On July 26, 2012, Cuba held its annual Revolution Day ceremonies. In an apparently impromptu speech at a gathering in the city of Guantánamo, President Raúl Castro announced willingness to enter into talks with the United States. A State Department spokesman responded by calling for the easing of Castro’s authoritarian rule. Repeating the Cuban government…

This picture is of former Assistant Principal Jay Gilbo of W.T. Sampson High School and Elementary School with a group of third graders going back to class after lunch.  The current popular opinion and perspective surrounding Guantánamo Bay is of Camp X-Ray and the “enemy combatants” detained at the base. However, there is another side…

At the turn of the twentieth century, the regular enlisted men of the U.S. Navy stationed at Guantánamo Bay were enmeshed in a culture of intense masculinity and sexual isolation, with no American women on the base, except for the wives of high-ranking officers. The raucous activities that took place just outside the walls of…

Despite the Guantánamo Bay base’s military purpose, it has also been home to a number of children over the years. In 1931 the W.T. Sampson School was founded to accommodate the children of military personnel and continues to operate today. The school was closed and students evacuated to the mainland during three periods of intense…

Video produced by Debbie Rolf. My project focused on the time period where Cuban rafters were the primary occupants of the Guantánamo Bay naval base. I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Eugenio M. Rothe about his experiences treating Cuban refugee children. I was floored by the level of psychological damage that these children endured.…

The image above is of a group of Haitian refugees who are making their way toward Cuba. This image reveals the terrible conditions of the boats and journey the Haitian people endured during their travels. The over-crowding of people shows how many individuals searched and dreamed of freedom to the west. By Antoinette Strickland In…

Two Guantánamo detainees from China, who were held for more than 10 years without charges, have been resettled in El Salvador. Both were captured in Pakistan along with 20 other Uighurs—a Muslim group who live primarily in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and have had recent troubles with the Chinese government. These men were in…

Present day Guantánamo Bay is a space that exists in obscurity, both in terms of geography and public imagination. Locating it on a map might involve a simple rendering of the Caribbean islands or, specifically, the southeastern region of Cuba; but to identify the space as a land once colonized by Spain where native Cubans…

After reading all of the articles provided at the Guantánamo Public Memory Project website, seeing all the images and hearing all of the testimonies, I feel so entrenched in the site and its situation that I want to take the next personnel flight back stateside. Just like many others who visit, part of me remains…

  The story from our short study of Guantánamo Bay’s history that I found the most compelling is Janet Miller’s narrative in Memories of Guantánamo Bay, 1960-1962. What I find so striking is how incongruent her experience at the base is with my prior understanding of Guantánamo. How can a place that has witnessed so…