Cubans eager for future but remain cautious

HAVANA, CUBA -- For all any Cuban can tell, Detroit hasn't made a car since 1961. Chevrolets and Fords familiar to Eisenhower and Sinatra live forever, thanks to a uniquely Cuban industry -- counterfeiting new parts from designs of the '50s.

I spoke about America's new relationship with Cuba with Alberto Coll, a professor of international law at DePaul University in Chicago.

"The average Cuban is ecstatic, they're euphoric, they believe that this is a new beginning for Cuba," Coll told me.

A specialist in Cuba, Coll moved to the U.S. as a child in 1961 when Castro imprisoned his father.

"I wonder how today the average Cuban's aspirations have changed?" I asked.

"There will be lots more opportunities for the economy to grow, for Americans to come here, to trade, to visit, to invest, and to develop all kinds of exchanges that will benefit the people here and give this small country of 11 million people a terrific opportunity," Coll said.

After five decades of a trade embargo, young Cubans know no other life. Fernando Saez, director of a dance company, surprised us when we asked how things would be different.

"It is very had to explain how the circumstances will be in the next future but I think I will be in a better position to answer that five years from today," Saez told me.

"You don't know what normal is?" I asked.

"Well, the normal circumstances, this is life with the embargo, and this is the air we have been breathing for many years," Saez said, "and it has been very hard to think how things are going to be in different way because we don't have the experience."

The dance company is one of the new private enterprises allowed by President Raul Castro, the more pragmatic Castro brother. Since 2011 he's allowed cell phones and some private ownership of real estate. But Cuba still ranks last in the world in Internet connectivity. Only five percent of the people are online.

The U.S. sanctions were designed to weaken the Castros, but in one way they became stronger. For half a century the brothers have told their people a David and Goliath story -- that only communism could save them from suffering imposed by the United States.

Wayne Smith was a U.S. diplomat in his 20s when he helped close the embassy in 1961. He's spent a lifetime on U.S.-Cuba relations.

"We haven't gained anything in 50 years with this embargo and refusal to have a dialog but that hasn't gained anything," he told me. "Why keep repeating the same mistake year after year after year when it isn't achieving anything? It was time long ago to change -- At last, sensibly, we have."