Delivered from Havana’s Grand Theatre, the home of Cuban ballet, Obama’s speech drew people to their televisions and radios across the city, impressing an audience not used to open political debate and surprised by his touches of humility.
“Now he’s thrown a grenade,” Morales gasped when Obama spoke of the importance of the free and open exchange of ideas, long a taboo subject in a country where dissent is stifled, access to the Internet remains limited and the media is state-controlled.
In his most pointed comments from the restored theater, where President Raul Castro was seated on a balcony with his top aides, Obama said Cubans should be able to choose their governments in free, democratic elections.
Obama’s two-day trip to Cuba was the first by a sitting US president since Calvin Coolidge sailed to Havana on a warship in 1928. Following a 2014 detente announced by Obama and Castro, the trip was a major step toward ending half a century of cold War animosity.
Obama politely praised his hosts and accepted that before the revolution, some Americans exploited Cuba. He acknowledged US problems with racism but was frank about his belief in democracy’s superiority over Cuba’s one-party system.
His acceptance of errors at home and in Cuba contrasted with past presidents who harangued their neighbour for decades after Fidel Castro overthrew a pro-American government in 1959.
Obama vowed not to impose a different political or economic system on Cuba and instead, urged Cubans to build on their own achievements, a resonant message for many young people proud of Cuba’s health, education and low crime, but hungry for change.
“He is calling on the young, on the Cuban people to build, not to destroy,” said Amed Chincle, 31, watching the speech with his Afro-Cuban neighbours and family in a windowless apartment lit by a single strip bulb.
More than anything, though, it was the personal flourishes during Obama’s three-day visit that won sympathy from Cubans.
Obama spent hours on Monday listening to small business owners in a meeting at a state-run brewery, and his speech on Tuesday was littered with references to Cuban entrepreneurs such as a barber whose business was growing fast. Cutting hair was mostly a state activity until Raul Castro took power in 2008 and began cautious market-style reforms.
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