Washington’s use of the naval base it occupies in Cuba’s Guantánamo Bay to imprison workers without papers is an assault on their rights, the unity of the working class and a longstanding violation of Cuba’s sovereignty. Working people worldwide should join in the fight to end it.
The U.S. rulers seized Guantánamo Bay in 1903, against the wishes of the Cuban people. For over 120 years since, under every Democratic and Republican administration, the occupation has been part of their decadeslong economic, trade and political war aimed at crushing the Cuban people and overturning their socialist revolution.
The U.S. capitalist class has never forgiven Cuban workers and farmers for toppling the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Led by Fidel Castro, working people took political power, overturned capitalist exploitation and have defended their revolution from a Washington-backed invasion in 1961 and ever since.
Half a million Cubans marched to the U.S. Embassy in December to demand Washington end its embargo of Cuba and remove the country from its “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list.
The U.S. rulers deeply fear the example for workers the world over set by working people in Cuba who showed that with a leadership consolidated in struggle workers can take power. The new workers and farmers government didn’t try to “do things” for the toilers. It set out to involve them in taking control of their own destiny, building mass, popular movements from the literacy drive to the Federation of Cuban Women to the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. Millions were drawn into political life, transforming themselves. And they came to the aid of revolutionary struggles around the world.
Since coming to power, the revolutionary government in Cuba has insisted Guantánamo be returned to Cuban sovereignty.
For more than two decades Washington has used the base to indefinitely detain and torture suspects in its so-called “war on terror.” Fifteen remain incarcerated there today.
Since the 1990s Washington has run another jail there to imprison immigrant workers before deporting them. It can currently hold 120, but President Donald Trump has dispatched Marines to rebuild the facility so it can hold up to 30,000. By Feb. 11 nearly 100 undocumented immigrants had been sent there.
Washington’s use of the jail at Guantánamo is part of its broader drive to scapegoat the 11-million-plus undocumented workers in the U.S., claiming they “steal American jobs,” and to reinforce their second-class status. The rulers hope this will intimidate those who remain here to make them more easily exploited. Their goal is to divide and weaken the working class as a whole.
The U.S. capitalist rulers will never back off their efforts to destroy the socialist revolution in Cuba. Most importantly, they fear working people here will emulate their example and organize in our millions to replace capitalist rule with a government of our own, building the kind of disciplined proletarian party that can make that possible.