Vol. 73/No. 5      February 9, 2009

Welcoming the promise to shut the infamous camp, Cuban president Raúl Castro called it “insufficient.” He said, “We demand that not only this prison but also this base should be closed and the territory it occupies should be returned to its legal owner—the Cuban people.”

All working people should support this demand.

The continued occupation of Guantánamo against the will of the Cuban people is an arrogant violation of Cuba’s right to self-determination. The U.S. naval base was first established when Washington occupied the island at the beginning of the 20th century. Under the terms of the agreement imposed on Havana at the time, the U.S. presence has no time limit unless both governments agree. Ever since 1959, when a revolutionary government of workers and peasants came to power in Cuba, Washington has simply ignored repeated requests from that government to withdraw from Guantánamo.

The naval base is one piece of the more than 50-year campaign by Washington to overthrow the Cuban Revolution—a campaign that has involved direct invasion; threat of nuclear annihilation; sabotage; assassination plots against the revolution’s leaders; an economic, commercial, and financial embargo; travel restrictions; and most recently, the frame-up and imprisonment of the Cuban Five, working-class fighters arrested in 1998 in Miami, where they were keeping Havana informed of the activities of Cuban exile groups that have carried out armed attacks on Cuba with the U.S. government’s blessing.

The Guantánamo base is part of Washington’s attempt to punish the people of Cuba for the example they set in mobilizing by their millions to remove the capitalists and landlords from power in 1959. The new revolutionary government mobilized working people and youth to get rid of the Batista dictatorship’s torturers and dungeons, carry out a literacy campaign, grant land titles to landless peasants, nationalize companies to combat economic disruption by the capitalists, and uproot the institutions of race discrimination. It came to the aid of liberation struggles around the world, from Vietnam, to Africa, to Palestine, to the Black rights movement in the United States.

The working-class solidarity that is the hallmark of the Cuban Revolution stands in sharp contrast to the dehumanizing abuse meted out by U.S. jailers and torturers at the Guantánamo prison and at the even larger, more secretive prison Washington is expanding at the U.S. air base in Bagram, Afghanistan.

Shut down all U.S. “detention” centers immediately and release the prisoners! U.S. troops out of Guantánamo! Lift the embargo! Free the Cuban Five!
 
 
Related articles:
Cuban president: Shut down U.S. base at Guantánamo
Cuban 5 offer solidarity to Palestinians in Gaza
Havana: panel to feature book on U.S., world politics
Cuba: former sugar workers discuss challenges of boosting food production
Workers at Havana province farm co-op assess progress in making
transition to new jobs growing food crops to reduce dependence on imports  
 
 
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