Making Cuba More Modern

 Thanks, Mr. Obama!! 

         A quantity of high-quality photos this week courtesy of Designboom.com reveal how Cuba is trying to modernize after over a half-century of right-wing Americans and revengeful Cuban-Americans trying to pound it into oblivion. Reflecting positive results of President Obama's historic, decent and visionary attempts to normalize relations with Cuba, study the above photo on a street in Havana. The spanking new red auto on the right is an Audi Q2. The more typical, at least for Cuba, car on the left is a 1950s-era convertible, a product of Cuban ingenuity much admired around the world for keeping such dinosaurs functional after all these decades, even with the half-century American embargo that denies spare parts. 

       According to Designboom.com, the brand-new Audi Q2 is "the first new model car presented in Cuba in modern times." It perhaps is a harbinger of long-awaited better days ahead for Cubans on the island.

      A new car in Cuba has been an anomaly, till Obama! 

Tourists in a 1950s convertible eyeing the Audi Q2.

        President Obama has every right to applaud his brave and courageous overtures to the Cuban people. As the Designboom.com photos indicate, Obama's sane gestures toward Cuba improve the lives and hopes of Cubans while also enhancing the tarnished image of democracy and the United States.

      This modern and historic photo is courtesy of REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini. It shows Puerto Rican Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla in Havana this week. He is the first Puerto Rican governor in history to visit Cuba. Both Caribbean island nations were Spanish colonies until 1898 when the U. S. victory in the Spanish-American War put them under American dominance. Puerto Rico is now, of course, a U. S. Territory but Cuba has had its independence since the Cuban Revolution in 1959 ousted the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship. In Havana this week, Governor Garcia told Reuters journalist Marc Frank, "After meeting with Cuban President Raul Castro, I have begun the process of opening a commercial office in Cuba." As a U. S. Territory, of course, Puerto Rico would not be doing this and Governor Garcia would not have visited Cuba if it were not for President Obama's decent gestures toward the island. So, the positives still flow. 

But, so do some negatives:

         This Shutterstock.com graphic will float around the world today -- June 7th, 2016 -- and paint an unfavorable glow on both Cuba and President Obama's detente with Cuba. The image shows North Korean and Cuban butterflies commingling, an image neither Cuba nor Obama needs right now. The image is used to illustrate a major article by Samuel Ramani entitled: "The North Korea-Cuba Connection." Mr. Ramani stresses that "Havana's continued cooperation with Pyongyang is an alarming blow to the normalization process" and he also says it is "a highly pernicious blow to the prospects of U.S.-Cuban normalization." 

       

      Samuel Ramani is a respected journalist who gets wide coverage in print and online from venues such as The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, etc. He is a scholar at England's Oxford University and he is considered an international expert on post-1991 Russian foreign policy, with 1991 being the year that Cuba was drastically affected by the collapse of a key patron, the Soviet Union. Mr. Ramani is not considered anti-Cuban and he seems to support President Obama's attempts to normalize U.S.-Cuban relations. In the aforementioned article that will get wide-spread attention around the world starting today, Ramani suggests that President Obama and Cuba should be "embarrassed" by Cuba's seemingly warm ties to North Korea. I think it's a very fair-minded article and I agree with Ramani's conclusions.

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