Cuba and the U.S.A. Re-establish Diplomatic Relations

Coinciding with the date of the re-establishment of relations, at 10:33 a.m., the voice of a young officer of the Ceremony Unit of the General Staff of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces will be heard, and after the usual protocol the Cuban flag will be hoisted in the garden of the now embassy of the island to the United States, and the notes of the national anthem will be heard.
Moments later Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez will go to the auditorium on the first floor of the house marked with number 2630 on 16th Street, a few blocks from the White House, and address some 700 guests, which according to organizers many have come to ask to attend the ceremony accompanied. Others said that although they didn't get an invitation they would outside the building, the surrounding area of which is expected to be crowded.
Havana City Historian Eusebio Leal told ACN that the opening of the embassy in this country is for him "the recognition of the legitimacy of the Cuban people and the Revolution itself, denied for years by the United States."
"Hostile methods did not work, so that's why a new stage begins; it does not mean that the ceremony this July 20 ends the problem, on the contrary, it opens a chapter in deeper and more complex things to deal with," pointed out Leal.
"I would say like National Hero Jose Marti said: 'it had to be in silence and somewhat indirectly' because what ends on Monday started long ago and has been negotiated arduously. The fact that the flag is hoisted here first, we being the affronted, the expelled, the sons of the desert, and that then they go to Havana, has a high symbolic value," he stated.
"Our good will is put on the table, and I also believe that of President Barack Obama and Raul acknowledged this in Panama," he said.
Artist Alexis Leiva, Kcho who traveled to Washington as part of the official delegation to participate in the opening ceremony, said he is happy to have the special opportunity to be part of a historic moment in which the Moncada garrison attackers have achieved the unbelievable.
More than six decades after the actions of July 26, it is a unique victory for the fighters of that heroic deed that the enemy acknowledges that these have been years of bad policy, of a wrong relationship and that this is going to start changing and with Cuba marking time, that's the most important thing, said Leiva.
Meanwhile Ramon Pez Ferro, the only Moncada attacker present there on Monday, asserted that his presence is a moment of recognition to all the fallen in defense of the ideals of the Revolution.
For Ramon Sanchez-Parodi several decades have passed since he completed his mission as head of the Interests Section in Washington, but it was really worth it because the United States has recognized the resistance of the Cuban people and now we enter a different scenario in bilateral relations, he pointed out.
The former Cuban diplomat stressed that now we have to do what the island has been doing for five decades, "persevere, keep the message, the essence of the Revolution and start walking down this long and difficult path, but I think this process began on December 17 and is irreversible," he concluded.
U.S. media outlets have given great prominence to the re-establishment of diplomatic relations, in particular the opening of the embassy and the reception Secretary of State John Kerry will give Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez on Monday afternoon on the first occasion since the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 that a Cuban foreign minister officially visits that nation.
Among those attending there will be U.S. senators and congressional representatives, experts called think tanks, NGO leaders, business persons and friends in solidarity with the revolution.
The ceremony closes a stage in bilateral relations following the announcement of Presidents Raul Castro and Barack Obama on December 17 and opens a new process towards the normalization of relations between Havana and Washington.
The respective embassies began operations on July 20 and the current heads of the interests sections, Cuban José Ramón Cabañas and Jeffrey DeLaurentis, of the United States, automatically become charge d'affaires.
As a result of the re-establishment of bonds, severed by Washington 54 years, six months and 17 days ago, agreements between the two countries and Switzerland for its role as protecting power cease to exist.