For decades, Cuban exiles in Miami’s Little Havana have gathered at the Versailles Cafe to talk about the home they’d left behind and the Castro regime that forced them to escape.
On Wednesday, the mood among many of the regulars was very testy.
They’d just heard that President Barack Obama had secured the release of detained U.S. contractor Alan Gross, but it had come at what they considered a steep and unwelcome price: the release of three Cuban intelligence agents convicted of espionage in 2001, and a sweeping change in America’s diplomatic approach toward its communist neighbor.
President Barack Obama announced Wednesday plans to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba and ease restrictions of a policy he deemed to have an “outdated approach” that “failed to advance” U.S. interests.
The U.S. will move toward re-opening its embassy in communist Cuba and allow some travel and trade that had been banned under a decades-long embargo instated during the Kennedy administration, the President said.
“Through these changes, we intend to create more opportunities for the American and Cuban people,” he said, “and begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas.”
“I think people are going to be upset,” said John Losada, who’s been an exile since the 1960s. “There is a long history here of people who have a lot of anger, people who have been hurt.”
At the cafe, two men shouted angrily, “Obama a coward! Coward, coward, coward!” They held up signs that read: “Obama administration conspiracy with Castro terrorist.”
A crowd of customers continued to get their morning coffee at the open counter that faces Calle Ocho, a street that has for many decades come to symbolize the Cuban community in the city. Some drivers honked as they passed.
CNN’s Patrick Oppmann, the only American journalist from a television network in Cuba, described the joy that Gross’ family feels about his freedom and the turn of events Wednesday as being truly historic.
Meanwhile, legal experts and political pundits debated how much change could really be brought about through executive order.
Bobby Ghosh, a journalist and previous world editor at Time magazine, said he thought there would be limits to how much the President could actually accomplish in altering U.S. policy toward Cuba. It would have to be approved by lawmakers, he said.
But, as he wrote in reaction to Wednesday’s developments in Quartz online, most of the world does business with Cuba already. And many Americans have already visited Cuba despite a travel ban.
“For a microcosm of the Castros’ failure as managers of the Cuban economy, look no further than the tourism industry. The island — blessed as it is with gorgeous beaches, warm weather, fantastic music, and terrific rum — gets nearly 3 million foreign tourists a year. Nearly a million come from Canada, with the UK, Italy, Spain, and Germany all accounting for large groups,” he wrote.
And yet easing relations with Cuba would feel like a “betrayal,” Felix Gonzalez told CNN. The 76-year-old Cuban-American immigrated to the U.S. in 1961 and had come to Versailles for his morning coffee. “I don’t trust the Castro government,” he said. “I will never.”
Miami’s Mayor Tomás Pedro Regalado, who came to the U.S. in the ’60s, said he thinks Cuba will make more arrests and crack down even more on human rights after the U.S. changes its policy. The Castro government won’t change its ways, he said.
But some of those who were born and grew up in the United States said this was just another chapter in the saga.
Fidel’s brother Raul Castro is now President of Cuba.
“The older generation still retain this idea that they’re going to go back to a non-Castro Cuba. That they’re going to reclaim Cuba,” said CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “The younger generation don’t harbor those fantasies.
“The issues were so much caught up with the Cold War. All that is gone. Finally, in a sense, we’re catching up with what the reality is.
“There is an alternate strategy that more contact, more commerce will have the effect of softening, opening up the regime.”
But Miguel Saavedra, another exile, said that’s not what many Cuban-Americans want.
He said that “70% of the Cuban exiles, they don’t support business to Cuba.”
CNN analyst Ana Navarro said she found it “disrespectful and unilateral” that the White House didn’t consult with Congress first. Navarro spent a large part of her career condemning rights violations in Cuba.
“They’ve been a thorn on our side, anything other than an ally,” she said. “I will not give one penny of my money to a regime that violates human rights.”