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Agence France-Presse Paris, France 25 March 2016 U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, Inc. New York, New York Telephone (917) 453-6726 • E-mail: [email protected] Internet: http://www.cubatrade.org • Twitter: @CubaCouncil Facebook: www.facebook.com/uscubatradeandeconomiccouncil LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/u-s--cuba-trade-and-economic-council-inc- Agence France-Presse Paris, France 25 March 2016 With Tango And Baseball, Obama Offers Latin America A Softer Image Of US Barack Obama dances tango during a state dinner hosted by Argentina's President Mauricio Macri at the Centro Cultural Kirchner. (Reuters File Photo) Buenos Aires: Dancing tango, watching baseball and acting in a TV comedy, US President Barack Obama used cultural soft power to polish his country's image in Latin America this week. The landmark visit to Cuba at the top of Latin America and Argentina at the tail, saw Obama subtly try to dampen anti-Americanism, in a region where Cold War grievances still burn. The tone for the trip was set early, when Obama landed in Havana for the first presidential visit in 88 years. "Que bola, Cuba?" -- "What's up, Cuba?" he tweeted using heavy Cuban slang. The five-day visit featured the usual meetings with dignitaries and presidents, but for much of the trip Obama had his eye on an audience of 11 million Cubans, 42 million Argentines and a continent full of Latin American unease about decades of US power. On Tuesday he sat down alongside Communist leader Raul Castro -- to watch a game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team. The Rays won 4-1, but it was never about the result. "We share a national pastime -- la pelota," or the ball game, Obama said, stressing commonality between two countries that have been at ideological odds for half a century. He also hailed cultural ties forged by the likes of US author Ernest Hemingway, who lived in Cuba, and Cuban-born singers such as Celia Cruz and Gloria Estefan. He astonished Cubans by making an improvised appearance in a television comedy sketch, striding onto the set and sitting down to play dominos with the characters. "He departed from the script and gave me a scare because he started talking in English," said comedian Luis Silva, better known as the character Panfilo, star of "Vivir del Cuento," Cuba's most popular television show. "I understood a few phrases and I was able to carry on the conversation." The actor supposed Obama did it "to relate with the ordinary Cuban people." Some locals complained however that no ordinary Cubans were allowed to get near Obama when he made a tour of the old city of Havana shortly after arriving. The whole visit to the island laid bare Obama's strategy of fomenting change rather than imposing it from Washington. This was Obama going back to his days as a community organizer in Chicago, trying to generate a critical mass that could alter the political reality on the ground. The White House is betting that increased economic openness will lead to political change in Cuba, with the regime unable to separate the two in a way that China, Vietnam and the Gulf have done. He championed a series of economic reforms that "focused upon supporting the recreation of a middle class... that needs more, wants more, will work for more, and is willing to be vocal about their desires," said John Kavulich, head of the US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. Tango Diplomacy Obama also tried to show the softer side of US power in Argentina, where many harbor resentment at Washington's support for past coups and dictatorships. His trip to Buenos Aires coincided with the 40th anniversary of the coup that brought the country's last murderous military regime to power. Victims' groups had been angered by the date chosen for Obama's visit, given the US support for the coup at the time. As Argentines prepared mass demonstrations to remember the victims of the dictatorship, he appeared at a memorial to the fallen. Alongside Argentina's President Mauricio Macri, Obama tossed three white roses into the La Plata River in memory of those who were executed by the regime. He also softened up Argentines during the two-day trip with cultural references. Obama projected a more amenable image of an American leader, one who is not afraid to tango with a starlet, glug on Argentina's national beverage mate or joke about wanting to meet a soccer superstar. At a state dinner he glided slightly, somewhat haltingly, with acclaimed tanguera Mora Godoy, who in 2006 appeared topless in the Argentine edition of Playboy magazine. The US president "was telling me he didn't know how to dance (tango)," Godoy told the newspaper La Nacion. "I told him 'just follow me'. "He said 'OK', and then he started to dance. Then I started following his lead because he is a very good dancer." US First Lady Michelle Obama joined in the tango, pairing up with dancer Jose Lugones. At a meeting with local people earlier, Obama joked about tasting mate and wanting but failing to meet football superstar Lionel Messi. The president fondly recalled reading books by Argentine writers Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar. He then headed off for some leisure time, hiking and taking a boat ride in a national park in the Andean resort town of Bariloche. That did not win him any praise from his opponents back home in the United States, coming in the wake of the Brussels attacks, but Argentines were wooed. Politico Washington, DC 23 March 2016 Evaluating Obama’s Cuba trip By Victoria Guida With help from Doug Palmer, Adam Behsudi and Jenny Hopkinson CUBA: YAY, BOO OR MEH? Despite the group of business deals announced between some U.S. companies and Cuba this week, the trade outcome of President Barack Obama’s historic trip was decidedly small — though, of course, that’s what we were expecting. John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, put it this way: “The president traveled a great distance, physically, politically, metaphorically; with the only certainty being uncertainty. And the government of Cuba, in response, accepted donations, agreed to purchase nothing, and only accepted from United States companies what offerings would increase revenues.” But that doesn’t really matter in the context of this trip, said Mark Entwistle, former Canadian ambassador to Cuba and a partner at merchant bank and advisory firm Acasta Capital. “I am much less interested in the business deals, etc., in assessing this trip,” he said. “The respect and open-mindedness with which President Obama spoke about Cuba and to Cubans was unprecedented in the history of the U.S.- Cuba relationship and left a huge impact on Cubans. And President Castro, for his part, showed real leadership in offering his guest the opportunity to speak his mind freely in private and in public.” And agriculture groups are hopeful Cuba won’t fall out of the spotlight now that President Obama has left. “This is the trip that I think tipped the scale on U.S.-Cuba relations,” said Devry Boughner Vorwerk, chair of the U.S. Agriculture Coalition for Cuba and a senior policy adviser at Akin Gump. “I do believe we are getting closer to the end of the embargo.” The Guardian London, United Kingdom 23 March 2016 US telecom businesses struggling to make connections as Cuba opens up President Obama has made the sector a priority but distrust about the security of US systems, foreign rivals and other priorities are making the going tough People surf the Internet at a public Wi-Fi hotspot in downtown Havana, Cuba. Residential connections are almost non-existent. Photograph: Desmond Boylan/AP Mark Walsh Obama’s historic visit to Cuba comes amid a frenzy of deal-making by US corporations keen to take full advantage of opportunities to come. But one area – technology and telecoms – shows just how complicated unwinding 50 years of hostility will be for companies and Cubans. “Cuba needs modernising – but it can manage without McDonald's” Michael White Ahead of the president’s trip, Verizon Communications announced a direct interconnection agreement with Etecsa, Cuba’s state telecom monopoly. Verizon was one of a number of companies, including Marriott and Western Union, to announce new deals before the president’s visit but it was not the first US telecom to make a move. That honor belongs to IDT Corp, which last year became the first US telecom company to sign such a deal with Cuba and capitalize on the US government’s efforts to reopen relations with its former cold war foe. And while other deals are in the offing, with Google, AT&T and others all looking keenly at Cuba, the string of agreements masks a lingering distrust between the two countries that has so far made it difficult to close larger-scale agreements to provide telecommunications services and equipment within Cuba. Overcoming the US trade embargo against Cuba and decades of hostile relations between the countries is challenging for any US business trying to tap potential new opportunities in Cuba. But for telecom and information technology firms, the more recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s global surveillance practices add another hurdle to cracking the nascent Cuban market. In 2014 it was revealed that the US government had secretly financed ZunZeno, a social network dubbed the “Cuban Twitter”, in the hopes of using it to undermine the Castro regime. “The Cuban government is rightly suspicious of US telecommunications companies, courtesy of Mr [Edward] Snowden,” said John Kavulich, president of the US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a New York-based not-for-profit body that aims to promote trade between the two countries.
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