Guantánamo Bay: Taking a look beyond the prison
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Mention this place, and people tend to think of caged men wearing orange uniforms and on their knees, the image of opening day at the wartime prison four months after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But this military base is more than one big prison. About 6,000 people live at the Navy outpost, which has the trappings of smalltown America and the amenities of a college campus and functions like a cross between a gated community and a police state.
It has a Defense Department school system for the children of sailors and contractors, a seaport for Navy and Coast Guard supply missions, bars, ball fields, neighborhoods with swing sets, beaches with barbecue grills and pleasure boats to rent for excursions on the bay.
It also has a McDonald’s with a drive-thru wide enough for tactical vehicles, just below a hilltop church with a white steeple. A 10-minute drive in one direction takes you to Nob Hill, a neighborhood of three-bedroom homes for junior officers on the base of 700 families.
Drive 10 minutes in another direction, past the base’s scrubby ninehole golf course, and you arrive at a gate to the detention zone. It is under the command of an Army brigadier general who is responsible for the Pentagon’s last 39 wartime prisoners and a staff of 1,500, mostly soldiers from the National Guard on ninemonth tours of duty.
The base covers 45 square miles straddling Guantánamo Bay, the U.S.-controlled body of water that splits the base in two. A small unit of Marines is responsible for security on the U.S. side of 17.4 miles of fences that surround the base. A portion of the Cuban side has a minefield.
Most days it is easy to forget that the base sits in southeast Cuba.
Little Spanish is spoken here, except when a unit of the Puerto Rico National Guard is on the post in the prison zone. Tagalog and Creole are more prevalent because about one-third of the residents are Filipinos and Jamaicans. They are hired by Pentagon contractors and serve as the backbone of the labor force.
They do construction, make and serve meals in the restaurants, and are cashiers in the commissary. They change beds at guest quarters, cut and color hair at the salon, and offer sailing lessons. None are allowed to bring family, and they live in separate housing areas maintained by their employers. Bingo inside the base ballroom is a popular approved pastime.
By some measures, the base resembles a college campus — one with a shooting range, razor
wire, hundreds of soldiers and sailors in battle dress, and cars that suddenly stop in the road at 8 a.m. when “The Star-Spangled Banner” is broadcast each morning.
Some residents are issued meal cards for the cafeteria-style dining facilities. Single soldiers and sailors live in dormitories. The base has a souvenir shop peddling alumni-style T-shirts, coffee mugs and shot glasses. “No Bad Day,”
says a T-shirt decorated with palm trees that boasts “Good Vibes” and “High Tides” at Guantánamo Bay. It has a Saturday night scene at the Tiki Bar, a volunteer carpool called Safe Ride so people will not drink and drive, and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings three times a week.
It also has intramural sports events and a sexual assault awareness campaign.
But it is a military base, after all. Drones are forbidden. Trick-or-treating is allowed only in certain neighborhoods. News photographers must submit each picture they take to military censorship. Forbidden images include guard towers, certain razor-wireringed fences and security cameras, as well as critical infrastructure — such as the four wind turbines that
tower above the base and can be seen at sea.
Anyone traveling to the base needs permission from the commanding officer,
a stamped access form that is essentially a visa to the Independent Republic of Guantánamo Bay, and then a seat on an approved flight, generally a Pentagon charter from the Eastern Seaboard.
The commanding officer is Capt. Samuel “Smokey” White, who goes by Sam to the few residents on board who do not address him as “sir” or “skipper.”
The base treats its own water in a desalination plant and generates its own energy from fossil fuels, solar panels and wind energy. It is resupplied by air and sea. A twice-monthly barge from Jacksonville, Florida, brings food for the commissary, new vehicles for the military, construction and building supplies, and household goods. A twice-weekly refrigerator flight delivers fresh fruits and vegetables and other perishables.
The base also has thousands of feral cats, the descendants of felines that found their way there through the Cuban minefield or of house cats left behind by Navy families. A group of cat lovers founded Operation Git-Meow, which seeks to find homes for the feral cats and is trying to persuade the Navy to permit an all-volunteer catch, neuter and release program to reduce the wild cat population.
A small community hospital on the base offers
family care. It also handles the care for the prisoners, no matter how complicated, under a congressional prohibition on bringing prisoners to the United States. Everyone else with a complex medical case is routinely sent to the mainland.
There was a time after the prison opened in 2002 and the detainee population rose to a peak of 660 in 2003 when the base bustled with a purpose that revolved around the detention operation.
Air Force cargo planes regularly delivered detainees brought from Afghanistan, and base residents
were ordered to stay inside for the high-security transfer of prisoners from the airstrip on one side of the bay to the cells on the extreme other.
Troops in camouflage cruised the base in Humvees. Members of Congress, senior military brass, government lawyers, journalists and foreign delegations paid regular visits, filling Guantánamo’s hotel-style guest quarters.
Over time, interest waned. There was a flurry of activity after President
Barack Obama ordered the prison closed, and administration officials worked to decrease the detainee population.
But congressional restrictions made it impossible to transfer the last dozens to the United States
for any reason.