Guantánamo (40 page)
Authors: Jonathan M. Hansen
Bulkeley had ensured that the U.S. naval base would now have to provide its own water. Reading press and biographical accounts of the episode, one might conclude that Bulkeley had introduced liberal democracy to Cuba. Clearly the press relished the appearance of the United States coming out on top. “Almost overnight, John Bulkeley's hole in the ground near the main gate has become a sort of Guantánamo
liberty bell,” Bulkeley's biographer wrote years later (a telling metaphor for a U.S. triumph at this imperialist enclave). Cartoons of a brisk and businesslike Bulkeley cutting off Castro's pipeline (which, in the G-rated version, looks like nothing so much as a bullhorn) accompanied glowing descriptions of the Guantánamo commander finally forcing Castro to “Pipe Down.”
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This was a “tale of triumph,” the London
Daily Telegraph
reporter Edwin Tetlow announced. “The U.S. has won a tactical victory in a tussle with Fidel Castro and in a more significant struggle with world communism. Such victories have been scarce enough.”
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liberty bell,” Bulkeley's biographer wrote years later (a telling metaphor for a U.S. triumph at this imperialist enclave). Cartoons of a brisk and businesslike Bulkeley cutting off Castro's pipeline (which, in the G-rated version, looks like nothing so much as a bullhorn) accompanied glowing descriptions of the Guantánamo commander finally forcing Castro to “Pipe Down.”
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This was a “tale of triumph,” the London
Daily Telegraph
reporter Edwin Tetlow announced. “The U.S. has won a tactical victory in a tussle with Fidel Castro and in a more significant struggle with world communism. Such victories have been scarce enough.”
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Bulkeley himself appears to have been on quite a high that night. Castro was rumored to be lurking in nearby Cuban hills during the pipe-cutting ceremony, his Colt .45 slung from a holster. Bulkeley favored the .357 Magnum, and it, too, was close at hand. Through much of the night after the pipe cutting, Bulkeley patrolled the base perimeter, “scrambling up one steep hill and down another” clad “in combat gear and carrying a loaded rifle.” In this game of cops and robbers, the vice admiral was not going to be caught off guard. “In the darkness, the admiral threaded past mine fields, some real, some dummies, with their triangular red warning signs. His bodyguard, a Tommy gunâtoting marine less than half Bulkeley's age, was hard put to keep pace.”
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The water episode led to a public relations blitz, suggesting that the Johnson administration preferred to fight this cold-war battle with propaganda rather than outright espionage. That same year, Guantánamo officials set out to win the hearts and minds not only of Cubans on the base but also of nationals at other Caribbean ports. The plan was simply to outspend the enemy. For Cubans living and working on the base, there would be sumptuous Christmas dinners, Spanish-language movies, and rehabilitation of Cuban housing. Farther afield, there would be Girl Scout trips from the base to Jamaica, distribution of “materials” to other Caribbean ports, and disaster relief for Haiti following Hurricane Flora. Though the effect of such programs was hard to quantify, Guantánamo officials insisted that “the authorities and peoples of the countries within the GTMO Sector, CARIBSAFRON have been favorably influenced by the Cold War activities carried out
by the command. The resources being devoted to Cold War activities are considered to be paying a worthwhile return.” These initiatives did not completely take the place of muscle flexing. “There is ample evidence in this area that the readiness and capability of the United States to prevail in limited and general war is well-demonstrated, is credible, and has provided a deterrent to aggression,” a report emphasized. With the Fleet Training Group keeping the bay full of warships, the base could be confident that Castro would behave himself. When “parades, static displays, demonstrations, air shows,” and threat of war weren't enough, there was always a demonstration of America's material wealth: “The Navy and Marine Corps exchanges, commissary, certain clubs, beaches and other facilities are patronized by indigenous persons along with U.S. citizens,” a report observed. “By this means indigenous personnel are afforded an opportunity to see, appreciate, and share in the bounty provided by our system of government.”
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by the command. The resources being devoted to Cold War activities are considered to be paying a worthwhile return.” These initiatives did not completely take the place of muscle flexing. “There is ample evidence in this area that the readiness and capability of the United States to prevail in limited and general war is well-demonstrated, is credible, and has provided a deterrent to aggression,” a report emphasized. With the Fleet Training Group keeping the bay full of warships, the base could be confident that Castro would behave himself. When “parades, static displays, demonstrations, air shows,” and threat of war weren't enough, there was always a demonstration of America's material wealth: “The Navy and Marine Corps exchanges, commissary, certain clubs, beaches and other facilities are patronized by indigenous persons along with U.S. citizens,” a report observed. “By this means indigenous personnel are afforded an opportunity to see, appreciate, and share in the bounty provided by our system of government.”
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When Castro cut off the water in February 1964 the United States responded by firing roughly four-fifths of the Cuban commuters (consisting of “Cuban nationals,” “Chinese, West Indians, etc”) working on the base. Like cutting off the water pipe, cutting off the Cuban labor supply was designed to make the base independent of Cuban labor and thereby free of Cuban government interference. As early as 1961, Castro had forbidden Cubans to seek new jobs on the base, confronting the Americans with a labor deficit as Cubans retired or ceased working, and forcing U.S. officials to appeal to the Jamaican government for labor. In fact, a 1967 Guantánamo labor report suggests that, in releasing the Cuban workers, the Americans shot themselves in the foot. Among other advantages, “the Cuban commuters required practically no logistic support except for on-base transportation” and a few meals. By contrast, a replacement workforce from Jamaica or elsewhere required everythingâfrom room and board to training and transportation. Moreover, the commuting population comprised men and women both. Again, by contrast, the Jamaican labor force consisted of men only. Less cut out for domestic maid service, they were unable to free up “dependent U.S. wives from household chores,” thereby disqualifying American women from the base workforce.
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The firing of commuters had other unanticipated repercussions. Faced with the termination of their jobs, many commuters declared themselves exiles and appealed to naval officials for permanent residency on the base. This confronted the base with the prospect, unprecedented in U.S. military experience, of inheriting a permanent, aging occupational force that would one day be in need of geriatric care. (Indeed, to this day, there remain aging Cubans on the base whose medical requirements differ markedly from those of the conventional military population.) Curiously, many of this last category were Chinese, unwilling to return to Cuba or Communist China.
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“Some of them are already old men incapable of work. Ultimately all of them will attain this status, imposing a potential geriatric problem upon the Naval Hospital.” As if this weren't enough, the “same trend [of aging Chinese and Cuban residents alike] must be anticipated for requirements for caskets and burial plots in the Base cemetery.”
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“Some of them are already old men incapable of work. Ultimately all of them will attain this status, imposing a potential geriatric problem upon the Naval Hospital.” As if this weren't enough, the “same trend [of aging Chinese and Cuban residents alike] must be anticipated for requirements for caskets and burial plots in the Base cemetery.”
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The balance of the 1967 Work Force Study addressed the difficulty caused by trying to replace mostly skilled so-called Cuban nationals, Chinese, and West Indians with mostly unskilled Jamaicans, which turns out to have been the only segment of its population that the Jamaican labor ministry was willing to part with. Many factors contributed to souring the relationship between the Jamaicans and their American hosts, from the fact that the Americans did not hide their preference for the old commuters, to substandard wages, poor housing, and the fact that U.S. officials did not allow families to accompany the Jamaican workers to the base.
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But a wider chasm divided the Jamaicans from the American community: race. The 1967 report admitted as much. “The majority of the Jamaican workers are emotionally immature,” the report suggests, and therefore cannot handle separation from their families. Separation “is a traumatic experience for them because of their fundamental and unsophisticated attitudes towards sex.” Jamaican workers “lack a sense of responsibility for planning for the future and think in terms of day-to-day living.” Inevitably among such a population there was a “high turn-over rate.” No wonder, then, that “most American supervisors on the Base,” both military and civilian, treated the Jamaicans in a “deprecatory and demeaning” manner. “The low productivity of the Jamaican, his lack of
native industry, his color, his language, his body odor, are all subjects of disparagement and critical comment.” As a result, training and assimilating the Jamaicans became extremely difficult, ultimately handicapping the base still more. For their part, the Jamaicans obviously recognized the “contempt” of their American hosts and resented the Americans' name-calling. (
Gooney
was a favorite term of opprobrium.)
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But a wider chasm divided the Jamaicans from the American community: race. The 1967 report admitted as much. “The majority of the Jamaican workers are emotionally immature,” the report suggests, and therefore cannot handle separation from their families. Separation “is a traumatic experience for them because of their fundamental and unsophisticated attitudes towards sex.” Jamaican workers “lack a sense of responsibility for planning for the future and think in terms of day-to-day living.” Inevitably among such a population there was a “high turn-over rate.” No wonder, then, that “most American supervisors on the Base,” both military and civilian, treated the Jamaicans in a “deprecatory and demeaning” manner. “The low productivity of the Jamaican, his lack of
native industry, his color, his language, his body odor, are all subjects of disparagement and critical comment.” As a result, training and assimilating the Jamaicans became extremely difficult, ultimately handicapping the base still more. For their part, the Jamaicans obviously recognized the “contempt” of their American hosts and resented the Americans' name-calling. (
Gooney
was a favorite term of opprobrium.)
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 âboss-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.
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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.
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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.
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What a difference a decade makes. The navy wives who arrived a decade after Judy Spielman received no blithe reassurances of Cuba'sâmuch less the base'sâracial 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.”
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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, âGunsmoke,' 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.
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If Jamaican labor had spoiled the demographic makeup of the baseâso worrying to denizens of Oriente province going back centuriesâone 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.”
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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, âGunsmoke,' 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.
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If Jamaican labor had spoiled the demographic makeup of the baseâso worrying to denizens of Oriente province going back centuriesâone 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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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.”
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