Guantánamo

  Still, to identify a problem was not to fix it. Solutions to this problem remained elusive, thanks to the Jamaicans’ innate character and to the peculiar race dynamics of Jamaican society itself. To begin with, “a black Jamaican finds it hard to have a natural, spontaneous relationship with a white person … . Taken from Africa as a chattel, then made a normal citizen of a society which sentenced him to remain an outcast, he accepted his inferior position and paid respect to the ‘boss-man.’” This, in turn, created suspicion, and led to “deceit,” “cheating and stealing” among Jamaicans, who possessed “a dual morality.” Combine this with Jamaicans’ “national inferiority complex,” and Guantánamo officials faced a tall order, indeed. The problem lay with Jamaica, where “racial equality exists,” but where “it is an equality on the white man’s terms, based on the presupposition that the white man has agreed to tolerate the black man, rather than on a belief in the black man’s equal rights.” U.S. liberty could do a lot, but whether it could rehabilitate the victims of such a society remained an open question.63

  The change in the character of the Guantánamo labor force brought on by the water fight was palpable in the pamphlets that welcomed Guantánamo wives by the late 1960s. In 1958, Judy Spielman had been greeted by untroubled news of the racial composition of the Guantánamo Basin, along with enthusiastic reports about the ready availability of cheap but reliable maid service. There was an understanding, reports suggested, that only the fairest maids made it onto the U.S. base, living in close proximity to the officers and their families. In the late 1950s, Hal Sacks reports, the American Dream was alive and well. Suppose you wanted to host a private party of, say, ten couples? No problem. You could have the club send over a bar and bartender, along with food, all for around one dollar per guest. Getting cars washed and clothes made was equally convenient in these, the salad days. There may have been labor unrest on the base, never mind political upheaval in Cuba proper, but that didn’t register in elite neighborhoods.64

  What a difference a decade makes. The navy wives who arrived a decade after Judy Spielman received no blithe reassurances of Cuba’s—much less the base’s—racial composition, by now overrun with Jamaicans. To be sure, there is plenty of talk in their initiation pamphlet about the wholesomeness of small-town life, but gone are the promises of labor-free living. Indeed, the pamphlet’s tone is comparatively subdued. “As indicated in this pamphlet,” the 1968 edition reads, “Guantánamo Naval Base is comparable to a small city in the U.S. We have practically everything you would normally find in a small city,” plus “a few extras, such as the lower cost of living here than stateside.”65 By 1968, prospective wives are greeted by long lists of what to bring, available recreation activities, opportunities for worship, along with a new warning about what not to say to the few remaining Cuban workers. In place of enthusiastic reports about what Cuban maids could do for Americans comes image after image of happy domesticity, along with incantations of the perfect life: “A suburban-like community has been carved out of a patch of scrub, thorn, palms, trumpet vines, and cacti,” reads one banner. “Here and there a peanut butter sandwich, ‘Gunsmoke,’ a hamburger, baseball, and a merry-go-round,” reads another. “More than a little Ohio, California, and West Virginia thrive in GTMO,” reads a third.66 If Jamaican labor had spoiled the demographic makeup of the base—so worrying to denizens of Oriente province going back centuries—one wouldn’t have known it from that year’s pamphlet. The pamphlet includes not a single photograph of any member of the Guantánamo community who is not white. Particularly notable in this edition is a centerfold of towheaded children, shirts off, on a jungle gym, accompanied by the caption “An Endless Summer of Family Activities.” On the following page is an introduction to the base school, with yet another caption that reads, “The Battle for Truth.” Make no mistake, the pamphlet informs prospective and arriving wives: “Happiness [means] being at home … with a purpose.”67

  The navy did all it could to ensure that nothing came between Guantánamo and the myth of Mayberry. Just weeks before the Bay of Pigs invasion, the public information officer at the naval base informed his commander about a series of less-than-flattering news stories due to be published by a reporter from Women’s News Service named Betty Reef. Based on the first piece out, the officer concluded that Reef “tends to be selective in her quotes and paints a slightly misleading picture” of the base. Beside pledging to promote future journalists’ contentment, the officer observed that the incident “serves to point up the necessity for watchfulness to insure that the journalist will write the truest picture of the situation at the Naval Base.”68

  The problem recurred a few years later, in February 1965, when base officials were discomfited when the Norfolk (Virginia) Ledger published an article by journalist Elizabeth Chambers, who had slipped onto the base camouflaged as a member of a singing troupe from Old Dominion College. Among the titillating items in Chambers’s story was a report of the group’s contact with “sex starved marines.” What in the world is going on down there? U.S. Navy officials demanded. In reply, Admiral Bulkeley assured navy brass that he had “personally seen to it that no suggestive or off color material is used by the entertainers” who visit the base. In this case, Bulkeley doubted that the entertainment slaked anybody’s thirst for anything: “the entertainers used ankle length costumes of the gaslight era,” though “they did alter their costumes to above the ankle length which certainly was welcome by some of the males in attendance.”

  More to the point, Bulkeley pledged to ensure that no similar breaches of press censorship occurred on his watch. “I am now having the Naval Station, who sponsors such groups, to ascertain well in advance of their arrival that only entertainers are coming and no newsmen are included unless authorized by [naval officials]. I will also see that they are briefed that their visitation aboard is solely for entertainment and not for other activities.”69

  Controlling access to the base was important for two reasons. First, in the propaganda war that broke out with Fidel Castro’s rise in Cuba, navy officials wanted to be sure that only the rosiest accounts of American values made their way across the Florida Straits. Second, by the mid-1960s, the naval base had begun to serve as a major transit station for Cuban refugees. In 1965, 72 Cubans crossed the fence onto the naval base. The next year the number of fence crossers nearly doubled. By 1967 it had risen to 515, before nearly doubling again the next year. The refugees created a dilemma for the base. According to the terms of the original treaty, the base and Cuba were obliged to return each other’s fugitives. And yet the Cuban fence jumpers represented a huge propaganda victory for the United States, which wasn’t about to return them to Castro. And so there was need for secrecy, as U.S. officials feared that violations of the terms of lease might put the base in jeopardy.70

  Secrecy and lack of journalistic oversight allowed the navy to spin developments at the base to its advantage. It also enabled the navy to keep unfortunate, sometimes illegal, events under wraps. In mid-September 1966, for instance, two Cuban swimmers approached the USS Willis A. Lee, anchored in the outer harbor. According to that year’s Command History, “at about 0130 the forward deck sentry observed a swimmer in the water some distance from the anchored ship, approaching. Ordered to move back and wait for the ship’s boat, the swimmer continued to approach. Several shots were fired near, but not at, the swimmer and he was warned to move back.” It turns out that there were not one but two swimmers in the water that night, a pair of brothers hoping to make it to the United States. One of the warning shots “had penetrated the forehead of the second swimmer, killing him instantly.”71 Now, killing hapless Cuban refugees in the water was supposed to be Castro’s, not the navy’s, stock-in-trade. The same Command History includes a mention of “the killings of numerous swimmers” by Cuban guards that very year. What was the mayor of Mayberry to do? Above all, base officials recognized, the need was “to avoid international repercussions and eliminate propaganda fodder.” In
the end, the surviving brother and five other swimmers “were secreted aboard the base for almost a week while intelligence personnel endeavored to persuade them not to disclose the circumstances surrounding the tragedy to anybody, including members of their families.” What exact methods of enticement were used on the six Cubans, the Command History does not say. The victim “was encased and buried at sunrise in an unmarked grave in the base cemetery,” with the commander and a few other officials on hand. In the end, all “agreed to secrecy, and the five were flown to Miami and paroled. All five kept the secret.”72

  Restricting access to journalists did not ensure favorable press. In December 1968 the Pensacola (Florida) News Journal carried a story by the journalist Tom Tiede about “the dreary life” at Guantánamo Bay. For once dispensing with the ballyhooed navy wife, Tiede focused on the sexual plight of the GIs since the coming of Castro. “Disgruntled GIs call Guantánamo ‘celibate harbor,’” Tiede writes. “It hasn’t got many women.” Indeed, by Tiede’s calculation there were roughly “2 women per square mile or one for every 400 males.” Fewer than 100 of these were “unattached.” This group included “a few Red Cross workers, some nurses at the hospital, a dozen or so dependents.” The celibacy on the base made for recalcitrant marines. “Don’t say I said this,” a marine commander tells Tiede, “but I swear, if I could find some way to start a house of prostitution here, I think I’d do it.” The base command did not trust the sailors and marines with the women available on the base. “Movie theaters are scrupulously segregated, and unmarried women are kept aisles away from unmarried men.” Base authorities claimed to be aware of the problem, reminding Tiede of the myriad recreational activities available to the men. But the new base commander, James Hildreth, was courageous enough to look the problem squarely in the eye. He “established a liberalized Rest and Relaxation system which encourages the men to fly, whenever possible, to any one of several nearby, lively and girly islands,” such as Haiti and Jamaica, both notorious for prostitution.73

  “If you’re going to smoke dope at a Navy base,” a chief petty officer told the journalist Tom Miller in 1973, “one of the best places in the world is Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.”74 With Cuba closed off to U.S. liberty parties, marijuana and other drugs became the entertainment of choice, source after source reveals.75 To my knowledge, Miller’s essay, published in Esquire, was not banned from the base. But its tone and content call to mind “Guantánamo Blues” and could not have made base officials happy. By 1973 the reign of Fidel Castro was in its fourteenth year, which meant that it was also the fourteenth year of Americans’ being denied travel privileges in Cuba. All the recreational facilities in the world (Miller described the U.S. naval base as “a 28,000-acre amusement park”) could not make up for the sheer boredom.

  Some things hadn’t changed. For all the dope, amphetamines, and psychedelics that Miller encountered, booze remained the preferred avenue of escape. Sailors still sought sanctuary from this sanctuary in local Cuban bars, though by this time the only Cuban bars accessible to the base were Charlie’s and another “Cuban-operated” bar located in “the Cuban Village” on a remote corner of the base. “Charlie’s is a favorite spot for sailors trying to escape the American aura which covers the rest of the base. It has some degree of atmosphere, which is more than anyone claims for other drinking joints on the base. It gets its un-American atmosphere because it is un-American.”

  Like the base of Sacks’s day, Miller’s Guantánamo is a two-tiered place, satisfactory, perhaps, for officers and their wives; tedious for enlisted men. “The Guantánamo Good Life,” Miller writes, “is a futile, busy attempt to fill up a year with recreational life devoid of human outlets. Masturbation, one hears, runs well ahead of fishing, sailing, horseback riding or football in leisure-time fulfillment.” Indeed, “for the enlistees,” Miller observes, clearly warming to the task, “Guantánamo is a good place to become an alcoholic. During the last twelve months gin has been the leading seller at the base Mini-Mart, with vodka a close second.”76

  Heavy drinking isn’t all fun and games. Nor was the base as immune from the violence and crime afflicting U.S. communities as its defenders insisted. The year before Miller’s visit saw the death of an eighteen-year-old civilian employee from an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol, the arrest of fifteen enlisted men for marijuana possession, and the conviction of a Jamaican contract laborer for assault with the attempt to commit rape.77 That same year, navy officials established alcohol treatment centers at Guantánamo Bay and thirteen other overseas bases.78

  Miller talks a lot about the segregation that divides Americans, Jamaicans, Cubans, and Filipinos on the base, but he doesn’t mention racial segregation within the American ranks, which seems odd, given the events at Guantánamo and elsewhere in the several years before his visit. In 1968 it was hard to ignore the issue of racial segregation—even at the U.S. base.

  Among the things Tom Tiede noticed on his visit a few years back was a sign at one of the outdoor movie theaters that read “Jamaicans and Cubans Sit Here.”79 Further investigation yielded many such signs. “There are more than 200 Jamaicans and Cubans at Guantánamo,” Tiede observed, “but they are not allowed at any of the US clubs, US restaurants or US bathing beaches.” The only places where they were allowed to mingle were at the Navy Exchange and on the sports field. Why the segregation? Tiede asked. Just naval policy dating back “God knows how many years,” he was told. The policy continued because the navy found it “prudent.” Indeed, Rear Admiral James Hildreth, the base commander, told Tiede, “There’s a good reason for the segregation—trouble. We have to separate them in order to avoid trouble. Actually, we separate our married personnel from our unmarried personnel for about the same reason.” Race had nothing to do with it. It was simply the fact that the customs of U.S. citizens and Cuban and Jamaican citizens did not “mix well.” Jamaicans, especially, loved “to chatter,” distracting American audiences. Jamaicans also had a propensity for violence. Besides, Hildreth remarked, apparently drawing on his own experience as well as venerable navy tradition, “I think they want to be by themselves. I think they prefer to be with their own people and so it’s better that way.”80

  Tiede discovered base employees to be less than unanimous on that score. One Jamaican worker, though grateful for the opportunity the base provided to make a living, believed that it was not “a good idea to put up a sign which says black man ‘Sit Here.’ This is a U.S. base,” he allowed, and obviously “the U.S. can do as it pleases, but that is a bad way to humiliate people. And I don’t like it very much.” Cubans shared this sense of resentment. The base occupied Cuban land, after all. Though there were too few African American sailors on the base for Tiede to canvass, one marine captain, a white man, told Tiede, “Why don’t they just say: ‘Jamaicans and Cubans Sit Downwind.’” Hildreth, on second thought, conceded that it might be time for a change. “That sign at the movie theater may not be really necessary.”

  On October 13, 1972, a fight erupted between white and black sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin, off North Vietnam, leaving three crew members critically injured. 81 A few days later a second racial conflagration broke out aboard the oiler Hassayampa at Subic Bay in the Philippines. Four white sailors were injured, and eleven black sailors were detained at the correctional center at the base.82 In the more serious episode aboard the Kitty Hawk, which involved more than one hundred sailors and forty-six injuries in the end, twenty-five enlisted men—all of them black—were brought before courts-martial.83

  The incidents themselves and the disproportionate arrest of black sailors sparked an uproar in U.S. military and political circles. The navy’s chief operations officer, Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, attributed the violence to racial reforms not keeping pace with expectations. In a draft memo, Admiral Zumwalt suggested that naval officers who did not make improved race relations a top priority should consider early retirement. Meanwhile, a panel of black office
rs protested that “the Navy has permitted the situation to exist where there is an incompatibility between being a member of a minority race and being a member of the Navy.” The navy’s recruiting slogan “You can be black and Navy, too” rang false. The intervention of NAACP executive secretary Roy Wilkins with navy secretary John Warner brought a temporary delay in the trials of the accused black sailors.84

  All of which was on the mind of the Washington Post columnist Jack Anderson early the next year when he received word of race-based disgruntlement and unequal treatment emanating from Guantánamo Bay. In this case, the initial cause of complaint was the refusal by the navy to allow two black sailors accused of marijuana possession to retain a civilian lawyer. Civilian lawyers were no more welcome at Guantánamo than nosy journalists. When the accused tried to hire William Burleson, based in Washington, D.C., Burleson was denied access to the base. In fact, he managed to come on board after forging an official-sounding letter of invitation. But once at work on the case, he was informed by the navy that his clients had been convicted in a Guantánamo military trial—a premonition of things to come.85