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STATEMENT BY THE GOVERNMENT OF CUBA TO THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC OPINION
January 11, 2002
The American Naval Base at Guantánamo is a facility located in an area of 117.6 square kilometers of the national territory of Cuba occupied since 1903 due to an Agreement on Coaling and Naval Stations signed by the Government of the United States of America and the Government of Cuba under President Tomás Estrada Palma. At that time, our country was not really independent since an amendment --known as Platt Amendment-- had been passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President McKinley on March 1901 while our country was under occupation by the U.S. army after its intervention in the independence war waged by the Cuban people against the Spanish metropolis.
The Platt Amendment, which granted the United States the right to intervene in Cuba, was imposed to the text of our 1901 Constitution as a prerequisite for the withdrawal of the American troops from the Cuban territory. Following that clause, the aforementioned Agreement on Coaling and Naval Stations was signed on February 1903 in Havana and Washington, respectively. It actually included two areas of our national territory: Bahía Honda and Guantánamo, although a naval base was never established in the former.
In Article II of that Agreement, the right was literally granted to the United States to do "all that is necessary to outfit those places so they can be used exclusively as coaling or naval stations, and for no other purpose."
In addition to that treaty of February 1903, on May 22 that same year a Permanent Treaty of Relations was signed by Cuba and the United States of America using the exact text of the 8 clauses contained in the Platt Amendment which were thus turned into articles of said treaty.
Twenty-one years later, on May 29, 1934, in the spirit of the American "Good Neighbor" policy under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a new Treaty of Relations was subscribed between the Republic of Cuba and the United States of America that abrogated the previous 1903 Treaty, thereby abrogating the Platt Amendment. The new Treaty definitely excluded Bahía Honda as a possible base, but it sustained the presence in GuantánamoNaval Base and kept in effect the rules of establishment. As for such rules that remained in force, the Article III of the new Treaty literally stated:
"Until the two contracting parties agree to the modification of the agreement in regard to the lease to the United States of America of lands in Cuba for coaling and naval stations signed by the President of the Republic of Cuba on February 16, 1903, and by the President of the United States of America on the 23rd day of the same month and year, the stipulations of that agreement with regard to the naval station of Guantánamo shall continue in effect. The supplementary agreement in regard to coaling and naval stations signed between the two Governments on July 2, 1903 also shall continue in effect in the same form and on the same conditions with respect to the naval station at Guantánamo. So long as the United States of America shall not abandon the said naval station of Guantánamo or the two Governments shall not agree to a modification of its present limits, the station shall continue to have the territorial area that it now has, with the limits that it has on the date of the signature of the present Treaty."
As evidence of the abusive conditions imposed by that Treaty, the above-mentioned supplementary agreement established that the United States would compensate the Republic of Cuba for the leasing of 117.6 square kilometers --that is, 11,760 hectares comprising a large portion of one of the best bays in the country-- with the sum of 2,000 US dollars annually, presently increased to 4,085 US dollars annually --that is, 34.7 cents per hectare-- to be paid to Cuba in yearly checks. An elemental sense of dignity and absolute disagreement with what happens in that portion of our national territory has prevented Cuba from cashing those checks which are issued to the Treasurer General of the Republic of Cuba, a position and an institution that ceased to exist a long time ago.
After the victory of the Revolution in Cuba, that base was the source of numerous frictions between Cuba and the United States. The overwhelming majority of the over three thousand Cubans who worked there were fired from their jobs and replaced by people from other countries. At present, only 10 Cubans work there.
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