U.S., Cuba end 5-decade chill, reopen embassies
Hundreds line up at Havana site; ‘Viva Cuba’ rings out in D.C.
HAVANA— After more than a half-century defined by mistrust and rancor, the United States oficially reopened its six-story embassy in the Cuban capital Monday, the culmination of many months of negotiations to overcome decades of historical enmity and to restore diplomatic relations between the two nations.
More than two years of effort went into restoring relations between Cuba and the United States, both public and private, yet most observers say they believe it will be many more years before mutual wariness fades.
A litany of questions have yet to be answered, including: Will the U.S. trade embargo that has crippled Cuba’s
economy be lifted, and if so, when? Will the Cuban government improve its human rights record and incorporate outsiders into the political spectrum? How much, and how fast, will the lives of ordinary Cubans, who earn $20 a month on average, improve?
But for now, the reopening of the embassy on the Malecón waterfront in Havana, previously used as an interests section, a limited diplomatic outpost, stands as the most concrete symbol yet of the thaw set in motion last year when President Barack Obama ordered the full restoration of diplomatic ties between the countries.
“It is sort of like a wedding,” said James Williams, the president of an advocacy group, Engage Cuba, which has been lobbying for improved relations. “You’ve spent all this time planning your wedding day, and fifinally you’re getting to see someone walk down the
aisle.”
“Now,” he added, “you have the rest of your life together.”
If Cubans are expecting bells and canapés to celebrate the nuptials, they will be sorely disappointed. The official celebration to inaugurate the U.S. Embassy will not take place until later in the summer, when Secretary of State John Kerry plans to visit, to formally raise the flag and install the new signage.
In Washington, however, shouts of “Viva Cuba” rang out Monday as Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, raised his country’s flag outside the newly reopened Cuban Embassy.
In Havana, a line had already formed at 6 a.m. along the side of the U.S. Embassy, a large building. Families clutched sheaths of paper as they awaited interviews and appointments with officials now operating under the auspices of an embassy.
Beyond the edge of the tidy line, hundreds more gathered in a small park awaiting their turn, and dozens more formed a separate line beyond that. For the first time in decades, U.S. Embassy personnel were managing the order of entrants, taking names, calling names, answering questions.
For now, though, the change was barely perceptible from the outside, arguably a metaphor for the state of Cuba itself.
Technically, there will be differences. Diplomats will be formally registered, and, for the first time since the embassy was closed, they will be allowed to travel freely in Cuba. They will be invited to state functions, too, like members of other diplomatic corps.
The U.S. government is supposed to ease access for Cubans entering the embassy and for the American Foreign Service officers inside, a State Department official said.
Obama, when announcing an end to the diplomatic freeze, eased travel restrictions, opened the door for more remittances to Cuba, and expanded the amount of goods that visiting Americans could bring home, like Cuban cigars and rum. In May, he removed the country from the list of nations that sponsor terrorism.
President Raúl Castro has spent the past five years, before the thaw began with the Obama administration, trying to jump-start the nation’s economy, ordering that hundreds of thousands of government employees be laid off, encouraging Cubans into self-employment and entrepreneurship, and creating a special economic zone in the coastal city of Mariel to attract foreign investment.
But many of these changes have been confronted with bracing realities. A farm program to encourage crop cultivation struggled because of regulations and a lack of reliable transportation, and the mass public-sector layoffs Castro promised never really materialized. Real estate overhauls that now allow Cubans to sell their homes have run into a problem that vexes just about every segment of Cuban life: a lack of supplies.
Often, these initiatives have been ensnared by the mentality that has both preserved and ossified Cuban life, one forged through years of anti-American sentiment that has defined the social, political and economic lives of Cubans. Letting go of that is not easy.
Castro has said that change will be slow, and that it will not come at the cost of stability or values. Again and again, what emerges is this: Cuba will change, yes, but at its own pace and with no apologies.
For many Cubans, that is reason enough for hope.
“The genie is out of the bottle,” said Carlos Alzugaray Treto, a former Cuban diplomat who is close to Castro and his brother Fidel, the country’s longtime president. “And once it’s out, you’re not going to be able to put it back in.”
Out of the bottle or not, life continues as usual in Havana. A number of Cubans know about the opening of the U.S. Embassy and have formulated opinions about what it will mean for them.
Some fear that Cuban culture could be lost, devoured by U.S. consumerism. But just as many, if not more, are fine with change if it means that they can earn enough to live on.
“For me, inequality is not a problem,” said Lázaro Borrero, 39, a journeyman worker who does a bit of construction, cooking and tobacco rolling to make ends meet. “If you earn $1 million a year, and I earn $1 a year, good for you.”
Change that will have an effect on the wallets of normal Cubans is, by some estimates, many years away. It will require the lifting of the U.S. embargo as well as what many Cubans refer to as the “internal embargo,” or the state impediments that exist in everyday life, from communications to buying groceries.
It will require change from within the Cuban system and adapting to economic norms that might require letting go of some of their control, experts say.
“Cuba has more of a challenge to change than does the United States,” said Ricardo Pascoe, a former Mexican ambassador to Cuba. “They’re going to have to open up one way or another.”