Three days in Cuba: will president Obama's historic visit lead to real change in one of the last bastions of communism?

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: INTERNATIONAL

As President Obama and his family walked through the cobblestone plazas of Havana, he was greeted with shouts of "U.S.A.!" and "Obama!" from Cubans eager to catch a glimpse of the first American leader to visit in almost 90 years.

Obama's historic three-day trip to Cuba last month--the first by a sitting U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge in 1928--showed how much progress the two nations have made in trying to thaw relations after half a century of bitter divisions. But it remains to be seen whether the milestone will prod Cuba to allow its people more freedoms--or convince the U.S. Congress to end a long-standing economic embargo.

"I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas," Obama declared in a speech carried live on Cuban TV. "I have come here to extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people."

The United States and Cuba are just 90 miles apart, but they're separated by deep ideological, political, and economic differences. For more than 50 years, ever since Fidel Castro led a Communist revolution in Cuba, relations between the two countries had been frozen. That started to change in December 2014, when Cuba and the U.S. began to normalize relations. Since then, Obama has slightly eased restrictions on travel and trade.

U.S. companies are eager to do business in Cuba, and Cubans are eager to have access to American goods. But burying the past isn't so easy. With Cuban President Raul Castro standing next to him on the second day of his trip, Obama called for lifting the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, imposed in 1960 after Cuba seized the assets of American companies. But he also challenged Cuba to open its economy and its political system.

"It's time to lift the embargo, but even if we lifted the embargo tomorrow, Cubans would not realize their potential without continued change here in Cuba," Obama said. "If you can't access information online, if you cannot be exposed to different points of view, you will not reach your full potential, and over time the youth will lose hope."

The visit included many awkward moments between the leader of the free world and the ruler of one of the last Communist nations (see photo, p. 6), but there also seemed to be genuine warmth between them.

"We agree that a long and complex path still lies ahead," Castro said. "What is most important is that we have started taking the first steps to build a new type of relationship, one that has never existed between Cuba and the...