Final Blog Post

      Over the past semester, my group covered the US-Cuba relations and the effects these easing relations are having on Cuba and the Cuban people. Our first blog post gave a background on the US-Cuba relations. We attempted to cover the long complicated history of these relations. From severing diplomatic ties in 1961 to the easing of relations with the Obama administration. With our second blog post, we talked about the effects that the normalization of relations will have on Cuba and the tourism will play in it. We highlighted the controversial Kardashian vacation to Cuba and how tourism will impact the economy. In our third blog post, we discussed the environmental issues that Cuba has. They became very self-dependent with the embargo and had very strict regulations on the environment. That could greatly change with the normalizing of relations, so we discussed the potential detrimental effects of the normalizing relations on the Cuban environment.

For our research, we visited many sites to get different views on these issues. Working in a group made it easier to cover a wide variety of ideas. For example, under tourism, we discussed Cuban music and pop culture. We were able to find out a lot of information on these two topics because we split up the research process. We would have three people and separate it, for one person to focus on music and one to focus on pop culture  while the third person researched both to be able to write an informative introduction paragraph. The fourth person would help with this research and then also find reliable photos that would fit with the music or the pop culture topics. 

Cuban and U.S. flags flying together
https://fronteranews.com/news/latam/cuba-may-finally-rejoin-global-economy-can-close-deal/

When I chose to go into the US-Cuba relations group, I didn’t have a lot of background information on what was going on. Throughout this project, I know a lot more about what is going on currently in Cuba and what happened in the past which led to the severing of diplomatic ties between the US and Cuba. It made me realize how big of a deal it was for Obama to begin the easing of relations with Cuba. The easing of relations will also have great effects on Cuba and the Cuban people, and I believe it's important to be aware of some of these possibly detrimental effects.  Working in a group was also a good experience. It was very hard to try and get everyone's schedules to match so we would able to meet. I believe that if we could have met then it would have been easier to have the blog post flow better. I also realized that for the next group project, the project should be done earlier than the actual due date. This will help us produce a better quality product and then if someone doesn’t complete their part it can be done before the actual due date.

Works Cited

@fronteranews. "Cuba May Finally Rejoin The Global Economy - If They Can Close This Deal."       

                   Frontera News. N.p., 01 Aug. 2016. Web. 04 Dec. 2016. 

             <https://fronteranews.com/news/latam/cuba-may-finally-rejoin-global-economy-can-close-    deal/>.