U.S.-Cuba talks begin amid bilateral optimism

The most senior U.S. official to visit Cuba in decades arrived here Wednesday for talks on normalizing relations between the two countries, barely a month after President Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro announced an end to 61 years of official estrangement.

Director of the Cuban Foreign Ministry's North American affairs office Josefina Vidal talks to media in Havana. The highest-level U.S. delegation to Cuba in 35 years began talks on Wednesday. (Reuters)

After a working dinner Wednesday night, Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson and Josefina Vidal, head of U.S. relations at Cuba’s Foreign Ministry, will meet Thursday to formally initiate discussions on reopening embassies in the two capitals.

The United States and Cuba Begin Restoring Relations

The United States and Cuba on Dec. 17 took their most assertive step in several decades toward normalizing relations. The most important announcements concerned the resumption of high-level political discussions focused on renewing formal diplomatic ties between the countries, which have been nonexistent since 1961. Cuban and U.S. officials will hold high-level meetings in the coming months, and the two countries will work toward establishing embassies in Havana and Washington. The United States will also immediately relax some sanctions on trade and travel to Cuba. President Barack Obama announced that the United States would loosen certain restrictions on financial transactions with Cuba, remove some restrictions on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba, and authorize the export of certain goods to the Cuban private sector. The U.S. State Department will also review Cuba's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. Obama has the legal authority to immediately implement the measures he announced, but he left the issue of formally lifting the trade embargo up to Congress. Together, the announcements signaled a gradual process of reopening Cuba to the United States.

How the Chinese are Helping to Transform Cuba, Again

In 1958 a young Chinese Cuban named Armando Choy posed for the camera in front of a drab brick farmhouse in Fomento, a town close to the Escambray Mountains in central Cuba. Choy stiffened almost to attention, his shirt buttoned to the collar, his hands clasping an old rifle by the muzzle. His seven comrades in crumpled fatigues, stranding alongside or squatting before him, smiled through bushy black beards that would become emblematic of Fidel Castro’s socialist revolution.