It is time to return Guantánamo to Cuba!

By Lorenzo Cañizares y Rolando Castañeda

For years, we have decidedly supported the full reestablishment of relations between the United States and Cuba for a better and integral development of the island, where the topic of Guantánamo is an essential element. In addition, given the toing-and-froing of Washington’s domestic policy, the Obama administration constitutes an exceptional opportunity that was truly unimaginable in the previous years of this century.

We consider that the moment is opportune and propitious for the Guantánamo Base be returned to the Cuban nation. That would benefit both the U.S. and Cuba.

The United States would gain the political and diplomatic prestige of adhering to, and complying with its new international commitments.

Closing the detention center in Guantánamo and returning the base to Cuba would be internationally considered as a fundamental act of good will that would uphold the promises made by the Obama administration of a new deal toward Cuba and Latin America.

It would also help restore the image and credibility of the United States before the international community, aspects that were so eroded by the deplorable practices against civil and human rights committed by the administration of George W. Bush.

It would eliminate the colonialist shame of forcibly occupying part of the territory of a small neighboring country for more than a century, under the pretext that the U.S. helped Cuba gain its national independence.

Guantánamo bay has been held by the United States since 1903, through the imposition on the Cuban nation of the Platt Amendment, a law passed by the U.S. Congress and added to the First Political Constitution of Cuba in the early 20th Century, under the threat that if it wasn’t accepted, the island would remain under U.S. military occupation.

The Platt Amendment also gave the United States the right to intervene politically and militarily in Cuban affairs whenever it considered it pertinent, which it did – wrongly and repeatedly.

The territory of the bay of Guantánamo was transformed in the U.S. Navy Base at Guantánamo, which today is the oldest military base operated by the United States outside its national boundaries. The base’s size – 117.6 square kilometers – is equal in size to the heart of the City of New York on the island of Manhattan.

It is important to point out the global tendency to respect the sovereign rights of nations and their territorial integrity, which the U.S. led and decidedly fostered after World War II. Recent examples of that tendency are the United Kingdom’s return of Hong Kong to China in 1997, Portugal’s return of Macao to China in 1999, and the U.S.’s return of the isthmus canal to Panama in 2000.

At the same time, at present there is a clear predisposition in world politics to defend fundamental principles and to resolve conflicts through negotiation and diplomacy, which would optimize the chances of putting an end to this dishonorable episode in the history of the two nations.

In addition, the base is associated worldwide with reprehensible acts of torture, and the violation of fundamental human rights and international agreements on the treatment of political and war prisoners that would not be tolerated on the national territory of the United States. Evidence of these acts has remained secret despite the promises to disclose it made by the new administration of President Obama.

Congressman John Murtha, D-Pa., has declared that the detention center at Guantánamo is not simply a question of tanks and artillery but a real challenge to the moral and ethical fiber of the American nation.

The closing of the detention center is not a partisan issue in the United States. Two outstanding and respected Republican politicians, Arizona senator and one-time presidential candidate John McCain and South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham have publicly stated their support for the detention center’s closing.

Fidel Castro has said that the base humiliates Cuba as a knife in the heart of the dignity and sovereignty of the Cuban people. Many compatriots, including some in the opposition, support that viewpoint and feel that the moment has come to exercise our moral and legal right to demand its return.

The Cuban nation must emphatically unite to seize this exceptional historic occasion and promote national unity to recover what is ours. That posture would help President Barack Obama to justify the return of the Guantánamo base to the Cuban nation.

To return to Cuba the occupied territory in Guantánamo offers a unique opportunity to start on a new road and redirect U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. cannot demand from other countries what itself is not willing to do.

The time is today, not tomorrow!

Lorenzo Cañizares is a specialist on labor union organization at the Pennsylvania State Education Association. He lives in Harrisburg, Pa. Rolando Castañeda is a retired economist, formerly at the Inter-American Development Bank. He lives in Washington, D.C. Both are Cuban-Americans.