In July 2016 I participated in a two-day media tour of the detention facilities where men classified by the U.S. government as unlawful enemy combatants have been imprisoned for more than a decade. The soldiers who guarded sally ports trimmed in barbed wire and concertina coils completed their tasks as if President Barack Obama had never promised to close the detention facilities more than seven years ago. As one young man put it, “It’s all about the chain of command. No politics. We aren’t waiting for anything, we’re carrying out our orders.”
U.S. Southern command has trained some military personnel to put down the traditional weapons of war and act as guides for visitors to the place that many consider one of the most notorious prisons in the Americas. The friendly members of Joint Task Force 160 lead journalists, congressional delegations, and other guests on official tours, usually giving them press kits emblazoned with the slogan of the detention operations, “Safe, Humane, Legal, and Transparent.”
Yet when sized up from its Windward side, the oldest of U.S. overseas military bases comes across as confusing and unwilling to divulge its own history. Cheap one-story prefab buildings look lost alongside the multi-million dollar facilities designed after maximum security prisons in the mainland U.S. Visitors are likely to be disoriented by long stretches of tall chain link fence covered in a dark green mesh called sniper cloth, but the soldiers say it’s merely meant to control the dust and reduce the glare of the sun.
The handful of Muslim men whom I observed behind the walls of Camp VI lived peacefully in a communal setting where many of their basic needs appeared to be met. Their situation certainly differed dramatically from that of 2002 when they were held in 6 X 8 feet wire “dog kennels” inside Camp X-Ray. As described by Karen Greenberg in her 2009 book The Least Worst Place, the open-air compound was built in the mid 1990s to hold “excludable” Cuban asylum-seekers before they were forcibly repatriated to their homeland.
From a dark and heavily guarded hallway, I observed the men through a one-way mirror for half an hour. Troubling but insightful, the experience underscored the base’s consistent role in refining traditions of captivity in terms of the goals of American Empire. Consider that the U.S. captured Spanish soldiers in Guantánamo Bay in 1898, dressed them in white smocks and hats, and then held them as prisoners of war. But roughly a century later, after the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush used arguments about Cuba’s sovereignty to redefine the base as “the legal equivalent of outer space,” the men captured in the Global War on Terror were denied that same status.
Imagine also the thousands captured, imprisoned, and defined as enemies in the major military events that were launched from the base following its seizure by Uncle Sam. The list is impressive: the invasion of Puerto Rico (1898), armed intervention in Cuba (1912), the occupations of Haiti (1914-1934) and the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), and major interventions in Nicaragua (1926-33) and Guatemala (1960). The base is linked to the detention of the enemies identified in conjunction to these events—only some of which were combatants—and, more broadly, to transformative struggles over economic production, governance, and human rights.
The lives of the 61 Gitmo detainees who remain imprisoned at the time of this writing have been transformed both by the expansion of American empire and by a system of incarceration that uses privileges and comfort items to reinforce compliance with its rules.
Today most of the men accept that they have to request permission to do basic things like pray, exercise, and shower. Those who are classified as compliant usually quietly return to their cells for a two-hour lockdown twice daily. They readily submit to shackling when they watch satellite television or receive medical care. Several have even learned conversational English to facilitate their interactions with guards. Others study Spanish or math, hoping to acquire skills that can be useful when they are finally free.
In recognition of their good behavior, men who are denied due process and subjected to indefinite detention enjoy access to a large number of library books, PlayStation 2 video games, a small outside recreational area, and ready-made halal snacks. They dress not in the detested fluorescent orange jumpsuits that are still reserved for the non-compliant, but in tan and light brown tunics made of soft cotton.
For the past few months, images of two of these men regularly interrupt my sleep at night. One is a young man trapped under the fluorescent lighting of a modern facility. He reads Harry Potter novels in Pashto. Another, slightly overweight, sweats profusely as he pedals an outdated exercise bike, baking under the Caribbean sun in a large outdoor metal cage. My recollections of daunting gaps in the military’s official narrative make these images all the more difficult to process.
I hear the voice of the articulate medic who repeatedly cited his lack of first-hand experience on the base as justification for not commenting on torture, forced feeding, or the relationship between stress and imprisonment. I recall an upbeat librarian who resisted commenting on his early deployment, even when he was simply asked to recall general impressions of detainees’ reading habits. In his words, “Things have changed, so it doesn’t really make sense to compare now and then.”
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In our question and answer session with Rear Admiral Peter J. Clarke, I asked about what I saw as a reluctance to engage lessons of the past. He responded that his staff was not authorized to talk about past standard operating procedures (SOPs) that were problematic or flawed, nor were they to comment on any improvements that have been implemented along the way. Clarke elaborated, “Our operating procedures, many of them, including the ones that apply to how we conduct detainee operations, are classified, and even after the procedures are no longer in effect, they remain classified.”
But the pattern that caught my attention extended beyond SOPs. For example, sitting at a picnic table with the Cuban border in sight I noticed a group of decaying wooden units with tin roofs in the distance. I turned to a female officer who had mentioned she studied history and, attempting to strike up conversation, suggested that the structures might be remnants of the “migrant crisis” involving tens of thousands of Cuban balseros and Haitians who were intercepted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard. She responded firmly, “Yes. Those look interesting, but I’ve never even wondered about those because today we have our hands full. We’re dealing with terrorists, and our focus is the present mission.”
The next day, a middle-aged public affairs officer named Jim also linked terrorists and the mission. He explained that his service has much to do with a personal understanding of the events of 9/11, and stated that he was extremely proud of the young men and women who volunteered to serve because “[m]any are just 18 or 19 years old and don’t even have any memories of 9/11, but somehow they’re still here.”
Jim’s peers were much more guarded. Their comments about detainee operations were vague, and at times so superficial that they came across as deceptive. With this in mind, and eager to hear more, I acknowledged the existence of the high-value detainees in the top secret compound called Camp VII, but reminded him that, according to the tribunals and commissions run by the Department of Defense, only a small fraction of the detainees had anything to do with the nightmarish events of 2001.
“How are you affected by official documents such as The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture and legal cases that chronicle abuses on the military’s watch? And the 2002 Pentagon photos showing detainees on the ground in goggles, earmuffs, caps, and face masks, bound, shackled, and virtually suffocating?”
Not missing a beat, he answered, “I’m not aware of any torture or any legal problems. I’ve worked with guards who were here in 2002 and then redeployed. I believe what they say, which is that they were doing it right back then, and they are doing it right now. [. . .] The reports you speak of, I know nothing about. I’ve seen those photos. The past is what it is, the present is what it is, and the future will be what it will be. I am extremely proud to serve here.”
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The bay is also a source of pride on the other side of the border, at least for nearby residents in the neighboring province of Guantánamo, Cuba’s poorest region. The government maintains that the base is built on illegally occupied territory and, as reported in the North American press, President Raul Castro has mandated that the forty-five square mile enclave be returned to the state as a precondition for the full restoration of relations with the U.S.
In the summer of 2015 I met an informal group comprised of artists, teachers, writers, historians, and museum staff on a visit to Guantánamo City. They periodically rally around the slogan “Guantánamo no es la base.” These vocal cubanos are concerned that the overly simplistic equation of “Guantánamo” with abuse, torture, lawlessness—even opposition to U.S. imperialism—can negatively impact understandings of regional history and identity. They share their message in schools, conferences, publications, and official meetings.
With little access to recent information about the prison’s pending closure, they are quick to take discussion of the matter in other directions. They envision themselves at home in the hills and beaches of Guantánamo Bay, and insist that its economic development must include initiatives that improve the quality of their lives. These guantanameros say the future offers the promise of change.
FEATURED PHOTO by Julie Schwietert Collazo (2006)