WASHINGTON (AP) — American officials say the U.S. and Cuba will start talks to normalize full diplomatic relations as part of the most significant shift in U.S. policy toward the communist island in decades.
Officials say the U.S. is also looking to open an embassy in Havana in the coming months. The moves are part of an agreement between the U.S. and Cuba that also includes the release of American Alan Gross and three Cubans jailed in Florida for spying.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, said the agreement includes normalizing banking and trade ties with Cuba.
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Wonderful news. Fantastic. Why we’ve let a small band of right-wing dead-enders control our relationship with Cuba over the years mystifies me. Our policy was bad for us, and worse for the Cubans.
Though I hope this doesn’t mean that Cuba will soon be overrun by, say, McDonald’s.
It’s time to do this. I just hope that Cuba is able to keep US corporations like McDonald’s and Starbucks the F&*k out of their country. I’ve visited there once a few years back and have not desire to see it turned into a little piece of Americana.
It’s a wonderful enough place as it is and will better if living standards can be raised without trashing the place.
What I worry about is the second- and third-generation descendants of Cuban refugees from 50+ years ago who’ve lived their entire lives in the United States, never set foot on Cuban soil, now demanding to have “their” property in Cuba returned to them. The Cuban people who actually, you knoww, live in Cuba were fncked over by Bautista, fncked over by the Castros, and now they’ll get fncked over by the Little Havana crowd.
My thoughts exactly. In ways I cannot state here completely because it would be the world’s longest post.
One of my main issues deals with who actually came to the U.S. from Cuba when Castro initially took over in 1959. In the 1960s the Cubans who immigrated predominated among the upper (and near-white) classes of individuals, leading to a vastly distorted notion of the makeup of the Cuban population, which has far more African ancestry in their overall population than, say, Puerto Rico. The “Mariel Boat Lift” of the early 1980s featured more diversity but this was overshadowed by the presence in this group of individuals with severe criminal and mental health issues.
The normalization will open American eyes to a more balanced view of the Cuban population. In addition, the Cubans themselves will be more likely to have outlooks which conform more with those of other Latinos, as opposed to persons like Cruz, Castellanos and Rubio.
Change We Can Believe In.
I echo all the positive sentiments in this thread.