Guantánamo

  19 De la Fuente, “Myths of Racial Democracy,” 58–64; Aline Helg, “Race and Black Mobilization in Colonial and Early Independent Cuba: A Comparative Perspective,” Ethnohistory 44, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 62–64; and Louis A. Pérez, Cuba Under the Platt Amendment, 1902–1934 (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), 148–51.

  20 U.S. ambassador A. M. Beaupré to the secretary of state, Feb. 27, 1912, in FRUS, 243.

  21 U.S. secretary of state Knox to U.S. ambassador to Cuba Beaupré, May 23, 1912, in FRUS, 245–46.

  22 U.S. ambassador Beaupré to the U.S. secretary of state, May 24, 1912, in FRUS, 247.

  23 The president of Cuba to the president of the United States, May 26, 1912, in FRUS, 247–48.

  24 Taft to Gómez, May 27, 1912, in FRUS, 248; Gómez to Taft, May 27, 1912, in FRUS, 249.

  25 Knox to Beaupré, May 29, 1912, in FRUS, 250.

  26 Ibid., June 1, 1912, in FRUS, 252.

  27 New York Times, “Warships to Cuba After Marines Land,” June 6, 1912, 5.

  28 Cuban foreign minister Manuel Sanguily to U.S. secretary of state, June 8, 1912, in FRUS, 259; Beaupré to Knox, June 9, 1912, in FRUS, 260; Beaupré to Knox, June 11, 1912, in FRUS, 262; and Helg, “Race and Black Mobilization,” 63. For an eyewitness account of the U.S. Marines’ expedition to Cuba, see John A. Gray (Maj., USMC), “Recollections of the 1912 Cuban Expedition,” The Marine Corps Gazette 17, no. 1 (May, 1932): 45–48. On the analogy to post–U.S. Civil War, see Joel Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).

  29 Beaupré to Knox, June 11, 1912, in FRUS, 262.

  30 Michael R. Hall, Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Trujillos (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000), 39–43.

  31 Jorge Domínguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 17–18.

  32 See Dudley W. Knox, Capt., U.S. Navy (Ret.), “An Adventure in Diplomacy,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 52, no. 2 (Feb. 1926): 273–87; FRUS, 1917, 367–431.

  33 See conversation between the U.S. ambassador to Cuba, William Gonzalez, and Secretary of State Robert Lansing, in FRUS, Cuba, 1917, 368–410; “Fleet to Protect Americans in Cuba,” New York Times, March 1, 1917, 12; and “Our Troops Guard 5 Points in Cuba,” New York Times, March 13, 1917, 4.

  34 Pérez, Cuba Under the Platt Amendment, 57–79.

  35 Ibid., 59–61.

  36 Ibid., 62.

  37 Ibid., 70–73, 84.

  38 Quoted in W. H. Brands, T. R.: The Last Romantic (New York: Basic Books, 1998), 569.

  39 Pérez, Cuba Under the Platt Amendment, 139–43; Louis A. Pérez, Jr., Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 215–20; Hugh Thomas, Cuba, or the Pursuit of Freedom (New York: Da Capo, 1998), 504–506.

  40 Pérez, Cuba Under the Platt Amendment, 152–55, 227–29; Thomas, Cuba, 556–76.

  41 Pérez, Cuba Under the Platt Amendment, 158–66; Pérez, Cuba: Between Reform, 241–44; Thomas, Cuba, 574–78.

  42 K. C. McIntosh, “Guantánamo,” The American Mercury 10, no. 37 (Jan. 1927): 106.

  43 Evelyn Hu-DeHart, “Race Construction and Race Relations: Chinese and Blacks in 19th Century Cuba,” in Wang Ling-chi and Lang Wungu, eds., The Chinese Diaspora, Selected Essays (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1998), 78.

  44 McIntosh, “Guantánamo,” 110.

  45 Ibid., 108.

  46 Ibid., 111.

  47 See Marion E. Murphy, The History of Guantánamo Bay, 1494–1964 (U.S. Navy, 1953), chap. 5. Base officials never took kindly to criticism, particularly from women. See James F. Lloyd, lieutenant commander, U.S. Navy, to Rear Admiral E. J. O’Donnell, March 6, 1961, Command History Files, Navy Library, on the mildly critical article by Betty Reef in the Overseas Press Bulletin, Feb. 25, 1961; also, B. S. Solomon, captain, U.S. Navy, to Lieutenant Commander B. D. Barner, U.S. Navy, February 25, 1965, Command History Files, Navy Library, on journalist Elizabeth Chambers’s infiltration of the naval base and her subsequent story, which appeared in the Norfolk Ledger that month.

  48 See Fred S. Harrod, Manning the New Navy: The Development of a Modern Naval Enlisted Force, 1899–1940 (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1979), introduction. The 1920s, the so-called Jazz Age, the age of flappers, was one of the most reactionary periods in U.S. history. The Red Scare, the epidemic of lynching and renewed commitment to segregation, immigration restrictions, and the Scopes trial are only a few of the era’s hallmarks. See Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995); Joshua Zeitz, Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern (New York: Broadway, 2007); and Nathan Miller, New World Coming: The 1920s and the Making of Modern America (New York: Da Capo, 2004).

  49 “Guantánamo Blues: A Taste of the Tropical Fruits of Prohibition, by a Navy Wife,” Liberty Magazine, April 12, 1930, 19–20.

  50 Ibid., 20.

  51 Ibid.

  52 Ibid.

  53 Ibid., 21

  54 Ibid.

  55 Ibid.

  56 Ibid., 22.

  57 Ibid.

  58 Ibid., 22–24.

  59 Ibid., 24.

  60 Ibid., 24.

  61 Gerardo Castellanos, Paseos Efímeros: Desfile histórico, Guantánamo Bijagual, Mantua, Remates de Guane (La Habana: Editorial “Hermes,” 1930).

  62 In February 1930, Castellanos notes (page 180), Guantánamo City was once more opened to the Americans.

  63 Castellanos, Paseos Efímeros, 183.

  64 Ibid., 187–88.

  65 Maynard Cooke Horiuchi to Jonathan Hansen, Sept. 20, 2005; Maynard Cooke Horiuchi to Jonathan Hansen, Oct. 1, 2005; Maynard Cooke Horiuchi to Hansen, Oct. 5, 2005; and Maynard Cooke Horiuchi, “US Naval Station, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Spring 1934 to April 1936,” personal memoir of Maynard Cooke Horiuchi, in author’s possession.

  66 Horiuchi to Hansen, Oct. 1, 2005; Horiuchi to Hansen, Oct. 5, 2005.

  67 Frank G. Carpenter, “American Mediterranean Must Be Guarded by Uncle Sam,” Boston Daily Globe, October 15, 1905, SM3.

  68 At different times, Cooke tried to do favors for Ernest Brooks, an Englishman and one of the area’s largest growers. See J. G. Atkins, lieutenant commander, U.S. Navy, and aide to the commander in chief, U.S. Fleet, to Charles M. Cooke, Oct. 16, 1934, in Charles Cooke Collection, Box 7, Folder Osment, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University; Charles M. Cooke to William T. Osment, December 27, 1934, in Cook Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.

  69 Horiuchi, “US Naval Station, Guantánamo Bay,” 2–3.

  70 Charles Cooke to William Osment, Jan. 14, 1935; William Osment to Charles Cooke, Jan. 15, 1935; Charles Cooke to William Osment, Jan. 16, 1935, all in Charles Cooke Papers, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. See also Humberto Monteaguado, chief engineer, Secretaría de Obras Públicas, Jefatura del Distrito de Oriente, to Charles Cooke, April 20, 1936, with accompanying report; report about water supply, Commandant, U.S. Naval Station, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, August 20, 1935, to chief of Bureau of Yards and Docks; and report on projects for supplying water to U.S. Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, commandant, to chief of Bureau of Yards and Docks, all in Cooke Papers, Box 24, Folder U.S. Naval Station, Guantánamo, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.

  71 Cooke to Osment, Jan. 16, 1935; William Osment to Charles Cooke, Feb. 3, 1935, Cooke Papers.

  72 Cooke-Osment correspondence, Feb. 19–21 and April 20, 1936, Cooke Papers.

  73 “Guantánamo: Cloaca de Cuba,” Bohemia (March 1938): 40, 46.

  74 Jane Robinson Hartge, e-mail correspondence, Sept. 29, 2005.

  75 “Relief Expedition to Haiti,” Office of the Commandant, U.S. Naval Base, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Nov. 5, 1935. Charles M. Cooke Papers, Manuscript Division, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.

  76 P�
�rez, Cuba: Between Reform, 261–62.

  77 Samuel Farber, Revolution and Reaction in Cuba, 1933–1960: A Political Sociology from Machado to Castro (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1976), 40–41; cf. Pérez, Cuba Under the Platt Amendment, 268–69; and Irwin F. Gellman, Roosevelt and Batista: Good Neighbor Diplomacy in Cuba, 1933–1945 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973), 42–60.

  78 Farber, Revolution and Reaction in Cuba, 41–42.

  79 Thomas, Cuba, 691–94.

  80 Ibid., 43.

  81 Ibid., 42.

  82 Ibid., 43.

  83 See, for example, Yuki Tanaka, Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World War II and the U.S. Occupation (New York: Routledge, 2001), esp. chaps. 1 and 5.

  84 T. H. English, Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba—and Then Lost It to the Revolution (New York: William Morrow, 2007), 211.

  85 Jana K. Lipman, Guantánamo: A Working-Class History Between Empire and Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 109–117. Cf. Vern Bullough and Bonnie Bullough, Women and Prostitution: A Social History (New York: Prometheus, 1987); and Frederique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander, eds., Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry (San Francisco: Cleis, 1998).

  86 Telephone interview, Doug White, Sept. 17, 2005.

  87 Telephone interview, William Mills, Sept. 20, 2005.

  88 Mills’s account is confirmed by James C. Manning’s unpublished novel Swans of Cong, based on his service in Guantánamo just after World War II, in author’s possession.

  89 “Reminiscences of Captain Roland W. Faulk, CHC, USN, Retired,” U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Md., 1975, 57.

  90 Ibid., 58.

  91 Ibid., 59–60.

  92 “Your GTMO Home, Housing Information Manual,” Public Works Center, U.S. Naval Base, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, July 1958, 27.

  93 Confidential Security Information, History of the U.S. Naval Base, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Command File, World War II, Operational Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C. The list of recreational activities dates from 1956. Pamphlet: “Living Conditions at the United States Naval Base, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, 1956,” Historical Collection, Guantánamo Naval Base.

  94 Telephone interview, Peter C. Grenquist, Sept. 11, 2005. See also telephone interview, Peter Grenquist, July 9, 2009.

  95 Telephone interview with Commander Harold H. Sacks, June 30, 2008.

  96 Ibid.

  97 Rex Lake, “Rex’s Masterpiece,” Sept. 9, 2009, in author’s possession.

  98 Ibid.

  99 Compare Lipman, Guantánamo, 115.

  100 Grenquist interview, July 9, 2009.

  101 Ibid.

  102 Ibid.

  103 Gervasio G. Ruiz, “Guantánamo, Caimanera y La Base Naval Norte Americana,” Carteles (May 7, 1950): 40–42.

  104 Ibid., 41.

  105 Ibid., 42.

  6 SEEING RED

  1 Malcolm Byrne, ed., The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents (Washington, D.C.: National Security Archives Electronic Briefing Book, 2002); New York Times, Nov. 1, 1956, 38.

  2 New York Times, Nov. 4, 1956, 1.

  3 Byrne, 1956 Hungarian Revolution, 3–4.

  4 See www.time.com/time/personoftheyear/archive/covers/1956.html.

  5 T. H. English, Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba—and Then Lost It to the Revolution (New York: William Morrow, 2007), xv–xvii.

  6 Ryan’s account of bullying by Cuban government troops is corroborated by Rex Lake, “Rex’s Masterpiece.” Lake lived in Caimanera from November 1956 to August 1958, and recounts numerous incidents of drunken Cuban soldiers randomly discharging their weapons in the direction of innocent civilians.

  7 Samuel Farber, Revolution and Reaction in Cuba, 1933–1960: A Political Sociology from Machado to Castro (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1976), 138; Louis A. Pérez, Jr., Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 284–87.

  8 Pérez, Cuba: Between Reform, 284–88, Jorge Domínguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 108.

  9 Farber, Revolution and Reaction in Cuba, 160–62; Louis A. Pérez, “Cuba, c. 1930–1959,” in Leslie Bethell, ed., Cuba: A Short History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 83–84.

  10 Farber, Revolution and Reaction in Cuba, 180–91; Pérez, “Cuba,” 86–91.

  11 The story of Cuban labor on the naval base is expertly described by Jana K. Lipman, Guantánamo: A Working-Class History Between Empire and Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 39 and passim.

  12 Lipman, Guantánamo, 16, 36–68.

  13 Ibid., 48.

  14 Ibid., 67–79.

  15 Ibid., 29–31.

  16 Ibid., 57–59.

  17 Ibid., 75, 83.

  18 Ibid., 91.

  19 Ibid., 92–93.

  20 Ibid., 94.

  21 The following section is based on telephone interviews with Charles Ryan (Oct. 8 and 9, 2009) and Victor Buehlman (Oct. 14, 2009). Cf. Ramón L. Bonachea and Marta San Martín, The Cuban Insurrection, 1952–1959 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1974); Thomas G. Paterson, Contesting the Cuban Revolution: The U.S. and the Trampling of the Cuban Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Julia E. Sweig, Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002); and Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left (New York: Verso, 1993).

  22 Author interview, Kevin N. Caffrey, Veteran, U.S. Marine Corps, Feb. 12, 2010, Cambridge, Mass.

  23 Bonachea and San Martin, The Cuban Insurrection, 93.

  24 “3 U.S. Youths Missing,” New York Times, March 8, 1957, 5.

  25 “U.S. Studying the Case of 3 Youths in Cuba,” New York Times, March 31, 1957, 5.

  26 “Batista Says Foes Have Quit Hideout,” New York Times, March 31, 1957, 5; “Cuban Colonel: They’re Not There,” New York Times, April 13, 1957, 12.

  27 Time magazine, March 18, 1957.

  28 Louis A. Pérez, Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003), 235; Bonachea and San Martín, The Cuban Insurrection, 244–45.

  29 Telegram from Commander of the Naval Base at Guantánamo (Ellis) to the Chief of Naval Operations (Burke), June 30, 1958, FRUS, Cuba, 1958, 119.

  30 Lake, “Rex’s Masterpiece.”

  31 Ibid.

  32 Ibid.

  33 Bonachea and San Martín, The Cuban Insurrection, 245; Tad Szulc, Fidel: A Critical Portrait (New York: William Morrow, 1986), 438–39.

  34 Szulc, Fidel: A Critical Portrait, 439.

  35 Wollam quoted in telegram from the embassy in Cuba to the Department of State, July 3, 1958, FRUS, Cuba, 1958, 127.

  36 See two telegrams from the embassy in Cuba to the Department of State, both dated July 3, 1958, FRUS, Cuba, 1958, vol. VI, 125–26.

  37 Ibid.

  38 Memorandum from the Chief of Naval Operations (Burke) to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, July 10, 1958, FRUS, 1958–60, Cuba, vol. VI, 140.

  39 Nixon and Dulles quoted in Lars Schoultz, Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy Toward Latin America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 351–53. Cf. Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States and the Rise of the New Imperialism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 42–45.

  40 See, for example, Memorandum from the Acting Secretary of State to the President, Dec. 23, 1958, FRUS, vol. VI, 1958–1960, 304–307.

  41 Sweig, Inside the Cuban Revolution, 59.

  42 Telegram from the embassy in Cuba to the Department of State, July 13, 1958, FRUS, Cuba, vol. VI, 152.

  43 Telegram from the embassy in Cuba to the Department of State, July 13, 1958, FRUS, vol. VI, 153–54; telegram from the embassy in Cuba to the Department of State, July 12, 1958, FRUS, Cuba, vol. VI, 149.

  44 Memoran
dum of Discussion at the 392nd Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, D.C., December 23, 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. VI, 302–303.

  45 Farber, Revolution and Reaction in Cuba, 198–201; Gary Prevost, “Cuba,” in Harry E. Vanden and Gary Prevost, eds., Politics of Latin America: The Power Game (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 325–34; and Pérez, “Cuba,” 92.