For more than fifty years, the United States pursued a policy of isolating and pressuring Cuba. While the policy was rooted in the context of the Cold War, our efforts continued long after the rest of the world had changed.

One of my favorite places I've visited is Havana, Cuba. On my way home from Costa Rica, I did a week in Havana. The colors, the music, the beautiful men and the cars! I love vintage and antique cars and own a couple myself.

Any Human Rights Council reform that allows countries that sponsor terrorism to remain as members, such as Cuba, is not real reform. And in the past, countries such as Libya, Iran and Syria have participated on this council.

I've always been very ambitious, and I always knew that I wanted something else. Cuba was a good start, but I knew I wasn't going to develop a real career, and I wanted to get closer to filmmakers that I wanted to work with.

My dad came from Cuba when he was a teenager not speaking English. And I grew up here speaking Spanglish. That's the world in which I grew up, and that's a world in which a lot of second generation immigrants find themselves.

My hope is that the Pope Francis visit to Cuba will remind all the Cuban citizens that they possess dignity and fundamental rights that come from God and that the Castro regime has no claim on changing what is 100% God-given.

The U.S. is re-establishing relations with Cuba. But before President Obama can lift the embargo, it will need approval from the Republican-controlled Congress - or as Republicans who called Obama said, 'Close, but no cigar.'

My grandfather was a very elegant individual. My father also. He was a lawyer and farmer in Cuba. In Miami, he had to go to work wherever he could. But whenever it was time to go out, you saw how they cared for how they looked.

President Obama has decided to have the United Nations review the law of Arizona. You have got to be kidding! We're now going to have countries like Cuba, Libya and Uganda sitting in judgment on Arizona's laws? Enough is enough!

A criminal pipeline from Cuba to Florida threatens U.S. national security interests with Cuban migrants exploiting U.S. law, stealing from the American taxpayer, and paying the Cuban government to live large off the cash in Cuba.

Despite the situation in Cuba, I had a chance to play on the national team; and compared to other baseball players and other people in Cuba, I had the opportunity to live at a level that was not very high class but in the middle.

I didn't come here without a visa, like everyone from China and Vietnam and Cuba. I came here by special plane... received by the ambassador, by the president of the United States. I should be the most honored man in your country.

Contrary to Eastern Europe, where the border was more porous and you could exchange information more easily, Cuba is an island. Thus, it is more isolated, and it's easier for the government to have great control over its citizens.

I invested in many companies, and I'm happy this one worked. This is capitalism. You invest in stock, it goes up, it goes down. You know, if you don't like capitalism, you don't like making money with stock, move to Cuba or China.

My eyes were bad. I stuttered. I had hepatitis, double pneumonia, even anemia. When I was 7, my family took me on a trip to Cuba, and all my ailments disappeared. Cuba gave me health, so I've been deeply attached to Cubans ever since.

To me, the New Jersey law enforcement community, and many other Americans, one of the biggest impediments to improved relations between the United States and Cuba is the continued safe haven provided to the fugitive, Joanne Chesimard.

I'm thirty-six years old and I've been married once and he left and I don't want to feel this way anymore. Like I can't be vulnerable. Can't relax. It's exhausting, always being on the defensive, keeping my guard up. I feel like Cuba.

Ali vs. Stevenson would have served as a symbolic battle between the United States and Cuba, capitalism and communism: Castro's values instilled in his boxers pitted against the values of 'merchandise' boxers from the rest of the world.

The Spirit tells me - Fidel Castro will die - in the 90s. Oooh my! Some will try to kill him and they will not succeed. But there will come a change in his physical health, and he will not stay in power, and Cuba will be visited of God.

In August 1961, I visited President Kennedy at Hyannis Port. The Berlin Wall was going up, and he was about to begin a huge military buildup - reluctantly, or so he said, as he puffed on a cigar liberated by a friend from Castro's Cuba.

I did 'Lonely Hearts' with John Travolta and James Gandolfini. Talk about getting over your fears. These guys were amazing! Also, Cuba Gooding, Jr. is one of my favorites. We've made 3 films together. He is such a generous, giving actor.

My grandfather left Cuba when Castro came into power and literally left everything. He had two suitcases and two kids and showed up in New Jersey and waited for my uncle to meet up with him. Imagine - there were no cell phones back then!

If Beyonce and Jay-Z had been born and raised in Cuba, they would have merely survived, with no opportunity to realize their aspirations. Only in a land that treasures liberty and the pursuit of happiness can such dreams become a reality.

As an amateur, I trained in some real hard schools of knocks. In Cuba, they would have judges on three sides of the ring just for sparring sessions. They train under exactly the same conditions as they fight, and it was a great experience.

I've never been anywhere in my life like it and I only really noticed it when I returned to Los Angeles and then Berlin. Everybody is much better off in these places, there is not poverty like in Cuba, but everybody complains about things.

My life has changed in many ways, both on an economic and personal level. All major league players are accorded the respect they deserve. In Cuba, it was not that way. National team players were not respected. The treatment was not adequate.

My dad left when I was a little boy and I grew up with my mother's family. There were foundations in the U.S. where Jewish people got together and sent money to Cuba, so we got some of that. We were a poor family, but I was always a happy kid.

I have not been to Cuba, though if you count the stories my grandma told me growing up, I've been there in my head many times. I think someday I will see it, when things are different there, but I've come to feel like I really am a Miami girl.

Of course, the kind of support that Cuba could give us was very limited when it came to building up our army, since they didn't manufacture armaments in the quantities that we required. So we turned to Algeria and the Soviet Union for support.

My parents made it a point that, although I was born and raised in New York City, I needed to speak Spanish because they wanted me to be able to communicate with my elders when I went to Santo Domingo or when my family came to visit from Cuba.

With the notable exceptions of rum drinks, black beans, fat brown cigars, the smiles of pretty girls, hot yellow sunlight, and fat men with guitars and bongos playing mambos, rumbas, and boleros late into the night, nothing in Cuba comes easily.

I was vaguely aware that people used to hijack planes to Cuba. But I didn't know much about how often it happened and what the motives were. I started looking into what was going on back then, and I was blown away by how common hijacking once was.

Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, setting us back in Latin America. That's why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, and positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people.

A very large majority of the U.S. population is in favor of establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and has been for a long time with some fluctuations. And even part of the business world is in favor of it, too. But the government won't allow it.

I grew up in Cuba under a strong, military, oppressive dictatorship. So as a teenager, I found myself involved in a revolution. I remember during that time, a young, charismatic leader rose up, talking about hope and change. His name was Fidel Castro.

The revolutions of my century, the 20th century - the Soviet revolution, or the Chinese, or the revolutions that were fomented in Latin America, such as in Cuba - failed for the most part, a failure which was completely clear by the end of the century.

I was a first-generation college student as well as the first in our family to be born in America - my parents were born in Cuba - and we didn't yet know that families were supposed to leave pretty much right after they unloaded your stuff from the car.

If the United States has normalized relations with Cuba, why would we treat illegal immigrants from that nation any different than those from other countries? It is time we level the playing field and end the outdated, preferential treatment for Cubans.

Standing, as I believe the United States stands for humanity and civilization, we should exercise every influence of our great country to put a stop to that war which is now raging in Cuba and give to that island once more peace, liberty, and independence.

My mom is very practical, and she originally wanted me to have something to fall back on. She was a little fearful of my becoming an actor because she didn't see it as a way to make a living. My dad, who was born and raised in Cuba, was really cool with it.

I would love to go back and help rebuild that country and help - you know, kind of like what's going on with Iraq right now. You know, they've got a new government in place. They're trying to rebuild the country. I would love for that to happen in Cuba also.

I wanted a name I could shape the music towards. I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba - 'Lana Del Rey' reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue.

In 1995, the Clinton Administration reached an agreement with Cuban government that any refugee caught at sea would be sent back to Cuba while any refugee who reaches the United States shores would be allowed to begin the process to citizenship after one year.

Chavez, who came out of the ranks of the Venezuelan Army, is methodical and tireless. I have observed him over the course of 17 years, since his first visit to Cuba. He is an extremely humanitarian and law-abiding person; he has never taken revenge on anybody.

My documentary 'Split Decision' examines Cuban-American relations, and the economic and cultural paradoxes that have shaped them since Castro's revolution, through the lens of elite Cuban boxers forced to choose between remaining in Cuba or defecting to America.

Forty-two years ago, I came to America from communist Cuba so I might have a better way of life, a freer way of life - a more democratic way of life. I wanted to live the American Dream where if you worked hard and put your mind to the task, anything was possible.

The left takes credit for being the political aisle promoting human rights and fighting oppression, but in the case of Cuba, its adherents promoted oppression and human rights abuses for decades by glorifying the Castro regime and its savage enforcer, Che Guevara.

Cuba is in some ways a perfect trading partner for Minnesota because there's so little overlap between what they are good at and they produce and what Minnesota is good at and what we produce. So it's a natural trading relationship, especially because they're so close.

When you see my performances, even people that you might have known, like Nicky Barnes in 'American Gangster,' you have to get over the fact that I look like Cuba Gooding, Jr. But once you find truth in the performance, if I'm doing my job right, you believe everything.

I realized that it's all really one, that John Lennon was correct. We utilize the music to bring down the walls of Berlin, to bring up the force of compassion and forgiveness and kindness between Palestines, Hebrews. Bring down the walls here in San Diego, Tijuana, Cuba.

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