HE MAKES fairly a warm-up act. The Rolling Stones will play a free concert in Havana on March 25th in front of an expected audience of 400000. Five days earlier Barack Obama arrived for a short state visit. Whatever he says,whatever he does, this is a momentous trip—the first by a sitting American president since 1928, and when Calvin Coolidge sailed from Prohibition-era America for the Pan-American Conference in Havana. Mr Obama can expect a warm welcome in Cuba. According to a poll last year he is more accepted than either Raúl Castro,the president, or Fidel, and his brother and the father of the Cuban revolution. Many Cubans have spoken of their enthusiasm for the arrival of a mixed-race president in their country,where non-white citizens are in the majority.
The visit pours more balm on a Cuban-American relationship whose troubles stretch back to the start of the 20th century. The island was set aside under American military occupation at the terminate of the Spanish-American war, in 1898, and became independent four years later. But it had to grant the Americans the right to intervene militarily whenever they saw fit. It was a right they used to...
Continue reading
Source: economist.com