It is hard to deny that the United States of America is an imperial power. This is clearly seen in the United States’ ongoing actions in Cuba starting in the Spanish American War or the existence of any of our territories. However, being an imperial power does not mesh as well with the American story.…

The Guantánamo Public Memory Project is thrilled to announce that Colonel Stephen Kinder will speak on December 14 at NYU’s King Juan Carlos Center as part of Why Remember Guantanamo? , the 2-day national dialogue to launch our traveling exhibit. Kinder was a celebrated commander of the camps detaining thousands of Haitian refugees seeking asylum in the US.  When Colonel Kinder…

“The law operates through practices and principles that purport to be objective, impersonal, and neutral, but are, in fact mired in hidden subjectivities and unexamined claims which often serve to denigrate the experiences of marginalized subjects and populations, experiences that contradict or challenge these unquestioned assumptions.” A. Naomi Paik, “Testifying to Rightlessness: Haitian Refugees Speaking…

Concentration camp: A camp where persons (as prisoners of war, political prisoners, or refugees) are detained or confined; Internment center by a government to confine political prisoners or members of national or minority groups for reasons of state security, exploitation or punishment. Concentration camps in the Western world, I thought, were sites of human rights…

This image captures the faces of just a very few of the Haitian detainees at the United States naval station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. They include young and old. Their hands are raised in the air in protest of their captivity behind hurricane fencing. They are unprotected from the sun’s heat. A sign in Haitian…

  I found studying images, maps, and videos of GTMO to be an enlightening experience. The Guantánamo Public Memory Project (GPMP) website covers the history of Guantánamo Bay, Cuban history, as well as news and updates on the post 9/11 era. One of the things that I found especially informative, and that I could to…

While researching Guantánamo, I was amazed at how little I actually knew about the history of this US base. For me, Guantánamo was a place where terrorists went to wait indefinitely for a trial that would never happen. My understanding has since changed dramatically. Although the post 9/11 history of GTMO has become a topic…

  Before I started reading about the history of Guantánamo, I thought it was just a jail that the United States used to house its post-9/11 political prisoners. As I began delving into Guantánamo’s history, I was surprised to learn, that the site was also used to detain Haitian and Cuban refugees. I had always…

  Is there any danger in fond remembrance? Most people look back on some point in their lives with happiness or even wistfulness; their memories of that time constitute an essential part of their self-understanding. Memory is vital to both the personal/individual and political/collective human experience: oral history projects across the globe have shown us…

“If someone didn’t live through it, didn’t experience it, they would know nothing about it,” a man I interviewed for another project once told me, referring to a place and time that held deep meaning for him. What can those of us who’ve never been to Guantánamo know about it? There’s knowledge derived from reading…