Guantanamo and the survival of a colonial dichotomy

As indicated in my previous blog, President Donald Trump referred to the American camp in Guantanamo Bay in his address to the nation. He stated that this camp is going to remain open. During the Obama administration, there was political discourse about A

Dr Simon Mercieca is senior lecturer, Department of History

It was never closed down and more importantly, the promise of the closure of this camp was half baked. These camps are part of a naval base for which rent is paid in gold and there was never even the promise of the closure and return of this territory to the Cuban Government.

The US has an important naval base in Guantanamo Bay. In this base, it set up a number of detention camps, the most notorious being ‘Camp Delta’ and ‘Camp Echo’. The latter is a disciplinary centre. These camps are nothing more than concentration camps. They have been used by different American administrations to hold Arab and European suspects of having participated in the war of terror against the West. The creation of such camps in this picturesque bay created the misconception that the whole of Guantanamo Bay is in American hands. But less than half of this bay is used as a base. The rest of the bay is in the hands of the Cuban government.

But the biggest dichotomy is that very few people realise that part of Cuba is in American hands. The fact that Castro’s regime was (and still is) Communist and anti-American created the deception amongst those non-conversant with this region, that the island is totally in Communist hands.

For those who study the region, these camps are synonymous with a political and legal situation where a stretch of territory, which de facto belongs to America, is not governed by what is known in legal studies as the ‘habeas corpus’ or a writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or court to secure the person’s release unless there are lawful grounds for detention. Those held in the Guantanamo jail cannot have recourse to any of this for being ‘illegally’ held there or for being kept in camps that are a disgrace. This is a piece of territory that is not covered by such procedure though America believes this to be fundamental to Common Law.

The basic truth is that world’s leading democracy has an area which is not governed by ‘habeas corpus’. Then, there is the issue of the relationship of America with Cuba’s colonial past.

This notion of colonial space has a resonance for Malta. The American presence in Cuba is over 100 years old. Yet, the way colonisation developed in Cuba is very similar to the British one in Malta. The Americans sought first to colonise this territory through the creation of military camps or barracks. The camps were first meant for the hosting of military garrisons and their families. One needs to remember that the English term ‘camp’ derives from the Latin ‘castrum’; a word that has a military resonance. It means a colonial enclave or a fortified camp.

In the trajectory of the history of colonialism there are moments when enclaves became so large that they overran and controlled the entire territory. Thus parts of the territory that are not controlled will end up enclosed in the new enclaves. This is what has happened in Australia, for example, versus the indigenous population. The situation was even worse in Tasmania where the British committed the first genocide in modern history. Malta was spared such an experience because of its size and the presence of a very powerful and strong Catholic Church, but this does not mean that the island was spared from the creation of colonial spaces.

The British colonial rulers sought to acquire more and more territory to turn it into exclusive areas. Marsa tal-Ingliżi, – which literally means Marsa of the British is a case in point. Then, there were enclosed spaces in St. Andrews, Mtarfa, Ħal Luqa, Ħal Far, Ta’ Qali, Għajn Tuffieħa, Ricasoli and Bighi to mention the most important.

Independence first and the closure of the military bases afterwards spared Malta from this Cuban experience. I still remember the political rhetoric of the seventies, when Labour supporters used to boast to me, a young kid still going into my primary education, that il-Marsa ta’ l-Ingliżi ser issir tal-Maltin or The Marsa of the British is going to start belonging to the Maltese!

In the case of Cuba, these spaces that once belonged to the indigenous population are now a prison space. Therefore, the control of the occupier on this territory is being even further increased.

Unfortunately, the Mediterranean is not extraneous to this sort of situation. What is happening in the Gaza strip where the Palestinians are suffering from this type of neocolonial reality, which like Guantanamo prison, is being justified by security.

In Cuba, as was also the case in Malta, the creation of a naval base formed the first type of colonial space. Prior to Cuba’s revolution, this base was the power behind the throne. It operated in strict territorial division; a fence divided the naval base from the outside world. This enclave represented the US. The rest was the ‘free’ Cuban state. After the revolution, there was a paradigm shift and the dividing lines changed. What was on the outside, became part of the inside and what was on the inside started to appear as being on the outside. The military base became outside, that part of free Cuba, where one could find everything. The situation has not changed under Raúl Castro, despite his reforms.

Setting up prison camps in these military bases dented the idea of America as being part of a free and democratic world. Trump is not much interested in this ideology. He is more concerned about security and does not have dreams of leading or imposing the American model on other people.

I don’t think that he is interested in recreating the idea that the Caribbean is some sort of a paradise, as was the case under the Battista regime. This image was backed by the American mafia. It used Cuba as its refuge. It became an enclave for sex and gambling. Battista permitted all this when, at the time, this were not permissible in the Puritan North.

The problem for America today is that the Battista regime left much to be desired. It was the antithesis of what is to be understood by democracy. After the Castro revolution, a new idea began to be promoted. The Caribbean started to be described as a tropical hell. Ironically enough, the presence of this military base, and worse still, its prison camps, only helped to confirm this idea.

Fidel Castro’s move to open up his country to European tourism and the subsequent forced march towards modernization by his brother Raul can be interpreted as a move against the spirit of the revolution. In propagandistic terms, the US has given the necessary alibi to the Castros to introduce these changes, despite their ideological past. Fidel first and now Raúl, can put claims which, in western eyes, appear politically anachronistic but when studied within the cultural and political realities of this type of environment could affect the population. A section of the population still feels it is living within a closed colonial space. In fact, in the Caribbean, the term ‘paradise’ continues to be used in an ironic sense.

For this reason, Trump’s decision to keep these prisons open, can only give further political legitimacy to the Castro regime. But it is useless for America to close these prisons and yet keep the military base in place. What Guantanamo needs is not the closure of its prisons but to extend the right of Habeas Corpus in this American space. None of the political talk till now focused on the closure of this base or the introduction of “habeas corpus” onto this colonial area. Therefore, speaking about the closure of these prisons by the previous administration was not only a half measure but a pledge of the greatest political hypocrisy.

For those who wish to read more about Cuba and its camps, I would suggest Cuba’s Wild East: A Literary Geography of Oriente by Peter Hulme.