The relationship between US and Cuba has been a fiery one since Castro took control of that country, yet the US continues to operate a major navel base on the island.
Guantanamo Bay was the first base the US ever created outside of its constitutional boundaries, and the only one it ever has had in a Communist country. And now it just happens to be the place where they’re storing al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives, at least they think they’re operatives.
Sure if you’re a political or military historian well versed in Cuban-US relations you will know all of this, but please bear with me, for the rest of us, learning about how Guantanamo Bay came about, lends some understanding why people around the globe learn to dislike Americans, and they’re allies.
The bay itself has a history built on turmoil and entitlement that has contributed much to the present strained relations between the US and Cuba.
The US Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, sometimes called "GTMO" or "Gitmo", covers about 45 square miles on the western and eastern banks of the bay. It was established in 1898, when the United States obtained control of Cuba from Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War, following the 1898 invasion of Guantánamo Bay.
In 1901, under U.S. pressure, Cuba included the amendment's provisions in its constitution. After U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt withdrew federal troops from the island in 1902, Cuba signed the Cuban-American Treaty (1903), which outlined U.S. power in Cuba and the Caribbean. Tomás Estrada Palma, who had earlier favored outright annexation of Cuba by the United States, became president of Cuba on May 20, 1902. Palma is noted in history for election fraud and starting the process of long-term American intervention in Cuban affairs.
Under Palma who was also an American citizen, the U.S. government obtained a 99-year lease on Guantanamo Bay that began on February 23, 1903. In reality, Cuba was far from an independent country and was in fact a US protectorate which was ensured through the Platt Amendment which was incorpoarted into the Cuban Constitution.
The Platt Amendment ceded to the United States the naval base at Guantánamo Bay and also stipulated that Cuba would not transfer Cuban land to any power other than the United States; mandated that Cuba would contract no foreign debt without guarantees that the interest could be served from ordinary revenues; ensured U.S. intervention in Cuban affairs when the United States deemed necessary; prohibited Cuba from negotiating treaties with any country other than the United States "which will impair or tend to impair the independence of Cuba" or "permit any foreign power or powers to obtain ... lodgement in or control over any portion" of Cuba, and provided for a formal treaty detailing all the foregoing provisions.
The amendment leveraged Cuban farmland for the production of sugar which would completely dominate the Cuban economy for fifty years.
Except for U.S. rights to Guantánamo Bay, the Platt Amendment provisions, which many Cubans considered to be an “imperialist infringement of their sovereignty”, were repealed in 1934, when a new treaty with the United States was negotiated as a part of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor policy" toward Latin America.
So who was the Cuban good neighbour who would once again sign away the bay?
It was General Fulgencio Batista who was the de facto military leader of Cuba from 1933 to 1940, and thus the dominant force of Cuban politics for that period of time, and the de jure President of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 after having won election. He then became the country's leader after staging a coup, from 1952 to 1959.
His greatest claim to fame however was losing the country to Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Then US President Dwight Eisenhower insisted the status of the base remain unchanged, despite Cuban objections.
The long-term lease of Guantánamo Bay still continues, and according to the treaty that right can only be revoked by the consent of both parties. The Cuban government strongly denounces the treaty on grounds that article 52 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties declares a treaty void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force. However, Article 4 of the same document states that the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties shall not be retroactively applied to any treaties made before itself.
Article 4 is a very important clause indeed considering the super powers of the world at the time wanted to protect their own Guantanamo Bay’s around the world.
Guantanamo Bay was a bargain indeed.
Every year Washington pays the rent, set a century ago at 2,000 gold coins a year then reset to the 1934 equivalent value of $4,085 U.S. Treasury dollars an amount which continues to this day, even though the Cuban government refuses to cash the cheques.
Despite numerous calls for the return of Guantanamo Bay to Cuba, the United States operates the base on Cuban soil business as usual. But, there will be no doubt that historians will use the present “lease“ as an example of how the US eroded the sovereignty of nations by ignoring contractual agreements, not to mention supporting puppet governments that would agree to such terms in the first place.
According to Cuban sources, the original lease was set to expire in 2003 and its interesting to note that at the start of George Bush Senior’s administration the man in charge of the base, US Secretary of the Navy, James H. Webb, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal in which he said:
“It is reasonable to assume that we will lose our lease on Guantanamo Bay in 1999.”
We know now, that wasn’t the case, but the question we should ask is by whose authority was this international agreement ignored?
Today, courts in the US are beginning to hear this very question. Many of the legal defense cases being built by present detainees of Guantanamo are including the question of the legal existence of the detainee camp itself.
Most of the detainees still at Guantanamo are not scheduled for trial. As of November 2006, out of 775 detainees who have been brought to Guantanamo, approximately 340 have been released, leaving 435 detainees: 110 are ready for release, 70 will face trial, and 250 may be held indefinitely
In November 2003, international law expert Professor Alfred de Zayas, from the University of British Columbia, gave a lecture on the state of the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. He began this lecture by detailing the position of the US base in international law, and found that there are a number of ways in which the lease and the treaty that created it, can only be described as illegal.
So why is this all so important?
The US has many Guantanamo Bay’s around the planet, nearly all of them placed in regions under questionable agreements, all of them solidifying a global military complex, and all of them operating without you and I questioning the truth and justice of such things.
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