President Barack Obama touched down in Havana on Sunday, 20 March, making him the first sitting US president to visit Cuba in 88 years. While touring the historic centre of Old Havana on Monday with first lady Michelle Obama, he stopped by the City Museum, where he was greeted by a portrait of Abraham Lincoln placed in the entryway. The president also placed a wreath at the monument to the Cuban writer and nationalist José Martí in Revolution Square.
The island nation with a population of 11.2 million sits just 300 miles from Miami, but has remained isolated from America and much of the rest of the world due to a US trade embargo imposed after the Communist revolution there in 1959. Though the blockade slowed down progress there significantly, a rich cultural life has been sustained, and its art has lately been sought after by collectors and curators.
The country’s Communist regime, however, has been known to repress dissident artists and cultural figures. Last year, the artist Tania Bruguera had her passport confiscated and was unable to leave the island after staging an performance that was critical of the government in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución. She is now fundraising to open an Institute of Artivism dedicated to the political writer Hannah Arendt. More recently, the street artist Antonio Gonzalez Rodiles, known as El Sexto, was reportedly arrested in Havana on Sunday along with other protesters during an anti-government march ahead of Obama’s visit.