Word: castros
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...does it? Scratch a little deeper and you'll see, as I did, the odd nature of these kinds of places. Guantanamo, like Hong Kong or West Berlin, serves many purposes for many people. And few people, Castro included, look like they're in any big hurry...
...20th century American history or gov course will give you an analysis of why the Cuban revolution occurred, and doubtless a professor will tell you that Guantanamo Bay played some sort of role. Castro, at any rate, used it with great effect. In the mid-60s he halted the employment of Cuban workers at the base. At the same time he accused the Americans of "stealing" Cuban water through the pipeline from the mountains which had served the base since the turn of the century. In response, the Navy severed the pipeline, engineered a 'waterlift' of freshwater tankers...
...Castro realizes several gains from the alien presence on his soil. His much-publicized cessation in '65 of the flow of Cuban labor to the base conveniently did not include current workers. It's taken fully two decades to narrow the Cuban workforce to a few hundred from an early '60s level of several thousand. All workers on the base are paid in dollars. The hard currency flow to the cash-strapped Havana regime must be extremely welcome...
...propaganda value of the base is probably as strong and useful to Castro as when he first used it extensively for such purposes back in the mid '60s. At the only functional gate remaining in the barbed-wire-lined and mine-strewn perimeter, I saw a sign on the Cuban side. Through binoculars I could read it: Territorio Libertad de America. And one of the weekends I was there, we heard that a huge Cuban independence celebration was being held in nearby Guantanamo City. Castro himself was supposed to attend. It's not hard to imagine the type of speech...
...SEEMS too unhappy about the only American possession in a Communist country. Castro would probably be quite upset if the U.S. actually took him at his occasional word and pulled up stakes. The situation recalls nothing so much as the Chinese Communists' response to continued British sovereignty over Hong Kong. At first hostile, then complacent, and now accommodative of a "special place" for the Westernized colony in the People's Republic, the leadership of the Chinese Party has found almost every major way to exploit continued Western presence on their land, just as they were once exploited. Propaganda, hard currency...