Eusebio Leal - “In Cuba There Is No Anti-US Sentiment, Only Anti-Imperialist”

Eusebio Leal: "In Cuba There Is No Anti-US Sentiment, Only
Anti-Imperialist" / 14ymedio, Sara Gomez
Posted on August 6, 2015

EFE/14ymedio, Sara Gomez Armas, Havana, 6 August 2015 — A few days
before the American flag will fly above the embassy in Havana, the
city's historian and Cuban intellectual Eusebio Leal said in an
interview with EFE that Cuba had never had "an anti-United States
sentiment, only an anti-imperialist sentiment."

"Cubans have always understood this subtlety. Many things unite us in
history and culture," said Leal, who is a kind of mayor of the Cuban
capital and the principal force behind the restoration of Old Havana,
the historic center of the city and one of the main tourist attractions
on the island.

Leal, who was a part of the Cuban delegation that traveled to Washington
for the opening ceremony of the Cuban embassy on 20 July, ​​insists that
normalization between Cuba and the United States is "necessary," but
still ahead is "a long process in which a number of issues, still
unclear, will have to be clarified."

"We, who are the victims because the blockade still remains intact, were
the first to go there to raise our flag," said Leal, who is committed to
a relationship between both countries based on "respect and always equal
standing."

With the embassies already open, and after US Secretary of State John
Kerry presides over the August 14 ceremony in Havana to hoist the "stars
and stripes" flag, the road will open for the second phase of
normalization between the two countries, in which "infinite steps" still
remain.

"What happens is that everything doesn't have to be public. There are
things that, to show them, would cause difficulties too formidable (…).
So these have to be resolved delicately and without sensationalism,"
explains Leal, who is also a deputy in the National Assembly.

The Cuba-US relationship still irritates some groups, especially among
the Cuban exile community in Miami, and hence Leal approves the
discretion and considers the secret negotiations to have been "one of
the best kept secrets in the history of both countries," maintained over
18 months with the mediation of the Vatican and the pope.

He also opines that the actions orchestrated by president Barack Obama
in his approach to Cuba have been "brave," aimed at trying to leave a
"positive legacy" and "to earn at the end of his presidency what they
awarded him at its beginning," referring to the controversy and, for
some, the premature concession to him of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.

With regards to the presidential elections in the coming year in the
United States, without naming names he notes that, although he will not
vote, "it is a campaign to avoid the most reactionary and conservative
parties, who carry hatred even in their blood, prevailing at this
particular time."

"The current trend in this part of the world favors maintaining the
change, maintaining the sensible, the positive," says Leal, which seems
an endorsement of the continuity guaranteed by the democratic candidate
Hillary Clinton, who spoke last week in Miami in favor of lifting the
embargo and deepening the rapprochement with Cuba.

Source: Eusebio Leal: "In Cuba There Is No Anti-US Sentiment, Only
Anti-Imperialist" / 14ymedio, Sara Gomez | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/eusebio-leal-in-cuba-there-is-no-anti-us-sentiment-only-anti-imperialist-14ymedio-sara-gomez/