One of the last remaining divides between the U.S. and Cuba was bridged Saturday, as leaders of the two countries met for the first time in a half a century.
President Obama met with Cuban President Raul Castro at an international summit in Panama on Saturday and emerged from the meeting saying it’s time for the two countries, long at odds, to “try something new.”
“We are now in a position to move on a path toward the future,” Obama said. He also said, “Over time, it is possible for us to turn the page and develop a new relationship between our two countries.”
The meeting, which Obama called “historic,” caps enmity between the two nations that predates the Internet, man walking on the moon and the Beatles hitting America.
The island country was taken over in a 1959 socialist revolution led by Raul Castro’s combat fatigue-wearing brother Fidel. Two years later, the U.S. backed an ill-fated invasion of the country, and later, the CIA tried to assassinate Fidel Castro, a fact that would not be revealed for years to come.
Perhaps most famously, the small island 90 miles off the coast of Florida nearly sparked a war in 1963 between the world’s two greatest nuclear superpowers, when the Soviets tried to place missiles in Cuba aimed at the American mainland.
The Obama administration recently loosened restrictions on the U.S.’s 30-year embargo against Cuba and allowed a broader swath of Americans to visit the island nation for the first time in decades. The U.S. is also reportedly set to remove Cuba from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.
But the Obama administration’s efforts have been sharply criticized by many conservatives and Republicans, who say the U.S. should not reopen relations with a government as oppressive as the Castro regime. Many Cuban exiles and emigres — and their children in the U.S. — have also spoken out against the thawing of the relationship.
“It’s ridiculous,” Sen. Marco Rubio told Breitbart in an interview published Saturday. The Florida Republican is the son of Cuban immigrants. “I don’t see how they can rationalize taking them off the [terrorism] list, other than the president’s desire to achieve a legacy issue that he’s the one that opened up Cuba and changed fifty years of policy.”
Obama said Saturday one of the first tasks at hand is for the two countries to open embassies in Washington and Cuba. Some Republicans in Congress have threatened to try to block that plan by, among other efforts, blocking the funding needed to restart embassy operations or blocking Senate approval of anyone whom the president might nominate to be ambassador to Cuba.
After Obama’s remarks Saturday, he and Castro shook hands, after which Castro spoke. The two men had shaken hands once before, in a brief, unplanned encounter at Nelson Mandela’s funeral in South Africa more than a year ago.
“We are willing to discuss everything but we need to be patient, very patient,” Castro said. He the U.S. and Cuba “might disagree on something today on which we could agree tomorrow.”
