Havana City Historian Eusebio Leal Received by New Orleans Mayor

HAVANA, Cuba, Oct 17 (acn) New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu received Havana City Historian Eusebio Leal on Friday, who is on a visit to the largest city of the state of Louisiana for an academic and cultural exchange program.

Landrieu, elected in February 2010, expressed his satisfaction with the reestablishment of official relations between his country and Cuba, in an irreversible path he considered beneficial for both states, RHC reported on Friday.
The host said that these links should include the elimination of the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by Washington on the Caribbean island for more than half a century.
The mayor emphasized the immediate possibilities of exchanges between the two cities in the artistic, academic and commercial spheres, and especially in the agricultural sector.
In his office, the Cuban flag is next to the U.S. flag in a symbolic gesture of commitment of his term of office to the reestablishment and full normalization of relations between the two countries.
For his part, Leal recalled that New Orleans was the first city where the Cuban flag embroidered by Cuban patriot Emilia Teurbe Toulon flew.
He also referred to the good reception that the decision of the Obama administration has had not only in the two peoples but also in the rest of the world.
The Havana City Historian reflected on the cultural and historic ties that have united New Orleans and the Cuban capital from the times when Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, the Canadian sailor, explorer and military -who died in Havana in 1706 - explored the banks of the Mississippi with his brother Joseph Le Moyne Sérigny and founded Louisiana.