In a huge protest in repudiation of the Naval Base Guantanamo Bay that the United States illegally maintains in Cuba, more than 50,000 Cubans gathered on Wednesday (25) in Mariana Grajales Coello Square, in the center of the city of Guantanamo.
From early in the morning, thousands of Guantanameros – people from Guantanamo – carrying Cuban flags and coming from different locations in the province arrived at the city’s main square to take part in the Anti-Imperialist Tribune, as political-cultural mobilizations to denounce US aggression are called in Cuba. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez and various local political authorities attended the demonstration.
The protest comes in response to Donald Trump’s administration’s decision to use Guantanamo Naval Base as a detention center for deported migrants. On Tuesday (25), US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited the base to “oversee deportation operations” underway since the beginning of February.
Through social media, Hegseth described the base as “the front line of the war against America’s southern border” and praised military personnel for their efforts in detaining and deporting migrants.
Neighboring a military occupation
In an interview with Brasil de Fato, Osvaldo Parrilla Estevez, a member of the Network of People’s Educators in Guantanamo province, called the demonstration “historic”, and said that the massive participation of people was due to “US government interference against Cuba.”
“The protest was a denunciation to the world of what it means to have a foreign naval base on our territory, against our will. In addition, the current Trump administration is turning it, before the eyes of the whole world, into a real center of abuses against humanity,” he explained.
For Guatanamo inhabitants, the US naval base illegally maintained there represents not only a violation of Cuban national sovereignty but also enormous economic and social damage.
“For us, the naval base means many things. It’s a huge damage to our right of movement, something as elementary as the fact that there are parts of the province that we can’t access because there is a foreign military power occupying our territory. But it’s also a huge detriment to the province’s and the country’s economic development. The base prevents us from carrying out various economic activities that could be beneficial for our population,” said Parrilla.
Parrilla Estevez points out that the base occupies most of Cuba’s white sands and virgin beaches, which prevents residents from enjoying these places or even developing tourism in the province.
On the other hand, the base is located in the largest pocket bay in the Caribbean and one of the largest in the world. This is a type of coastal geographical formation connected to the sea by a narrow passage, which offers favorable natural conditions for the protection and development of maritime activities, such as navigation, the anchoring of vessels or port operations.
The US military presence in the area not only prevents Cuba from setting up a port there, on its own territory, but also hinders any commercial process the country intends to start, making it impossible for Cuba to exploit its own resources and increasing the cost of transporting goods the island acquires.
An old demand
For more than half a century, the government and people of Cuba have been demanding the return of the occupied territory in Guantanamo and an end to military activities in the area. They argue that the US military presence on their territory is not only illegal under international law but also violates the principles of self-determination of peoples.
The origin of the so-called Naval Station Guantanamo Bay dates back to an agreement signed in 1903, after the US military occupation of Cuba (1898-1902). Known as the “Lease Treaty”, Cuba signed the agreement under the threat that if the country refused it, the United States would militarily intervene on the island.
The treaty established that the US would have “complete and exclusive” control over the Guantanamo Bay area, establishing the lease for an indefinite period, with the condition that it could only be terminated by mutual agreement or by a unilateral decision by the United States, a clause considered abusive and contrary to international norms.
However, since the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, Cuba has constantly demanded the withdrawal of the US army from its territory. Washington has refused to do so.
This situation has led Cuba to denounce the naval base as an illegal occupation of its territory. The country defends the idea that no country has the right to maintain a military installation on the land of another without its express and sovereign consent.
The island also argues that the 1903 agreement has no legal validity because it was signed under duress, which contradicts Article 52 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which establishes the nullity of treaties imposed by force or threat.
A current threat
Parrilla Estevez emphasizes that everything related to the military base is “very important”, not only for Cubans but also “for all the peoples of the world”. Throughout the 20th century, the United States has used the Guantánamo Naval Base as a strategic point for its military operations in the Caribbean and Latin America.
The US invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, the country’s support for the “contras” groups in Nicaragua during the 1980s and the invasion of Grenada in 1983 are some of the examples of how the US has used the territory it illegally occupies in Cuba to intrude on other countries.
This is a story that “we need to know”, says Parrilla Estevez because, according to her, even today the naval base “is a gateway for the United States to easily intervene against the different social processes of transformation in Latin America.”
Parrilla Estevez also stresses that the US government also uses the illegal base as a “torture center and a place where crimes against humanity are committed.”
With the express intention of escaping the jurisdiction of its federal courts and avoiding the scrutiny of the press, the United States created an infamous prison at Guantanamo Naval Base that has worked as an international center of torture and human rights violations this century, housing detainees during the so-called “war on terror”.
Over the years, the systematic crimes against humanity the US military committed at Guantanamo Naval Base have been widely documented by human rights organizations.
In 2022, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the opening of the prison, a report by a group of experts from the UN Human Rights Council described the military base as “a place of unprecedented notoriety, marked by the systematic use of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment against hundreds of men jailed there and deprived of their most fundamental rights.” The document also stated that the site represents “a legacy of systematic human rights violations.”
