--- title: Guantanamo Bay: A History of How the U.S. Military Got There description: President Obama promised to close the prison there on Jan. 22, 2009 canonical: https://time.com/3672066/guantanamo-bay-history/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-01-22T14:00:24.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-19T07:47:28.293Z article:section: History og:title: Guantanamo Bay: A History of How the U.S. Military Got There og:description: President Obama promised to close the prison there on Jan. 22, 2009 og:url: https://time.com/3672066/guantanamo-bay-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbf380d2a0a57009d/69877a6dcd1bba12e96f4b18/gitmo.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Guantanamo Bay og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Guantanamo Bay: A History of How the U.S. Military Got There twitter:description: President Obama promised to close the prison there on Jan. 22, 2009 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbf380d2a0a57009d/69877a6dcd1bba12e96f4b18/gitmo.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why the United States Controls Guantanamo Bay > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Jan 22, 2015 2:00 PM UTC  US Marines raising the American Flag over Guantanamo Bay in 1898 US Marines raising the American Flag over Guantanamo Bay in 1898 US Marine Corps—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Jan 22, 2015 2:00 PM UTC It was six years ago, on Jan. 22, 2009, two days after he became President, that Barack Obama issued [an executive order](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the%5Fpress%5Foffice/Closure%5FOf%5FGuantanamo%5FDetention%5FFacilities) designed to “promptly close detention facilities at Guantanamo.” The closing of that prison at the U.S. naval base at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay would, he said, take place no less than a year from that date. Five years after the 2010 deadline passed — and even as relations between the U.S. and Cuba begin to thaw — the detention facilities remain in use. More than 100 prisoners remain there, even though that number is [declining](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/world/middleeast/us-moves-five-yemenis-from-guantnamo.html) and officials [have said](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-prepares-to-ramp-up-transfers-from-guantanamo/2014/12/24/46685a86-8ab9-11e4-a085-34e9b9f09a58%5Fstory.html) that Obama would still like to achieve the closure before he leaves office. But how did the U.S. end up with such a facility in Cuba in the first place? **MORE** [New York Governor Andrew Cuomo Planning Trade Mission to Cuba](http://time.com/3672755/andrew-cuomo-cuba-trade/) The story of Guantanamo goes back more than a century, to the time of the Spanish-American War. And, during that time, it’s been, as it is now, a source of controversy. Until 1898, Cuba had belonged to Spain; as the Spanish empire diminished, Cubans fought for their independence. The U.S. joined in to help its neighbor and, though the Spanish-American War ended up focused mainly on the Spanish presence in the Philippines, Cuba was the site of the sinking of the _USS Maine_, the event that precipitated American military involvement. (Remember “Remember the _Maine_“? That’s this.) When the war ended, Spain gave the U.S. control of Cuba — among other territories, like Puerto Rico — and, about three years later, Cuba became an independent nation. **MORE** [With Cuba, Nothing Can Be Simple](http://time.com/3646803/cuba-decision/) However, that independence was not without a catch: as part of the [Platt Amendment](https://history.state.gov/milestones/1899-1913/platt), the document that governed the end of the occupation, the new Cuban government was required to lease or sell certain territory to the United States. Here’s how TIME [later summarized](http://www.time.com/vault/issue/1960-03-28/page/40) (with numbers accurate for 1960) what happened next: --- > “” --- When Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba the 1950s, there was briefly a period during which the fate of Guantanamo seemed in question. As TIME reported in the [Sept. 12, 1960, issue](www.time.com/vault/issue/1960-09-12/page/45), Castro threatened to kick the Navy out if the U.S. continued to interfere with the Cuban economy; however, he also said that he knew that, if he did so, the U.S. could take it as a pretext to attack and get rid of him. Castro would continue to bring up his displeasure at the U.S. presence in Cuba — in 1964, he cut off the water supply, to which the Navy responded by building its own water and power plants — but the lease stayed, as did the military families based there. **MORE** [When Fidel Castro Canceled Santa Claus](http://time.com/3652532/cuba-epiphany-feast-christmas/) Guantanamo returned to the news in the 1990s when it got a new set of residents. In 1991, in the wake of a coup d’état in Haiti, thousands of Haitians fled by sea for the United States. In December of that year, Guantanamo Bay became the site of a refugee camp built to house those who sought asylum while the Bush administration figured out what to do with them. Throughout the years that followed, the camp became home to thousands of native Cubans, too, who had also attempted to flee to the U.S. for political asylum. In the summer of 1994 alone, TIME [wrote](http://www.time.com/vault/issue/1995-05-22/page/50) the following May, “more than 20,000 Haitians and 30,000 Cubans were intercepted at sea and delivered to hastily erected camps in Guantanamo.” In 1999, during conflict in the Balkans (and after the Haitian and Cuban refugees had been sent home or on to the States), the U.S. agreed to put up 20,000 new refugees at Guantanamo, but that plan ended up scrapped for being too far from their European homelands. The decision to house al-Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo was reached shortly after 9/11 — and, nearly as immediately, [the world began to wonder](http://www.time.com/vault/issue/2002-01-28/page/32) just what their status would be. A former Pentagon official [told TIME’s Mark Thompson last month](http://time.com/3642064/cuba-guantanamo-bay/) that some would like the Guantanamo Bay facility to be closed entirely, although that’s very unlikely to happen. If the long history of Guantanamo Bay proves anything, it’s that, though regimes and requirements may change, the U.S. Navy is likely to stay. _Read next:_ [_Why the U.S.-Cuba Thaw Doesn’t Mean Guantanamo Bay Is Closing_](http://time.com/3642064/cuba-guantanamo-bay/?xid=time%5Freadnext) [_Listen to the most important stories of the day._](http://time.com/newsletter/the-brief/?sl%5Fautoplay=true&xid=spl-fullbrief-article) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3672066/guantanamo-bay-history/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3672066/guantanamo-bay-history/"},"headline":"Why the United States Controls Guantanamo Bay","datePublished":"2015-01-22T14:00:24.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-19T07:47:28.293Z","description":"President Obama promised to close the prison there on Jan. 22, 2009","url":"https://time.com/3672066/guantanamo-bay-history/","keywords":["politics","Military","Obama","Cuba","Guantanamo"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbf380d2a0a57009d/69877a6dcd1bba12e96f4b18/gitmo.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbf380d2a0a57009d/69877a6dcd1bba12e96f4b18/gitmo.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Guantanamo Bay","caption":"Guantanamo Bay","creditText":"US Marine Corps—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/politics/","name":"politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3672066/guantanamo-bay-history/","name":"Why the United States Controls Guantanamo Bay"}}]}] ```