Cuba

Historic day in Havana

Only the Pope came, and now Obama. On Sunday, the US President arrives for a historic visit to Cuba. The process of rapprochement between the two former archenemies have become irreversible.

“The visit of Obama is a historic event for the population,” says Cuba expert Bert Hoffmann, Director of the GIGA Institute for Latin American studies. “The Older people say: ‘That I was able to do that yet!’”

For the first Time in 88 years on 20. In March, a state land head from the US to the Caribbean island. However, during the then US President Calvin Coolidge in 1928, arrived with a war ship to Cuba, want to be Barack Obama and Cuba’s President, Raúl Castro, now buried the hatchet.

In the run-up to the historic visit, there is no lack of symbolic Gestures. So Cuba, announced foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrila on 18. March on that the fee should be repealed on money transfers from the United States. The fee in the amount of ten per cent was introduced in 2004 by the government in Havana. Their abolition will increase the income of many Cubans who are from the Remittances of their Relatives from the USA financially dependent.

Scholarship for artists from Cuba

In the US, Cuba to receive American state citizens during your visit in the future, the permit, a regular work, you are allowed to open Bank accounts, and visitor grants. In addition, the postal traffic between the two countries has been resumed after 48 years.

“In Havana has happened in the last one and a half years more than in the previous five decades,” says Cuba expert Hoffmann. The influx of U.S. visitors to have to grow the economy, and the hope is that
this development further: more Internet, more dollars, more visitors.

Finally! In the Parque Fe del Valle in Havana, Cubans have access to the wireless Internet

However, from his previous course, Cuba has not yet solved completely: on Friday, Raúl Castro, Venezuelan President gave
Nicolas Maduro, the José Martí order, the highest award of the Communist government. Maduro had fought with “courage and intelligence” against the United States, signed a decree in which Venezuela as a threat to the United States referred to had been.

Stumbling Block Guantánamo

Despite all the spring feelings between Washington and Havana, the Cuban government remains in their claims. A is met: The U.S. has cancelled in may 2015 Cuba from its black list of States allegedly supporting terrorism. The end of the trade embargo, as well as the return of the US base in
Guantánamo.

“Raúl Castro must formulate maximum demands, he is the recipient of the Cuban Revolution,” by Bernd Greiner clear, from the Hamburg Institute for social research. It was clear, however, that this would not be a maximum of implemented claims a one-to-one, said the political scientist in the Südwestrundfunk.

Presidents Castro and Obama (on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September): Many of the symbolic Gestures

Greiner and Hoffmann agree that Raúl Castro is the key figure for a successful rapprochement between the two countries. “It is super important that Raúl Castro President welcomes Obama, and not his successor.” Otherwise have can all say “Fidel would have never done this”. So this would say to Raúl Castro in the name of the Revolution, “with all the historical legitimacy,” says Hoffmann.

Social Scissors

In Cuba itself, the critique of the growing social inequality is growing in all the euphoria about the economic and political Opening. Because while the restaurant operator or bar owner to earn tourist Dollars, teachers or Doctors in the country empty. “The cost of living is rising rapidly”, – stated in the opposition magazine “Convivencia”. “The violence is increasing and there is a lack of everything.”

The contradictions of the Cuban road are difficult to bear, is also the foreign observers, is clear. “For the government, the approach is not so easy, because the Cuban Revolution is legitimized by their position against the United States,” says Latin America expert Hoffmann. The internal political process of reform don’t go nearly as far as he would go. He was neither coherent nor transparent.

But Bert Hoffmann sees to relations with the US, no Alternative. “The US is the natural trading partner for practically everything. Havana is closer to Miami than Leipzig to Bonn!”, make it very clear. “The two million Cuban-Americans in the United States will bring more money to Cuba than the EU.”