Cuba–United States border

A line from a lease

The border exists because of a lease. In February 1903 Cuba leased the United States land and water at Guantánamo Bay for a coaling and naval station. The lease marked the area out from a point on the south coast 4.37 nautical miles east of Windward Point lighthouse: north for 4.25 nautical miles, west for 5.87, south-west for 3.31, and then south to the sea.^[3]

A second agreement that July said the area was to be surveyed and its boundaries “distinctly marked by permanent fences or inclosures”, built and kept up at the United States’ expense.^[7] The treaty of 1934 fixed the station’s limits as they then stood, for as long as the United States does not abandon it or the two governments agree to change them.^[4]

The fence hardens

Before the revolution, vehicles drove in and out through the North East Gate. In mid-1958 that traffic was stopped, and Cuban workers had to walk through the gate’s checkpoint. In the autumn of 1961 Cuban militia planted miles of cactus along the north-eastern part of the fence, which became known as the “Cactus Curtain”, to deter people trying to flee to the base.^[8]

After the United States broke off relations in 1961, both militaries began patrolling the boundary. It is still guarded by US Marines on one side and Cuba’s Frontier Brigade on the other.^[2] The United States planted more than 50,000 mines on its side of the buffer zone in 1961, and Cuba mined its side too.^[6] Until 1983 the Cuban fence stood only 80–150 metres from the American one. According to GlobalSecurity, after the US invasion of Grenada that year the Cuban army moved it back to its current line and laid the minefields that lie between the fences.^[8]

Water and the pipe

On 2 February 1964 the US Coast Guard seized four Cuban fishing boats off East Key, saying they were in US waters; Cuba said they were in international waters. On 6 February Cuba cut off the base’s water supply.^[9] American Forces Press Service later put the arrests off the Florida coast.^[5] The water had been pumped from a river several miles north of the base. The base commander, John Bulkeley, had the cast-iron pipe cut near the North East Gate in front of reporters and sent a piece to Castro. Water was shipped in until a desalination plant was finished.^[5]

Mines

In May 1996 the United States announced it would remove all its mines at Guantánamo and replace them with sensors, and committed to finish by the end of 1999. By 1999 at least 23 people had been killed in the minefields since 1961: 18 US servicemen, most of them Marines who maintained the minefield, and five Cubans trying to reach the base.^[6]

Cuba told Landmine Monitor that it used anti-personnel mines only around “the Cuban territory illegally occupied by the USA” at Guantánamo, and that it would clear them once the United States withdrew.^[6] In 2004 the Cuban side was still mined, with no maps of where the mines lay. A wildfire that February set off about 152 of them.^[1]

The gate

The North East Gate is the only break in the fence. Around 3,500 Cubans commuted through it each day in 1959. After the revolution no new workers were allowed to take jobs on the base, and by 2004 only three remained.^[1] In 2006 there were two, an 85-year-old and a 79-year-old.^[5]

Once a month the base commander meets his Cuban counterpart at the fence, alternating between the two sides. They discuss security, the fence and communications, not politics. Once a year both sides hold a joint mass-casualty drill.^[5] A sign on the Cuban side of the gate reads “República de Cuba. Territorio Libre de América”.^[1]