Raul is getting suckered by the master neoliberal-con artist --- but not as completely fleeced as Gorbachev and the drunken Yeltsin.
The Disguised Global Capitalist Empire HQed in, and merely 'posing' as, our former country has a 'History' of militarist attempts to take-over Cuba as one of its near territories, and failing that to oppress and tyrannize its citizens as all Empires do according to the late/great Jewish intellectual, Hannah Arendt, who presciently warned of all Empires:
"Empire abroad entails tyranny at home"
This is what I commented to one of the first NYT deceitful articles about the Cuban trip by Julie Hirschfeld:
Well, Mr. Hopie Changie (or Secret Agent 008, as some call him) certainly raised the "Hopes" of a majority of the media/propaganda deluded 'subjects' of the Disguised Global Capitalist Empire (aka America) in the 2008 (s)election --- as Slick Willie "I feel your pain" Clinton proved he could do both for the 'subjects' within the DGCEmpire, and those 'subjects' then recently freed from the supposedly last "Evil Empire" on earth, with the fall of that wall.
So, 'hopefully' --- from the Empire's perspective, Obama can pull-off that trick again, and get the Cuban people to not only forget the truth of what Sydney Pollack and Redford's 1990 film "Havana" documented in historical novel form as the transition from a subject territory of the gambling and financial Empire under the Batista Vichy-like regime of militarist, economic, and social tyranny.
Cuba is tentatively 'inviting' their big neighbor back, but as Mr. Gutierrez says in your articles' conclusion, “The Cubans aren’t sure what the U.S. intentions are — whether this is being done because it is a Trojan horse or a hidden regime-change policy,”
And in reply to Redford's question of why the revolutionaries of the late '50's had to "actually fight?" --- Raul Julia [Revolutionary Doctor Duran simply said, "But, they won't leave by asking 'Nicely'".
If the Russian people, of the euphoric early 1990's, had known what they know now, would they have 'invited' the U.S. HQed Empire, only 'posing' as our former country in to loot them?
Ultimately, of course, the real winners will be il Donald Trump and Sheldon Adelson with their massive new casions and real estate Empires taking over Cuba and returning it to the conditions of Batista 50's with poverty, slave labor, and economic tyranny.
I'd give it a decade.
