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…

Srebrenica, January 1995. Her country in the midst of a civil war, pregnant Hava Muhic, staying in the UN-designated Safe Area, was confident that she would give birth to a healthy and safe child. Half a year later, in July 1995, the baby Hava gave birth to wasn’t breathing and was taken away by the…

      Throughout Haiti’s history, it has been a powerful place. From the slave revolt to the populist movements in the late 20th Century, Haiti has been a place that is feared and oppressed by strong global powers. Yet Haiti is not usually discussed in terms of protest and power. As Nancy Dorsinville said,…

  While the current notoriety of Guantánamo Bay is focused on its use as a detention center for alleged terrorists against the United States, this is not the first time in history the island has been used to indefinitely detain individuals. In this photograph, a woman and her children are among the thousands of Haitians…