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The news was announced by the main US diplomat in Cuba, Timothy Zúñiga-Brown. The representative headquarters will resume its activity on a limited basis for some immigrant visa services. The bulk of the cases will continue to be handled by the northern embassy based in Guyana.
The announcement comes in the midst of a complex economic and social situation on the island, where thousands of Cubans are trying to migrate in search of a better future or to reunite with their relatives living in the northern country.
The decision comes as part of the result of the ongoing review of President Joe Biden’s Cuba policy. The staff who will be based on the island will have to deal with a backlog of more than four years of immigration visa applications. Zúñiga-Brown’s statements did not directly address the issue of the increase in personnel. He also did not release calendars or numbers of officials.
Following the announcement, the embassy announced in a statement that these new changes will focus on “limited processing of nonimmigrant emergency visas.”
The Embassy will initiate the limited resumption of some immigrant visa services, as part of the broader expansion of the Embassy’s functions to facilitate diplomatic and civil society engagement and to expand the provision of consular services. pic.twitter.com/oUQbNPBhyp
— Embassy of the United States in Cuba (@USEmbCuba) March 3, 2022
Thousands of Cubans demand that the United States Government return consular services in Havana to normality. Since the impasse that led to the closure of the representation, the islanders must carry out their visa procedures in a third country, specifically Guyana, which makes the process more expensive, having to pay for stay, flights and procedures, without being sure of an approval from the entry authorization.
Signs of change?
Some voices point out that this gesture should not be read as a sign of change, but as the beginning of the fulfillment of one of Biden’s unfulfilled promises to date: the restoration of services at the Havana embassy.
However, for the Cuban political scientist Rafael Hernández, the “deliberate” interruption of the migratory agreement with Cuba, which provides for 20,000 annual visas for Cubans, has caused in four years “a kind of silent Mariel”, referring to the port through which in 1980 Hundreds of thousands of people left for the United States.
Quoted by AFP, for Hernández the recent gesture “has nothing to do with giving continuity to Obama’s policy”, it is “reversing the barbarities committed” by Trump that affected Cubans living in the United States.
For his part, Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue analysis center, agrees that “it would be a mistake to interpret it as the beginning of a significant opening towards the island.” It’s a decision backed by both Republicans and Democrats that “has no political cost to the Biden administration,” he said.
The Havana Syndrome
Diplomats residing in the Cuban capital, specifically Americans and Canadians, experienced a series of strange clinical conditions, for which the then administration, headed by former President Donald Trump, decided to withdraw most of the representative personnel from the island.
Those affected experienced headaches, nausea and dizziness, presumably caused by some type of microwave weapon. American media, such as the NBC news network, announced in December 2020 that a committee of experts from the US National Academies of Sciences. determined that microwave energy “appeared to have been the most plausible mechanism to explain these cases,” to which the State Department responded, at the time, that each possible cause remained “speculative.”
With the progress of the investigations, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), ruled out that the Havana syndrome, also experienced in countries like China and Colombia, was part of a foreign plot against their diplomats.
An impasse in relationships
On December 17, 2014, and after several secret meetings between representatives of both parties, the President of the United States, Barack Obama, and the then Cuban Head of State, Raúl Castro, decided to initiate official talks in order to resume relations. diplomatic.
The previous meetings took place in Canada under strict secrecy, with the mediation of the Vatican. As part of the reestablishment agreements, it was decided to reopen the diplomatic representations of both States in their respective territories.
With the arrival at the White House of former President Trump, the agreements reached were reversed, with the promise to put an end to the government and the political system imposed on the island for more than sixty years.
The new administration, headed by Biden, promised during the campaign to resume the course Obama had left, but the constant denunciations of human rights violations, the demonstrations carried out by Cubans in July of last year and the force with which the government repressed any indication of opposition in those days and subsequent dates, strengthened the impasse in relations between Washington and Havana.
With AFP and EFE