Portside

On December 17, 2014, the U.S. and Cuba announced the restoration of diplomatic relations, and the U.S. abandoned its 55-year effort at regime change through political isolation and economic sanctions. One year later, however, difficult questions regarding relations with Cuba remain unanswered and unaddressed. And how will relations be normalized when what has constituted “normal” for 200 years has been the presumption of U.S. entitlement to impose its will on Cuba?

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President Obama has the constitutional power to shut down the prison there and return Guantanamo to Cuba.

Speech broadcast Saturday, Nov. 14, to the TEDxHavana conference on the Cuba-United States normalization process. More than two thousand attended.

Millions of Americans believe that President Obama has normalized relations with Cuba and ended over 50 years of US efforts to strangle its economy. They might have been puzzled when the United States stood up against every other nation save one, in opposing the UN General Assembly resolution that passed, 191-2, on October 27, 2015.

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Years before the thaw and the restoration of relations between the United States and Cuba, Miles Jackson and a college friend had been building a different kind of diplomacy: one on wheels. Their hope is that skateboarding can help pry open a notoriously stiff relationship and encourage a new generation of skateboarders to join an international sporting community.

The leader of the Cuban Revolution insists that Cuba will never stop struggling for peace and the well-being of all human beings, for every inhabitant on the planet regardless of skin color or national origin.

“A new stage will begin, long and complex, on the road toward normalization, which will require the will to find solutions to problems that have accumulated over more than five decades and hurt ties between our nations and peoples,” Castro said in remarks published on the state-run website Cubadebate. Cuba is trying to forge new ties with the United States “different from those of our entire common history,” Castro said.