In a historic address to Cubans, President Obama said Tuesday he wants Congress to lift the embargo against Havana, and called for democratic reforms on the communist-ruled island.
“It’s time to lift the embargo,” Mr. Obama said at Havana’s Grand Theater in a speech broadcast on Cuban television. “It is an outdated burden on the Cuban people.”
Speaking with Cuban President Raul Castro in the audience, Mr. Obama declared that he had come to Havana to “bury the last remnant” of the Cold War in the Americas. His speech was aimed not only at Cuba’s 11 million citizens, but at 1.6 Cuban-Americans back home.
White House aides described Mr. Obama’s speech as the symbolic highlight of his groundbreaking visit, the first by a sitting president since Calvin Coolidge in 1928. Many Cubans received his address enthusiastically, but some dissidents and critics found it disappointing.
Marion Smith, executive director of the Victims of Communism Foundation, responded, “Until the Cuban people are free from communism, remnants of the Cold War live on.”
Some dissidents said Mr. Obama should have been stronger in condemning the military dictatorship’s human rights abuses, with the Cuban government detaining more than 2,500 political prisoners in the first two months of this year alone. There were more than 6,602 political detentions in Cuba in 2012, among the world’s highest on a per-capita basis.
Mr. Obama “told us to forget the past, to forget the horror and pain of exiles,” Ailer Gonzalez told The Guardian. “He talked about what he believed but didn’t talk about what is happening.”
Mr. Obama met privately with 13 Cuban dissidents at the U.S. Embassy in Havana. Among the participants was Berta Soler, leader of Ladies in White, a group that marches for religious freedom each Sunday after Mass.
The president said it was important for him “to hear directly from the Cuban people and making sure that they have a voice and making sure that their concerns and their ideas are helping to shape U.S. policy.”
“It requires oftentimes great courage to be active in civic life here in Cuba,” he said.
The president’s address also was overshadowed by the Islamic State terrorist attacks Tuesday in Brussels, Belgium, that killed at least 30 people and wounded about 230 others. Mr. Obama spoke for one minute about the attacks at the start of his speech, condemning them as “outrageous.”
Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio criticized Mr. Obama for showing a lack of leadership.
“President Obama looks and sounds so ridiculous making his speech in Cuba, especially in the shadows of Brussels,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter. “He is being treated badly!”
Mr. Kasich said the president “ought to return home” to deal with national security challenges instead of proceeding on his trip from Cuba to Argentina, where he was to arrive late Tuesday night.
Mr. Cruz, Texas Republican, criticized Mr. Obama for “going to baseball games with Castro” while U.S. allies are being attacked by terrorists.
The president and Mr. Castro attended a game Tuesday between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team at a packed stadium in Havana. Organizers released doves before the game, and the crowd chanted “Cuba! Cuba!”
Asked if he considered not attending the baseball game due to the terrorist attacks in Brussels, Mr. Obama told ESPN, “It’s always a challenge when you have a terrorist attack anywhere in the world, particularly in this age of 24/7 news coverage.
“You want to be respectful and understand the gravity of the situation, but the whole premise of terrorism is to try to disrupt people’s ordinary lives,” the president said.
In his address to Cubans, the president said he decided to end a half-century of Cold War isolation because U.S. policy toward Cuba was ineffective.
“Why now? There is one simple answer,” Mr. Obama said. “What the United States was doing was not working. We have to have the courage to acknowledge that truth. The embargo was only hurting the Cuban people instead of helping them.”
Lawmakers in both parties of Congress favor an end to the embargo, but Republican leaders say the repressive Cuban communist regime has not earned the right to full and free trade with the U.S.
While the president has eased some travel and trade restrictions, and he spoke as if the U.S. embargo will end soon, Congress isn’t likely to move this year to address it. Mr. Obama said even if the U.S. lifted the embargo tomorrow, “Cubans would not realize their potential without continued change here in Cuba.”
“It’s up to you,” the president said. “What changes come will depend upon the Cuban people.”
Addressing Mr. Castro, who was seated in the audience at the historic theater, Mr. Obama said, “You need not fear the different voices of the Cuban people — and their capacity to speak and assemble and vote for their leaders.”
Mr. Obama said he wasn’t advocating for Cubans to change their government, but he offered do-it-yourself advice based on his own example.
“When I first started school, we were still struggling to desegregate schools across the American South,” the president said. “But people organized, they protested, they debated these issues, they challenged government officials. And because of those protests, and because of those debates, and because of popular mobilization, I’m able to stand here today as an African-American and as president of the United States.”
Voters in every country, Mr. Obama said, “should be able to chose their governments in free and democratic elections.”
“Every person should have the freedom to practice their faith peacefully and publicly,” he added.
Referring to Mr. Castro’s criticisms of the U.S., Mr. Obama said he welcomes debate about America’s “flaws.”
“We do have challenges with racial bias,” Mr. Obama said, citing one example. “But the fact that we have open debates … is what allows us to get better. I’m not saying this is easy. There are still enormous problems in our society. But democracy is how we solve them.”
The president also spoke of the importance of reconciliation between families split between Cuba and the U.S., some of whom have been kept apart for more than 50 years.
“The reconciliation of people bound by blood … that’s where progress begins,” Mr. Obama said. “It is time now for us to leave the past behind. It will take time. We can make this journey, as friends and as neighbors and as family, together.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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