On February 16, 1903, the then-President of Cuba, Tomás Estrada Palma, betrayed the ideals of José Martí and the Cuban Revolutionary Party, which he helped found, by signing the cession of the Caimanera territory to the United States to establish a naval base against the will of the Cuban people.
In this way, the Estrada Palma government ceded an area of 117.6 square kilometers of Cuban national territory for the Guantánamo Naval Base, which has remained occupied for 118 years against the will of the Cuban people.
The interventionist "Agreement for the Coal and Naval Stations" arose from the imposition of a constitutional amendment on Cuba approved by the United States Congress and signed by President William McKinley in March 1901, known as the Platt Amendment, while Cuban territory was occupied by the United States military.
The Platt Amendment was an eight-article appendix to the Army Budget Bill passed by the United States Congress and imposed on the first Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, drafted by the Constituent Assembly in 1901, under the threat that if it was not accepted, Cuba would remain under military occupation.
Article VII of this Amendment stipulated the cession of portions of Cuban soil for the location of U.S. naval stations “to enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba and protect the Cuban people, as well as for its own defense.”
Even more insolent was Article III, which “granted the United States the right to intervene militarily on the Island when, in its judgment, life, property, or individual liberties were endangered.”
Thus, the United States warned the Cuban government that “the United States may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty, and for the fulfillment of the obligations with respect to Cuba imposed upon the United States by the Treaty of Paris, which must now be assumed and fulfilled by the Government of Cuba.”
Also, in Article VI, they took advantage of the geographical error in the Treaty of Paris, which referred to Cuba as an island and not an archipelago, to stipulate that the status of the Isle of Pines (now the Isle of Youth) would be determined in a future treaty with the United States.
After Martí's death in combat, Estrada Palma became president of the Cuban Revolutionary Party (PRC) and remained in the United States until long after the island was occupied by the U.S. military. During this period, one of his few public actions was the unilateral, irresponsible, and ill-advised decision to dissolve the Cuban Revolutionary Party (PRC) in December 1898, considering the objectives that led to its creation to have been fulfilled.
In open communication with the Americans during the occupation, Estrada recommended to General-in-Chief Máximo Gómez the immediate dissolution of the Liberation Army without monetary compensation, telling him that his efforts to obtain recognition of the soldiers' pay from President McKinley had been fruitless.
Estrada Palma suggested that the Mambises be employed as laborers in the sugar mills, a solution for which he was already in talks with Cuban landowners. Máximo Gómez flatly refused to disband the army without monetary compensation and responded in a letter: “Reasons of public order, high politics, and morality led me to oppose, and to continue opposing, the return of our soldiers, who have given so much proof of selflessness, to their devastated homes and barren fields without a penny in their pockets (…)”
Estrada Palma became a candidate in the first Cuban elections, in which his opponent was Major General Bartolomé Masó, the last president of the Republic in Arms, who ultimately withdrew due to a lack of electoral guarantees, thus handing the victory to Estrada.
Tomás Estrada Palma was president of the Republic of Cuba from 1902 to 1906, having been elected in the first elections held in the Republic under American supervision. He governed with austerity, but with absolute subservience to American interests.
Nearing the end of his term, he decided to seek reelection, resorting to the force of power and fraud, which prompted supporters of the opposition Liberal Party to take up arms.
When he realized that the popular uprising threatened to overthrow him, he preferred to request military intervention from the United States government. Shortly thereafter, he resigned the presidency to facilitate the transfer of the country's affairs to the Americans, who occupied Cuba for the second time.