Guantánamo Public Memory Project

Tag: Haitian Refugees

This Week in Guantánamo: 2015 and 1994

This Week in Guantánamo: 2015 and 1994 Thumbnail Image

July 28th 2015: Reports have emerged of Haitians previously residing in Dominican Republic moving to settlement camps in Haiti along the border with the Dominican Republic. While the residents of the camps have not been formally deported many are moving to these settlement camps in anticipation of August 1st, the day deportations are scheduled to begin. Around…

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Exciting GPMP News

Exciting GPMP News Thumbnail Image

In the past few weeks there have been some very exciting developments for GPMP….. First off, three weeks ago GPMP was granted funding from LAMP (Latin American Microform Project) for digitization of The Guantanamo Bay Gazette. Old editions of the Gazette are now being digitized and uploaded to GPMP’s online GTMO archive, hosted by Dloc (The Digital…

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Advocacy Groups and their Compatibility

Advocacy Groups and their Compatibility Thumbnail Image

In the early 1990s, AIDS was still formidable, frightening, and under-researched. The United States government and the Center for Disease Control maintained that being Haitian was a risk factor for HIV/AIDS. This policy was based upon racism and fear, not scientific evidence, but it influenced public perceptions of both the Haitian community and HIV/AIDS. And…

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Reluctance to Remember the Past: Children in Guantánamo

Reluctance to Remember the Past: Children in Guantánamo Thumbnail Image

While uncovering the experience of Haitian unaccompanied minors held at Guantánamo Bay during the refugee crisis in the early 1990s, I found it difficult to face the unresolved legacy that the detention left these children. Many of refugee children suffered a range of psychological issues as a result of the traumas of their ordeal. Consequently,…

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The Impact of HIV on the The Haitian Refugee Crisis

The Impact of HIV on the The Haitian Refugee Crisis Thumbnail Image

People fear what they do not understand. Few things were less understood or more feared in the late ’80’s than HIV. Though everyone knew that HIV killed, how it spread was still unclear to many Americans. How long it stayed dormant before turning into AIDS was still unknown to most doctors. So little was known…

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“At Times It’s Best Not to Open a Jar” – Conflict in Extracting Memories?

“At Times It’s Best Not to Open a Jar” – Conflict in Extracting Memories? Thumbnail Image

Throughout my experience contributing to the Guantánamo Public Memory Project, I often found myself considering the contradictions of attempting to capture memories regarding a time and a place that many people who experienced it firsthand do not wish to remember. In discussing the guiding principles of the Guantánamo Public Memory Project, the project website asks…

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Obtaining Refugee Voices: In Whose Interest Does the GPMP Act?

Obtaining Refugee Voices: In Whose Interest Does the GPMP Act? Thumbnail Image

While researching for and carrying out this project, one of the major ethical concerns I encountered was the issue of speaking for another person or group. Although one of the Guantánamo Public Memory Project’s main goals is to allow people to relate their own memories of Guantánamo, I found that such personal memories are incredibly difficult…

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Guantanamo: A Lieux de Memoire

Guantanamo: A Lieux de Memoire Thumbnail Image

How can we trust memory? As historians, we strive to be objective as possible. We gather evidence, often basing our arguments on documents that we find in archives. Yet, we have to be able to trust our sources. Oral histories and people’s memories are hardly perfect. Who can remember what exactly happened five or ten…

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Who Are the History Makers?

Who Are the History Makers? Thumbnail Image

Growing up in the 90’s, I remember hearing my parents talk about the Gulf War, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Oklahoma City bombings, but I do not recall them ever discussing the heartbreaking situation of the thousands of Haitian asylum seekers detained at Guantánamo Bay. This is not their fault; most of America had no…

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Judging Camp Bulkeley: Quarantine or Detention?

Judging Camp Bulkeley: Quarantine or Detention? Thumbnail Image

I am not a hypochondriac, but during the SARS outbreak of 2002, I seriously contemplated wearing a mask.  How else could I protect myself from the airborne disease that killed nearly a thousand people in a year-long span?  Ten years earlier, a similar hypochondriac tendency had plagued the United States.  The disease, AIDS; the pathogen,…

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