A trip to the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, introduces you to far more than a notorious prison. It takes you back in time to before the United States was even a country, connecting recent developments in the war on terror to epochal events in the nation’s history—and, indeed, in the history of the Atlantic world. At Guantánamo, the past comes at you in all colors and from every angle with no chronological formalities and no mercy for the faint of heart.
My odyssey began before I had even left the United States. I first flew to Guantánamo in October 2005 aboard a rickety charter out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with room for about sixteen passengers. Most of the passengers on my plane were Filipino laborers. Men ranging in age from thirty to forty, they were headed to the bay to help build and maintain the prison in exchange for $2.60 an hour. The Philippines is a long way to go for cheap labor, and I wondered what made Filipinos suitable for such work in the eyes of the U.S. Department of Defense. I wondered, too, if the Filipinos knew how the United States came to occupy Guantánamo Bay. For Cuba and the Philippines share a common history. Along with Puerto Rico and Guam, they were liberated from Spain by the United States in 1898, only to discover that freedom has its conditions. Cuba would get independence so long as it acknowledged the U.S. right to intervene at will in Cuban affairs and acceded to the leasing of the naval base. The Philippines would undergo a period of U.S. tutelage until it proved itself ready for self- government. In the Philippines these conditions sparked revolution; in Cuba they spawned resentment that festers to this day. At Guantánamo, I quickly discovered, past and present confront you in unexpected ways.
Ask a navy official at Guantánamo Bay to explain how the United States came to occupy this remote corner of Cuba, and he or she will respond with the gripping story of gallant U.S. marines seizing the bay from Spanish regulars in the first pitched battle of the so- called Spanish- American War. But this doesn’t really answer the question. How the United States captured the bay and how it has managed to hold on to it are two very different things. On several visits to the naval base, I heard this story repeated over and over again with a zeal bordering on zealotry. It is a story Guantánamo officials have been telling themselves with little variation for more than a century, which is enough to make a historian suspicious. Every generation rewrites its own history, the saying goes— except, apparently, at Guantánamo Bay.
Read Full Article »