Cuban Americans have mixed emotions about the thawing relations between the two countries.
When you step into Havana Café in Gulfport, you step out of Florida and into Cuba.
Owner Jo Gonzalez-Hastings, who opened up the restaurant in 1997, serves up authentic Cuban cuisine using a collection of family recipes.
Gonzalez-Hastings was born in Cuba and came to the United States in 1964. She was just 5 years old.
"I remember a lot of fear in my parents,” Gonzalez-Hastings said. “Just fear of the government."
Fear of a communist dictatorship that Gonzalez-Hastings said ravaged a once beautiful country. Now, the restaurant owner said she has mixed emotions over the reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Havana.
"I think that it's an olive branch,” said Gonzalez-Hastings. “But what are you going to do with that? Unless that government changes, what are we doing?"
Gonzalez-Hastings believes the only way things will change is if Cuba’s communist government is overthrown. Only then, she said, will it return to the beautiful place it once was.
"When Cuba was in its heyday. When it was the Emerald of the Caribbean,” said Gonzalez-Hastings.