Cuba’s Granma newspaper, ahead of Obama’s visit, wrote a sweeping editorial and among its many observations were: “The US President will be welcomed by the government of Cuba and its people with the hospitality which distinguishes us, and will be treated with all consideration and respect, as befits a head of state.
“This will be an opportunity for the President to directly observe a nation immersed in its economic and social development, and in improving its citizens’ wellbeing. This people enjoys rights, and can exhibit achievements which are only dreams for many of the world’s countries, despite the limitations derived from our condition as an underdeveloped, blockaded country — which has earned us international recognition and respect.
“Obama will find himself in a country which actively contributes to regional and world peace and stability, and which shares with other peoples not what we have left over, but the modest resources we possess, making solidarity an essential element of our identity, and humanity’s well-being,” the paper said.
The Jamaica Observer believes that Obama’s visit — which comes 88 years after the previous President’s visit, Calvin Coolidge in 1928 — possesses all the elements to speed up the process of normalisation between the two countries. Says it editorial: “The visit is a strong statement of his intention to continue the process of normalisation of relations between the two countries, reinforcing the fact that the US embargo against Cuba is a failed policy and an exercise in futility based simply on the unwillingness of the US to accept that such a small country could defy the lone superpower.”
The Boston Globe views Obama’s visit as a “vital policy statement” given America’s by now legendary “failed endeavour” of isolating Cuba for decades. In its editorial, the Globe writes: “When President Obama travels to Cuba on Sunday with his family, he is making a vital foreign policy statement, and not just about the small island off the tip of Florida. The bigger principle at play is the value of diplomatic engagement over isolation, cooperation versus Cold War thinking. The visit — the first time a sitting American president has been to Cuba in almost 90 years — is a manifestation of the hope that democratic ideals can spread over time once normalised relations are established.”
USA Today states in its editorial that using the term historic has to be the most precise in context of Obama’s visit to Cuba. “A lot of things are called historic, but President Obama’s trip to Cuba truly is,” says it editorial. “For nearly 60 years, [Cuba’s] government has done two things exceptionally well: repress its own people and make a mockery of US efforts to compel change through economic sanctions.
“And that’s what makes Obama’s trip so important. He cannot unilaterally lift sanctions embedded in a number of laws dating to the early 1960s. But he has made some much needed policy adjustments.
The mere presence of a US president in Havana is startling, refreshing, novel.”
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