As far as the outside world is concerned, Cuba began a rapid process of political and economic change on 17 December 2014. On that day, the United States and Cuban governments surprised everyone by announcing their agreement to establish full diplomatic relations as soon as possible and end their fifty-four-year history of mutual antagonism.
It was an announcement which immediately sparked a series of assumptions about Cuba’s domestic situation. Certainly, most casual observers seem to have assumed that recognition has also ended the equally long US economic embargo, opening up the Cuban market to American tourists and capital. Hence, it is also widely assumed that Cuba’s return to capitalism, and thus a more "Americanised" system, is only a matter of time – something welcomed by those who, since 1991, have seen Cuba as an anachronism, but regretted by others. What has helped fuel these assumptions is the awareness that, in 2018, when Raúl Castro’s realises his promise not to serve more than two terms as elected president, Cuba will no longer be governed by a Castro. Hence, whichever way you look at it, the end of "the Revolution" is assumed to be nigh.
But all is by no means what it appears. To begin with, an exact chronology of the diplomatic relations broken in 1961 would mark 1977 as the year the Carter administration and Cuba agreed a partial recognition, setting up interest sections in third-party embassies, with a view to eventual full relations – an aim then derailed by the Reagan administration which entered the White House in January 1981. In this strict sense diplomatic relations did not restart in 2015.
