With Irreversible Improvements
The new era in U.S.-Cuba relations ushered in boldly and dramatically by President Obama will be tested when he leaves office in January, especially if Republicans claim the White House or if they maintain their majority in both houses of Congress. Yet...the revenge, economic and political motives that have dictated America's Cuban policy since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 will have trouble reversing or turning back Obama's fresh and popular imprimatur on the highly promising and nearby island. While a handful of self-serving Cuban exiles aligned with a handful of right-wing sycophants have benefited from using Cuba as a punching bag and piggy-bank for over half-a-century, Obama has sliced through their propagandized rationale and imposed a measure of sanity and decency to America's Cuban relations that will now be supported by an American pillar known as capitalism. Intimidation coupled with a media dominance of the Cuban narrative will now be confronted by U. S. businesses demanding to partake in the island's commercialism. Among the collateral benefactors, Mr. Obama hopes, will be the Cuban people who have long been punished by the world's superpower in the guise of overthrowing or just hurting Fidel Castro, that old anti-Mafia revolutionary icon who is just a few weeks shy of his 90th birthday.
This photo helps explain why a few anti-Castro zealots will have trouble, even in post-Obama America, dictating a Cuban policy designed to suit their revenge, economic and political motives. This is the Four Points Havana Hotel in the upscale Miramar section of Havana. This week -- the last week in June of 2016 -- it became the first U. S. Hotel to open in Cuba in 60 years. It's where the old Quinta Avenida hotel was located. With a lot of Yankee dollars, Four Points has already been updated into a jewel and America's Starwood Hotel and Resorts will close it for another couple months to continue the expensive refurbishing process. It will then open with a charge of only $249 per night for each of its 186 magnificent rooms.
This photo provides a peek inside the entrance to Havana's Four Points Hotel. It's the first of three Cuban hotels to be upgraded and operated by the world-renowned Starwood Hotel and Resorts brand.
The Cuban flag flying in front of its embassy in Washington for the first time since 1961, coupled with the American flag doing the same at its embassy in Havana, is an Obama trademark that might herald his legacy for decades and generations to come. Starwood Hotel and Resorts, American Airlines, Carnival Cruise Lines, MasterCard, and many other American businesses doing business in Cuba is now a trend with a brisk Caribbean wind at its back providing a momentum that will be hard to blunt in a capitalist society.
Yesterday USA Today reported that this luxurious Cyprus-based Celestyal Cruises ship will begin year-round trips to Cuba starting in 2017. The 25,000-ton vessel has been sailing to Cuba during winter months from Montego Bay, Jamaica, for the past three years but only with non-American passengers because of the embargo. But because of Obama, Americans will now be allowed to book passage and thus the company has added year-around cruises to Cuba. Earlier this year Carnival Cruises lines out of Miami began making twice-monthly cruises to Cuba in defiance of a five-decades-old ban due to the embargo.
Obama eased Cuba's "fear" of the United States.
And that was his starting point.
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