While acknowledging the damage inflicted by hurricanes last year and by the American economic embargo against the island, he has stressed the economy's inefficiencies.

ECONOMIST: Cuba's economy

Those in the United States who argue that the American economic embargo merely serves to shore up the Castro regime hoped that Mr Obama's team would agree with them.

ECONOMIST: A familiar mistrust descends

On top of the long-standing inefficiencies of central planning and the difficulties caused by the American economic embargo have come other blows, including devastating hurricanes in 2008 and fewer tourists because of the world recession.

ECONOMIST: Reform in Cuba

The Congress formally approved measures announced last September designed to rescue an economy that can no longer feed Cuba's 11m people in the face of low productivity at home and a chronic shortage of foreign exchange (only partly attributable to the American economic embargo).

ECONOMIST: Cuba's communist congress

More significantly, they built one of the most powerful political machines in American history, dedicated to overthrowing the Castros through the economic embargo imposed from 1960.

ECONOMIST: Cubans on the other side of the water are slowly changing too

Francis Rooney, the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See from 2005 to 2008, said that top Catholic officials, including current Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, regularly lobbied American envoys to relax the economic embargo on Cuba.

CNN: Pope plays key role in historic Cuba deal

President Fidel Castro often boasts that Cuba's economic woes caused, in his view, by the American trade embargo have yet to force it to close a single hospital.

ECONOMIST: What ails Cuba��s health service?