The Best American Travel Writing 2019

by Jason Wilson

  Later, during the hilltop skirmish with Spanish guerrillas, another signalman stood exposed on a ridge to send the requisite message. “I watched his face,” Crane wrote, “and it was as grave and serene as that of a man writing in his own library. He was the very embodiment of tranquility in occupation . . . There was not a single trace of nervousness or haste.” Crane’s admiring account of this “very great feat” emphasizes the stoic, masculine qualities that he saw in the regulars, the foot soldiers who did the arduous fighting. Elsewhere, he would criticize the press corps for ignoring these paragons of courage in favor of heaping praise on volunteers such as Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. Crane refused to overlook the regulars, making them the focus of his dispatches and stories, lauding their stoicism and grace under pressure, and holding them up as exemplars of what Crane perceived as American ideals.

  Crane tried to live up to those ideals himself, according to those who observed his activities during the fight. A letter from a Marine commander recalled Crane’s bravery at Guantánamo. An official Navy report recognized Crane’s “material aid during the action” in delivering messages between platoons. The report does not say whether Crane did more than carry messages, but a biographer (Paul Sorrentino) says that “he quietly carried supplies, built entrenchments, dragged artillery up hills, and helped to fire guns.” In “War Memories,” which is taken to be semiautobiographical, Crane’s stand-in narrator (named Vernall) is asked by a Marine captain to undertake a brief scouting mission. Crane/Vernall does so: “All the time my heart was in my boots,” he says, contrasting his fear with the stoic regulars “who did not seem to be afraid at all, men with quiet composed faces who went about this business as if they proceeded from a sense of habit.”

  Shortly after the hilltop battle, an exhausted and somewhat unnerved Crane left Guantánamo on the dispatch boat with his fellow journalists. Ahead of him were the events at Daiquirí, Siboney, Las Guásimas, and San Juan Hill, followed by a breakdown (perhaps malaria or yellow fever), which further eroded his already precarious health. Just shy of two years after the events at Guantánamo, Stephen Crane was dead at 28.

  Standing at the Malones Lookout, gazing across the hills at the approximate location of these events, I recalled Crane’s description of this same landscape. He wrote two versions—one version in a news dispatch and a second version in “War Memories.” Both passages involve a panoramic survey from atop the mountain where the skirmish took place. In the dispatch, Crane noticed the view in the heat of combat: “The sky was speckless, the sun blazed out of it as if it would melt the earth. Far away on one side were the waters of Guantánamo Bay; on the other a vast expanse of blue sea was rippling in millions of wee waves. The surrounding country was nothing but miles upon miles of gaunt, brown ridges. It would have been a fine view if one had had time.”

  In the second version, Crane (through his fictional narrator Vernall) takes in the view during the relative calm after the fight is over: “I discovered to my amazement that we were on the summit of a hill so high that our released eyes seemed to sweep over half the world. The vast stretch of sea, shimmering like fragile blue silk in the breeze, lost itself ultimately in an indefinite pink haze, while in the other direction, ridge after ridge, ridge after ridge, rolled brown and arid into the north.”

  This was essentially the same panoramic view that I now had at the Malones Lookout, although my view—if I had the geography right—was a little farther inland and a little higher up. And, of course, later in time by a century. Because of the time that had passed, I could see what Crane could not: the upshot, the end result of the Marine action at Guantánamo in June 1898—namely, the naval base spread out before me. As Crane sailed out of view, off to report on the coming battles of the war, I turned my attention to Gitmo, one of the principal prizes of that war.

  What a convoluted history had gone into the making of the base and the odd little township that had developed along with the naval facility. Following Spain’s surrender in the Spanish-American War, Cuba became a protectorate of the United States. Overt American administrative control of the country lasted a little over three years while US officials and Cuban representatives negotiated the conditions of Cuba’s independence. That any terms at all should be imposed was outrageous to Cubans; even worse, the United States insisted on particularly onerous terms. These were outlined in the notorious Platt Amendment of 1901, which the United States insisted on inserting into the new Cuban constitution. The Platt Amendment (so called because, as introduced by Senator Orville Platt, it had amended an Army appropriations bill in the US Congress) gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuban affairs whenever American interests were threatened. It also stipulated that Cuba would lease territory to the United States for the purpose of establishing a coaling station and port facilities. The territory in question was Guantánamo Bay.

  The war had demonstrated to the Navy the bay’s strategic value: a protected body of water from which the Navy could monitor approaches to New Orleans and the Panama Canal (then in the planning stages). Although Cubans were loath to accept the base of a foreign power within Cuban territory, the United States insisted: no base, no independence. By 1903, it was a done deal; the United States had secured the right to operate, essentially in perpetuity, a naval base of 45 square miles on Guantánamo Bay. Remuneration was to be around $2,000 a year. “Naval Station Guantánamo Bay” became one of America’s first overseas naval bases, and it remains the oldest overseas American base still in operation.

  Despite the Navy’s insistence on Guantánamo’s importance, development of the facilities occurred fitfully. Congress did not provide sufficient funding for many years. Early photos show that the naval station was not much more than a camp with rows of tents for Marines and sailors. Early on, however, the base proved useful as a staging area for American interventions in Cuba and the Caribbean region, and eventually the facilities were improved. By 1920, the base could accommodate visits from the naval fleet; periodically, training exercises involving 20,000 sailors were conducted there. A National Geographic correspondent accompanied the fleet in 1921 and reported that Guantánamo, a “plant of extraordinary value,” featured rifle ranges, a landing strip, a balloon school (at the time, hot-air balloons were considered to have military utility), hospitals, clubhouses, canteens, and a sports complex with baseball fields and tennis courts. There was also a pigpen, which the National Geographic writer called a “principal attraction” for sailors from the Midwest “with fond recollections of the old farm.”

  The correspondent marveled at the base’s natural setting: “Now and then the sharp fin of a shark is seen. Pelicans drift overhead with their air of aldermanic dignity. Fish hawks are forever circling against a sky of almost incandescent blue.” Summarizing the near-pristine quality of the place, the writer called it a “sanctuary” for “the wild animals of the hills.”

  In years to come, the base continued to expand with more permanent facilities and housing for military personnel. A community developed, a small American town in the tropics, as families of officers arrived. By 1927, according to a visiting journalist, there were “low green bungalows” nestled “in a tangle of palms and trumpet vines, a flowery oasis in a desert of scrub and thorn.” The wives of naval officers rode “lazy ponies over the hill to call on the ladies of the Marine Corps at Deer Point.” It was, when the fleet was not in port, a place of “vast, placid stillness”—a languid and somewhat dull outpost of the expanding American Empire. “Old Civil Service clerks thankfully close their desks as the shadows start to lengthen,” the journalist observed, “and scramble into motor boats to go home and loll on their breezy porches on the bare yellow crest of Hospital Key. A shout or a loud, hearty laugh would be as noteworthy in Guantánamo as it would be in a church. There was just enough tennis to keep in condition, just enough swimming to keep moderately cool, just enough bridge of an evening to exhaust the conversation of your neighbors.”

  Such were the appe
arances. Beneath the placid surface, Gitmo could be stultifying and dismal. This was the impression conveyed in an anonymously written “tell-all” magazine article published in 1930. Under the byline of “Navy Wife,” the writer described what she called the “Guantánamo Blues.” The article’s subtitle coyly promised “A Taste of Tropical Fruits of Prohibition.” For the most part, the writer agreed with previous observers that life on the base was merely dull: “no daily papers, no real news except a few items that sifted in by radio.” During the Prohibition years, not even alcohol was available on the base—at least not officially. According to the Navy Wife, American women living on the base spent the bulk of their time playing bridge, holding teas and dinner parties, and gossiping, sometimes ruthlessly, about one another (“the usual post-mortems,” she called such gossip). It was a life of “coffee cups, long ribald conversations about nothing.” One lived with “an inescapable smell of stale paint . . . the buzz and thud of tropical insects against the screens.”

  But when the fleet returned, so did the excitement—sometimes more than was welcome. With men outnumbering women 40 to 1, every woman, even those who were married, received plenty of unwanted attention, especially at fleet dances. These were “a nightmare,” the Navy Wife recalled. She was sweet-talked, pulled onto the dance floor, propositioned, and groped. She was “protected only by the thin shred of circumstance which lies in the proximity of others.” Her “woman’s instinct” told her she “must not dare get outside the circle of light and moving white figures,” lest she become subject to “a violent seizure as if I were to be the victim of a rape.”

  This undercurrent of lust, potential violence, and vicious gossip hidden below the superficial boredom made Guantánamo seem like a tropical Peyton Place. Over the decades, other residents and visitors noticed this undercurrent as well, even as the base was growing and taking on the appearance of a typical all-American town with outdoor movie theaters, hamburger joints (including, eventually, a McDonald’s), Little Leagues, Scout troops, bowling alleys, golf courses, skating rinks, playgrounds, and skateboard parks. But this surface placidity concealed (barely) drug and alcohol addiction, racism, classism, and sexism. Crime was minimal, but visiting journalists noted that violence did occur now and then, particularly alcohol- and jealousy-fueled spousal abuse.

  In the publications it provided to newly arrived families, however, the Navy continued to project the image of Guantánamo as an idyllic community. “One of the nice luxuries of Guantánamo Bay,” one such publication noted, was “the fact that domestic help is available.” Besides the cheap labor of Cuban maids, residents on the base could enjoy a variety of recreational activities, hobby shops, libraries, and theater, along with “dances, special parties, bingo and the like.” There were religious services, Bible studies, choirs, and Sunday school. Residents could join any number of clubs, from the PTA to Toastmasters. Touting these perks, the Navy publications presented life on the base as pleasant, even blissful. And indeed, former residents typically have fond memories of their time at Gitmo.

  After 1960 and the success of Fidel Castro’s revolution, however, life on the base became even more insular. As tensions between the United States and the new Cuban government mounted, the gates to Guantánamo closed. US personnel were no longer allowed to venture beyond the perimeter to explore and enjoy Cuba proper. Both sides mined the area around the perimeter—making it the largest minefield in the Western Hemisphere—and cacti were planted to make the barrier even more difficult to penetrate. This so-called “cactus curtain” featured sandbagged outposts, watchtowers, and perimeter patrols. The base was turned into a sealed-off garrison. Guantánamo became what a National Geographic reporter in 1961 called “an idyllic prison camp.” One military wife told the reporter that life at Gitmo could be described as “comfortable claustrophobia.” The base had everything families needed, she said, “but in fifteen minutes you can drive from one end of it to the other . . . It’s the same old thing day after day.”

  In such circumstances, the “Guantánamo Blues” that the anonymous writer struggled with in the 1930s became all the more acute. Visiting journalists in the 1960s and 1970s reported on racial tensions, drug and alcohol problems, and occasional violence. According to a 1973 article in Esquire, “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.”

  A strange place to begin with, Gitmo became even stranger during the Cold War period, given that it was a US military facility on the sovereign territory of a country aligned with the Soviet bloc. By the time I stood at the Malones Lookout in 1998, with the Cold War supposedly a thing of the past, Gitmo seemed like a weird anachronism of both neocolonialism and the Cold War. My opinion at the time was that Guantánamo was outdated and unnecessary; keeping it seemed counterproductive, and returning it to Cuba seemed like the right thing to do. I had said as much in some of my conversations with Cubans. In fact, I had told many of my interlocutors that I had a gut feeling President Clinton was going to normalize relations with Cuba and begin the process of returning Guantánamo before he left office in two years’ time. What I didn’t understand then—even though I lived in Miami—was that both political parties were already anticipating that Florida would be the decisive state in the 2000 presidential election, so Clinton could not possibly consider jeopardizing the Florida electoral vote by making amends with Cuba.

  As I studied Gitmo from the overlook, I thought the base was an absurdity, a ludicrous embodiment of America’s imperial ambitions (past and present); but I did not regard the base as particularly invidious or inimical or evil—a characterization of the place that shortly would become more accurate. Moreover, on that day in 1998, I had forgotten that just a few years before my visit Guantánamo had already been deployed as a prison camp of sorts. In the early 1990s, Haitian refugees captured on the open seas had been diverted to Guantánamo and held there in what were reported to be deplorable conditions; the practice, which included isolating HIV-positive people, ended in 1995 after the camp was declared illegal by a US district court judge. At the time, US government officials were already claiming that Gitmo was not subject to laws of the mainland because Guantánamo was not technically US territory. In retrospect, dealing with the Haitian refugees turned out to be a logistical trial run for what was to come later, after 9/11.

  The tour guide had finished with his overview of Guantánamo’s topography. The German tourists had taken their photographs and wandered away from the lookout platform to the outpost’s other attraction—a diner that served up chicken and drinks. In fact, the price of the tour included a complimentary drink from the bar, your choice of rum mixed with fruit juice or cola. The Germans were jovially imbibing. I went over to the bar for my drink. It was very strong, more rum than juice, and I said as much in Spanish to the bartender. He beamed. This was the highest-quality rum, he asserted, the best in Cuba. In the world. Of course, it was strong. Cuban rum was the strongest and the best. He asked me how to say “best” in German.

  Not German, I told him. American.

  His response was typical of what I had encountered in Cuba—surprise and keen interest.

  “A Yanqui!” He called over to the waiter to tell him the news: a Yanqui in their midst. The waiter came over to have a look. “A Yanqui, eh? Don’t you know you’re supposed to be down there”—he waved toward the base—“not up here? Did you get lost? Or maybe you are a defector!” He smiled broadly. He was getting a kick out of teasing me.

  No, just a tourist, I said.

  “So you want to see what your imperialist government is up to, eh?”

  Yes, I agreed, that pretty much summarized it.

  He nodded. “Tell me, amigo, are you a baseball fanatic? Yes? Then tell me—I need inside information—who is strong this year? Who will win the championship of American baseball? I have bets with my compañeros.”

  “Hard to say,” I said, “but definite
ly not Miami.”

  “No? But they are last year’s champions, the defenders.”

  “Yes, but they sold their best players.”

  “Sold?”

  “Yes, or traded them.”

  “Sold. Traded. I see, like slaves.”

  “Something like that.”

  “This,” he asserted, “is why Cuban baseball is better than American baseball. In America, the players must perform as slaves for the owners. No matter how much money the players get, they are still property. In Cuba, they play for love of the sport. They play with their hearts. Now, then, tell me, who will win this year’s championship?”

  “Good question,” I said. “Probably the Yankees. The Yankees always win.”

  “Always? Well, we will see. We will see. Perhaps one day the Yankees will prove not so powerful as they think.” He smiled and shook my hand.

  Having basked in the warm sun and indulged in the strong drinks, we tourists tipsily boarded the bus for the short ride down to Caimanera, a fishing village situated just outside the perimeter of the naval base. There were more checkpoints, then a causeway lined with salt dehydration ponds. On the other side of the causeway, Caimanera was perched on an extension of Guantánamo Bay. The hotel occupied a small hill looking onto the waterfront. The hotel grounds included a pool and a watchtower, the latter built to give hotel guests a better view of the perimeter of the base.

  After getting settled in my room, I went out to ascend the tower. Meanwhile, the Germans, lolling around the pool, were drinking again—mojitos and daiquiris. Music played over the loudspeakers, including, inevitably, the popular song “Guantanamera.”

  The observation tower offered a partial view of the inner bay and the base, but nothing like the view from the overlook where I had just been. So I turned my attention to the little town. It appeared to be as sleepy and slow as you would imagine a waterfront town in the tropics to be. A few people strolled the streets, kids played in the dirt, dogs sniffed puddles and trash cans. Here and there people stood in clusters or sat on doorsteps engaged in casual and sometimes spirited chatter. As usual in Cuba, the conversations were not hushed; voices carried, and I could almost eavesdrop on the gossip, the friendly arguments, the earnest conversations taking place several blocks away. Three men peered into the open hood of a car, deep in deliberation over the vehicle’s malfunction and possible solutions. Two women laughed heartily at a joke. A boy whistled as he rode a bicycle.