End the blockade!
By Norm Dixon
Cuba has repeated its call for the United States to withdraw its military forces from Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, illegally situated on Cuban soil. While US President George Bush parades before world opinion as the defender of the sovereignty of (selected) nations against military aggression and occupation, he thumbs his nose at demands by the Cuban people for an end to the military occupation of their territory.
Cuba's ambassador to Italy, Javier Ardizones, reminded the world that the US has also blockaded Cuba economically since soon after the Cuban revolution in 1959. The blockade prohibits Cuba from purchasing any food, medicine, goods or technology originating in the US. The US blocks Cuban exports by prohibiting the import of goods containing materials which originated in Cuba.
The US "anti-Cuban policy at a time when it pretends to be restructuring international relations on the basis of detente and cooperation" was described as "unjust, anachronistic and irrational". Cuba has called on the United Nations General Assembly to examine these "hostile actions against Cuba", he said.
Ardizones said that the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Cuba, announced by Moscow on September 11, "must be negotiated with the Cuban government and carried out at the same time as the dismantling of the naval base at Guantánamo. We are disposed to accept participation by the United Nations in an agreement of this type."
A recent editorial in the Cuban newspaper Granma explained that it is Cuba's success at building a free and egalitarian society that is behind the US hostility: "Underlying these 32 years of aggression is the fact that through its revolution, Cuba escaped the United States' control. That is our heresy: encouraging, sustaining and defending our own political system, which we ourselves created outside of and in opposition to its patronage."
The US ruling class had long considered Cuba a de facto part of its domain, so when the revolutionary forces led by Fidel Castro began building a society politically and economically independent, Washington vowed to strangle Cuba if it could.
As early as 1823, the "Monroe Doctrine" declared the western hemisphere a US sphere of influence. President Monroe's secretary of state announced that "it is scarcely possible to resist the conviction that an annexation of Cuba to our federal republic will be indispensable." In 1812, the US had printed an official map that showed Cuba, then a colony of Spain, as part of the USA.
In 1898, war between Spain and the US erupted after a US warship was blown up in Havana. The US accused the Spanish, but later emerged suggesting that the US itself destroyed the ship in order to justify going to war. The war coincided with an independence uprising by the Cuban people. The US replaced Spain as Cuba's colonial master on January 1, 1899. Through the notorious Platt Amendment, passed by the US Congress in 1903, Cuba was required to include clauses in its constitution demanded by the US before it would be allowed independence.
A key clause obliged Cuba to "sell or lease to the United States, the lands ... for naval stations, at certain specified points". Cuban authorities at the time said the demand "is the equivalent of giving the key to our house so that [the US] can enter whenever they feel like it, day or night, with good or evil intent".
Threatened with military action if the demand was not accepted, Cuba was forced to lease Guantánamo Bay to the US. In 1934, a new treaty entrenched US control over Guantánamo "so long as the United States of America shall not abandon the said naval station or the two governments shall not agree to a modification of its present limits".
The base occupies 303 square kilometres on the southern coast of the eastern end of the island. It is Cuba's third largest bay. A deep, sheltered inlet, it was strategically ideal for US military control of the Caribbean, Central America and South America.
In 1958 the US refuelled the warplanes of Cuban dictator Batista which were flying bombing raids against the liberation fighters. US troops were sent from the base to crush a popular uprising in Guatemala in 1965.
Between 1959 and 1979, the US violated Cuban airspace 6065 times and Cuban territorial waters 1303 times. It committed a total of 12,668 provocations against Cuba from the base. In 1964 and again in 1966, Cubans were shot dead by US soldiers from inside the base.
In recent years the US has annually staged provocative military exercises involving Guantánamo. In 1989, "Global Shield '89" rehearsed a massive air strike against Cuba.
In 1990, "Ocean Venture" practised aerial and naval landings on Puerto Rico, a US colony in the Caribbean. At the same time exercises, were held at Guantánamo that simulated an invasion of Cuba.
Cuba has demanded the withdrawal of US forces from Cuba since 1962. The new Cuban constitution, proclaimed in 1976, declared: "The Republic of Cuba rejects and considers illegal, null and void all treaties, pacts and concessions signed in conditions of inequality which disregard or diminish its sovereignty over any part of the national territory."
Cubans fear that a provocation from Guantánamo may be the pretext for an attack on Cuba. Granma recently asked: "If the United States is not threatening Cuba and does not want to use violence against the revolution, why does it blockade it and why does it need the naval base in Guantánamo; why doesn't it dismantle the base right now?
"What sense is there in maintaining its bases in the south bristling with planes and missiles aimed at Cuba? Why carry out dangerous he Caribbean, in which a massive air strike against Cuba is rehearsed, if there is no intention to launch an air attack at a convenient moment?"