Already taking shape by the opening of the Fifth Summit of the Americas was what history may well call The Port-of-Spain Consensus on Cuba. The prevailing mood, given voice by first plenary speakers, and applauded by participants, was marked by impatient dissatisfaction with the continuing exclusion of Cuba from OAS deliberations, including the Summit. Cuba’s outsider, even pariah, status has looked more and more like a historical anachronism.

The revolutionary state led by Fidel Castro, helped by the Soviet Union, pursued a path of governance, economy, and international relations that distinguished it from its hemispheric neighbours. The Cuban revolution’s adoption of communism drew hostility from the US superpower, then exerting influence and projecting power in its hemispheric sphere of influence. The Bay of Pigs invasion by US-sponsored anti-Castro forces; the missile crisis and the resulting US naval blockade terminally worsened relations between Havana and Washington.

Aiming to dislodge or, at least discomfit the Castro regime, US imposed an economic embargo, and engineered Cuba’s suspension from the OAS. Though a victim of painful sanctions imposed or inspired by the US, Cuba has hardly itself been blameless. The Castro regime has been repressive, marked by a high degree of suppression of rights of free expression and assembly and other freedoms; it still holds many political prisoners. Efforts to export its revolution troubled relations with hemispheric countries, including Trinidad and Tobago, for whom, at one stage, Cuba was a byword for communist subversion.

By the mid-1970s, however, T&T, with Guyana, Barbados and Jamaica, disregarding Washington’s disapproval, had established diplomatic ties with Cuba. Sentiment progressively widened in favour of properly integrating the largest Caribbean state into a Caribbean community writ large. In many respects, then, the Caribbean has been ahead of Latin America, in the forefront of initiatives to bring Cuba out of the cold. On Friday, Prime Ministers Manning and Dean Barrow of Belize—the latter speaking as Caricom chairman—called for reintegration of Cuba into hemispheric institutions.

Presidents Christina Fernandez de Kirchner and Daniel Ortega, of Argentina and Nicaragua, respectively, called for the end of the US embargo. OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, no doubt speaking with approval of member states, had earlier bluntly said, “I want Cuba back in the Inter-American system.” The time is ripe for rectifying a historical sore point. US President Obama announced, last week, removal of restrictions on remittances to Cuba and on travel to the island. The Obama administration also has projected an interest in updating policy toward Cuba.

The response has been encouraging. Promptly, President Raul Castro declared his government’s willingness “to discuss everything—human rights, freedom of press, political prisoners, everything, everything—everything they want to talk about.” The future for Cuban-American relations, accordingly, appears more promising today than in the recent past. On Friday, President Obama shrugged off President Ortega’s many citations of past US sins, and affirmed that the US “seeks a new beginning with Cuba.” The US had changed, Mr Obama said, calling on Cuba to show evidence that it, too, is changing.

His administration seeks to “engage” with Havana on human rights, free speech, and democratic reform to drugs, migration and economic issues. Issues stubbornly remain to impede any flood of change. Havana wants removal of the embargo and remaining travel restrictions; Washington wants freedom for political prisoners, human rights and other reforms. Caricom could be helpful as an honest broker. When, as he soon should, President Castro visits T&T, Mr Manning, having already heard from the US President, must take the opportunity to explore exactly what the Cuban leader meant when he said last week: “We could be wrong—we admit it. We’re human.”