Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — The $4,085 check is delivered each year in April, addressed to the Treasurer General of the Republic of Cuba. That position ceased to exist decades ago. The Cuban government last cashed it in 1959.

Yet by submitting that paltry payment year after year, knowing it won’t be accepted, the United States continues to feel entitled to its oldest overseas naval base, a 45-square-mile sliver of prime coastline in southeast Cuba that is unlike any other military installation in the world.

On Friday, the Trump administration announced a partial rollback of the Obama administration’s opening with Cuba — limiting travel and business interactions. President Trump is once again recasting the relationship between the two neighbors as one of subjugation. Few issues exemplify this toxic dynamic as starkly as the convoluted history of how the United States came to open a naval base in this part of Cuba.

Guantánamo is best known today for the legal travesty it enabled in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, as the Bush administration deemed it the ideal locale to detain hundreds suspected of being terrorists in a territory that was under American control but ostensibly beyond the reach of constitutional protections. Since the prison was established in 2002, the legal status of the detainees has been at the heart of a contentious debate and a source of international condemnation.