For Afro-Cubans President Obama is a source of pride and inspiration

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Boys wearing palm fronds around their necks after going to church on Palm Sunday pose for a photograph along the Paseo de Marti, the wide boulevard running through the heart of the historic Old Havana neighborhood March 20, 2016 in Havana, Cuba. Obama is scheduled to arrive in Cuba Sunday afternoon, the first time a sitting U.S. president has visited the island nation in nearly 90 years. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)


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For Mauri and other black Cubans, Barack Obama isn’t just the first U.S. leader to visit their country in nearly nine decades. He’s a black man whose rise to the world’s most powerful job is a source of pride and inspiration.

Obama’s March 20-22 visit has raised Cubans’ hopes that a new era in relations with the United States will bring an end to the U.S. trade embargo and improve life for everyone on the island. For Afro-Cubans in particular, the presidential trip carries a special charge, a hope that an African-American leader’s near-universal popularity among Cubans of all races will help end lingering prejudice and inequality.

“He’s black and in some moment of his life he must have realized that as an African-American he had to elevate his performance level because as a black person you have to work twice as hard to get the same result as a white,” Mauri said. “I identify a lot with him because of that.”

Cuba’s culture is a blend of African and Spanish influence. The island’s world-renowned music and dance traditions draw deeply from the cultures of the West Africans brought to the island as slaves. Its Santeria religion is a blend of Catholicism and the Yoruba practices of western Africa.

Read More: http://thegrio.com/2016/03/21/for-afro-cubans-president-obama-is-a-source-of-pride-and-inspiration/