121 years of violation of Cuba’s territorial rights

On February 16, 1903, Yankee imperialism consolidated its semi-colonial domination of Cuba at a ceremony at the Government Palace attended by U.S. diplomats in which then President of the Republic Tomás Estrada Palma signed the agreement to lease the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base for as long as necessary.

Thus began 121 years of outrageous violations of Cuba’s territorial rights.

The U.S. representatives had plenty of reasons to feel joy: in addition to the excellent inlet on the southeastern coast, they might just spread the so-called naval bases or coal bunkers to the bays of Nipe, Cienfuegos and Bahía Honda in the near future.

The Guantanamo Base gave the U.S. a chance to support its Navy’s intention to achieve supremacy in the South American region and its routes to Europe and to have control over the possibilities to be provided by the strategic Panama Canal, concluded in 1914.

It was the first step to implement the Platt Amendment imposed on the Cuban Constituent Assembly, which the U.S. blackmailed into accepting as an appendix to its Constitution lest the American troops were kept in Cuba, stating among other prerogatives the right to intervene in Cuba and use its bays in perpetuity to set up naval bases.

On December 10, 1903, months after the spurious ceremony, silence was broken at Guantanamo Bay by 21 cannon shots fired from the modern battleship Kearsarge in salute to the official acquisition of the grounds by the U.S. Navy.

The Cuban people repudiated the move from the very outset. Veterans and pro-independence leaders were also opposed, but the division and demoralization of the progressive forces, aggravated by the Yankee strategy, prevented a real mass movement against the plans of the empire.

Upon learning that a U.S. squadron was in the bay, Manuel Sanguily told his friend Enrique Trujillo: "They have seen Guantanamo Bay, they will never give up their possession of it!"

According to the chronicles of the time, the humiliation caused by that plunder was so great that no high-ranking representative of the Cuban government participated in the ceremony.

Over the years, during the liberation war waged by the Rebel Army, the Naval Base would supply the planes of the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship with fuel, bombs and ammo.

After the triumph of the Revolution, the Base became a permanent source of aggression against Cuba and support for counterrevolutionary organizations and CIA networks.

Cuban border patrol agents Ramón López Peña and Luis Ramírez López were assassinated in 1964 and 1966, respectively, as were Rubén López, a humble worker and well-known revolutionary, in 1961, and Rodolfo Rosell, a fisherman and militiaman, in 1962. None of these crimes have ever been clarified by the U.S. authorities.

Since 1994, an atmosphere of détente has prevailed in the border area thanks to Cuba's willingness to avoid provocations near the U.S. facility, which also became a detention and torture center for prisoners during the so-called war against terrorism, repeatedly denounced by human rights institutions around the world.