The new Cuba-U.S. immigration agreement again focuses attention on the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay - Cuban soil occupied against the will of that sovereign nation. Nine U.S. administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, have maintained the military base, which Cuban revolutionary leader Ernesto Che Guevara rightly called a "nest of thieves," as a permanent source of aggression against Cuba. U.S. forces have launched a multitude of provocations from Guantánamo since 1959. The base, bristling with thousands of U.S. troops and weaponry, and surrounded by 60,000 land mines, remains the most dangerous border in the world.

After Washington stole the Guantánamo base from Cuba almost a century ago, it signed an agreement with the local subservient exploiters whom it had installed, giving U.S. forces a claim to this Cuban territory "in perpetuity." The U.S. government still asserts it has a right to "lease" Guantánamo with the same arrogance of an employer arguing the legality of a contract for bonded servitude.

But the lords of Wall Street have a big problem. In 1959, Cuba for the first time became sovereign. Millions of workers and farmers there made a socialist revolution and established their own government, one that - in contrast to all others in Latin America - defends their independence and social gains. Every year, when the U.S. government cynically sends a "rent check" for the Guantánamo base, the Cuban government promptly stuffs it in a drawer, reminding the empire, and the world, that Cubans are a free people.

That is why the billionaire families in the United States and elsewhere hate the Cuban revolution. They hold onto the Guantánamo military base as part of their unceasing, though unsuccessful, efforts to overthrow the workers and farmers government. One of the demands many will justly be raising at upcoming protests against the U.S. embargo of Cuba is: "Washington, get out of Guantánamo now."  
 
 
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