9781422279816

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Turbulent Times O n March 20, 2016—holding an umbrella to cover himself and his wife from a late afternoon drizzle— President Barack Obama descended the staircase of Air Force One and stepped onto the tarmac at José Martí International Airport in Havana. For Cubans, the scene would have seemed unimaginable just a couple years earlier. It wasn’t simply that no American president had visited Cuba since 1928. More significantly, the island nation and its giant neigh- bor to the north had a history of antagonism dating back as far as most Cubans could remember. For half a century, the U.S. government had tried to topple the Cuban regime, mostly through economic pressure but also, during the 1960s, by sponsoring an invasion of the island as well as multiple assassination attempts targeting Cuban dicta-

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