Cuba doesn't cash checks for Guantanamo. Once one was taken to the 7-11 and cashed by mistake.

[RB TexLa]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070817/wl_nm/cuba_castro_usa_dc_2



By Anthony Boadle Fri Aug 17, 5:27 PM ET

HAVANA (Reuters) - The United States pays Cuba $4,085 a month in rent for the controversial Guantanamo naval base, but Cuba has only once cashed a check in almost half a century and then only by mistake, Fidel Castro wrote in an essay published on Friday.

The ailing Cuban leader, who has not appeared in public for more than a year, said he had refused to cash the checks to protest the "illegal" U.S. occupation of the land which he said was now used for "dirty work."

"The base is needed to humiliate and to do the dirty work that occurs there," he said of the detention camp where some 355 terrorism suspects are still being held with no legal rights despite international criticism.

Castro, who turned 81 on Monday out of public sight, said the U.S. checks are made out to the "Treasurer General of the Republic," a position that ceased to exist after Cuba's 1959 revolution.

He said only one U.S. check was ever cashed -- in 1959 due to "confusion" in the heady early days of the leftist revolution.

[Sabriel]

1. I guess it must've bounced.... n/t

[Canuckistanian]

2. He keeps them in a stack in his desk drawer

He's been adding them, one by one, ever since he came to power.

What's even more amazing is that the US government keeps sending them still made out to a non-existent official.