Three years after Raúl Castro cast aside decades of communist housing dogma and allowed homeowners to buy and sell their properties for the first time since the 1960s, the island's real estate market is proving to be a powerful engine of economic and social change.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Negotiators for Cuba and the United States said Friday after two days of talks that they have not settled on arrangements to reestablish diplomatic relations, severed decades ago, so that full-fledged embassies can open again.
At Havana's Hemingway marina before the event, the two sides got organized and chatted like old friends. They even carried some of each other's belongings in ride-along powerboats.
Scholars and military experts say it's difficult to see how the United States can overhaul its relationship with Cuba while hanging on to Guantanamo Bay Naval Station indefinitely, especially if relations warm significantly in a post-Castro era.
The first South American pope played a key role in secret negotiations between the United States and Cuba that led to the surprise announcement in December that they would seek to restore diplomatic ties after more than 50 years of tensions.
HAVANA, Cuba – Cuban President Raúl Castro's daughter Mariela, a lawmaker and gay-rights activist, said Tuesday her organization would hold symbolic gay weddings this weekend in a call for equal rights.
HAVANA — As they begin to visit this long-forbidden island in greater and greater numbers, it is only natural that some travelers from the U.S. will fall in love with Cuba. Others, with Cubans.
Cuba is one of the least Catholic nations in Latin America, where along with a sizable number of the religiously unaffiliated, both Pentecostalism and Afro-Cuban Santeria, an Afro-Caribbean religion, are thriving. The pope's announced visit to the island is probably more about politics than religion, one expert said.
If the redesignation is successful, Cuba would again have access to the U.S. banking system, allowing an embassy to be opened and paving the way for further trade between the Cold War foes.
