Fifty years after the Cuban missile crisis, Havana remainsvirulently hostile to the United States, which reciprocates by maintaining acrippling economic embargo against the communist-ruled island. Despite thepassage of time, official speeches from the Castro regime and state-controlledmedia still refer to the superpower 145 kilometers across the Florida Strait as"the enemy" or "the Northern empire."
The "blockade," as Cubans describe the US economicand financial embargo imposed by Washington since February 1962 before theMissile Crisis, remains the main obstacle to any normalisation. Fidel Castrosuffered a health crisis in 2006 and delegated duties to his brother Raul.Despite some loosening of rules on property ownership and business, the regimehas kept a strong grip on the reins of power. Cuban officials insist that theembargo, enshrined in US law and condemned annually by an overwhelming majorityof UN members, has already cost this island nation of 11 million people morethan $100 billion. "It is the main cause of our country's economicwoes," Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said.
In addition, since 1982, the US State Department has addedCuba to its list of "state sponsors of terrorism," alongside Iran,Syria and Sudan. The US naval station at Guantanamo, under "perpetuallease" since 1903 in the southeastern corner of the country, is also apainful affront to Cuban nationalism. In 1962, the end of the embargo and thereturn of Guantanamo were already two key demands by then Cuban leader FidelCastro for a withdrawal of the Soviet missiles, deployed at the height of theCold War. The Soviet deployment was in response to the stationing of USintermediate-range missiles in Britain, Italy and Turkey capable of strikingMoscow with nuclear warheads.
But despite the chill, the two countries maintain ties. Theembargo has not prevented the United States from being Cuba's seventh largesttrading partner, mainly thanks to export waivers extracted by the powerful USagribusiness sector. Although diplomatic relations were broken off in 1961, theUnited States maintains an "interests section" housed in the Swissembassy, the largest diplomatic contingent in Cuba. Havana charges that the USinterests section's main mission is to bankroll what it describes as the"mercenary" domestic opposition.
Over the past five decades, hundreds of thousands of Cubanshave emigrated, most of them to the United States, now home to 1.5 millionCubans and their descendants. Last year, an estimated 400,000 Cubans Americansvisited Cuba, each instilling a bit of US culture, especially among the young. "Ifpoliticians from both countries refuse to change their policy, thesepeople-to-people exchanges will eventually lead to warmer bilateral ties,"a western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, concluded.
