Conan O’Brien’s visit to Cuba is about way more than comedy

Conan O'Brien just made your dreams come true. You probably didn't realize it was your dream to see the late-night host walk the streets of Havana in a white leisure suit, roll the worst-looking cigar in recorded history while visiting the La Corona cigar factory, and speak hilariously bad Spanish intentionally — but it was.

Conan's trip is the most recent and visible sign that things are changing between the United States and Cuba. In December 2014, US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced plans to normalize diplomatic relations, which have been more or less nonexistent for 60 years, and open up Cuba to American commerce and some travel.

More from GlobalPost: Want to go to Cuba from the US? Here are 6 tips to decipher the new rules

Change at the government level will take time, but change is already noticeable. Cubans can now stream Netflix if they can get access to the internet. Online booking sites like Kayak are beginning to list flights to the island. And Paris Hilton, whose visit doesn't seem to satisfy any of the US Treasury Department's requirements for travel to Cuba, partied in Havana in late February.

More from GlobalPost: 5 signs that Cuba is already very open to Americans

Moving past 60-plus years of political tension and a US-imposed trade embargo won't be easy, and it will take a lot more than embassies and Netflix.

That's where Conan comes in. For him, visiting Cuba wasn't just about shooting a TV show. It was about reaching out to Cubans. And it was about showing Americans that Cuba is a real-life place filled with real-life people — not just a geopolitical football. 

This was a diplomatic mission, in many ways, and you can hear it in the way Conan talks about the trip. 

Here's what he told the Los Angeles Times about it:

We didn’t really tell anybody at Turner we were doing it. We put it together on the down-low and then we went to Cuba and didn’t really know what I was going to find. I had a good sense of what I wanted the tone to be. I wanted it to be snark-free. I didn’t want to go there and be the snarky comic in the foreign culture who's laughing at it. I very much wanted it to have a sweetness to it and I think that’s one of the ways I was maybe well-suited to that. A lot of my comedy, especially the remote segments, the joke is on me. I'm the fish out of water and I'm inept at things and a lot of the laughs are at my expense. I wanted that to be the tone. I really wanted it to be as simple as I go to Havana, I want to meet these people, and I want to try to make them laugh.

I think that mission was accomplished because there's a lot of segments where I'm diving into their culture, I'm trying to do their thing and they find me absurd. They're laughing at me but the entire time understand where it’s coming from. It’s nice to know that there’s this universal language with this culture that's been isolated from ours for 53 years… And I wanted Americans to really see Cuba.

So what are some of the ways Conan dives into Cuban culture?

Here he wears this suit.

He visits the Havana Club Rum Museum.

He enjoys a roof-top Havana sunset, during which he's pretty focused on a dog that keeps barking. (This comes up a lot.)

He takes a Spanish lesson and has trouble remembering the difference between “huevos” and “ojos.”

He dances Cuban Rumba and gets called out for putting his hand just a little too low on his partner's back. Watch it, Conan.

He sings and plays guitar with a salsa band.

He eats at a "paladar" — a restaurant in a private home.

He rolls a horrifying monstrosity of a Cuban cigar at the La Corona cigar factory.

You can watch the opening clip here:

The rest are available on Conan's website.

Also check out Conan's Twitter feed. It's got incredible behind-the-scenes stuff. Like this dog.

And this.

Enjoy.