Guantánamo Bay

Guantánamo Bay is an inlet on the extreme southeast coast of Cuba. The bay makes an excellent harbor because it is sheltered from storms, has deep waters, and lies near the Windward Passage. After the U.S. Navy found it useful in the Spanish-American War (1898), the U.S. government decided to acquire the bay for a naval base. The right to do so was provided for in the Platt Amendment, which was appended to the Cuban constitution of 1901 and incorporated in a treaty between the United States and Cuba on 22 May 1903. On 2 July 1903, the United States leased the bay and its outer shoreline for $2,000 annually. Although the United States abrogated the Platt Amendment in 1934, it retained the right to the naval base in Guantánamo Bay. After coming to power in 1959, Fidel Castro unsuccessfully attempted to force the United States from the facility but continued to permit Cuban nationals to work for the U.S. Navy.

Guantánamo Bay has received considerable attention since 2002, when the U.S. government began to hold alleged terrorists there. Human rights groups and others have sharply criticized the Guantánamo detention camps because of the limited access to judicial review offered to detainees and because of poor conditions in the camp. Some groups have alleged that prisoners have been mistreated.

See alsoCastro Ruz, Fidel; Cuba, Geography; Platt Amendment; Spanish-American War.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Emilio Roig De Leuchsenring, Historia de la Enmienda Platt, 2 vols. (1935).

David F. Healy, The United States in Cuba, 1898–1902: Generals, Politicians, and the Search for Policy (1963).

Gary L. Maris, "International Law and Guantánamo," Journal of Politics 29 (1967): 261-286.

Walter J. Raymond, "The Feasibility of Rapprochement Between the Republic of Cuba and the United States: The Case of the Guantánamo Naval Base," Caribbean Quarterly 21 (1975): 35-46.

Additional Bibliography

Butler, Clark. Guantanamo Bay and the Judicial-Moral Treatment of the Other. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2007.

Pérez, Louis A. Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy, 3rd edition. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003.

Reverter, Emma. Guantánamo: Prisioneros en el limbo de la ilegalidad internacional. Barcelona: Ediciones Península, 2004.

Saar, Erik, and Viveca Novak. Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier's Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo. New York: Penguin Press, 2005.

                                         Thomas M. Leonard