WI Guantanamo Bay had a 100 year lease

What If, in the Cuban–American Treaty, instead of Guantanamo Bay being a perpetual lease from Cuba it was a 100 year lease?

The treaty was signed in 1903 so that would mean in 2003 Guantanamo Bay would be transfer back to Cuba. Would the USA have tried to keep Guantanamo Bay? How would South Florida react?
 
It was also used for temporary housing of Cuban and Haitian refugees picked up by the US Navy or Coast Guard.
 
What If, in the Cuban–American Treaty, instead of Guantanamo Bay being a perpetual lease from Cuba it was a 100 year lease?

The treaty was signed in 1903 so that would mean in 2003 Guantanamo Bay would be transfer back to Cuba. Would the USA have tried to keep Guantanamo Bay? How would South Florida react?
Does the USA actually recognise the Castro regime as 'legitimate' successors to the 1903 government? If not, then they could probably make a legal case for hanging on to control of Guantanamo -- to 'protect' it -- until Cuba finally has a 'properly elected' government once again...
 

Hyperion

Banned
From what I understand, the US pays for the lease of the base, and has continued to make payments every year.

The Cuban government, from my understanding, has access to the account and can take the money at any time, they just refuse, probably figuring it would discredit them, or during the Cold War it would have looked bad to the Soviets for them to have taken US money to allow a military base to continue functioning in Cuba proper.
 
Does the USA actually recognise the Castro regime as 'legitimate' successors to the 1903 government? If not, then they could probably make a legal case for hanging on to control of Guantanamo -- to 'protect' it -- until Cuba finally has a 'properly elected' government once again...

I wonder if the British could have tried that with Hong Kong?
 
I wonder if the British could have tried that with Hong Kong?
I did wonder at the time about whether we could have got a renewed lease for 'The New Territories' (i.e. the section that we didn't legally own outright) from Taiwan, but bearing in mind the Reds' likely response if we'd actually tried that I suspect that doing so wouldn't really have been wise: The USA is in a rather stronger position relative to Cuba than the UK is/was relative to Mainland China... :(
 
From Wiki
The U.S. continues to send monthly checks for the inflation-adjusted lease amount ($4,085 As of 2007[9]) to the Cuban government. However, since the Cuban Revolution, the government under Fidel Castro has cashed only one of these checks. The Cuban government says this was only done because of "confusion" in the heady early days of the revolution, while the U.S. government maintains that the cashing constitutes an official validation of the treaty.
I believe the Navy still uses Gitmo for pre-deployment training.
docfl
 
Ah well, if the USA is still paying the rent like that then evidently it is accepting the current government as legitimate heirs to the one with which they signed the treaty... OTL. ATL, they'd have had to stop sending the cheques to Havana after the revolution (and presumably start paying them into an escrow account instead) if they wanted to take the approach that I'd suggested above...
 
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