Eyeing New Future With U.S., Cubans Await Visit by Obama

HAVANA (AP) —
The seal of the United States of America is pictured outside the U.S. ambassadorial residence, where U.S. President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, their two daughters Malia and Sasha and the first lady's mother Marian Robinson are scheduled to stay during the first visit by a U.S. president to Cuba in 88 years, in Havana, March 14, 2016. Picture taken March 14, 2016. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini
The seal of the United States of America is pictured outside the U.S. ambassadorial residence, where President Barack Obama and his family are scheduled to stay during the first visit by a U.S. president to Cuba in 88 years, in Havana. (Reuters/Alexandre Meneghini)

Eyeing a new future with the U.S., Cubans are preparing their famed capital for a long-awaited visit by President Barack Obama, who will make history when Air Force One touches down in Havana.

Obama’s visit to the tiny island nation beginning Sunday will serve as a powerful symbol of the relationship that the U.S. and Cuba are now forging. For Obama, the 2½-day trip offers one of the last, best chances to advance the diplomatic opening with President Raul Castro before Obama leaves office early next year.

Ahead of Obama’s arrival, American flags were raised in parts of Havana alongside Cuban flags, an improbable image for those who lived through a half-century in which the U.S. and Cuba were bitter foes. Cubans were hard at work cleaning up Old Havana and giving buildings a fresh coat of paint, as the city buzzed in anticipation of Obama’s visit.

Yet while Obama remains a popular figure in Cuba, the jubilation that surged there in the early days of detente has been tempered by the absence of tangible improvement in most people’s lives. In a reminder of how tightly Cuban society is still controlled, the Castro government announced a virtual shutdown of Havana during Obama’s stay, and few Cubans expect to see him in person.

Still, the historic significance of Obama’s visit is impossible to overlook. Not in nearly 90 years has a sitting American president visited Cuba.

Obama will be closely watched for signs of how aggressively he’s pushing Cuba’s Communist leaders on the very issues that led the U.S. to isolate Cuba for the last half-century: human rights, democracy and economic reform. Though Cuban officials have warned Obama against meddling, the White House insists he’ll use his visit to speak directly to Cubans about possibilities for a different future.

To that end, Obama will meet with dissidents critical of Castro’s government. Aiming to show that Obama was traveling on his terms, the White House emphasized that Obama — not Cuba’s government — was deciding which dissidents would attend.

At home, Obama has faced intense criticism from some Cuban-Americans who see his outreach as a disgraceful embrace of a government whose practices and values betray much of what America stands for. That’s increasingly a minority view among both Cuban-Americans and the broader U.S. population.

Ahead of his trip, Obama further lifted restrictions on Cuba, easing travel restrictions for Americans and restoring Cuba’s access to the global financial system. Cuba, meanwhile, announced plans to lift a 10 percent conversion fee on U.S. dollars. And on Saturday, U.S. hotel chain Starwood signed a deal to renovate and run three Cuban hotels, returning American hotels to the island more than 50 years after Fidel Castro’s socialist revolution.

Yet supporters of warmer ties are concerned that as American travel to Cuba increases, the U.S. trade embargo that Congress has refused to lift will force American businesses to cede opportunities to competitors overseas.

“If we don’t lift the embargo, we’re going to be sleeping in European hotels and eating Chinese food,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., one of dozens of lawmakers traveling with Obama, said in an interview.

Illustrating the tensions surrounding the visit, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez rebuked Obama ahead of the trip for suggesting that he would use the visit to promote change. Invoking the 1959 revolution, Rodriguez said Cubans had already “empowered themselves decades ago.”

Two years after taking power in 2008, Raul Castro launched economic and social reforms that appear slow-moving but are lasting and widespread. Yet the Cuban government has been unyielding on making changes to its single-party political system and to strict limits on media, public speech, assembly and dissent.

While in Havana, Obama will attend a state dinner, honor a Cuban independence hero and meet with local entrepreneurs. His speech at the Grand Theater of Havana will lay out a vision of greater freedoms and economic opportunity, White House aides said.

 

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