IT WAS smuggled through the US diplomatic pouch, secretly installed across the facade of a building overlooking Havana and given a very specific mission: to annoy Fidel Castro.
The scrolling electronic sign escalated the US’s propaganda war with Cuba’s leader three years ago by flashing human rights messages in five-foot high crimson letters.
History though, or more specifically Barack Obama, appears to have pulled the plug on the billboard which flitted across 25 windows of the US interests section in Havana. The screen has gone blank – the latest indication that half a century of enmity may be winding down.
The ticker, erected by the Bush administration in January 2006, infuriated Castro and provoked tit- for-tat diplomatic jousting which further strained relations.Castro said it was another assault on Cuba’s sovereignty by a hypocritical imperialist bully.
Soon after it appeared, he marched a million people past in protest, dug up the US mission’s car park and erected anti-US billboards and 138 huge black flags to commemorate “victims of US aggression” – and block the ticker.
The revolutionary leader said there would be no contact between Havana-based US diplomats and Cuba’s foreign ministry until the sign came down.
Since then he has fallen ill and been succeeded as president by his brother, Raul, and George Bush has been replaced by a Democrat who has spoken of a new start with the Caribbean island 90 miles off Florida.– ( Guardianservice)