Obama-Castro handshake: more than just a gesture?

The brief handshake between US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro at South African leader Nelson Mandela’s funeral triggered a wave of speculation and expectation over future relations between the long-estranged neighbours. Barely 145 kilometres apart, the United States and communist Cuba have kept up their Cold War postures, which commentators warned would take more than a handshake to thaw.

Obama shook hands with Castro and other leaders while making his way to the podium to speak at Mandela’s memorial service, leaving an indelible image in the history of the two countries.

Presidents Bill Clinton of the United States and Fidel Castro of Cuba shook hands in 2000 at a UN summit, but there were no photos of that historic moment.

Thirteen years later, millions of live television viewers around the globe saw Obama and the younger Castro join hands and even share a smile and a few words.

Media seized on the moment.

US broadcaster CNN reported “a brief but important handshake.” The New York Times said the gesture was “sure to be dissected for its symbolic and political significance.”

Even in Cuba, the pro-government website Cubadebate published the photo with the caption, “Let that gesture be the beginning of the end of US attacks on Cuba.”

But many voices warned against overvaluing the moment.

“It is probably unwise to read too much into Obama’s handshake with Raul Castro,” Michael Shifter of Inter-American Dialogue, an influential Washington-based think-tank, told dpa.

Ignoring Castro at an event like Mandela’s funeral in Johannesburg would have been “embarrassing and politically costly for Obama” and would have looked “completely at odds with Mandela’s generosity of spirit,” Shifter said.

“The Obama administration is open to improving relations with Havana, and this gesture underscores that openness, but there is a long way to go before one can talk about a meaningful thaw,” he said.

It would not be the first promising but unproductive gesture. Obama and Venezuela’s then-president Hugo Chavez shared a similar handshake at the 2009 Summit of the Americas, which led to nothing.

Obama, who showed openness toward Havana from the start of his first term in 2009, last month told the Cuban exile community at a private event in Miami that the US needed to “update” its policy toward the communist island. “We have to be creative, and we have to be thoughtful,” he said to the surprise of many people present.

During his address to honour Mandela in Johannesburg, Obama directed a pointed critique at governments like the Cuban regime: “There are too many who claim solidarity with Madiba’s struggle for freedom but do not tolerate dissent from their own people.”

Asked to comment on the Castro handshake, a White House official said the gesture was unplanned and insisted that leaders “honour Mandela’s struggle for freedom by upholding the basic human rights of their people.”

In fact, a reported 30 people were arrested Tuesday in Havana during an attempted protest marking International Human Rights Day.

At least one Republican member of Congress blasted Obama for shaking Castro’s hand.

“Sometimes a handshake is just a handshake, but when the leader of the free world shakes the bloody hand of a ruthless dictator like Raul Castro, it becomes a propaganda coup for the tyrant,” Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American, told Secretary of State John Kerry in a hearing Tuesday.

“Raul Castro uses that hand to sign the orders to repress and jail democracy advocates. In fact, right now, as we speak, Cuban opposition leaders are being detained, and they’re being beaten. They will feel disheartened when they see these photos.”

But Cuba specialist Philip Peters of the Lexington Institute said while the handshake can’t hurt, it’s not significant.

“What matters is whether President Obama will conduct relations (with Cuba) as he does with all other countries with different political systems,” he said. “That requires a decision, not a handshake.”