GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA — For anyone wishing to see what it would
be like to live under communism, the Cuban border with America’s
naval base at Guantanamo Bay offers a brief but decidedly memorable
taste.
Standing near Gitmo’s Northeast gate, the lone crossing point
between the base and Cuba, you have the disturbing feeling that you
are being watched. And so, of course, you are. Dotting the green
hillsides beyond the gate are observation towers from which the
Cuban military surveys the border. Because their glimpse into the
base itself is limited — about 75 percent of Gitmo, including the
strategic headquarters and the detainee camps, lie outside of their
scope of vision — they are forever watching for that other threat
to the glories of Castro’s revolution: defectors.
It doesn’t quite line up with what one may hear from Amnesty
International and its ilk, but in fact there is a long line of
people waiting to get into Gitmo. The U.S. Coast Guard
reportedly intercepts some 600 refugees, not all of them from Cuba,
in the sea around the base every month. Gitmo itself houses around
30 migrants at any given time.
Most refugees have no such luck. For the few asylum seekers that
are allowed to remain on the base, about 70 percent are repatriated
to Cuba. Before reentering the country, they are forced to recite a
pledge of allegiance to Cuba, a ritual of long standing that under
the circumstances seems more like cruel and unusual punishment.
STILL, THERE HAVE BEEN some improvements. For instance, migrants
fleeing into Guantanamo are now considerably less likely to be
blown up. Whereas there were once nearly 60,000 landmines scattered
in and around the base’s perimeter, all but six have been removed
on the American side. This is a credit to the Clinton
administration, which ordered Gitmo de-mined in 1997 after wisely
refusing to sign an international treaty outlawing anti-personnel
mines. (The Cuban side of the border is still mined.)
To be sure, there is still the matter of those other six mines,
and as one wanders the grounds along the border, it takes on a
certain urgency. “Once a minefield, always a minefield,” observes
Marine Corporal Munoz, my guide here, not at all reassuringly.
WHAT MAKES THESE HAZARDS worth braving is the rich history of the
Northeast gate. In many ways, it’s the history of the last 50 years
of Cuban-American relations in microcosm — a natural progression
from mutual suspicion, to overt confrontation, to the resigned
acceptance that prevails today.
Although the U.S. took charge of Guantanamo in 1903, relations
deteriorated with Castro’s ascent to power. By the early 1960s, the
Marine barracks near the gate had become a favorite target of
torment for the Cuban military.
At nights, while Marines tried to sleep, Cuban soldiers would
sneak near the fence to hurl rocks at the tin roofs. To this the
Marines responded by building a 40-foot-tall, strategically placed
fence to intercept the nighttime barrage. When the Cubans struck
back by affixing wire hangers to the fence, to be rattled like wind
chimes by the late-night breezes, the Marines added barbed wire to
keep trespassers away from the fence. Not to be outdone, the Cubans
began beaming spotlights into the barracks.
And that was when Vice Admiral John Duncan Bulkeley, Gitmo’s
commander in the sixties, conceived a scheme that would find no
answer from the Cuban side. For one month, the Seabees, the Navy’s
construction force, labored on a hillside beneath the barracks.
When they were done, the face of the hillside had become a display
for a giant, concrete version of the Eagle, Globe and Anchor, the
Marine Corps’ official emblem. No longer would the hill or the
barracks be illuminated by the Cubans. For their part, the Marines
rather liked the idea, building a floodlight that today stands
above the emblem, framing it against the dark of the Caribbean
night.
Bygones are not quite bygones, but between the two militaries
there is something like a rapprochement. Every month, Marine Corps
commanders meet with their counterparts in the Cuban military. The
Marine Corps’ barracks near the Northeast gate, long since
abandoned, serves as the venue. Although the meetings are friendly,
the subjects of discussion are necessarily limited. For the most
part, the two sides discuss asylum seekers. “After that, we talk
about baseball,” says Corporal Munoz, who serves as the translator
for the Marines. “We never talk about politics.”
ANY HOPE THAT Castro’s resignation in mid-February would herald a
thaw in relations between Cuba and Guantanamo Bay has thus far gone
unfulfilled. The new government of Raul Castro has made no
overtures. Even the monthly military-to-military meetings have been
on hiatus. And while Gitmo’s commanders would like to see relations
improve, they’re not optimistic.
Their pessimism is well-founded. For all the hopeful coverage
that greeted Castro’s withdrawal from power, little has so far
changed in Cuba. The dim figures of Cuban intelligence monitoring
the border for any sign of defection, just as they have done for
decades, are stark reminders that history has not ended here. It
has merely stood still.
