Cubans stunned by Kerry speech, but skeptical of change

Cuban TV carried the event live, broadcasting flattering biographical facts about secretary of state John Kerry and interviews with Cubans who praised detente with the US as a necessary and positive step for their country.

US Secretary of State John Kerry (C) stands with other dignitaries during the raising of the US flag over the newly reopened embassy in Havana, Cuba on August 14, 2015.

At a pageant-filled ceremony earlier Friday, he gave the cue to hoist the Stars and Stripes over the glass-and-concrete building on the Havana waterfront.

After Kerry finished speaking at the ceremony, Larry Morris, Jim Tracey and Mike East – the three now-retired Marines who lowered the U.S. flag to close the embassy in January 1961 – saluted and handed a folded flag to three Marine guards in crisp uniforms.

The US and Cuba are not “prisoners of history”, noted Kerry, adding that “Raul Castro and (US President) Barack Obama made courageous decisions”, referring to the decision to start a process for resuming and normalizing bilateral relations. “We do not practice torture”, a presumed reference to the U.S. military base at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay.

Meanwhile, critics of President Obama’s Cuba policy are sounding off.

The thawing in the Cold War conflict has been criticised by Obama’s conservative opponents.

Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said 50 years of the embargo have not secured U.S. interests in Cuba, but have disadvantaged American businesses by restricting commerce with a market of 11 million people just 144 kilometers from U.S. shores.

Citing the Cuban government’s continued arrests of anti-government protesters and dissidents, he said the Castro government had been “emboldened”, because it had yet to receive U.S. pressure to improve human rights. “In some ways all of my body of work has circled around this idea of cultural identity and negotiation of this sense of home”, said Blanco, the son of Cuban exiles who came to the U.S.in 1968 from Spain. The U.S. Embassy in Havana will be a hollow one, with the Cuban government limiting our diplomats the freedom of movement.

Friday’s flag-raising ceremony marks a milestone in the relations between the two nations, but tensions remain.

“Cuba may never be the same again, but I really believe if the Cuban people have the light of the Americans there then they will begin to get a chance to have a better life”, said Vesa.

His comments drew a firm riposte from Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, who defended Cuba at a news conference with Kerry and criticized the United States’ own record on rights, referring to racial strife and police brutality in America.

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

At the ceremony, Kerry called for democracy in Cuba, which is still run by dictator Fidel Castro and his family.

Trimpa Group also hired Luis Miranda, former White House director of communications for Hispanic media, and created the organization #CubaNow, which pushed for the policy change and the lifting of the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Cuba remains the target of a decades-old U.S. trade embargo that only Congress can remove.