Guantanamo Bay Rankles Cuba

Cuba Wants It Back
Updated: Thursday, July 23rd, 2015

         Carlos Gimenez {Photo: progressoweekly} was born in Havana in 1954. His parents were well-to-do Cuban ranchers. In 1959, when Mr. Gimenez was 7-years-old and the Cuban Revolution defeated the Batista dictatorship, his parents resettled in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood. Today Mr. Gimenez is the Mayor of Miami-Dade County. For the first time since 1961 the Cuban flag was raised at the Cuban embassy in Washington on Monday, July 20th, to signify major changes for Cuba...and Miami! On Tuesday, July 21st, the Miami Herald featured a major article, written by Douglas Hanks, expressing Mr. Gimenez's alarm. The article is entitled: "In Miami, Worries About Cuba Include Grains of Sand." The article stated: "In pitching his new $40 million plan to combat beach erosion, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez on Tuesday pledged to find replacement sand white enough to hold its own against Cuba's famously gleaming coast. 'It has some of the best beaches, and most beautiful beaches, in the world,' Gimenez said of Cuba. Gimenez's warning captures the anxiety in tourism circles over how a newly accessible Cuba might upend the Caribbean vacation market once U. S. tourists are free to travel there. Miami is seen as vulnerable..." The article went on the explain that Miami, facing serious erosion problems, desires tons of white sand...just like Cuba's!

      This photo is courtesy of Roman Lyskowski/Miami Herald. It was used to illustrate the aforementioned article in Tuesday's Miami Herald. This shows a section of Varadero Beach, which is an hours drive southeast of Havana. {A gorgeous drive on the coastal highway that I've taken several times}. The white Cuban sands bathed with the green palm trees, the blue ocean waters, and the emerald Caribbean sky makes for a breathtaking experience, one that direly concerns Miami Mayor Carlos Gimenez and others competing for the tourist trade. In the background of this photo is the famed DuPont mansion. For decades, as one of the many Cuban exile-directed punitive actions against Cuba, everyday Americans have been the only people in the world without the freedom to visit Cuba. That basic right, at long last, seems to be gradually returning in the closing months of President Barack Obama's second term.

Since the 1950s, no President has changed Cuban policy as much as Obama.

          Monday -- July 20th -- Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and America's Secretary of State John Kerry held a joint news conference {above} to herald the opening of embassies in the two capitals for the first time since 1961. But even on that historic occasion, Mr. Rodriguez brought up a topic that spawned the above expression on Mr. Kerry's countenance. The topic was: Guantanamo Bay!! Cuban wants it back. As the July 21st USA Today reported, Rodriguez surprised Kerry at the news conference when he cogently stated that "compensation for our citizens for human and economic damages is crucial."

         The history of Guantanamo Bay favors Cuba getting it back...some day. All nations against imperialism, past and present, support Cuba's efforts regarding its own land. The U. S., then a rising imperialist power, gained dominance over Cuba from Spain, a declining imperialist power, with the easy victory in the 1898 Spanish-American War. No Cuban attended the treaty ceremony that ended the war. In 1903 the U. S. easily mandated the theft of 45 square miles of Guantanamo Bay, a very valuable spot on Cuba's southeastern tip. The U. S. mandated that it would pay Cuba $2000 a year, which it did. In the 1930s the U. S. mandated that it would increase the amount to $4000, which it did. Since 1959, when the Cuban Revolution defeated the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship, Cuba has refused to cash those yearly checks from the U. S.

 U. S. flag being raised at Guantanamo Bay in 1903.

U. S. flag flies high over Guantanamo Bay today.

         Unlike the rest of Cuba, the U. S.-occupied Guantanamo Bay is very Americanized as this www.businessinsider.com photo illustrates. That Americanization irks Cuba's idea of sovereignty.

The U. S. has a powerful military base at Guantanamo.

         The world thinks of Guantanamo Bay as "Gitmo" because, after 9/11, the Bush-Cheney administration created an infamous prison there. Amnesty International still calls it "The gulag of our time." President Obama, when he succeeded Bush-Cheney in the White House, vowed to close Gitmo. In over six years he hasn't been able to do it because the U. S. Congress dictates most of the nefarious aspects of America's Cuban policy. It has been estimated that it costs U. S. taxpayers about $1.3 million each year to house each of the hundreds of Gitmo prisoners, while it would cost about $40,000 per year per prisoner if they were housed in a maximum security federal prison on U. S. soil. Congress is well aware of the damage Gitmo does to the U. S. image worldwide but it apparently believes that having the prison on occupied Cuban soil softens the image, meaning that it is less of a bad thing as long as it is on Cuban, not American, soil.

         In any case, the continued U.S.-occupation of Guantanamo Bay embarrasses America's best friends around the world and it embarrasses the United Nations. If Cuba manages to get the dispute arbitrated in an international court, it expects to win. However, an island trying to exorcise the hurtful symbols of a superpower's imperialist past clearly remains a distinct underdog even while it benefits from having a sympathetic Democratic President in the White House. And Obama's presidency ends in 17 months. 

        Meanwhile, now that the U. S. and Cuba have embassies in their respective capitals, the sticky issue concerning Guantanamo Bay will get stickier. At least, the two top diplomats -- Bruno Rodriguez of Cuba and John Kerry of the United States, are now shaking hands and talking to each other. This week, when he attended the historic raising of the Cuban flag at its embassy, marked the first time Rodriguez had ever been to Washington. On August 14th Rodriguez will host Kerry in Havana for the ceremonial raising of the American flag at the U. S. embassy. It is a bit surprising to some that Rodriguez, both at the joint news conference with Kerry and later in a private meeting Monday, stressed that the return of Guantanamo Bay to Cuba is something that Cuba will not let go of. Rodriguez, aware that the thawing of relations has Cuban-Americans more than ever demanding compensation for lost property in Cuba, sharply countered that with Kerry Monday. Rodriguez stressed the hundreds of billions of dollars the embargo has cost Cuba since 1961; the billions of dollars that the 45-square miles of Guantanamo Bay is worth; the Batista-Mafia-U.S. theft of Cuban assets from 1952 till 1959; and, most of all, the compensation that innocent Cubans are entitled for terrorist acts that have killed or maimed thousands of Cubans -- including coastal assaults, the bombing of Cubana Flight 455, etc. Rodriguez also has already let Kerry know that Cuba wants the U. S. to cease or sharply curtail the numerous ongoing Congress-funded regime-change programs and he wants U. S. diplomats at the new U. S. embassy in Havana to refrain from fomenting dissent on the island. Of course, the U. S., even apart from appeasing Cuban-exile extremists, has demands of Cuba too.

         So, even as the Cuban flag now flies high in front of its splendid new embassy in Washington, many chasms that have separated the nearby island from the U. S. remain. In fact, if past history is a guide, the opening of embassies will soon generate additional fireworks designed to turn back Obama's clock on Cuban rapprochement. And, for sure, past history will factor sharply into the future of U.S.-Cuban relations.

             Guantanamo Bay, USA and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba will be just one of many battlegrounds that U.S.-Cuban/Rodriguez-Kerry diplomacy will have to deal with in the coming hectic months that lie ahead. 

And by the way:

          This is Sarah Obama, President Barack Obama's step-grandmother. She still lives in Kogelo, Kenya. Kogelo is in western Kenya near Lake Victoria and northwest of Nairobi. President Obama is visiting East Africa this week. Sarah hopes he visits her. President Obama very lovingly calls her "Mama Sarah."

{The next ten photos are courtesy of Carl Anthony Online.}

Sarah Obama as a baby.

Barack Obama visiting his father, Barack Obama Sr.

Barack Obama Sr., a student at Harvard University.

Barack Obama Sr. and his wife Ann Dunham, the President's mother.

Barack Obama and his beloved mother.

Barack Obama and his mother in Hawaii.

A young Barack Obama visiting Sarah, his step-grandmother.

Young Barack Obama helping Sarah in Kenya.

Barack Obama visiting Sarah in 2006 before his bid for the presidency.

In 2008 Sarah predicted Barack Obama would be elected U. S. President.

Photo courtesy parade.condenast.com

President Barack Obama with his two daughters.

Photo courtesy Aljazeera America.

       Sarah Obama holding a cherished photograph and hoping for "one more visit from Barry." Barry is her grandson -- Barack Obama, the President of the United States. Although he is visiting Africa this week, he might not be able to visit Sarah in Kogelo because of the political and military strife roiling Kenya. Sarah and the President's father were born in Kogelo, which is 200 miles northwest of Nairobi, Kenya's capital. Kenya's President, Uhuru Kenyatta, and some of his top aides are currently being charged with serious crimes by the International Criminal Court. Sarah is now 95-years-old. She visited the U. S. two years ago and had extremely warm visits with President Obama, her step-grandson. She now says she wants him to visit her again so she can show him where his father is buried in Kogelo, and where she will be buried.

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