Military honor guard for Obama as Castro extends a formal greeting
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US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro met in Havana’s Palace of the Revolution yesterday for groundbreaking talks on ending the standoff between the two neighboring countries.
Obama, seeing Castro only for the third time in a formal setting, was the first US president in Cuba since 1928.
He was greeted by a military band at the Palace of the Revolution, a building put up after the 1959 revolution that turned Cuba into a communist state. He then sat for discussions with Castro in front of a backdrop of tall tropical plants and the two countries’ flags.
The United States has yet to lift its decades-old economic embargo on Havana.
But despite these differences, Obama and Castro say they are ready to bury their Cold War-era conflict and work toward a complete opening of relations.
Obama arrived in Cuba on Sunday on a trip that comes 15 months after he and Castro agreed to end five decades of Cold War-era animosity and work to normalize relations.
On the first full day of his visit, he laid a wreath in Revolution Square at the memorial to independence hero Jose Marti.
He moved on to the nearby Palace of the Revolution, where Castro and his predecessor, older brother Fidel Castro, have led Cuba’s resistance to US pressure going back decades.
Honoring a man whose writing is still read by young Cubans, Obama touched a wreath and signed a memorial book at the foot of a statue of Marti in the heart of Havana’s government district.
The moment began with a band from the General Staff of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba playing the Star-Spangled Banner.
Images of the event were broadcast on Cuban television.
Marti was a leading figure in Cuba’s battle for independence from Spain. He also ties the United States and Cuba, having lived for years in exile in New York, where he championed independence through his journal “Patria,” or homeland.
But he was not uncritical of his hosts, fearing that the “colossus to the north” would replace Spanish colonialism with its own and bristling at the racism shown by Americans toward Cuba’s Afro-Cuban population.
Marti died in Cuba in 1895 in a battle against the Spanish.
Secretary of State John Kerry said the Obama visit was “a historic moment,” adding that it was “pretty remarkable to hear the anthems here, side by side, in Havana with the president of the United States.”
After signing the memorial book, Obama walked across Revolution Square under the gaze of a mural of revolutionary icon Che Guevara to a meeting with Castro.
As Castro and Obama stood shoulder to shoulder before their talks, a military band played the Cuban anthem and then the US anthem.
After the music, the two leaders walked past a military honor guard with fixed bayonets.
The formal ceremony contrasted with Obama’s lower key arrival by Air Force One in Havana on Sunday. Castro did not meet the plane and there were no military honors.
Ahead of talks with Castro, Obama announced a deal that Google reached with the island. “One of the things that we’ll be announcing here is that Google has a deal to start setting up more Wi-Fi and broadband access on the island,” Obama told ABC News. He gave no other details.
Castro has said Cuba will not waver from its 57-year-old revolution. Officials say the US needs to end its economic embargo and return the Guantanamo Bay naval base to Cuba before normal relations can resume.
Obama has urged Congress to rescind the 54-year-old embargo but has been rejected by the Republican leadership. He now has both Democratic and Republican officials with him on his Cuba trip and hopes Congress may act after the November 8 presidential election.
One Cuban yelled “Down with the embargo!” during Obama’s tour of Old Havana. He responded by raising his right hand.
Asked about the potential for US companies to lose out to other countries in the Cuban market, Obama told ABC: “There’s no doubt that we still have some work to do, and part of that is bringing an end to the embargo that is currently in place.”
Today, Obama will deliver a speech on live Cuban television.
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