Barack Obama made history landing at José Martí International Airport even if President Raul Castro wasn’t there to receive him. The first US President to visit Cuba in 88 years, Mr Obama and family braved rain to walk Old Havana’s cobblestoned streets Monday. There will be a big dose of a shared sporting culture as both Presidents attend a baseball game between the island’s team and Tampa Bay Rays Tuesday.
For decades, this would have been unimaginable as the US cut all ties with Havana fearing its Communist ideology might infect the American mainland. Those who lived through 13 tense days of the 1961 Bay of Pigs crisis, when the Cold War came closest to triggering a nuclear clash between the superpowers, would find it hard to believe what they are seeing now.
The symbolism apart, what is yet to be seen is how Cuba benefits from closer ties with the United States, just 90 miles away and yet millions of miles distant in culture, ideological thought processes and work practices. Raul Castro launched economic and social reforms six years ago and its fruits are slowly bearing fruit.
Mr Obama’s visit may be a big catalyst for Cuba’s modernisation, if not Americanisation. But will a society that is still closed and opaque, with tight curbs on free speech and intolerant of dissent, change more fundamentally? In that sense, the Obama visit may be a civilisational moment for Cubans in search of more openness. There is far more to Cuba than the wholesome cigar, something the world may welcome.
