© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A view of the US Embassy next to the Anti-Imperialist Theater in Havana, Cuba, on May 24, 2023. REUTERS/Alexander Meneghini
By Dave Sherwood
HAVANA (Reuters) – When the U.S. Embassy in Havana reopened last May to Cubans seeking visas after a hiatus of nearly five years, the antiquated 1950s building lay in ruins.
Parts of its stone façade were crumbling from the upper floors, threatening passers-by. A rusty perimeter wall, rickety and outdated, swaying with the trade winds. Hurricane Irma damaged the lower windows, guard post, and granite facing. Even the ambassador’s dramatic seat—the balcony overlooking the Gulf of Mexico—was considered unsafe.
A $28 million renovation project now underway is a little-known but significant investment in American diplomacy on the island, which has also included an increase in consular staff, “human rights advancement” programs, and private business in the communist-run country.
“The important thing to realize about diplomacy is that it’s not just politics — it’s logistics,” said Benjamin Ziff, the top US diplomat to Cuba. “You need to have a presence. You need to have people. You need to have a building.”
But the project also highlights the still tense relationship between Cuba and the United States, which flared up again earlier this week over a US media report that China had reached a secret agreement with Cuba to set up a spy base on the island targeting the United States.
US officials immediately questioned the report, and Cuba on Thursday denied it outright. But the Cuban government also took the opportunity to accuse the United States of being behind a fabrication intended to justify the decades-old economic embargo imposed by Washington on the island.
According to a source in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the work of the embassy, which began in May 2022 and is likely to be delayed by six months, has stalled until March or April of 2024, amid tensions and mistrust between the two countries.
Ziv told Reuters that the Cuban government was slow at first in issuing visas to American workers and technicians.
The State Department source said the roughly 12 crew members, including five Cubans who are required to be accompanied at all times by American contractors with special security clearances, have fluctuated with those bureaucratic hurdles, leading to unexpected construction delays.
If a contractor breaks a saw blade, for example, Ziff said, he sometimes works the floor until it stops.
“They will have to go back to the US to buy another blade, and then apply for a new visa, which could take two months,” he said.
Other challenges, including high-sulfur Cuban fuel that wreak havoc on machinery imported from the United States, and local shortages of supplies such as cement and rebar, initially halted progress.
Ziff said some of those problems have been resolved. The Cuban government has simplified visa procedures for workers. The State Department imported high-quality stainless steel for its fence, and granite from a quarry in Vermont for the building’s new facade.
But new obstacles appeared. So-called “secure” containers for transporting sensitive building materials, sealed with a diplomatic seal, are facing bureaucratic delays, according to Ziv and State Department sources.
“There is an understanding that it is good for bilateral relations to have a safe and secure embassy,” Ziv said. “However, trying to bring in materials… is still a problem.”
The Cuban government did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Cuba has insisted on the importance of a functioning US embassy and robust visa program, agreed upon in the two countries’ immigration agreements, as a necessary step to stem the mass migration of Cubans via irregular routes north of the United States.
Reuters spoke with several Havana residents who applauded the embassy reform.
“It is one of the most important embassies in our country, and many Cubans visit it when we want to travel,” said Alexandre Garcia, a 22-year-old worker in a cafeteria opposite the embassy.
“I want him to be at his best when it’s my turn to go,” he said, smiling.
A castle is threatened by taking over a building
Under former leader Fidel Castro, jabs and animosity often ran both ways between Cuba and the embassy.
In 1964, outraged by the arrests of Cuban fishermen in Florida, Castro threatened to seize the building and turn it into his government’s Ministry of Fisheries. Castro often claimed that the embassy was a stronghold for spies aiming to overthrow his government.
When the embassy under the George W. Bush administration began running a Times Square-style electronic strip with messages promoting human rights and democracy, Castro planted more than a hundred black flags in a lawn adjacent to the embassy to hide the banner for a year.
The embassy has not always been a point of contention.
Its landmark setting and modern architecture, said author Jane, was built on Havana’s iconic Malecón waterfront promenade in 1953 and designed by Harrison & Abramowitz, the architects who designed the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Loeffler, a Washington-based architectural historian who studies embassies.
She said the State Department saw it as “a way to put America on the diplomatic map as a forward-looking and optimistic country, home to the world’s largest democracy, a place of welcome and a force for good.”
But after Castro took power in 1959 and the two countries severed diplomatic relations, the structure was virtually abandoned and that initial display of optimism became “a failed dream,” she says.
The building, which had operated for years as the US Interests Section, reopened as an embassy in July 2015 when diplomatic relations were restored under Barack Obama. But its staffing was cut sharply two years later after US employees began reporting a mysterious illness dubbed “Havana Syndrome”.
Ziff said US intelligence investigations have since concluded that it is “very unlikely” that a foreign adversary was responsible for the disease, and that a more active task force and agenda has returned to Havana.
“There is a lot of interesting history here, and we will continue to make interesting history here.”