Cuban Americans in Biloxi react to US flag being raised in Cuba

The U.S. flag waves outside the newly opened U.S. Embassy, near a Cuban flag overlooking Havana’s seaside boulevard, the Malecon, in Cuba, Friday, August 14, 2015.

Three marines who lowered the American flag for the last time on January 4, 1961 will raise it again during Friday’s ceremony in Havana. He says that without making demands on Cuba, the situation is going to get worse for Cuban citizens.

With regard to the US economic, financial and trade blockade for over 50 years on Cuba, he said, “The embargo has always been a two-way street”.

“We will continue to urge the Cuban government to fulfill its obligations under U.N. and Inter-American human rights covenants – obligations shared by the United States and every other country in the Americas”, Kerry said.

Addressing his audience in English and Spanish, Kerry recounted decades of U.S.-Cuba relations “suspended in the amber of Cold War politics” and urged the Cuban government to usher in a new era of freedom.

Bemused tourists and locals soon flooded Saint Francis of Assisi Square as Kerry took in the UNESCO World Heritage Site after giving a joint press conference with his Cuban counterpart. Secretary of State Kerry met with dissidents at a separate reception later Friday. In 2002, former President Jimmy Carter addressed Cubans in an unprecedented hour of live, uncensored television – telling them their country did not meet global standards of democracy and repeatedly promoting a grass-roots campaign for greater civil liberties.

“I think the biggest suffering and the biggest pain as a Cuban-American is the suffering of families”, he said.

University at Buffalo Professor Henry Taylor told Sputnik that President Obama has been freed from the burden of re-election, which has allowed him to pursue “long coveted” policies such as healthcare reform. Human rights groups say regular, short-term arrests and beatings of the government’s critics seek to intimidate dissent. Cuba’s future, he said, “is for Cubans to shape”.

The two countries formally restored diplomatic ties on July 20, when Rodriguez attended the opening of the Cuban embassy in Washington.

“The leaders in Havana – and the Cuban people – should also know that the United States will remain a champion of democratic principles and reforms”, Kerry said.

Putting a symbolic capstone on the United States’ historic rapprochement with Cuba, Kerry gave the cue to hoist the Stars and Stripes over the glass-and-concrete building on the Havana waterfront.

But he also warned that the United States would not stop pressing for political change in Cuba. “It would be equally unrealistic to expect normalizing relations to have a transformative impact in the short term”, he said.