Raul Castro has stepped down as president and his brother Fidel is dead but US relations with Cuba are frostier than in years, with their reopened embassies nearly empty and President Donald Trump hinting at measures that could further lower the temperature.
A new Cuban president, 58-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel, took office on Thursday after decades of rule by the Castros since they toppled a US-backed dictator in 1959, nationalising US properties, allying with the Soviet Union and sending thousands of Cubans into exile in Florida.
The Castros were personally reviled by at least the older generation of Cuban-Americans, and some political analysts believe Diaz-Canel’s ascent to power will make it easier over time for US politicians to normalise relations.
In the short term, though, the path ahead looks rocky.
In his first speech as president, Diaz-Canel, a stalwart of the ruling Communist Party, clearly stated he intends to preserve the one-party socialist system.
Moreover, Castro, who will retain considerable political clout as head of the party, delivered a long parting speech in which he poured scorn on the Trump administration.
In turn, the White House was dismissive of the presidential change, saying the Trump administration did not see the Cuban people gaining greater freedoms and had no intention of softening its policy toward the government.
Trump took office last year promising to roll back Democratic former President Barack Obama’s policy of engagement, which included re-establishing diplomatic relations.
The Republican president made it harder for US businesses to invest in Cuba, while restoring some limitations on travel to the island that had briefly become a hotspot for American visitors for the first time in decades following Obama’s loosening of restrictions.
Trump’s latest choices for his foreign policy team — Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo and new national security adviser John Bolton — have advocated a hard line on Cuba and the president has hinted that a further roll-back of the engagement with Havana is on the cards. “We’re being very tough on Cuba because we want the people to have freedom,” Trump said last week in an interview with Spanish-language network Univision. “You’re going to see some very, very good things happen,” he said, adding that Bolton was “very strong on Cuba and Venezuela.” In a previous role in George W Bush’s presidency, Bolton included Cuba on an “Axis of Evil” list.
William LeoGrande, who co-authored a book on the secret talks that led to the 2014 detente Obama reached with Castro, said new sanctions “would not be a surprise,” but added that it was also possibly just more rhetoric.
At a Summit of the Americas in Lima this month, US Vice President Mike Pence said Cuba’s “tired Communist regime” denied its people basic rights, then walked out of the gathering.
In reply, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez decried a “moral vacuum” in the US government.
Such gestures take Cuba and the United States back to the familiar territory of their nearly six decades of hostilities.
It was a far cry from the last Summit of the Americas, held in Panama in 2015.
There Obama shook Castro by the hand as he unwound what he called a counterproductive US policy of trying to force change by isolating Cuba.
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