The Naval Base of Guantanamo is the oldest military enclave that maintains outside its borders and also the only one maintained against the will of the country where it is located. What is the history of the controversial gitm immigrants?
President Donald Trump's plan of Send thousands of irregular migrants to the United States Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay He revived interest in the controversial site located east of Cuba, the oldest American military enclave outside its borders and the only one maintained against the will of the country where it is located.
A few days after the announcement, more than 150 soldiers reached the base as reinforcements “to support the operation” and condition what will be an immigrant detention center with capacity for some 30,000 people, the southern command reported on Monday.
Located about 117 square kilometers from tropical paradise that fell in love with Cristobal Colón five centuries ago, the base of Guantanamo or Gitm It is key in US naval and air operations in the Caribbean.
In its more than 120 years of history, it has gone from being a symbol of the close relationship between Washington and Havana, to become one of the most uncomfortable points of several decades between the two countries.
After the resumption in 2015 of broken relations for more than half a century, the return of the territory of the “illegal base” – as Havana qualifies it – was one of the claims of the then Cuban president Raúl Castro for full bilateral normalization.
At some point, the former American ex -president Barack Obama considered closing the controversial prison that housed hundreds of accused of terrorism for the attacks on the twin towers and the 2001 pentagon. Human rights activists criticized the conditions of the prisoners, some of them released by the administration of former president Joe Biden.
But what is the unique story of this enclave and why does a military base located in a country with which it barely has relations?
A centenary treaty
The American war ships threw anchors in the Bay of Guantanamo in 1898, when Washington's participation in the War of Independence of Cubans against Spain helped end Madrid in Madrid in the Americas. More than 125 years later, they are still there.
An amendment in the first island Constitution ordered the military presence of Washington to preserve the independence of the island and raided the way for the establishment of US naval and carboneras bases in the Caribbean territory. An agreement of 1903 set the lease of the coastal portion of Guantanamo in the symbolic amount of 2,000 dollars of the time.
In 1934, the rent increased to $ 4,000 and the pact was updated, which states that the military presence in the territory will be extended “the time required” by the US government. Without a specific expiration date, the naval base will only cease to exist by decision of Washington or mutual agreement between the two countries.
The current Cuban government, as its predecessors, does not recognize the treaty, which it rejects as an “imperialist vestige.” According to The Washington Postthe late Fidel Castro used to have checks without charging by the US government in his office, to show them to his guests.
The US maintains jurisdiction over the outer portion of the bay where the enclave is, but acknowledges that Cuba maintains final sovereignty.
Bone of contention
The rise to the power of Fidel Castro in 1959, his subsequent confrontation with Washington and approach to Moscow in the Cold War, marked a deep turn in the bilateral relationship and turned Washington and Havana into long -standing ideological enemies.
During the missile crisis in 1962, the Naval Base became one of the closest borders between the two sides. Two years later, Castro cut the supplies of water and electricity towards Gitmthat from that moment was isolated from the rest of the territory.
A strip of “nobody's land” was established, for which Cubans who sought to flee to US territory in search of a better life would later risk.
The only exception was a small number of Cubans who crossed daily the gitm gate to work at the base, a practice that ceased several years ago. After the rupture of the relations between the two countries, some 70 Cubans decided to stay there.
At the worst of the cold war, shootings and aggressions were not rare from one side and one. Popular culture reflects it in what is possibly the best known film about life in the military base: a matter of honor (A Few Good Men, 1992). The base commander, Nathan Jessep, played by Jack Nicholson, reminds Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) in one of the most famous scenes of the film that he “takes his breakfast at 300 yards (274 meters) of 4,000 Cubans trained to kill him. “
The few civilians who have visited it describe the camp as a mini American city with McDonald's included, the only subsidiary of the famous chain in the communist island.
Camp for migrants and detention center
Perhaps the best known detention center is the prison where the US sent to the prisoners accused in relation to the mortal attacks of September 11, 2001. The images of prisoners in orange monkeys and the stories of the abuse to which they were submitted To the world.
However, before that, Gitm He welcomed thousands of migrants during the worst of the 1994 Balsers crisis, one of the greatest Cuban exodus to the US, when the Coast Guard intercepted more than 3,000 islanders in rustic rafts.
According to him Guantanamo Public Memory Projecta collaborative effort that documented the history of the base, 34,090 Haitians and 34,000 Cuban balslers would spend time arrested there, mostly in difficult conditions because the great influx of migrants quickly overwhelmed the capacities of military personnel. Providing adequate accommodation, sanitation and food proved to be a great challenge.
Over time, the conditions improved, but the situation stabilized and the Cubans ceased to be carried there. The base continued to receive migrants, but to a lesser number.
What are Trump's plans?
The use of the base again as a migrant detention center was announced by President Donald Trump as part of his hard hand policy against irregular immigration. The idea of the president starts from using the existing conditions in the enclave to send to what the Administration considers as “the worst of the worst” of immigrants with a criminal record or related to dangerous criminal gangs.
“Today I am also signing an executive order to instruct the National Defense and Security departments to begin preparing the installation for 30,000 immigrants in Guantanamo Bay,” Trump said on January 29.
According to the president, “some of them are so bad that we do not even trust that countries retain them because we don't want them to return, so we will send them to Guantanamo.”
The plan immediately caused the rejection of several rulers in the region, including Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel, who described him as a new “act of brutality” at the base, “located in illegally occupied Cuba territory.”