The flag which came down on January 4th 1961, will go up again today. The Havana US embassy reopens in the building it left on that day. Since 1977 it has been simply the “US Interests Section”.
But Cuba remains, if not frozen out entirely, still in the Cold War space . A market of more than 11 million people is still largely off limits to most US companies although foreign firms have been rushing in to take advantage of the thaw. It is still the only country US citizens are barred from visiting as tourists though attempts are being made in Congress to lift the remnants of sanctions and allow free travel – a recent poll found 72 per cent of Americans support ending the embargo imposed in 1962. It is a view shared now even by a majority among traditionally militant anti-Castroite Cuban-Americans.
It has been an issue in the US presidential election too, with this week Hillary Clinton criticising two of her Florida Republican opponents Governor Jeb Bush and Senator Marco Rubio for their refusal to recognise the real benefits of diplomacy over sterile confrontation. That debate is in itself a measure of how the terms of a once-toxic debate have been transformed.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, the first since 1945 to visit Cuba, will today oversee the ceremony that marks the welcome recent restoration of diplomatic relations by Barack Obama. They had been severed on that day in 1961, three months before the failed, CIA-orchestrated Bay of Pigs invasion by US-armed Cuban exiles, ushering in a period of mutual bitter hostility, economic war, the flight of countless refugees, and espionage and counter-espionage, best exemplified by what the Cubans claim were up to 600 US attempts to kill Fidel Castro.
Kerry emphasises that in his meetings with the Cubans today, although dissidents will not be present, human rights will be centre stage.
Obama’s landmark decision, importantly, is also helping to restore battered US relations in the region where the Cuban embargo has long been a running sore.