Stars and Stripes in Havana

Tara John and Victor Luckerson have a Time article about Havana:

The Stars and Stripes are flying over the American embassy in Havana, Cuba for the first time since 1961. Secretary of State John Kerry visited the country Friday during a ceremony to officially reestablish diplomatic relations between the two countries.
“This is truly a memorable occasion, a day for pushing aside old barriers and exploring new possibilities,” Kerry said at the ceremony. “We are gathered here today because our leaders, President Obama and President Castro, made a courageous decision to stop being the prisoners of history and focus on the opportunities of today and tomorrow.”
Diplomatic ties between the two countries were cut in 1961 by Cuban leader Fidel Castro and the Eisenhower administration. In his speech, Kerry recounted the many global events that have occurred since Cuba and the U.S. broke off ties—ten American presidents have served, the Berlin Wall fell, and the US both fought a war in Vietnam and reestablished diplomatic relations with the country. “For more than half a century, US-Cuba relations have been suspended in the amber of Cold War politics,” Kerry said. “It doesn’t take a GPS to realize that the road of mutual isolation and estrangement that Cuba and the US were traveling was not the right one.”
Kerry said that the US would remain a champion of democratic principles, but could not dictate the governmental decisions of Cuba. “US policy is not the anvil on which Cuba’s future will be forged,” he said. “Cuba’s future is for Cubans to shape.”
He also called on Congress to lift trade embargoes with the country, but such measures are likely to face significant Republican opposition.
His visit marks the first time a Secretary of State has visited the island in over seventy years. He will also be the highest-ranking American official to visit Cuba since its 1959 revolution.
The three Marines who lowered the American flag in Havana in 1961 for the last time were also present at the ceremony:

On a beautiful January day in 1961, three Marines walked out of the American embassy building in Havana and lowered the flag that had been flying proudly outside. The act itself was routine, but the implications were enormous. The embassy's flag was never raised again. "I didn't have any particular thoughts," recalled James Tracy, then a master gunnery sergeant in the embassy's security detachment. "We were just taking the flag down."
But it was also a rolling up of the US-Cuba relationship. Only a day earlier, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had announced that diplomatic relations between the two countries would cease, the coup de grace to what had been an increasingly frosty relationship.
The three Marines didn't realize that flag would be the last to fly over the embassy in Havana for 54 years. But, after a historic thaw in Us-Cuba relations this summer, they returned to Havana for the reopening of the American diplomatic post.
Eisenhower's move followed an order from the relatively new Cuban president, Fidel Castro, to remove all but eleven diplomats from the country. "There is a limit to what the United States can endure," Eisenhower said at the time. "That limit has now been reached."
But the Marines who took down the flag  were surprised by the suddenness of the embassy closure and its longevity.
"Three years, I figured," Tracy told CNN this week. That's how long he expected the freeze to last.
Kerry acknowledged the long wait in remarks at the flag-raising Friday. He said the three Marines had made "a bold promise that one day they would return to Havana and raise the flag again. At the time, no one could have imagined how distant that day would be."
"We knew we were closing it up, but we had no idea as to all the particulars behind it," said then-Gunnery Sergeant Francis East, another Marine who participated in the flag lowering. "As far as I was concerned, it was a sad day." East was particularly sorry to leave his friends behind. He had been at the embassy for nearly two years and had grown to love Cuba. "I thought it was a paradise," he recalled.
The third Marine who participated in the flag removal, Corporal Larry Morris, also remembers Havana fondly. "I was impressed with the city," he told CNN. "And the people were wonderful people, friendly people."
As the Marines gathered up the flag, a large crowd of Cubans hoping to get a last-minute visa to the US quietly watched. "We looked at the flag pole, we looked at the people, we looked at the pole," Tracy said of that moment. "And they just spread off the sidewalk. They knew we were going to go get the flag," he added. "They just got out of our way."
It was a solemn moment, but a hectic one as well. Tracy, East, and Morris said the days before the embassy closure were very busy. There were classified documents to destroy, equipment to remove, personal effects to pack up, all while protecting the embassy and its personnel. After the flag was lowered, the Marines went about their packing. Later that day, they got on a ship and left the country.
Morris had to leave a treasured possession behind.
"It was a '49 DeSoto," he told CNN. "And I'll spend most of my time in Havana looking at the old cars go by, to see if I can find it!" Locating one DeSoto in a city known for its ubiquitous classic cars will be a tough order, but Morris finally has the opportunity to try, courtesy of the same government that ordered him to fold up the flag on that fateful January day.
East, for one, is excited to be back at the embassy to see the Stars and Stripes finally raised over the building. "Just to see Old Glory go back up over Cuba," he said, "It's going to be great!"
The trio didn't expect to actually raise the flag this time around, something done by current Marines. Tracy said that's how it should be. "That's their job now," he said. "They'll be protecting the flag just like we did in our time. It's going to be there. It's going to stay there. I hope." Protecting the flag is a duty he understands and takes to heart. "I protected that flag for thirty years," the Vietnam veteran, who's now retired and living in Alabama, told CNN, "and sometimes I didn't think I was going to be able to continue, but I did." Tracy served two tours in Vietnam and held another embassy security post in Rabat, Morocco, where he met his wife Mary, then a foreign service administrator. At one point he also served in Secretary of State Dean Rusk's personal detail.
East also served two tours in Vietnam, then went on to become a Marine Corps recruiter. After retiring, he became a postal clerk, and now lives in Memphis, Tennessee. He was one of only two African-Americans in his class of fifty at the Marine Corps' Embassy School in 1959, and one of the first African-American Marines to attend boot camp at Parris Island.
Morris did one more tour, in India, before leaving the service. He went on to work as a machinist in his home state of West Virginia.
Raising a flag, like lowering it, is a routine act for the Marines that carry it out. But just like 54 years ago, the implications Friday were enormous.
"It's one step more for peace," Tracy said.

Rico says it's sort of like that old Alec Guinness movie, Our Man in Havana...