“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…

How often are we subjected to the harsh criticisms of Guantanamo Bay? News of the base consists of much of the same: detainees, imperialist presence, and torture. But what of the people who are stationed there? What do we know of them, their experiences, and their lives? Is GTMO only filled with hardened soldiers inflicting…

Hearing Susan Lagos reminisce about her childhood of horseback riding, traveling with her parents, learning Spanish, and memorizing Shakespeare for high school English, you would think she was a fairly normal middle-class American who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. But Susan did not grow up in America; she grew up as a civilian’s…

If you stopped a person on any street in America today and asked them what they thought about the U.S. naval station at Guantánamo Bay, chances are, you would hear a response about “detainees,” “torture,” or the “War on Terror.” If you asked a person who has lived or served at GTMO that same question,…

I came to Pensacola to study at the University of West Florida, but almost anyone you might ask would consider this a military rather than a college town. Comparatively, when many people think of The U.S. naval station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, they immediately think of the military installation there.  This means thousands of military…

“I never missed out on anything,” said Daline Riley, who was born at GTMO in the 1950s and spent several years at the Caribbean base as a teenager. Daline was one of several GTMO children interviewed in the summer of 2012 through the University of West Florida’s Public History program. “It gave me a better perspective; it…

  Guantánamo is about people. Mired in the languages of the War on Terror, and previous to that, of relief efforts and military operations, it is a fact easily obscured. Guantánamo has been variously discussed as a ‘detainment centre,’ a ‘prison,’ a ‘military base,’ a ‘camp,’ one full of ‘detainees,’ ‘prisoners,’ ‘refugees,’ ‘soldiers,’ with a…