The story goes that when President John F. Kennedy decided impose the trade embargo on Cuba in 1962 he told his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, to buy up Cuban cigars prior to its going into effect. Salinger obliged the president's request and delivered 1,201 Petit H. Upmanns (Kennedy's favorite) to the White House the next morning.
There has long been a great deal of cynicism surrounding the U.S. posture toward Cuba, which was dramatically altered earlier this week by President Obama. Cuba has, for the almost five and a half decades of its existence, used the U.S. policy as one of the many scapegoats for the miserable failure of their own economic central planning.
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