Fidel, the historic leader of the Cuban revolution was crystal clear, as to the intentions of the US empire regarding Guantánamo Naval base located in south-eastern Cuba. “Since the triumph of the revolution in January 1959, the revolutionary government has denounced the illegal occupation of that part of our territory occupied by the United States. But at the same time the United States has transformed the occupied territory of the Guantanamo Naval Base into a permanent source of threats, provocation and violation of Cuba’s sovereignty, with the aim of creating obstacles for the victorious revolutionary process. The base has always been part of the plans and operations conceived by Washington to overthrow the revolutionary government’.
That situation remains the same today as when those emphatic words were spoken by the Cuban leader. The most recent proposal by the 47th president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, to use it as a mass detention center for migrants, undermines the very foundation of the beginning so-called ‘golden age’ age of America, in his acceptance speech with its cruelty and arbitrariness that he has employed in the ‘scraping up’ and deportation actions, since January 20, 2025.
To add insult to injury, these undocumented migrants, who in the main are ‘economic migrants’, fleeing the structural adjustment from the neo-liberal policies adopted by their governments with the full backing of US administrations, are being unfairly labelled as gangsters and criminals, who are even been rejected by their countries of origin.
The cruelty and barbarity of the Trump’s action should not be of any surprise to anyone, who has been following the recent use of this illegally occupied Cuban territory, which has developed an unenviable notoriety as a site of torture, indefinite detention without charge or trial and other unlawful practices by the US government beginning with George W Bush in 2002 following the Iraq war and continued by successive occupants of the White House.
Our sister country is not alone in standing up to the empire and its shenanigans and can continue to count on the international movement of solidarity with the Cuban people, of which we are a part, in the best tradition of our peoples resistance in the struggle for a better world.
Kingston, 31 January 2025