The relationship between the United States and Cuba continues to rapidly develop, with the US reopening its embassy in the communist dictatorship on Monday after some 55 years of severed relations.
“Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Cuba later this summer to celebrate the reopening of US Embassy Havana and raise the US flag,” the US embassy announced. “Details regarding the reopening ceremony will be provided in the coming weeks.”
The opening is another step in a series of events that began when President Barack Obama announced in January that the two nations would resume diplomatic talks.
Since then, Cuba has implemented wireless Internet service for its citizens, US cruise ships have received permission to travel there, and the country has been taken off America’s list of countries that allegedly sponsor terrorism.
However, political commentators say that a number of steps remain to be taken before the nations’ relationship is fully “normalised.”
“A litany of questions have yet to be answered,” wrote New York Times foreign correspondent Asam Ahmed on Monday. “Will the American trade embargo that has crippled Cuba’s economy be lifted, and if so, when? Will the Cuban government improve its human rights record and incorporate outsiders into the political spectrum? How much, and how fast, will the lives of ordinary Cubans, who earn $20 a month on average, improve?”
But for now, Mr. Ahmed concluded, the reopening of the embassy serves as the most concrete symbol yet of the two countries mending years of distrust.
In his story, Mr. Ahmed quoted a native of the US Virgin Islands who was born in Cuba: Lucia Nunez, the director of the Civil Rights Department for the government of Madison, Wisconsin, said she hopes the relationship between the country where she was born and the one where she was raised will continue to normalise.
According to Mr. Ahmed’s article, Ms. Nunez is taking a trip to Cuba this summer to see some of her family.
“[Ms. Nunez’s] mother, who has been back to Cuba only once since leaving [in 1961], missed the deaths of her brothers on the island,” he wrote.
The USVI native’s mother will see her sister for the first time in years, he stated, and her 19-year-old daughter will see her hometown of Guantanamo for the first time ever.
“I hope the normalcy of the relations – or whatever it is they are calling them – I hope it brings us closer to the family I used to have,” Ms. Nunez’s told the Times.
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