In the Pew surveys, they report El Salvador approval of the US at 79 and 80 percent in the last two years, the only times they have been surveyed.
I follow what you’re saying in that some presidents are better and some worse for their policies toward Latin America. But I think the claim that was previously made that I’m so far calling an urban myth is that there is a general dislike of the US because of its long imperialist history, sort of how Americans generally dislike authoritarian governments.
Castro slaps away the hand offered by the President. No normal relations until the embargo is lifted and Gitmo is returned and we pay them compensation(reparations):
I see Castro’s comments as stating a negotiating position. There’s room to work between where we’re at and fully normalized relations. I’d guess a slow process with small intermittent changes. At least embassies mean we won’t have to involve an intermediary in the annual theater of attempting to pay rent on Gitmo.
That’s as simple as an act of Congress to change the law. Now simple can sometimes be very hard. Moot might be overstating how hard.
Compensation?! AIUI, every year the U.S. government sends Castro a check for rental of Gitmo (on terms negotiated with pre-Communist governments), and every year Castro (denying that pre-revolutionary treaties are binding on his government and denying that the U.S. has any legitimate claim to Gitmo even as rented property) sends the check back.
That seems reasonable to me. He would like the money, but not so much that he’s willing to undermine the legitimacy of his government.
Whether you like Castro or not (I’m not a fan), both the US and contemporary Cuba were founded by revolutions, and that pressed the reset button on a lot of property issues. Plus, for somebody with blood on his hands, I can see the convenience in claiming a grievance over Guantanamo. The guy who led a revolution fifty years ago isn’t going to look as bad as the guy torturing today on rent-free land owned by someone else.
Attempting to look at it from as unbiased a perspective as possible, Castro has a point about Gitmo. Even if he accepted the checks, they’re a pittance – something like $5K per year. That’s way, way less than my mortgage! Even if we adjusted them for inflation from the original price, it would still be a pittance.
Basically, we hold onto Gitmo because we’re America and because we can get away with it. Cuba is not fairly compensated in any way whatsoever for its use.
It’s actually only $4,000.00 a year (less than my mortgage for 121 square miles!) and not index-linked or anything.
I think the “compensation” Castro is demanding is for Cuban assets that we expropriated following Cuba’s expropriation of US-held assets in Cuba (which, frankly, is the real reason we’ve embargoed them for 50 years.)
From the Cuban perspective, I’d imagine it’s extremely galling that they have already made a bunch of concessions, and yet the embargo hasn’t ended. Cubans are now free to emigrate if they wish (as of a month or two ago), the number of political prisoners is much smaller than it was a few decades ago (and frankly, most of the prisoners probably deserve to be there), and Cuba has even made steps towards allowing a limited amount of market socialism.
I don’t think the US has any interest in giving up Guantanamo, so Castro is probably overplaying his hand there, but he certainly has every right to demand the US stop trying to subvert his government.
Of course, we don’t really need a Navy base in Cuba, do we? If the U.S. ever needs to project naval power in the Caribbean, any port in Florida, Puerto Rico or the USVI will do as a base.
Actually, Guantanamo was very useful during the Haiti refugee crisis. When Haitians were setting out on terribly unsafe baots to try to float 600 miles to US waters, being able to intercept them and take them to Guantanamo, rather than somewhere in Florida, saved countless hours and days of Navy and Coast Guard ships shuttling back and forth to some place in Florida. I have no doubt that the proximity of Guantanamo helped save a lot of lives.
Furthermore, it really is an important staging ground for humanitarian relief missions and even counter-drug operations in the Caribbean. Link.
Just because it isn’t Norfolk doesn’t mean it isn’t quite useful, and I say that with the hope that the detention center is closed as soon as can be. ETA: I’ll also note that Roosevelt Roads, the large Navy base in Puerto Rico, has been closed for a decade.
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Latin America
Presidents Emílio G. Médici (left) and Richard Nixon, December 1971. A hardliner, Médici sponsored the greatest human rights abuses of Brazil’s military regime. During his government, persecution and torture of dissidents, harassment against journalists and press censorship became ubiquitous. A 2014 report by Brazil’s National Truth Commission states that the United States was involved with teaching the Brazilian military regime torture techniques.[10]
U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger shaking hands with Augusto Pinochet in 1976.
Porfirio Díaz (Mexico) (1876–1911)[11][12]
Institutional Revolutionary Party (Mexico) (1929–2000)[13]
Juan Vicente Gómez (Venezuela) (1908–35)[14]
Manuel Estrada Cabrera (Guatemala) (1898–1920)[15]
Jorge Ubico (Guatemala) (1931–44)[15]
Fulgencio Batista (Cuba) (1952–59)[16]
Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic) (1930–61)[17]
Efraín Ríos Montt and the rest of the military junta in Guatemala (1954–86)[18][19]
Revolutionary Government Junta of El Salvador (1979–82)[20]
Hugo Banzer (Bolivia) (1971–78)[21]
National Reorganization Process (Argentina) (1976–83)[22]
Brazilian military government (1964–85)[10][23]
Somoza family (Nicaragua) (1936–79)[24]
François Duvalier (Haiti) (1957–71)[25]
Jean-Claude Duvalier (Haiti) (1971–86)[25]
Omar Torrijos (Panama) (1968–81)[26]
Manuel Noriega (Panama) (1983–89)[26]
Alfredo Stroessner (Paraguay) (1954–89)[27]
Augusto Pinochet (Chile) (1973–90)[28]
Asia
Current president Barack Obama and First Lady with Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan, September 2009, one of the most repressive regimes in the world,[29] supported with millions of dollars in military aid.[30]
File:Shakinghands high.OGGPlay media
Middle East special envoy Donald Rumsfeld meeting Saddam Hussein on 19–20 December 1983.
Syngman Rhee (South Korea) (1948–60)[31]
Park Chung-hee (South Korea) (1961–79)[32]
Chun Doo-Hwan (South Korea) (1979–88)[33]
Ngo Dinh Diem (South Vietnam) (1955–63)[34]
Lon Nol (Cambodia) (1970–75)[35]
Yahya Khan (Pakistan) (1971)[36][37]
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Iran) (1941–79)[38][39]
Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines) (1965–86)[40][41]
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (Pakistan) (1978–88)[42]
Saddam Hussein (Iraq) (1982–90)[43]
Suharto (Indonesia) (1967–98)[44]
Truong Tan Sang (Vietnam) (2011–present)[45]
Islam Karimov (Uzbekistan) (1990–present)[45]
Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan) (1999–2008)[46]
Ali Abdullah Saleh (Yemen) (1990–2012)[47]
Emomalii Rahmon (Tajikistan) (1994–present)[45]
Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow (Turkmenistan) (2006–present)[45]
House of Saud (Saudi Arabia) (1945–present)[48][49][50]
Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa (Bahrain) (1999–present)[51]
Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (Qatar) (1995-2013)[52]
Qaboos bin Said al Said (Oman)[50]
Africa
Mobutu Sese Seko and Richard Nixon in Washington, D.C., 1973.
King Hassan II, predecessors and successors (Morocco) (1777–present)[53]
Gaafar Nimeiry (Sudan) (1969–85)[54]
Samuel Doe (Liberia) (1980–90)[55]
Apartheid South Africa (1948–94)[56]
Meles Zenawi (Ethiopia) (1991–2012)[45]
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (Equatorial Guinea) (1979–present)[45]
Mobutu Sese Seko (Democratic Republic of the Congo) (1965–97)[57][58]
Hissène Habré (Chad) (1982–90)[59]
Hosni Mubarak (Egypt) (1981-2011)[60]
Idriss Déby (Chad) (1990–present)[61]
Yoweri Museveni (Uganda) (1986–present)[62]
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (Tunisia) (1987–2010) [63]
Paul Kagame (Rwanda) (2000–present)[64]
Europe
Francisco Franco (Francoist Spain) (supported from 1959 to 1975).[65]
Greek military junta of 1967–74[66]
António de Oliveira Salazar (Portugal) (from 1932 to 1975)[67]
Turkish millitary junta (Turkey)(1980-1991)[68]
I’ve been on ships that have re-fueled on the Windward side in the middle of counter-narcotics operations twice, and I’ve deployed out of GITMO as part of an aviation detachment many, many times from 2001-2009. It’s a handy place to fly out of and quickly be on scene to the shifting narcotics trafficing areas, it had good support on the Leeward side (not as great as the Windward side, but whatcha gonna do), and the crew wouldn’t get in trouble.
It also had a great and challenging visual approach into it until 2007 (I think), as you couldn’t fly past the fence line, so you had a really tight turn in on the base leg (some larger jets banked so hard that there was grass in their wingtips). Sadly, they made the approach easier, by extending it over the fence into Cuban Airspace.
It is important to have a base in that location for operations in that part of the Atlantic/Caribbean. I’d hate for us to give it up.
We could always negotiate a new lease if relations are normalized. Frankly, I’m not surprised that what amounts to our occupation of (a small) part of the island is a sticking point.