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The Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, "the only U.S. naval base on communist soil," is located on the southeastern coast of Cuba, about 400 miles from Miami. Over 3,000 U.S. military service members, civilians, and their families live in once sleepy Gitmo. The official site for Guantanamo Bay includes a brief history of the oldest foreign U.S. military base. The strategic location of the area was first recognized during the
Spanish-American War, when U.S. forces defeated Spain's Caribbean fleet near Santiago, Cuba, in 1898. In 1903, the United States leased the property from Cuba for use as a fueling station for the Navy, and in 1934 a formal treaty between the nations decreed that both countries had to "mutually consent to terminate the lease." When President Eisenhower cut off diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961, thousands of Cuban refugees flooded the base. The following year all military personnel were evacuated for several months during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1964, the naval base was forced to become self-sufficient after Castro (who is from a nearby town) cut off power and water. The base now operates its own power and water desalination plants. In 1991, it temporarily housed thousands
of Haitian immigrants fleeing a military coup, and in 1994 some 45,000 Cuban and Haitian migrants were housed there temporarily. Today its main missions are to "serve as a strategic logistics base for the Navy's Atlantic Fleet and to support counter drug operations in the Caribbean." Armed guards keep surveillance over its fenced-off perimeter 24 hours a day. Now Guantanamo Bay is back in the news. Its recently constructed and controversial prison Camp X-Ray is holding al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters from Afghanistan.
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