El Salvador and Cuba normalize relations

El Salvador’s new president, Mauricio Funes, was inaugurated yesterday in front of an audience of several prominent heads of state (including Brazilian President Lula da Silva) and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Today, Cuba and El Salvador signed an agreement to fully normalize relations—a significant and symbolic act for Funes on his first day in office.

As of today, then, the United States is the only country in the Western Hemisphere without normal diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Fidel Castro reflected upon the inauguration with some comments on the significance of “applause and silence,” during Funes’ speech. Instead of focusing on the historic election of Funes, a candidate from the leftist political party that was a guerrilla movement a mere two decades ago, or on the promising new relationship to come from renewed diplomatic exchanges between the countries, Castro focused on the role of the United States in all of it. He compared the applause given in the inauguration hall when Funes mentioned Cuba to that when he mentioned the United States (guess who won?); he ridiculed the U.S. conception of “democracy” and “human rights”; and he alluded to the U.S. role in El Salvador’s “bloody dictatorship” of the 1980s.

High officials in the United States and in Cuba may have agreed to hold discussions on several important issues, but the path toward establishing good will between the two countries looks long.