How things have changed between US and Cuba

By Louis A Perez Jr/Tribune News ServiceUS and Cuban diplomats are meeting this week to re-establish diplomatic relations, and Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro chatted amiably in Panama last month. It’s a remarkable turn of events given the two countries’ history.Demonising Fidel Castro has been an American obsession ever since the Cuban Revolution. As far as Americans were concerned, all of Cuba’s troubles were his fault. “It is Castro who is the issue,” pronounced New Hampshire Senator Robert Smith in 2000.Raul Castro picked up the role of American bogeyman when his brother stepped down. The vilification of Fidel and Raul meant, to American politicians, that Cuba lacked leaders with the minimal moral credibility necessary to negotiate in good faith. The Castro brothers were so irredeemably contemptible that US officials would not risk even being seen with them.So, in 1994, at the inauguration of South African president Nelson Mandela, CNN correspondent John King recalled that vice president Al Gore “literally ducked his way behind aides and ducked his way into doors to avoid Fidel Castro”.President Clinton was obliged to explain an unexpectedly awkward moment at the UN in September 2000.“I shook hands with a giant Namibian official, who towered over me,” he later narrated. “He then moved on, revealing a last greeter who had been invisible behind him: Fidel Castro. Castro stuck out his hand, and I shook it.”The Clinton-Castro handshake was initially denied by the White House, then subsequently, grudgingly, confirmed. The Clinton administration quickly moved into damage-control mode. “It was a momentary exchange. It was nothing substantive,” White House spokesman Joe Lockhart reassured the press corps. The New York Post was not mollified. “Bill Clinton shakes hands with the murderer Fidel Castro,” the Post wrote the following day.Hillary Clinton recalled a reception she attended in South Africa as first lady. “One of my challenges that afternoon was Fidel Castro,” who wanted to meet her, she recounted in a 2003 memoir.State Department officials “told me to avoid him at all costs, since we had no diplomatic relations with Cuba, not to mention a trade embargo”, she continued. “I frequently looked over my shoulder during the reception, watching for his bushy gray beard in the crowd of faces. In the middle of a fascinating conversation with somebody ... I’d suddenly spot Castro moving toward me, and I’d high-tail it to a far corner of the room. It was ridiculous, but I knew that a single photograph, stray sentence or chance encounter could become news.”Chance encounters between US and Cuban officials are no longer news. And encounters are no longer chance - they are planned as public events.It’s about time. Rumours swirl that US Secretary of State John Kerry will soon visit Havana. We’ve come a long way in just a few months.♦ Louis A Perez Jr is the J Carlyle Sitterson professor of history and director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of several books on Cuba. Readers may write to the author at: Progressive Media Project, 409 East Main Street, Madison, Wis. 53703; e-mail: pmproj@progressive.org