At the recent Summit of the Americas, President [Barack Obama] suggested that the U.S. could learn a lesson of goodwill from Cuba. In 1998, Cuba's government began programs to send large-scale medical assistance to poor populations affected by natural disasters. Each year some 2,000 young people enroll at the school, which operates from a former naval base in a suburb of Havana. Cuba's 21 medical faculties all train young people of poor families from throughout the Americas, as well as hundreds of African, Arab, Asian and European students. The country sends teams of doctors all over the world to respond to natural disasters. Cuban doctors have provided medical services to the underserved in Africa for over a decade. Blacks' views of relations with Cuba differ vastly from those of most Cuban immigrants and Cuban-Americans. The former lily-white upper crust of Cuban society wield political clout in Florida and are dead set against normalizing relations with Cuba's government. Consequently most politicians have chosen to adopt Cuban-American views. From 1960 to 1979, hundreds of thousands of Cubans began new lives in the US. Most of these Cuban Americans came were from educated upper and middle classes and form the backbone of the anti-[Fidel Castro] movement. Cuban Americans are America's fifth-largest Hispanic group and the largest Spanish-speaking group of white descent.
HAVANA - A group of US lawmakers is working at easing dialogue between Washington and Havana, as President Barack Obama's administration weighs plans to drop its decades-old strategy of isolating communist Cuba. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee's top Republican Richard Lugar, who in February said decades of US sanctions on Havana had failed, wrote to Obama in a March 30 letter that: "additional (US) measures are needed... to recast a policy that has not only failed to promote human rights and democracy, but also undermines our broader security and political interests." U.S. Congressman [Bobby Rush], left, and Rep. [Barbara Lee], D-Calif, second from right, attend a ceremony in front of Martin Luther King monument in Havana, Saturday, April 4, 2009. Seven members of the Congressional Black Caucus arrived in Cuba last Friday to discuss improving relations with the communist government amid speculation that Washington could ease travel restrictions to the island.
