President Barack Obama made a historic visit to Cuba this week, meeting with President Raul Castro. He is the first United States leader to visit Havana in 88 years. For more than fifty years, diplomatic and trade relations between the U.S. and Cuba were  frozen following the communist takeover of the country in 1959. In December 2014, both nations announced a new effort to normalize relations once again. Obama and Castro met in private before answering questions for the press. “Today, I reaffirm that we should exercise the art of civilized coexistence, which involves accepting and respecting differences and preventing these from becoming the center of our relationship,” Castro said through an interpreter. President Obama acknowledged that the U.S. and Cuba still differ in some aspects with regard to human rights and democracy, but said they will work together to create a dialogue going forward. Although Congress has not yet lifted the trade embargo, U.S. tourism and business interests are already making plans in Cuba. Obama met with American and Cuban entrepreneurs as well and toured Havana with his family on Sunday.

communism – a political and social ideology in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs; in practice and throughout history, communism has led to a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls the state-owned means of production dissident – a person who opposes official policy, especially that of an authoritarian state