After President Obama moved on his own to normalize relations with Cuba, White House officials told reporters they were confident that the thaw between the countries would result in positive change in Cuba. How’s that working out?
Not well. Political dissidents were rounded up before and after Obama’s visit last month. The Columbia Journalism Review noted that last week’s Communist Party Congress was “a particularly opaque affair, even by Cuban standards. Raúl Castro emphatically rejected new reforms during the opening speech.” “Julie Martinez,” a Havana secretary who asked that her real name not be used, told the Financial Times: “The same [80-year old] leaders and the same [lack of] reforms. . . . Am I supposed to wait till I’m their age to see some real change?” – Spencer Irvine, AIM.com
John Fund- April 22, 2016. After President Obama moved on his own to normalize relations with Cuba, White House officials told reporters they were confident that the thaw between the countries would result in positive change in Cuba. How’s that working out?
Consider the following three examples of U.S. interests’ kowtowing to the Cuban regime, and discriminating against Cuban Americans, in just the last month.
D’Rivera quickly smelled a Castro rat, and expressed his belief that Cuban officials had intervened and tried to have him banned. In February, he had told the Miami New Times that Obama’s openness to Cuba would result only in “cosmetic” changes, mostly improvements in the Cuban elite’s access to the West: “Maybe now, some people, some elites, have the chance to go play with American musicians, like Wynton Marsalis going and playing there . . . but that doesn’t change much.”
After his rejection by the White House, D’Rivera wrote an open letter to President Obama objecting to his exclusion:
Sanchez told El Nuevo Herald this week that he believes he will win the right to stay by filing an appeal, but that he is prepared to leave his adopted land and return to Cuba.