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Havana, Cuba. Your Holiness: Now that your name is no longer so popular on the Island of Cuba, I have decided to write you these lines. I suspect that this decline in your prestige has to do with the scant companionship you have provided us, as well as with the distance that you have placed between yourself and the Cuban people. If I insist on threading these ideas it is because I am certain that your work as head of the Church–that is, of the Earth–is a far cry from the love, justness, and fairness that we knew from John...

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on Friday blasted the Obama administration’s latest Cuba policy shift as one that makes “no sense,” because it foresees some intelligence sharing between the two countries. President Obama last week announced a wide array of changes related to Cuba, including changes further easing trade and travel restrictions Americans face related to Cuba. One set of changes to be implemented by the Treasury Department lifted the limits on the amount of tobacco and alcohol products people can buy in Cuba. But the White House outlined several other changes, including one that said the Director of National Intelligence...

Days after President Barack Obama’s historic visit, the leaders of Cuba’s Communist Party are under highly unusual public criticism from their own ranks for imposing new levels of secrecy on the future of social and economic reforms. After months of simmering discontent, complaints among party members have become so heated that its official newspaper, Granma, addressed them in a lengthy front-page article Monday. It said the public dissatisfaction over the lack of open discussion before the upcoming Communist Party congress next month is “a sign of the democracy and public participation that are intrinsic characteristics of the socialism that we’re...

The White House refused to say Sunday whether President Obama would be talking to Cuban officials about US fugitives who have found a refuge there, but critics blasted the historic trip Sunday for rewarding Cuba while convicted cop-killer Joanne Chesimard remains free and President Raúl Castro’s human-rights abuses have worsened. […] Critics, led by New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, blasted Obama. “The simple truth is, deals with the devil require the devil to deal,” Menendez said in advance of the visit. […] Critics believe conditions in Cuba are terrible and Obama is too focused on making a legacy-defining trip rather...

President Obama landed in Cuba on Sunday afternoon, hours after dozens of dissidents from the Ladies in White movement were detained during a post-Mass, pro-democracy march, in what has become a weekly ritual of protest and arrest over almost a year. “Obama, traveling to Cuba isn’t fun,” read a banner carried by the demonstrators. “No to human rights violations.” Any hopes that this week’s demonstration, on the eve of Obama’s arrival, would be tolerated were quickly put to rest, as police handcuffed and bussed away dozens of the protesting women, and a handful of men. Ladies in White was established...

Yolanda Mauri’s ancestors almost certainly came to Cuba in chains, laboring as slaves on an island of French coffee plantations and fields of Spanish sugarcane. Her parents became their family’s first professionals, graduating with engineering degrees after Cuba’s 1959 revolution ended segregation. Mauri, 26, graduated from an elite technical university with a degree in computer programming. Today, she struggles to patch together a living from poorly paid government work and freelance jobs like building websites. She feels the sting of racism in casual derogatory comments or a maître d’s refusal to seat her in an expensive restaurant. For Mauri and...

Havana/Washington (dpa) - US President Barack Obama departed Washington Sunday for a three-day visit to Cuba, a historic trip culminating a process of a rapprochement that began more than a year ago. Obama and his family, including first lady Michelle Obama and her mother, Marian Robinson, boarded Air Force One around 1:30 pm (1730 GMT) at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington and the plane took off in a light drizzle. The only other sitting US president who has ever visited Cuba, Calvin Coolidge, travelled there by ship in 1928. Obama is expected to be feted during his stay on...

President Obama’s outreach to communist-ruled Cuba risks “legitimizing the deeply entrenched Cuban regime,” Cuban human rights and opposition groups warned Wednesday, days before Obama is scheduled to become the first sitting president to visit the island nation in almost 90 years. “We would never imagine that the democratic world would legitimize the Castros,” the Forum for Rights and Freedoms and the Resistance Assembly wrote in a letter to Obama. “These individuals have destroyed the well-being of our nation. From firing squads and political assassinations to political imprisonment, thousands of Cubans inside and outside the island have had their lives taken...

President Barack Obama will use an historic speech in Havana next week to lay out a vision of greater freedoms and more economic opportunity in Cuba, White House officials said Wednesday, offering a glimpse of how the president hopes to use his trip to encourage change on the communist island. Obama’s speech on Tuesday at the Grand Theater of Havana will mark a moment that seemed unimaginable only a few years ago, before Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro moved to restore relations between the two estranged countries. Obama’s advisers said they hoped Cubans would be able to watch the...

The United States government has been paying to feed and shelter thousands of Cubans trying to migrate to the United States, in what critics consider another sign of the lopsided treatment provided to Cubans under American law. The Obama administration has tried hard to deter the crush of migrants arriving from Central America in recent years. It has pressed Mexico to crack down on migrants passing through its territory, while women and children who managed to cross the American border have been held in detention facilities. But American law gives Cubans special status to live in the United States and...

The Cuban government has loosened travel restrictions on some of the island's best-known dissidents, granting them one-time permission to travel abroad ahead of President Barack Obama's trip to the island, activists said Wednesday. [...] Members of a group of 11 dissidents imprisoned during the 2003 crackdown known as the Black Spring said Wednesday that officials have told seven of them that they will be free to travel one time as a reward for good behavior. Four more-politically active members of the group remain unable to travel, the dissidents said. Activist Marta Beatriz Roque said that she and six other former...

In the months after President Obama re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba, there's "certainly" been an "uptick" in the number of Cubans trying to make their way to the United States, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said on Thursday. [...] ... "I think that's tied to perhaps expectations around our policy changes but also greater freedom of movement for Cubans to travel from Cuba." Rhodes said the Obama administration has no plans to change the longstanding "wet foot/dry foot" immigration policy, which says Cubans who reach U.S. soil qualify for legal permanent resident status and U.S. citizenship, while those who...

U.S. officials say the United States and Cuba will sign an agreement next week to restart commercial air traffic for the first time in five decades. U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx flies to Havana on Tuesday to cement the deal. It will let U.S. airlines bid on routes for dozens of U.S.-Cuba flights per day. That's more than five times the current number of flights, all of which are charters. ...

More than 51,000 undocumented Cubans entered the United States last year -- a dramatic surge over 2014. Newly released immigration numbers for the final three months of 2015 show that 17,071 Cubans arrived in the U.S. without prior authorization, bringing the calendar year total to 51,011, according to figures from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That is an 84 percent increase over 2014. ...

Can an authoritarian regime convert to democracy by itself? The historical record isn't encouraging. In the absence of a popular uprising, it is rare for tyrants to voluntarily retire. The military junta of Burma has promised to relinquish some power to an elected government, but it has not yet delivered. China's party-state shows no inclination to try. Russia's strongman is reversing what incipient democracy existed. This goes to the core of why President Obama's opening to Cuba seems to be failing to live up to its declared goals. When the end to a half-century of hostility was announced in December...

Cuba and the United States announced Friday they have struck a deal to re-establish direct mail service, which was cut in 1963 at the height of Cold War tensions. Both countries said that they would launch a pilot program to test direct service. They gave no date for the permanent resumption of service, but indicated that it would not be imminent, saying that technical, operational and safety aspects remained under discussion. The announcement came six days before the anniversary of the announcement by Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro that they were re-establishing diplomatic relations. The Obama administration has been...

The United States and Cuba are set to sign their first accord on environmental protection since announcing plans to re-establish diplomatic relations. Under the deal, scientists at U.S. marine sanctuaries in Florida and Texas will cooperate with their counterparts at two Cuban reserves on preservation and research. ...

Pope Francis’ visit to Cuba could be greatly enhanced by a meeting between the Pope and political prisoners, or an embrace of the "Damas de Blanco" [Ladies in White] who every Sunday after leaving Church demonstrate on behalf of their relatives in prison who are continually beaten and detained. This is the hope expressed by Flavio Labrador, a doctor from Havana, who has lived for years in exile in Miami, where he earns his living as a teacher, a few hours ahead of the Pope’s arrival on the Argentine island, for a four-day visit. Labrador appreciates the small steps that...

Leadership: The sight of President Obama glad-handing Cuban dictator Raul Castro showed just how far American diplomacy has sunk. Far from being a Nixon-goes-to-China moment, this was a craven capitulation. There's a reason 10 presidents of both parties kept Cuba's Castros on America's bad-guys' list for more than 50 years. Each leader understood a basic truth: Totalitarian Cuba is a sworn enemy of the U.S., a violent threat to the Western Hemisphere's peace and prosperity and an ally of our worst enemies — including the former USSR. Hearing an American president now apologize — as Obama did over the weekend...

… Soon after Fidel Castro won control of Cuba in 1959, his government began confiscating the property of thousands of U.S. citizens and companies. For Edmund and Enna Chester, the losses included an 80-acre farm, hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock, and a brand new Buick that, who knows, may still be plying Havana’s streets. The confiscation of American property, valued today at $7 billion or more, was wrapped up in the retaliatory back-and-forth that led to the trade embargo, which remains in place. In 1996, Congress passed a law insisting Cuba repay Americans for what was taken...