The 1903 lease agreement included a specification in Article 6 that “The U.S. will not obstruct entry or departure into the bay.” Is that still honored, given the tension between the US and Cuba? The bay is an excellent harbor and it would be a big economic disadvantage to Guantánamo Province to be unable to use it for shipping. That said, satellite photos show very little port infrastructure on the upper bay. Could that be because Americans are blocking access to it?
Looking at the map, the narrowest choke point in the passage through the naval base is only 0.25 km. Cuban sailors passing through could hail the Americans on the shore, and vice versa. American ships cannot enter the upper bay, but Cuban ships can pass through the lower bay? It looks crazy for security, but if Article 6 of the lease agreement still holds, it would mean that Cuban ships can pass right through the middle of the base?
According to Article 2 of the original 1903 lease, “Vessels engaged in the Cuban trade shall have free passage through the waters included within this grant.”
The US still pays rent based on this agreement (though the Cuban’s don’t cash the checks), so I assume the terms are still abided by the USN.
On the other hand, the Wikipedia notes for the town of Caimanera (the one by the naval base) claim, without citation, that, “Ships chiefly export sugarcane and coffee. Fishing is no longer part of the economy because the fish are in the lower part of the bay, in the territory of the naval base.” That is, that local fishermen do not have any free passage.
Under the lease, fishermen should be able to use the area for passage, but not necessarily for any other use such as fishing. For fishing the open Caribbean, there are many better options on the Cuban coast than Caimanera.
Looks to me like Caimanera would be better suited to being a port than a fishing village. But they have only a couple of docks, only good for local boating on the upper bay. Maybe Cubans have just decided for their part not to sail through the naval base. It could feel a bit… awkward? if they did.
There is a substantial wharf at Boqueron on the eastern side of the bay just north of the base boundary. It can be seen on Google maps and is shown in this photo. It has a large shed and a railway line and to my somewhat expert eye is clearly an export port
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Google Earth’s 2004 image shows an 80m vessel at the wharf. That is too large to be a local vessel for use only in the bay. So I would say that at least as at 2004 vessels were exercising right of free passage through the naval base.
The large shed is now shown on Google as being a museum so I suspect the port is no longer in use.
I should have looked to Caimanera for information. It’s said to be a port, or rather it was designated a port city in the 1920s. It has shrunk because most of the people who used to live there worked on the American naval base, but such employment is no more. It doesn’t directly say that Caimanera stopped functioning as a port after the Cuban revolution. But I found: “On May 7, 2023, residents of Caimanera protested a lack of food.” It would be very unusual for a functional port city to run out of food. This is an indication of economic hardship visited upon Guantánamo Province by the closing of the border.
In ‘23 the trains stopped running to Caimanera for lack of fuel, and they also lacked fuel for trucks, which caused the food shortage. Which strongly implies that no ships were docking there.
If they had no fuel for trucks they had no fuel for ships - given that the latter use more fuel. To be clear it wouldn’t surprise me if the port isn’t operating, but I don’t think you can tell anything one way or the other from the food shortage.
I was in Gitmo in the 1980s and recall seeing all kinds of ships passing through.
Soviet Union, Cuban, German, Haitian, etc.
Not sure what goes on now.
If they had no money for fuel to send trucks 20km you think they could afford to import food from other places by ship?
Seems from what? What closing of the border? The US/Cuba agreement seems quite definite that the border is not closed. If you are assuming this based on an assumption arising from a food shortage, you are drawing a very long bow IMHO.
There is a fuel embargo. That has always limited the people willing to supply fuel. I don’t doubt that Cuba has a cash problem, but I think it might have been made worse by things happening at the other end of the (limited) supply channel?
I think in general embargoed fuel costs more?
FYI there is routine communication between the base and the commander of the Cuban forces. They give a roster of ships that are going to go through. We would let them know things like when small arms training was going to occur. It was all pretty routine. Gitmo is a regular Navy base. Naval personnel are there with their families. There is a high school and lower schools. At one time the Marines had tanks and a much bigger force there. Now the unit that Colonel Jessup used to command is much smaller and commanded by a Major. Tensions were extremely low at the time I was there.
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