Naval Station Guantanamo Bay

The United States is entitled, by treaty, to maintain Naval Base Guantanamo Bay on a 20 square kilometer parcel of land on the Southern coast of Cuba.

History

The United Statest seized Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain, during the Spanish American War.

Treaty

When the USA allowed Cuba to become independent they signed a treaty with the new Government giving it a lease on the site. The treaty allows the USA to use it as a Naval Base and Coaling Station, in return for rent of $4,000 per year.

When Fidel Castro took power, fifty years ago, to show its opposition to the treaty, the Cuban Government stopped cashing the USA's rent checks.

The internment of refugees

During the later decades of the 20th Century the USA used the base to intern human rights and economic refugees from Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Tens of thousands of migrants spent years interned at the base. The base is still, occasionally, used to intern refugees.

The internment of "enemy combatants"

On January 11th, 2002 the USA opened the Camp X-Ray, the first of several camps in the complex of Guantanamo Bay detention camps that hold captives the USA considers "enemy combatants" in the "war on terror".