President Obama announced this Wednesday that he has ordered to restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba. Along with this, President Obama also announced the opening of an embassy at Havana as he said he would “cut loose the shackles of the past” and cut one of the final ties to the Cold War, according to an article on the New York Times webpage.

With the help of Pope Francis and after 18 months of secret phone calls that produced a negotiated prisoner swap, our president phoned Raul Castro, president of Cuba, and concluded the deal. This historic arrangement broke an everlasting stalemate between two countries separated by less than 100 miles of water.

“We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries,” said President Obama in a nationally televised statement. The deal will “begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas,” he added in a later statement.

Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a Cuban-American Democrat and the outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, “President Obama’s actions have vindicated the brutal behavior of the Cuban government.” Menendez isn’t the only Democrat to have shown support. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the outgoing majority leader, said, “I remain concerned about human rights and political freedom inside Cuba, but I support moving forward toward a new path with Cuba.”

However, Republicans have shown further disappointment in President Obama’s decision making. One being Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American Republican from Florida and a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2016, condemned the deal as “the latest in a long line of failed attempts by President Obama to appease rogue regimes at all cost.” Also a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio said he would try to do what he could to “block this dangerous and desperate attempt by the president to burnish his legacy at the Cuban people’s expense.”

Hopefully this deal will result in Havana becoming a popular summer vacation escape for our generation and for those to come.

FSA Connection Questions:

1. What is the overall tone of the piece?

2. What sentences best summarizes the passage?

3. How is the information of the piece organized?

4. What does the word normalize mean in the passage?

5. What is the subject of the passage?