The Washington Post says:
“‘We walked freely around the streets and talked with anyone we wanted,’ Klobuchar said. ‘I did not know what to expect. . . . The people were really positive about Americans — I didn’t expect them to be that positive and that excited.’ (Well, most Cubans weren’t alive the last time we invaded.)”
Really? Havana is full of very visible celebrations of the return of the Cuban Five, who every Cuban knows were imprisoned in the United States for attempting to halt U.S. attacks on Cuba, which have never ceased. In the lifetime of many Cubans now alive, the U.S. or terrorists it harbors have blown up buildings and airplanes, introduced human and animal diseases into Cuba, and murdered people while hijacking boats.
Do not assume that Cubans do not know this history. It is in their museums, their news, and their studies.
Cubans of course also know Hollywood. They watch the people of the United States as idealized individuals in movies and TV shows all the time.
Cubans do something that the people of the United States have never truly mastered, and the Washington Post seems not to consider. They distinguish between a government and its people. They even distinguish between individual members of the U.S. government and its worse inclinations. They accept as a positive step an opening up by a government that wants to control and harm them. They believe they can control the process enough to make the result a good one.
But they remember things that happened long before the latest revolution, much less before they were born. And they are not ignorant of the U.S. attacks they have lived through.