How does the USA have a base, Gitmo, in Cuba?

Question

Cuba is communist and the United States and Cuba disagree. How is it that the United States have a military base in Cuba?

Answer 1

Perpetual lease agreement entered into with the first Cuban government after Cuba attained independence following our acquisition of it after the Spanish-American War. Castro has never cashed any of the lease payment checks as yet.  

Answer 2

Spoils of war in the Spanish American War. America gained control over the Phillipines, Pueto Rico and Cuba for winning the war and when Castro took over Cuba his fear of the Marines stationed there kept him from trying to take over so we kept control over it.

Answer 3

Typically well thought out & balanced answer from Ray-no Foghorn Leghorn accent this time though? Perhaps Castro would cease his criticism of the USA if they'd stop with the childish embargoes and assassination attempts? Sulking for almost fifty years is not becoming of any nation, especially the "land of the free"

Prior to Castro booting out the USA's pet dictator Batista, Cuba was a giant money laundering, gambling, and prostitution operation for the Mob & CIA. Cuba had pretty much been under US control for the hundred years or more preceding Castro's revolution. The Cuban-American Agreement of 1903 gave the USA a perpetual lease on the land at Guantanamo Bay, though it does contain certain stipulations, which the US government has continuously flouted. As mentioned by another answerer, Castro has never banked any of the annual $6000 cheques he receives for the lease, and has tried every legal method available to reclaim the land. I know Castro has never been the biggest civil rights activist, but even he can't be happy about having a concentration camp on the eastern tip of his country.

Answer 4

Cuba was not always communist.

When the US and Cuba were 'friendlier', the two nations agreed to lease the land to the US for a navy base.

Since then politics (and sometimes silliness) have evolved.

(Cuba cutting the water lines so the US installed desalinization plants, etc.)

It is all just the real world, not the one everyone likes to think is out there.

Best Wishes

Answer 5

They could get it back if the old f**t would tone down his anti American B/S just has P R could get their independence if they wanted it

Many of your anti Americans love to refer to the 'bay of pigs' and how the U S backed invaders were defeated but well not not talk of the U S base