If the US and Cuba can get along ...Forming a government

PRESIDENT Barack Obama yesterday became the first American leader in 88 years to visit Cuba. The last, Calvin Coolidge, arrived on Cuban shores in the battleship USS Texas and was greeted by salvos from massed artillery.

Mr Obama’s arrival was less dramatic. He set the tone for his three-day visit when he said it is part of making the new relationship between the two countries “irreversible”.

America imposed a crippling economic embargo — el bloqueo — on Cuba in October 1960 and the missile crisis of 1962 deepened enmity between the superpower and the impoverished island. For its part communist Cuba, despite all of those emblematic but ultimately fraudulent 1960s T-shirts, did not shy away from human rights abuses when confronted with internal opposition. Castro could be as brutal as any despot if he felt the need. The fractious relationship between the countries came to symbolise the uncompromising, deadly power plays of the Cold War.