Across the twentieth century, Guantanamo's many uses have included being a coaling station, a ship repair point for the American naval fleet, a naval launching point into the treacherous Atlantic during the Second World War, a point from which to facilitate hurricane relief throughout the Caribbean, and as an incarceration center for suspected terrorists. Along with these functions, Schwab argues that Guantanamo was a sight of mediation from its earliest days, and that that role took on new importance in the middle of the twentieth century because the base was one of the only places that the United States and Cuba were able to engage each other during the years after the revolution in which the Castro brothers rose to power.
It continues to be a place of mediation to the present day as one of the few places Cubans and Americans interact on a regular basis.
Not surprisingly, the majority of the book is devoted to the first six decades of the twentieth century. During the Cold War, Americans viewed Cuba with trepidation. The revolution of ensured the institution of a communist regime that was frightening to the United States. Two of the eight chapters are reserved for the history of Guantanamo during the height of the Cold War, under the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations.
Schwab's treatment of the Cuban missile crisis in is surprisingly cursory, though he acknowledges it played only a minor role in those events. More than anything, Guantanamo functioned as an annoyance to Castro who demanded normalized relations between the U. Although much of the work is concentrated during the middle of the twentieth century, Schwab does not neglect bringing the story to the present.
It continues to be a place of mediation even though relations between the US and Cuba remain strained. Today, Guantanamo is the only place on the island of Cuba that one can watch television beyond the state sponsored channels, American television that has even helped some of the Cuban workers at Guantanamo learn English Guantanamo, USA's publication in late contributes to the current debate about Guantanamo, one discussed extensively in the last presidential election.
Many Americans perhaps would be surprised to learn that the terms of the debate have changed, but that debate about Guantanamo is anything but new. Commander, Navy Installations Command. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay. Find Your Region or Installation. Approximately 6, people live on the Guantanamo Bay naval base today, including American military personnel, their families and civilian staff. The base offered steady jobs at wages far higher than those on local sugar plantations.
President Lyndon Johnson ordered most Cuban workers fired to make the base more self-sufficient. Jamaican and later Filipino guest laborers were brought in to take their place.
Today, these guest workers live in trailers and old barracks on the base and do everything from construction and food services to laundry. Many are paid less than the U. Guantanamo Bay is a mostly Constitution-free zone. He observed that the working conditions of Cubans employed at Guantanamo Bay complied with neither Cuban nor American labor laws. In , U. More recently, in the s, the Coast Guard intercepted thousands of Haitians fleeing post-coup political unrest in boats and brought them to Guantanamo Bay.
Most were denied asylum and sent home. Though they had been granted asylum, immigration officials would not admit them into the United States because of their health status. What Cuba wants from Joe Biden. At one point, there were nearly Cuban Special Category Residents living on the base. Over time, people have moved away or passed on. West chose to stay on the base because he had a stable job, he said, and he liked that the base was the size of a small town like the one he'd grown up in, but with more infrastructure.
He believed life on the base would be better than staying in Cuba. No bigger but more advanced," West said. West was also critical of the Castro regime and noticed that it was hard for people to get jobs that paid well in Cuba. Lane said most of the residents who stayed on the US Naval base were "against the regime," referring to the Cuban government.
A tense history. Cuba and the US have had fractured political relations since the early s. Former President John F. Kennedy later imposed an embargo on trade with Cuba that remains in place to this day. After the border between the base and the rest of Cuba closed, residents had to decide if they were going to give up their jobs on the base or stay and live on the base forever. After Cuba gained independence in , they leased 45 square miles on the bay to the US for construction of a naval station.
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