Guantanamo Bay Naval Base

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Location of the base in Guantánamo Bay

The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (abbreviated GTMO spoken Gitmo ) is a base of the US Navy to Cuba . It is located on land leased from the Cuban state and is located in the south of Guantánamo Bay , about 15 kilometers south of the city of Guantánamo . The base was a 2002 internment extended storage (see Guantanamo Bay detention camp ). The Cuban government considers the 1903 lease, which was extended indefinitely in 1934, to be invalid.

history

Location of the Guantánamo Bay

Colonial times

Already in the colonial era, Guantánamo Bay was the focus of strategic military considerations. The bay became the scene of a British landing company during the so-called War of Jenkins' Ear (1739–1742). As part of an attempt to take the Spanish port of Santiago de Cuba west of the bay, the British expeditionary force used the geographical advantages of the bay to land their infantry (July 23, 1741). When it later turned out that an attack over land was impossible due to the impassability of the only way to Santiago, the British claimed the bay for themselves and named their anchorage after the second son of the then English king Cumberland Harbor . Their camp, located further inland, was to be developed into a permanent British fortification in Cuba and was called - in honor of King George II of German origin - George City . After the British troops had been severely decimated as a result of tropical diseases during their several months' stay, they gave up the company, destroyed George City again and left the island in December 1741.

Cuban independence

Until 1897, the USA tried to buy the entire island of Cuba from the then colonial power Spain . In 1898, during the Spanish-American War , the United States occupied Guantanamo Bay because there was an important port facility there. Cuba gained independence through the Peace of Paris on December 10, 1898, but became politically and economically dependent on the USA. Washington exercised its control and supremacy over Cuba through the establishment of pro-US presidents and through several military interventions (including 1899-1903). From January 1899 to May 1902, the island was under US military administration. In 1901 the so-called Platt Amendment was included in the Cuban constitution. This law severely restricted the country's sovereignty. It granted the USA the right to intervene in the event of internal unrest and envisaged the cession of Cuban territory as a naval base.

Establishment of the US military base

Map of the base

On February 23, 1903, the Constituent Assembly of Cuba agreed a loan agreement with the United States due to the Platt Amendment. Cuba ceded the area for 99 years (which was only extended indefinitely in 1934), whereby it was granted the right for the free passage of Cuban merchant ships. The leased area is 117.6 km² and is now equipped with an airport and fortifications. Also included in this contract was another port in Bahía Honda , which was returned to Cuba in 1912. Until 1934, the US paid $ 2,000 a year as a lease fee.

In 1934, the Cuban President Ramón Grau San Martín was deposed and the treaty was repealed. After the contract was renewed in the same year, only Section 7 on the right to use the bay as a naval base remained. Furthermore, the lease was subsequently extended for an indefinite period. From 1938 the lease fee was increased to 4085 US dollars.

Since the revolution in 1959 and Fidel Castro's seizure of power , Cuba has no longer accepted the US presence on Cuban soil and has called for the bay to be returned. The US lease payments are served annually in the form of a check in July. This was redeemed once in 1959. Since then, Cuba has denied the validity of the amended contract, as it came about through military pressure, while the USA regards the one-time check cashing as confirmation of the continuation of the lease.

Even after 1959, Cuban civilian employees were still working at the military base, where they worked, for example, as welders, machinists or accountants. They commuted daily on foot between their homes on the Cuban side and their workplaces on the naval base. The last two retired at the end of 2012 at the age of 79 and 82 respectively. Until then, they had also served as couriers for the naval pension of the 65 other former Cuban workers at the base, since financial transfers between the USA and Cuba are prohibited due to the embargo regulations. After their departure, the Cuban and US governments agreed on an unspecified way to continue providing retirees with their US Navy retirement benefits averaging $ 684 per month.

Role of the base

Aerial view of the US base at Guantanamo Bay
Fast food branch in the base

The bay is always the starting point for a large number of Cubans to flee to the USA. This is probably one of the reasons why the Cuban government keeps making it clear that the non-military use as a reception center for refugees and a prison for possible terrorists or the operation of commercial facilities ( McDonald’s and subway branches and a bowling alley) represent a breach of contract. The treaty stipulates a restriction to military use.

Since Cuba disconnected the US base from the electricity and water grid in the 1960s, it has been supplied with ships and airplanes from the USA ever since. In order to reduce the consumption of the diesel generators, four wind turbines were installed in 2005 , which, when operated at full load, are able to cover a quarter of the peak consumption of the entire base. Our own seawater desalination plant produces drinking water. A 28 kilometer long border fence with 44 towers and a minefield surround the bay.

The original military importance of the base for the USA as a supply base for the coal, water and ammunition requirements of the steamships of the US fleet is no longer given with the end of the conversion to oil-fired boilers or other types of propulsion. The recent use of small parts of the base as prison camps since 2002 is related to the fact that the US civilian jurisdiction does not have direct access to military-law territories outside of US territory.

In the wake of the earthquake disaster in Haiti in January 2010, the base in Guantanamo served as a logistics base for Operation Unified Response , the relief effort of the US armed forces. Among other things, aid goods were flown to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) with Grumman C-2 transport aircraft in shuttle traffic , and a catamaran ferry enabled faster shuttle traffic at sea. In this context, Cuba granted overflight rights for evacuation flights over its territory.

In 2018, the Pentagon commissioned a construction company to build a supplies warehouse for migrants on the site of the naval base, for which a budget of 23 million US dollars was available. According to the contract, the infrastructure should be designed for up to 13,000 migrants and 5,000 troops deployed for them and be usable for at least 50 years.

Prison camp (Camp X-Ray, Camp Delta and Camp Iguana)

Cinematic reception

  • A Few Good Men ( A Few Good Men ) - Military Court feature film by Rob Reiner (1992) about the abuse / killing of a US Marines at Guantanamo by comrades.

literature

Web links

Commons : Naval Station Guantanamo Bay  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
 Wikinews: Portal: Guantanamo Bay  - In The News
Wikisource: United States - Cuban Agreements and Treaty of 1934  - Original text (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wentworth's camp was being solidly constructed along regular military lines, and was named Georgestadt in Honor of the King , Richard Harding, Amphibious warfare in the eighteenth century. The British Expedition to the West Indies, 1740–1742 , Woodbridge [u. a.] 1991, p. 128.
  2. ^ Cuba / Guantánamo Bay: A leased area as an internment camp. In: nzz.ch. July 2, 2014, accessed January 19, 2015 .
  3. ↑ U.S. Department of Defense, Aug. 24, 2004
  4. ↑ Peter Gaupp: The Last Commuters from Guantánamo , NZZ Online from January 3, 2013
  5. ↑ Carol Rosenberg: Cuba helps US Navy find a way to pay Guantánamo retirees , Miami Herald of January 3, 2013
  6. ^ The Department of Navy Debuts Largest Wind Energy Project To Date (accessed March 30, 2010) ( Memento of May 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Christian Sorensen: RQ Construction to Build A Contingency Mass Migration Complex In Guantánamo Bay! In: Newsbud of February 23, 2018, accessed November 6, 2018
  8. ^ Tracey Eaton: Millions for a tent city designed to last 50 years. In: Cuba Money Project, October 31, 2018, accessed November 6, 2018


Coordinates: 19 ° 54 '43 "  N , 75 ° 9' 46"  W.