two daughters and his motherin-law, were greeted on the tarmac by Bruno Rodriguez, Cuba’s foreign minister.

Obama arrived amid high anticipation and anxiety on the island within both the Communist government and its political opposition. The government hopes the twoday visit will reap benefits without ceding control, while dissidents on the island want it to speed the pace of change.

For Obama, the trip is affirmation of his foreign policy vision and could encourage a generational change within the walls of one of America’s longest and most bitter adversaries.

Late Saturday, the Starwood hotel chain signed a mega-deal with the Cuban government to manage three hotels on the island, the first U.S. entrance into the tourist business here in more than 60 years.

On Sunday morning, Cubans crowded around their televisions to watch a hilarious phone conversation Obama taped Friday with the island’s best-known comedian.

“I’m looking forward to it,” a beaming Obama said of his upcoming visit here.

Hours later, the Ladies in White were attacked.