Word: cuba
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Since the semester began, I've been taking a kind of informal poll. First I ask people if they've ever heard of Guantanamo Bay. If they say yes, I ask them where it is. If they know it's in Cuba, I ask them who controls it. And so far I've had only two or three correct answers to this last question...
Very few "ordinary" Americans, at least college-aged ones, know that the United States has a small yet completely functional Navy and Marine Corps base on the mainland of Cuba...
...FIRST GLANCE IT doesn't seem like the kind of place worth spending much money on. Since it's on the southeastern tip of Cuba and surrounded by mountains, its climate greatly resembles southern California's. Trade winds blow moisture off the Caribbean over the harbor and into the mountains, where it finally rains. As a result the immediate harbor area is desert--no streams, springs or significant vegetation of any kind. What's green and grows was probably brought...
...activities in and around the Caribbean, and for training and recreation. Cuban workers performed the thousands of tasks needed to support a naval base, and American sailors spent many a wild night in Guantanamo City. Next to Havana itself this was probably the most economically dynamic area of Cuba, especially during wartime. Here, and in Subic Bay and Manila in the Philippines, the United States experienced its first and only taste of direct imperialism...
...last year to take their case to the World Court, Reichler's first choice for his legal team was Chayes. "I thought about it for a long time," says Chayes, who during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis helped the State Department work out legal arguments supporting the blockade of Cuba. Described by colleagues as brilliant and impassioned, Chayes was drawn to the case partly by the magnitude of the questions it raises. "We are dealing here with the fundamental norms of international law," he explains. "It's not pettifoggery...