Dan Gardner: Tenant from hell ... The U.S. Base at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay
Dan Gardner, in the Ottawa Citizen (2-27-05):
Fidel Castro may have seen off every American president since Eisenhower, but in all the long years of the Cuban dictator's rule the Americans have had something that bothers Castro at least as much as Castro annoys the Americans. Officially, it is called the United States Naval Base Guantanamo Bay. The soldiers, sailors and Marines who live there know it as Gitmo.
"The naval base is a dagger plunged into the Cuban soil," the young revolutionary thundered shortly after taking power in 1959. "That base is there just to humiliate Cuba," the middle-aged Soviet ally railed in 1971. "It is a stretch of land (the Americans) occupy illegally and forcibly in another country," the old man declared last year in a May Day speech that left audiences, as always, exhausted and amazed at the stamina of a man who turns 80 next year.
Endurance is something "el Jefe" (the boss -- Castro's nickname) shares with Gitmo. In 2003, the base turned 100, making it the oldest overseas American naval station ("and the only one on communist soil," as the official Gitmo website proudly notes). That remarkable anniversary, and the history behind it, would have attracted more attention if Guantanamo hadn't shortly before become famous, or infamous, as the place where suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists are held without charge or trial.
All around the world, "Guantanamo" has ceased to mean an American naval base in Cuba. It is instead a politically charged symbol: of firmness in the war on terror to some, of imperial arrogance to others.
But long before the first prisoners in orange jumpsuits arrived, there was another Guantanamo -- or, in a sense, several Guantanamos. The prison camp may overshadow them today, but the other Guantanamos are still very much alive.
There is the Guantanamo of history, the pride of an imperial era that became a trip wire in the Cold War.
There is the Guantanamo of Cuban nationalism, a nagging reminder of colonial humiliations and a symbol of the difficult relationship between the little island and the giant to the north. This is the Guantanamo that itches under the skin of Fidel Ruiz Castro.
There is also the Guantanamo of law. The naval station occupies 117 square kilometres of Cuban land, an area about the size of Manhattan Island that the United States controls just as absolutely as it does Manhattan Island. And yet, the whole enormous complex is founded on an ordinary lease of land with an annual rent of $4,085 U.S. The landlord claims the lease ended long ago and the tenant should leave.
The tenant insists the lease is still good and insists the terms must be honoured -- although a careful reading of those terms suggests the tenant is clearly in violation.
Don't expect the tenant to be evicted anytime soon, however. Not only will
the United States not discuss a hand-over with the current Cuban government,
the Pentagon has plans to build a permanent prison for suspected terrorists
on the base. It seems that Guantanamo's new job as jailer will last as long
as the war on terror, which the White House has said could take decades or generations.