Presents galore in Cuba after relaxed US ban

CUBA: Christmas in Cuba was awash with hard-to-get presents like flat-screen TVs and expensive candies as a wave of US-based Cubans visited for family reunions after a recent scrapping of US travel restrictions.

Adrian, one 17-year-old who flew in from the US state of Florida, where he was born to Cuban immigrants, was overjoyed as he threw his bags into a relative's classic orange 1956 Chevrolet at Havana's airport. He was seeing his grandfather for the first time. "My parents emigrated 20 years ago and I'm so happy to be able to come and get to know my relatives," he said, grinning.

Next to him, the grandfather, a 60-year-old truck driver named Evaristo Delgado, was likewise exuberant, though he slammed "the politics that separate the Cubans here from those over there."

"Over there" mostly means Florida, the closest point in the United States to the communist island state that Washington has targeted with an economic embargo dating back five decades, in reaction to the revolution led by Fidel Castro. Former US president George W. Bush toughened the embargo by allowing US-Cubans to make only one trip every three years.

In April of this year, though, US President Barack Obama relaxed the restrictions slightly, by giving Cuban-Americans the right to freely travel to Cuba. Non-Cuban-Americans, however, remain barred from doing so.

The change has meant that over this Christmas season, up to 10 flights a day were arriving from Miami in Havana, each of them filled with US Cubans weighed down with gifts. HAVANA, Friday, AFP