Guantánamo Bay

A coaling station

Guantánamo Bay is a large, sheltered inlet on Cuba’s south-east coast, near the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti. US marines landed there in 1898, during the Spanish-American War.^[1]

An appendix to Cuba’s constitution of 1902, repeating a clause of the 1901 act of the US Congress known as the Platt Amendment, promised to sell or lease land for American coaling and naval stations. The lease of 1903 gave the United States land and water at Guantánamo “for the time required” for such stations, for $2,000 a year in gold.^[2][4][5]

Cuba’s land, America’s control

The lease splits sovereignty in two. The United States recognises “the ultimate sovereignty of the Republic of Cuba” over the area, while Cuba consents that for as long as the US occupies it, the United States exercises “complete jurisdiction and control”.^[2]

A new treaty in 1934 kept the lease and doubled the rent. It also fixed the base’s limits for as long as the United States does not abandon it or the two governments agree to change them, so neither side can end it alone.^[3][5]

“the United States recognizes the continuance of the ultimate sovereignty of the Republic of Cuba over the above described areas of land and water”^[2]

Uncashed checks

Since the revolution of 1959 Cuba has protested the American presence.^[1] The United States still sends a rent check of about $4,000 a year, and since shortly after Fidel Castro took power Cuba has refused to cash it. When the countries restored diplomatic ties in 2015, Cuba’s foreign minister demanded “the return of the territory occupied illegally”; the US said there was no plan to change the arrangement.^[5]

The prison

From 2002 the base also served as a prison for people captured in the US campaigns in Afghanistan and elsewhere.^[1] In all 780 men have been held there.^[7] In 2009 President Barack Obama ordered the camp closed, but it stayed open.^[1] After 11 Yemeni prisoners were sent to Oman in January 2025, 15 remained.^[6]