I did not agree with the United States’ Wet Foot–Dry Foot policy because it encouraged Cubans to risk their lives. Those who managed to reach US soil could remain, but those who were intercepted at sea by the US Coast Guard often suffered even greater troubles once back in Cuba. Despite promising that it would not retaliate, the Cuban government always fired returned migrants from their jobs in the tourist industry, using as an excuse the fact that they had left their job without giving notice. Others were harassed and jailed; some relief was provided by the 1994 migration agreement, which allowed the US Interests Section to periodically check on those whom the Coast Guard brought back to Cuba.
I joined our consul general, Patty Murphy, on one of her visits to check on the condition of returned migrants. In the beach town of Varadero, we climbed the stairs to a second-floor apartment that by Cuban standards was quite comfortable, with large windows, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The mother of a young woman who had left in a small boat, told us that her daughter was too much of a “free spirit” to acclimate to life in Cuba—another Ana Maria. Even as a schoolgirl she had questioned the rules and rebelled against authority. Her mother had tried to persuade her to soften her outspoken views and independent ways. The neighborhood committee boss labeled her a troublemaker, removing the option of attending college or landing a job in one of the hotels reserved for foreign tourists. With little hope of a happy life, she tried to reach the United States. The attempt failed, and the US Coast Guard returned her and others picked up at sea to the Cuban port of Mariel. Home again, she found that she had become a marked woman: security personnel and government loyalists mocked and harassed her constantly. Her mother begged us to help her reach the United States because she had no future in Cuba. Just as we were leaving, we met the daughter, a tall, slender woman who was deeply unhappy. My heart went out to her. She was unconventional and outspoken, and I completely understood her inability to lead a productive life within the highly restrictive Cuban system. Having once tried and failed to escape to a new life, her only option would be to try again. If she had relatives in Miami who were willing to hire a smuggler, she would probably make it to Florida. If she tried again to leave in an unsafe boat, her odds of success would be considerably reduced. There was a good chance that she would again be intercepted and returned, or that she might lose her life. I told her that she could apply for refugee status but that she was unlikely to be approved because she did not belong to a human rights group and had never been jailed. I would have liked to have done more, but not even the principal officer could interfere in the issuance of visas.
Typical of those who found themselves without a legal way to emigrate was a bare-chested young man in cutoff jeans who was standing on the roof of a one-story house where he had built his own small shelter. He didn’t come down, so I yelled to him, “Is everything all right?”
“I have tried twenty times and I will try again,” he replied. “I have nothing here.”
For two returnees in Matanzas, a large coastal town east of Havana, life was demonstrably better. The couple lived in a nice home with an expensive stereo system and large television, which they had purchased with money sent to them by relatives in Miami. Still, they thought life would be better in La Yuma—the United States—and were committed to trying again.
There is also the desolation of those family members left behind. In Cárdenas we visited a white-haired woman, thin and sad, in a faded gray gown. She invited us into her dilapidated living room, which must have once been lovely with a high ceiling and long windows with wooden shutters. The room had only two chairs, a small table with uneven legs, and no rugs on the worn hardwood floor. The ceiling fan had stopped working long ago. With the shutters closed to keep out the heat, the room was dark and silent. Over time the woman’s entire family had deserted her for Miami. Once they left, she never heard from them again. Perhaps they forgot about her or were lost at sea. Alone, with no means of support, she sold off her furniture and personal possessions while she waited for news, or a visit, or change, or death.
Too often those who leave—especially those who left in the sixties and seventies—break contact and faith with those left behind. Some of the early migrants, the best educated and most successful, blame those who stayed behind for not deposing Castro. But I think these Cuban Americans are naive. How could those left behind confront an authoritarian regime with a world-class military and neighborhood block committees that monitor the lives of every citizen, jailing dissenters and even young men for minor infractions?
In addition to those who fled Cuba because they were persecuted, dejected, or wanted a better life, there were political defectors who worked for the government but had become disillusioned over time. Orestes Lorenzo Pérez trained as a MiG pilot in the Soviet Union, where he became disenchanted with the communist system. In March 1991 he flew his MiG-23 Flogger, the newest among Cuba’s Soviet aircraft, to the US Naval Station in Key West, Florida. One of the US jet pilots that had been scrambled to intercept the intruder exclaimed, “My God, there is a Soviet MiG in the landing pattern!” A week later, we allowed a Cuban pilot to fly the MiG back to its base in San Antonio de los Banos. (The intelligence community kept the MiG’s black box for another month, after which I returned it to the chief of the Cuban Interests Section.)
I got to know Orestes when he visited the State Department to ask if we would issue visas to his wife Vicky and their two children. I told him I would gladly arrange for their visas, but that the Cuban government would never allow them leave. He was stunned. He could not imagine that the government would retaliate against his family. After waiting a year, he borrowed an old Cessna and flew it to Cuba. Although he narrowly missed colliding with a truck as he landed on the coastal highway about thirty minutes outside Havana, Orestes managed to evade Cuba’s air defenses. His waiting family climbed into the little Cessna, and Orestes flew them safely to the United States, evading the Cuban Air Force once again upon departure. It was a truly amazing story.
The tragedy for Cuba is that so many of its citizens want to leave so badly that they are literally willing to risk their lives to escape. Of course, it would be better if they remained on the island and attempted to change the conditions that compel them to leave, but their actions are understandable because our immigration policy at the time encouraged them to risk the journey, and they preferred to risk their lives rather than provoke the Castro government.
CHAPTER 11
THE BEST OF ENEMIES: GUANTANAMO NAVAL BASE
FIDEL CASTRO ONCE DECLARED THAT “GUANTANAMO BASE IS A DAGGER plunged into the heart of Cuba.” Castro never reconciled himself to what he perceived as the US occupation of Cuban territory, but he was also wise enough not to directly attempt to dislodge the United States. Since the early 1990s, so-called fence-line talks between the United States and Cuba have led to mutually cooperative military relations that have benefited both countries. Still, the Castro regime longs to regain the territory over which Cuba retains “ultimate sovereignty,” yet cannot exercise that sovereignty so long as the Treaty of 1934, which superseded the Treaty of 1903, provides the United States “complete jurisdiction and control” over the land on which the base is situated. The US government agreed to pay Cuba two thousand gold coins annually for use of the base, an amount that has been determined to amount to the modest sum of $4,085. Since taking power in 1959, neither Fidel nor Raúl Castro has ever cashed the annual checks delivered by the US government. The treaty also stipulates that the territory on which the base is situated will only be returned to Cuban jurisdiction when either both governments consent to its return or the United States abandons the facility. It is this provision that has allowed the US military to occupy the territory for well over one hundred years.
Guantanamo Naval Reservation, often referred to as Guantanamo Bay or in more recent years just Gitmo, is located along Cuba’s southeastern coast, forty-eight miles from Santiago de Cuba, where the US Navy destroyed the Spanish Fle
et on July 3, 1898. Protected by the Cuzco Hills and encircled by two mountain ranges, the Sierra Maestra in the west and the Sierra del Maguey in the east, the deepwater port at Guantanamo Bay consists of forty-five miles of land and sea, shaped like a figure eight, of which the United States occupies the lower half and Cuba controls the upper half.
Guantanamo Bay exemplifies the contradictions and myths of US-Cuba relations. Despite the widespread belief—or myth—that we have sovereignty over the naval base, we do not. The US presence in Guantanamo Bay contradicts our general practice because it is the only military base in the world that we occupy over the objections of the host government. I saw this contradiction firsthand when, in the early 1990s, I watched as a freighter flying the Soviet Hammer and Sickle steamed through the waters of the base on its way to the Cuban town of Caimanera, which is situated in the upper half of Guantanamo Bay.
In the early years of the revolution Castro planted eight miles of opuntia cactus along the northeast perimeter, dubbing his creation the Cactus Curtain. He also created one of the largest minefields in the world, thereby isolating the US naval base from the rest of Cuba. During the Cold War, the Cuban Frontier Brigade yelled obscenities at US Marines, who in turn “mooned” the Cuban soldiers from a watchtower that overlooks Cuban territory. Just in case the mines and the Cactus Curtain were insufficient to keep the two enemies apart, two large gun emplacements containing ten to fifteen M198 howitzers prevented any movement into or out of the base. The current state of the bilateral relationship was reflected by the proximity of the towed artillery that would be moved closer when US-Cuban rhetoric spiked.
When the Soviet Union broke apart, ending the Cold War, the United States scaled down its military presence in Guantanamo Bay. The US Navy ceased using the offshore waters for target practice and closed the aerial bombing range on the leeward side of the base. Gitmo’s principal function of overhauling naval vessels ended with the repair of the USS Stark, which had been severely damaged by two Exocet missiles fired by an Iraqi aircraft in 1987. At that point Gitmo might have been decommissioned with the overall realignment of US military bases, but the Cuban American community objected. Leaders of the community understood that the territory would revert to Cuba if it were no longer used as a military base and deemed it an unwarranted gift to Castro.
In 1992 the base commander, W.C. McCamy, Jr., invited me to speak at his change-of-command ceremony. He had successfully managed the refugee camps set up on the base to temporarily house thirty thousand Haitian migrants, who had fled their country after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was deposed by a military coup d’état. With the migrant camps closed and the Haitians returned to Haiti, the captain was moving on to his next command post. This was my first visit to Gitmo, and it gave me an opportunity both to learn about the base’s operations and assess its security.
As I toured the base with my escort, a navy captain from Norfolk Naval Station Virginia, I began to realize that Gitmo was vulnerable to being overrun by Cubans. Several times a year, desperate Cubans attempted to cross the minefields or even swim across the shark-infested narrow strait between the upper and lower bay, and occasionally someone would fly a small airplane onto the base. Since those who successfully gained entry to the base were few in number, they were quietly sent up to the United States. But the vulnerability that concerned us did not arise from these attempts to enter the base by swimming or flying; rather, the threat emanated from those who might walk into the base through the Northeast Gate.
Conceivably, Castro could provoke a mass migration by removing his guards from the entrance to the mile-long path that led to the Northeast Gate. Only a handful of Cuban workers, who for years had walked to work at the base, were allowed past the military post. But if the Cuban military closed the checkpoint, any Cuban who wished to flee the country could walk down the path to the Northeast Gate, the only land entrance to the base. Finding it closed they would likely gather outside rather than returning to the highlands behind the base. As more and more Cubans walked down the path, they would be stuck in an inhospitable no-man’s-land surrounded by mines and cactus plants. Blocked from entering the base, these hundreds of Cubans would become ill from exposure and lack of food and water. There would be no place to sleep other than the small spit of land in front of the gate where no more than fifty people could safely gather. Some would wander into the surrounding minefields and be injured or killed. Sooner or later, the US Navy would be forced to render medical assistance. In doing so it would be confronted with a humanitarian nightmare: hundreds of desperate Cubans rushing the gate.
We concluded that the navy would have no option but to allow the would-be migrants into the base. Given the number of Cubans who wanted to leave Cuba and the ease of simply walking down the mile-long path, if unguarded—as compared with the dangerous voyage across the Florida Straits—it was possible that Cubans would eventually overrun the base, which has a limited supply of potable water and food. If the Cubans flooded in, the base commander would have to evacuate US families and pull his workforce off their regular duties in order to care for the migrants. To resolve the crisis Cubans allowed into the base would be brought to the United States, where they would remain, and more would follow as long as the Cuban military did not prevent them from taking the path leading to the base’s Northeast Gate.
A few weeks later, the captain and I presented this hypothetical crisis to policy makers at the Departments of State and Defense. We argued that the only way to prevent a migration crisis was to ensure good relations between the US and Cuban militaries. The departments agreed, authorizing the base commander to conduct monthly fence-line talks at the Northeast Gate with the Cuban general responsible for eastern Cuba.
Over the next two decades the fence-line talks ensured the security of the base and the surrounding countryside. They were held in a small office building that formed part of the Northeast Gate. The Cuban general and his aides would walk down—and then afterward back up—the mile-long narrow path. Over time the fence-line talks laid the foundation for more than two decades of close cooperation between US and Cuban armed forces. The Cubans removed their howitzers and the US military removed mines that lay within the base perimeter. The two militaries cooperated on health and environmental issues, developing strategies to fight wildfires and disease. A forest fire aided by the high winds would damage surrounding towns as well as the base if effective preventative actions were not taken. Over the years the talks broadened to include joint exercises on security, health, and the environment.
As I feared, Castro did set off another mass migration by telling Cubans that if they wanted to leave by sea they would not be stopped. Fortunately, he did not target the Northeast Gate at Guantanamo Bay. During the crisis, however, the US Coast Guard brought many migrants rescued at sea to Guantanamo, along with a large number of Haitian migrants. At the height of the crisis more than fifty thousand migrants were installed in camps set up for the two nationalities. The pressure for essential goods and services was so great that dependents of our military forces working at the base were evacuated to Norfolk, Virginia.
For years Cubans have lived and worked on the base. During my first visit, I told a community gathering of several hundred that they could remain in their bougainvillea-covered wooden houses when they retired. Most had been living on the base since the Cuban Revolution. Some decided to relocate with their families to the base after Castro took power; others came seeking work. And there they remained for the rest of their lives. These workers raised families, retired, and died on the base, although they were given the opportunity to either return to Cuba or relocate to the United States. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the navy found it necessary to build a geriatric health care.
The hospital also played a role in building good relations with both the Cuban military and civilian populations. As a result of the fence-line talks, the military hospital administrators cooperated with the hospital in nearby Guantanamo City, sharing me
dical information on diseases and illnesses of patients on and off the base. Today the number of Cubans on the base is small; most have died and been buried in a special area set aside for them within the base cemetery. But local cooperation between Cubans and Americans at the base continues.
Like its elderly Cuban residents, Guantanamo Bay was slowly losing its relevance, coming alive only when the excitement of a mass migration resulted in tens of thousands of Cubans and Haitians living in temporary camps on the base. By the 1990s, there were few if any military operations; Gitmo’s principal activities were the provision of logistical support to the US Coast Guard and the US Drug Enforcement Agency in the fight against smuggling and narcotics trafficking.
Then, on January 11, 2002, Guantanamo Bay was transformed into a military prison. Four months to the day after Al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on American soil, twenty shackled, blindfolded “unlawful enemy combatants” were marched off a C-17 military transport aircraft and into Camp X-Ray. As the detainees shuffled into their prison and knelt down with bowed heads, I was congratulating myself on a small diplomatic coup because I had gained Castro’s cooperation in the use of Gitmo for their detention. Years later I would regret that day and my role in it.
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