Obama, Cuban President Raul Castro Shake Hands at Nelson Mandela Memorial


U.S. President Barack Obama shook hands with Cuban President Raul Castro today at a memorial service for former South African president Nelson Mandela — an almost unprecedented moment between two deeply opposed neighbours.

Barack Obama, Raul Castro shake hands at Mandela memorial

The handshake came during a ceremony focused on Mandela’s legacy of reconciliation.

The U.S. and Castro have been enemies since the Cuban revolution led by Castro’s older brother, Fidel, in 1959. After U.S. businesses in Cuba were nationalized without compensation, the U.S. broke off diplomatic relations and imposed a trade embargo.

Obama was greeting a line of world leaders and heads of state attending the memorial in Johannesburg just before he spoke to the gathered thousands at FNB Stadium in Soweto.

The U.S. and Cuba have taken small steps toward peace in recent years, raising hopes they could be on the verge of a breakthrough in relations.

Still, skeptics caution that the two countries have shown signs of a thaw in the past, only to fall back into old recriminations.

Canada, for the most part, has maintained warm relations with Cuba since the days of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s visits to the country in the 1970s. He and Fidel Castro, who fell ill in recent years, remained on good terms.

Shark-infested straits

Obama also shook hands with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who followed him onto the podium during the Mandela memorial, and has clashed with Obama over alleged National Security Agency spying.


Cuba has been a hot button in U.S. politics for decades. The southern coastal state of Florida is home to thousands of Cuban refugees and their descendants.

The shark-infested Florida Straits, known for difficult currents and sudden squalls, separate the southeast coast of Florida from Cuba. Many would-be Cuban immigrants to the U.S. have died trying to cross the straits as they flee their Communist-ruled homeland.

CBC’s Peter Mansbridge noted that Obama spoke of the Mandela legacy even as leaders such as Castro, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and South African President Jacob Zuma sat nearby — all of them criticized in recent years for acts of oppression against some of their own people.

“We, too, must act on behalf of justice,” Obama said. “We, too, must act on behalf of peace.

“There are too many of us who happily embrace Madiba’s [Mandela’s] legacy of racial reconciliation, but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic poverty and growing inequality.”

The BBC reported in 2000 that then U.S. President Bill Clinton had shaken hands with the Cuban president at the time, Fidel Castro, at a UN summit in New York. The White House originally denied that the handshake had taken place, but later admitted it had occurred, the BBC said.

CBS

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