HAVANA — Washington’s top diplomat flew to Havana on Friday to raise the Stars and Stripes over the newly opened U.S. Embassy, making a symbolically charged victory lap for the Obama administration’s new policy of engagement with Cuba.

Some waking as early as 6 a.m., hundreds of Cubans gathered outside the embassy for what they universally called a historic day. Cuban TV carried the event live, broadcasting flattering biographical facts about Secretary of State John Kerry and interviews with Cubans who praised detente with the U.S. as a necessary and positive step for their country.

Cuban dissidents were not invited to the embassy ceremony, avoiding tensions with Cuban officials who typically boycott events attended by the country’s small political opposition. The State Department said it had limited space at what it called a government-to-government event, and invited dissidents to a separate afternoon flag-raising at the home of the embassy’s chief of mission.

Giant Cuban flags hung from the balconies of nearby apartment buildings and people gathered at windows with a view of the embassy.

“I wouldn’t want to miss it,” Marcos Rodriguez, 28, said as he waited outside the embassy. He said he and thousands of other on the island were hoping the opening with the U.S. will bring “social and economic benefits for all Cubans.”

High-ranking Cuban officials, U.S. business executives and Cuban-Americans who pushed for warming with Cuba gathered inside the former U.S. Interests Section, newly emblazoned with the letters “Embassy of the United States of America.”