Cuba's President Raul Castro (R) and U.S. President Barack Obama (L) attend a press conference at the Revolution Palace in Havana, capital of Cuba, on March 21, 2016. (Xinhua/Joaquin Hernandez)
by Xinhua writer Ma Guihua
MEXICO CITY, July 19 (Xinhua) -- For Cuba and the United States, two Cold War foes for over half a century, a belated rapprochement presents exciting possibilities. Cuba is hot now, with tourism, culture and small businesses starting to blossom.
But the thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations could be like watching ice slowly melt.
Yes, there was the initial fanfare in Havana and Washington marking the restoration of U.S.-Cuban diplomatic relations on July 20, 2015. In March of this year, President Barack Obama made an historic trip to Cuba, accompanied by a high-profile business entourage eager to be part of the Cuba boom.
The run-up to Obama's Cuba visit, the first by a sitting president in 88 years, was marked by a loosening of restrictions, allowing U.S. individuals to have people-to-people educational travel to Cuba without government permission while lifting restrictions on the use of American dollars in transactions with the Caribbean island.
Also in March, hotel chain Starwood signed a deal with Cuba to manage three hotels in Havana, and Marriott and Airbnb announced new opportunities in the island country. Cuba, in turn, removed the 10 percent tax on U.S. dollar.
In May, about 700 U.S. passengers boarded the first cruise in almost 40 years to travel from Miami to Havana. A month later, U.S. Department of Transport approved six airlines to establish regular flights to nine destinations in Cuba.
Tourism, a key foreign currency earner for the Caribbean island, is the first to benefit from the U.S.-Cuba thaw, with a record 3.5 million inbound visitors in 2015. The number of American tourists increased 77 percent in 2015 from the previous year. Estimates suggest that Cuba is now bracing for as many as 10 million U.S. tourists per year.
A Cuban takes pictures of American tourists in a street of Havana, on September 18, 2015. (Xinhua/AFP)
Yet despite Obama's efforts to chip away through executive orders the over five-decade U.S. embargo on Cuba, really normalizing relations will not be easy, or quick.
"Charting this new course for the Cuban government means starting the clock on an economy that has been stuck in time over the past several decades," said Stefan Selig, Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade, U.S. Department of Commerce.
But he was concerned that "if the embargo is not lifted in the near term, the excitement will begin to wane."
The commercial, economic, and financial embargo the United States has imposed on Cuba since 1962 can only be lifted by the Congress under the conditions that Cuba, in its view, has a democratically elected government and an improved human rights record.
The embargo, or "blockade" as Cubans see it, since it also blocks third countries from doing business with the Caribbean island, has cost it nearly 834 billion U.S. dollars, Cuba claims.
Andres van Hoole, a Cuban-American businessman born in Cuba, sees Cuba now as going through "an evolution of the revolution", but he couldn't help asking: "Is the embargo not an embargo on U.S. businesses and companies and U.S. individuals from visiting Cuba like you can elsewhere in the world?"
Indeed. Estimates from U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Cuba Policy Foundation place the cost of the Cuban embargo to the U.S. economy at between 1.2 billion and 4.84 billion dollars annually. A study by Texas A&M University calculated that 6,000 American jobs could be created by lifting the embargo.
For 24 years in a row, the United Nations General Assembly has adopted resolutions calling for an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba, but to no avail.
Two months after the two neighbors resumed diplomatic ties, Cuban President Raul Castro urged the U.S. to lift the embargo, return the land it occupied as military base in Guantánamo Bay, and stop anti-government radio and television broadcasts as well as "subversive and destabilizing" programs.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told the UN General Assembly that "Any attempt to condition the lifting or modification of the blockade to the introduction of internal changes in Cuba will be in no way acceptable nor productive."
A vintage car passes the Hotel Four Points by Sheraton in Havana, capital of Cuba, on June 29, 2016. (Xinhua/Raimundo Urrechaga)
In April, during the opening of the Seventh Congress of Cuba's Communist Party (PCC), President Castro said all Cubans should know Washington's intention toward the government in Havana remain the same -- regime change.
"We must be more vigilant than ever, since the U.S. has changed its strategy, but not its objective," said Castro, warning "the methods used will be more difficult to counteract."
Ted Piccone, senior fellow with the Latin America Initiative at the Brookings Institution, highlighted the "longstanding feuds" between U.S. and Cuba, noting "it will take longer than a year or two to unwind the accumulated distrust and build support for this new normalcy."
Obama's Cuba visit is intended to make the normalization of U.S.-Cuban ties irreversible. Toward that goal, the two governments have also been having bilateral commission meetings on telecommunications, U.S. property claims, environmental protection and cooperation, human trafficking, human rights, migration, law enforcement, civil aviation, and direct mail.
However, this month, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to approve new restrictive measures against Cuba, on travel to Cuba for certain educational exchanges, importation of property confiscated by the Cuban government, and financial transactions with the Cuban military. What's more, restrictions on agricultural exports and travel to Cuba, which have been widely expected to be lifted, remain in place.
Archibald Ritter, research professor with Carleton University, believes there is a correlation between U.S. embargo and reforms in Cuba.
"If the embargo were to end quickly, that would encourage a much more rapid process of reform in Cuba," he said.
For Cuba, a country which has learned the dangers of relying heavily on a single country, be it the United States in the pre-revolutionary years, or Soviet Union, or Venezuela, as some analysts say, now that it's determined to update its economic model, it will take its time to diversify its economy and trading partners.
"Cuba still has to decide how much it wants to open up its market in specific areas, and how much it wants to privatize that market," said Jay Brickman, vice-president of government services and Cuba service at Crowley Maritime.
Amid all the hustle and bustle from the in-streaming Americans trying to see the pristine island "frozen in time" before the big commercial chain stores spoil it, changes are coming. But this time, it's at Cuba's own pace.
