look. i managed to look over to the side of the road and i saw a man lying there. dead. barbed wire wrapped around his neck. on january 1st, 1959, my dad and i were headed out early in the morning, new year s day, headed to the corner bakery to buy a loaf of bread and we got to the corner and i remember this very clearly. this man stopped and says have you heard. we said no, have you heard what? he said batista fled last night. we said, oh, we knew that was the revolution. fidel castro himself had been these scenes though his triumphant march to the capital. my parents wanted to go down and see the rebels going through and i didn t let them. i was just too afraid. i was too traumatized about what i had seen and felt all those years. i said please let s no not go and they didn t.
month after we were here last year, it was euphoria, people were heading down in droves, and i think everybody thought this was going to happen very quickly. but any of us who spent any time in cuba know things don t happen so quickly. they ve had trouble adjusting to our speed and accepting the changes we ve been making so they ve been taking it very slow, which is why we haven t seen a mcdonald s and starbucks on every corner down there. what can be realistically expected to change in cuba when the same exact people who on january 1st, 1959 before many of us were born took power are still in power today? we re going to learn a lot in april when cuba s assembly when the party has its once every ten year meeting to go over the constitution and go over the government. we re expecting to see maybe some changes there but realistically, the government is
doesn t work, maybe it s time to try something different. i ve heard that a lot, and it s debatable whether the old policy didn t work. the same people who took power january 1st 1959 are still there. if you look at it in that way, yes, it has worked. look at it a different way. how much has the u.s. embargo increased the soviet union in supporting cuba and how much did it contribute to the collapse? and what brought cubans to the negotiating table with president obama? the fact that they need the u.s. economy to support them. that s interesting. before i let you go i have a question i ve been milling around in my mind. yesterday the u.s. interception that in havana had been under swiss sovereignty turned into the american embassy in havana. now it s u.s. territory. under the cuban adjustment act, if a cuban reaches the united states and asks for political asylum he automatically gets it. my question is does that mean that every single cuban that goes into the area of the
a lot of the survival depends on venezuelan oil money is drying up and economy is in shambles. we ve held it in place for 50 plus years. the cuban regime, two castro brothers since january 1st, 1959. over half a century. we are a lot closer to the end than we are to the beginning and so now when we are so close to the end of the castros, the end of that regime, when you haven t seen fidel castro react because if he s alive, he s too weak or too senile to know this just happened and react. now that we are so close to the end of those two dictators who have oppressed these people for over half a century, now we re going to change and do it unilaterally without them lifting the oppression? ana, what sign do you see
more of the amazing cinnamon taste you love on cinnamon toast crunch. crave those crazy squares even more. president obama s decision to establish diplomatic ties with cuba changes a u.s. policy in place for multiple generations, more than 50 years. i do not believe we can keep doing the same thing for over five decades and expect a different result. moreover, it doesn t serve america s interests or the cuban people to try to push cuba towards collapse. it all started january 1st 1959 when castro took power in