US State Secretary Reopens Embassy in Havana

In remarks at a flag-raising ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, Kerry says “I want to sincerely thank leaders from throughout the Americas who have long urged the United States and Cuba to restore normal ties”.

From left, retired marines Gunnery Sergeant Francis “Mike” East, Gunnery Sergeant James Tracy, and Corpral Larry Morris presenting the United States flag to Marines now stationed in Cuba, during the raising of the United States flag over the newly reopened embassy in Havana, today.

In a historic moment, the US raised its national flag at its new Embassy in Cuba after a gap of over five decades, marking the end of one of the last vestige of the Cold War.

But he also warned that the US would not stop pressing for political change in Cuba. This is lame. Inviting the dissidents would be a demonstration to Raúl and Fidel Castro of what the flag stands for: people freely choosing their leaders, a pluralism of views and a public engaging in the institutions and traditions of a healthy civil society.

They include the full lifting of the “blockade” – or economic embargo – that the US has maintained on Cuba since 1962 and the return of the “usurped” Cuban territory of the American navy base at Guantanamo Bay, he said.

He said in a phone interview he hopes his new poem will spur Cubans to reunite emotionally after years of separation due to politics, travel restrictions and an economic embargo.

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.

That’s when the US had cut diplomatic ties with Cuba. Alzugaray is a Cuban diplomat and educator.

However, he reiterated Havana’s demand to re-establish relations with the United States, which have been ruptured more than 50 years ago.

At the reopening of the Cuban embassy in Washington last month, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parilla noted the differences remaining between the two countries.

Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio is the son of anti-Castro Cuban immigrants and he’s blasting the Obama administration’s decision to reopen the embassy in Havana. Only a little more than half of people in Mexico approve of the renewed relationship between Cuba and the U.S. and of the U.S. ending its trade embargo.

Kerry is the first secretary of state to visit Cuba since 1945.

His family still lives in the communist country with which the U.S. recently restored diplomatic relations after 54 years.

“We were unsettled and uncertain about the future, because we didn’t know when closing our eyes at night, what we would find when we woke up”, Kerry recalled gravely.

Kerry has rejected criticism that Cuban dissidents were not invited to attend the morning embassy ceremony, describing it as a “government to government event”.