Local Cuban community reacts to U.S. flag raising in Havana

Larry Morris, wait to present the U.S. flag to Marines now stationed in Cuba, during the raising of the U.S. flag over the newly reopened embassy in Havana, Cuba.

Secretary of State John Kerry presided over the official reopening of the U.S. embassy to Cuba under a blazing Caribbean sun Friday morning, declaring an end to “too many days of sacrifice and sorrow, too many days of suspicion and fear” over more than half a century of estrangement between the two countries.

The snub was a clear signal of the journey Cubans still face in finding changes in human rights, choices in leaders and the ability to speak freely about their country.

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

Cuba has long defended its style of government in the face of U.S. hostility and pressure to change since the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power.

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.

He told reporters afterward that diplomats would meet in the second week of September to set the agenda for wide-ranging talks on normalization, covering topics from maritime security and public health to the billions of dollars in claims and counterclaims stemming from Cuban confiscation of U.S. property and the subsequent U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. “After all, Cuba’s future is for Cubans to shape”.

At their news conference later, Rodriguez said Havana also had concern about human rights in the United States.

“On the basis of mutual respect and equality, and on the precondition that Cuba’s independence and sovereign integrity will not be encroached upon and its internal affairs will not be interfered in, our government has the full will to normalize relations with the United States“.

While some are happy about the renewed relations, some Cuban American leaders in South Florida are appalled. Cuba raised its own flag and upgraded its low-level mission in Washington to embassy status.

“Once again, the Obama administration’s fixation on collecting headlines by embracing and granting unilateral concessions to pariah states has not delivered real change in their behavior or improvement in the lives of their citizens”, Boehner said in a statement”.

Rodriguez believed the lifting of the economic blockade was essential for Cuba to have normal relations with the US, as was the return of the territory now occupied by the Guantanamo naval base. “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.

He noted that the Cuban constitution “recognizes freedom of speech and association”.