5 decades later, US-Cuba diplomatic ties restored

For the first time since 1961, the Cuban red, white and blue flag will fly over Havana’s newly upgraded embassy in Washington, just a stone’s throw from the White House.

The flag-raising at Cuba’s current Interests Section building on Washington’s tony Embassy Row will symbolize the restoration of US-Cuba diplomatic relations.

More than 500 people will attend the Cubans’ festivities in Washington, including members of Congress.

Workers were expected to hang the Cuban flag in the State Department lobby on Monday alongside other nations with which the USA has diplomatic relations.

In what will mark a foreign policy legacy for US President Barack Obama, he and his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro agreed on December 17 to end their estrangement and put their countries on track towards a full normalisation of ties.

Obama – who was born the year the U.S. embassy was closed, in 1961 – then hailed the deal as a “historic step forward” that would end a failed and archaic U.S. policy of isolating the island.

Obama’s efforts at engagement were frustrated for years by Cuba’s imprisonment of U.S. Agency for worldwide Development contractor Alan Gross on espionage charges.

The Cuban Interests Section in Washington switched its Twitter account to say “embassy”, one of a series of similar changes being made to the two country’s social media accounts.

It will take a long time to win over the proponents of that view, as well as soothe anger over compensation claimed for property owned by Americans and which were seized in Cuba’s 1959 revolution.

Roger Noriega, an American Enterprise Institute analyst and a former USA ambassador to the Organization of American States, also expressing concern about Cuba’s human rights record, said “I think we have had to lower our standards in order to raise our flag in Havana”.

Both countries maintained a diplomatic mission in each country, referred to as an “interest section”. “Greetings from the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba”.

The Cuban government plastered propaganda around the building, including one iconic sign that showed a fatigue-clad revolutionary telling a hissing caricature of Uncle Sam, “Mister imperialists, we are not the least bit afraid of you!”

Since 2011, the highest flooring homes an intimate bar, accessible by invitation exclusively, which bears the identify of the U.S. writer Ernest Hemingway, who lived in Cuba.

Washington also wants to ensure the return of several American fugitives wanted in the US.

“As an Interests Section, we were kind of radioactive for Cubans”, Caulfield said. The two first met in April during the Summit of the Americas in Panama, where they worked on normalizing relations and reopening the embassies.