In the first hours after President Barack Obama’s address to the Cuban people last Tuesday, which he delivered on the main stage of Havana’s impeccably restored nineteenth-century Gran Teatro, several Cubans I know told me how moved by it they had been; some confessed to having wept. Many quoted specific lines from what was a carefully nuanced piece of speechwriting: “I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas” was one. There were mentions, too, of Obama’s story about himself as the son of an African student and a white American woman, and of how “democracy” had made it possible for him to become President of the United States. These Cubans, who were from all walks of life, were impressed, too, by Obama’s easy charisma and his use of Cuban catchphrases and witticisms, and a couple of them recalled his praise of Cuban resourcefulness when he said, in Spanish, “el cubano inventa del aire”— roughly, Cubans are able to make things out of nothing. Obama also deftly balanced appeals for greater freedom in Cuba with acknowledgements of endemic American ills, such as racism. Raúl Castro’s presence in the theatre audience seemed to signal his endorsement for much of what Obama said—or at least a certain acquiescence to its spirit. When Obama left the stage, Castro stood alongside Cuba’s ancient prima ballerina, Alicia Alonso, held up both hands in clasped fashion, and grinned broadly. Cubans in the audience shouted “Viva, viva,” as if to acknowledge the shared triumph of Obama’s visit and the reconciliation under way between the two nations.

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