Herald News: American flag to rise again in Havana

According to the Associated Press, Cuban dissidents will not be invited to the embassy event Friday morning with Kerry, a sign of the degree to which US officials are shifting their attention to conventional diplomatic efforts with the Cuban government.

Already, American businesses and interests have started engaging more in Cuba, CBS News Senior National Security Analyst Juan Zarate said Thursday.

Fidel’s birthday celebration comes the day before Secretary of State John Kerry and hundreds of guests and reporters converge on the newly opened US embassy to hoist the flag to begin a new era in US-Cuban relations. The need to separate these disparate factions shows how complicated diplomatic relations with Cuba remain. It officially took effect July 20.

Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro announced on December 17 that they would re-establish diplomatic ties 54 years after the flag was taken down from the embassy overlooking Havana’s seaside boulevard, the Malecon.

The Castro government will use Kerry’s visit to push for the lifting of the full embargo, in place since 1962.

Just on Sunday, protests were held around the United States to mark the one-year anniversary of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

Castro’s birthday fell on the eve of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip to Havana.

“Knowing that we are an embassy now is definitely something very big”, said Julio Llopiz who works at the public affairs office.

“My grandmother would’ve tried to make some money off this somehow”, laughs Cuban-American poet Richard Blanco.

The officials said that the President’s calculus in carving out certain sectors – health, agriculture, telecom and information – was that they could be justified within the President’s executive authority as humanitarian in nature and opening Cuba to the outside world.

The new policy is building trust and cooperation, and enhancing U.S. influence and commerce.

Third, rapprochement with Cuba will improve important bilateral relations with other Latin American states.

Three marines who lowered the American flag for the last time on 4 January 1961 will raise it again during Friday’s ceremony in Havana. Foreign entrepreneurs, for example, are prohibited from directly hiring Cuban employees-a disadvantage for firms that want to set up shop in Cuba. “And I think the reopening of the US embassy and the restoration of relations will modernize things even more and will bring more opportunities”, Karakaya said.

Piccone suggests that the Cuban government may not be all that eager to put out the welcome mat for U.S. companies.