President Barack Obama addressed the Cuban people from an iconic theater in Old Havana on Tuesday, promising a new chapter in the history of the Western Hemisphere.
“I am here to bury the last remnants of the Cold War in the Americas. I am here to extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people,” Obama said.
But Obama also made clear there were still serious issues that need to be resolved before he can convince Congress to lift the 54-year-old embargo.
“The differences between our governments over these many years are real and important. I’m sure President Castro would say the same thing,” he said, acknowledging Cuban President Raul Castro, who watched the speech from a box seat. “It’s time to lift the embargo,” Obama said, followed by sustained applause in the 1,500-seat theater.
But the applause was more subdued when he continued that “even if we lifted the embargo tomorrow, Cubans would not benefit from that change without changes here in Cuba,”
That statement received approval only from the corners of the theater, as Obama urged Cuba to eliminate its two-currency system, recognize free speech and religious freedom, and allow access to the Internet on all parts of the island.
Obama’s speech carried with it more than a century of historical baggage.
He acknowledged that U.S. battleships crossed the Florida straights to exert control over Cuba, while Cuban revolutionaries came the other way.
He called the U.S. and Cuba “shadowboxers in a geopolitical struggle.” “Havana is only 90 miles from Florida, but for us to get here, we had to travel a great distance, over barriers of history and ideology,” he said,
Obama’s keynote address in Cuba was also littered with cultural references — from poet Jose Marti, writer Earnest Hemingway, baseball great Jackie Robinson and singer Gloria Estefan. Obama said the United States and Cuba were “like two brothers who have been estranged for many years, even though we share the same blood.”
He portrayed the United States as an example for a Democratic Cuba, but noted that democracy can be frustrating and messy. But he noted — to the clear approval of the audience — that the current presidential race had featured two Cuban-American Republicans running against a woman and a Democratic socialist.
Obama spoke at the Great Theatre of Havana, built in 1838 and home to the Cuban National Ballet. It’s the same place that President Calvin Coolidge — the last U.S. president to visit Havana — told a Pan-American Conference in 1928 that “all of the Americas have an eternal bond of unity, a common heritage bequeathed to us alone.”
Dozens of U.S. members of Congress attended the speech. The speech to the Cuban people was nationally televised to the 11 million Cuban people on the communist-controlled island.
But just as important, Obama advisers said, are the 1.6 million Cuban-Americans back home, many of whom are skeptical of Obama’s warming of relations to the Castro regime that caused many of their families to flee the island over the last half century.
Obama aides said the speech may be the single most important event in the already history-making trip.
