'Obama put Castro on the carpet': Cuban Americans' verdict on watershed visit
|
Version 0 of 1. They gathered to watch in homes, restaurants and offices. Traffic along Calle Ocho, the main thoroughfare of Little Havana, became noticeably lighter and all work was dropped as groups of people crowded around TV sets to witness this piece of history. For many in Greater Miami’s Cuban American population of more than 1 million, Barack Obama’s speech in Havana on Tuesday was a watershed moment, a gauge of progress made – and a roadmap of the obstacles that lie ahead on the pathway to ending more than half a century of hostility. Across much of south Florida, every step of Obama’s trip to Cuba, the first by a sitting US president in over 80 years, has been closely watched and analysed. To the hardliners, including many of Miami’s Cuban-born elected politicians, his mere presence on the stage at El Gran Teatro de la Habana on Tuesday was an outrage, a betrayal by the leader of the world’s greatest democracy, who caved in to a communist regime charged with more than five decades of human rights abuses. Yet to an increasing number of Cuban Americans, many of whom have welcomed the tearing down of barriers and supported the president’s attempt to forge a new partnership with an old cold war foe, Obama’s speech and its themes of reconciliation and democracy resonated well. “I might agree or disagree with Obama’s approach of establishing new diplomatic relationships with Cuba, but I’m very proud to be Cuban American today,” said Andy Gomez, a respected expert in Washington-Havana relations who moved to Miami from Cuba with his family in 1961 in one of the first waves of exiles following Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution. “I thought it was an outstanding speech, an honest speech from his heart. A speech that called out the Cuban government. Two powerful points he made were when he said the principle of any revolution, American or Cuban, is to bring democracy to its people, and then when he said that human rights are universal. “He gave tremendous respect to the Cuban American community for what we have been able to build in the States, and at the same time making it very clear we have not forgotten the Cuban people back on the island, and their suffering.” Gomez added that he felt Obama had put Raúl Castro, the Cuban president, “on the carpet” with some of his remarks at a sometimes awkward joint press conference on Monday. “To do that, as he did at the press conference, made Raúl very uncomfortable. He made it a very clear point that the future of Cuba is in the hands of the Cuban people,” he said. “The rhetoric that the Castros have used against the United States has fallen to the wayside, they have lost the argument they have used. The ball is back in their court.” Many of Miami’s senior politicians, including Republican senator Marco Rubio and city mayor Tomás Regalado, had lambasted Obama for undertaking the trip, while congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen accused him of legitimising the Castro regime by sharing a platform with the Cuban president. But many in the Cuban American community no longer share that view, especially the younger generation born in the US to Cuban parents, and also an increasing number among the old guard who are increasingly open to Obama’s message of change. Santiago Portal, a 64-year-old who immigrated from Cuba in 1973, expressed his backing for Obama’s visit and speech, a public declaration of support that just a few years ago would have been unthinkable among his fellow patrons at Versailles, the famed Cuban restaurant and coffee house on Calle Ocho. “The most important thing in the world for the last 20 years is what the president is doing in Cuba,” said Portal, an inventor who works in alternative energy. “The people of Cuba and the people of the United States want to unite, we were never supposed to be enemies. I am very happy to hear the president speaking in Havana, it’s enough what the government of the US has done with the last 50 years,” he said, adding that he thought Obama’s speech was “inspiring”. “We have to do something different, take a different approach, and Obama has seen that,” he said. Sebastián Arcos, associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, said the speech stretched across the divide in opinion. “It was a good speech, a brave speech, he said things that the Castros needed to hear,” he said. “Most people I’ve spoken to who disagree with Obama’s presence in Cuba, myself included, agree it was good. He touched on many important topics, he emphasised the success of Cuban exiles. “He spoke of dissent, political assembly and stated clearly that the US is not an obstacle [to progress]. But there is a gap between the president’s policy and those who disagree that’s too wide to be filled by a speech. Beautiful speeches are not going to solve this problem, it’s more complicated than that. He will leave this afternoon and tomorrow Cuba will be the same.” Arcos added: “You cannot craft a foreign policy on hopes and expectations of what a speech will do, you have to do more than that. Yet it is an important step. Obama needed to prove he was willing to say certain hard truths in front of Raúl Castro and he did. “Obama was confident and comfortable and he looked open, young, and smart. Raúl Castro looked old, uncomfortable and authoritarian. It was a nice contrast.” Dr Gomez, a now-retired senior fellow of the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American studies and an expert analyst of the Obama administration’s transitioning of policy towards Cuba, believes that Obama already has the support of a majority of Cuban Americans in south Florida. But he does not believe the president was trying to win over the hardliners with his speech on Tuesday. “There will always be groups that will find ways to criticise, and they will continue to do so,” he said. |