Authors: Jonathan M. Hansen
Guantánamo (31 page)
One night, Sacks was approached by a young woman in tears; she reported being roughed up by one of the Americans. Sacks offered to escort her home. She lived in a one-room house, very simple, with nothing to distinguish it from her neighbors' lodging except for the red-haired kid asleep on her bedâ“not at all Hispanic.” Next to the bed, on the nightstand, stood a picture of the boy's father, a “red-headed American marine.” “Syphilis wasn't the only reason to wear a condom.” At the U.S. base and in the Cuban towns and cities that surrounded it, all sorts of sexual and conjugal alliances were struck. The Sackses lost their first maid of eight months to a U.S. sailor. There was a pecking order among the maids, Sacks reports, with darker Cubans making less money than their lighter-skinned counterparts. For the Sackses' maid, “black and dark,” marriage to a young second-class petty officer promised immediate upward mobility. She accompanied him back to the United States and expedited U.S. citizenship.
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Other witnesses report similar alliances. Attached to a helicopter
squadron at McCalla Field, Rex Lake lived with his young family in Caimanera, at the Oasis Hotel, from the autumn of 1956 through the summer of 1958, a period that coincided with Castro's return to Cuba and subsequent guerilla campaign waged from the nearby Sierra Maestra. Long after the end of World War II, the base population continued to exceed available housing, and it was not unusual for U.S. servicemen and civilians and their families to live in Guantánamo City and Caimanera.
squadron at McCalla Field, Rex Lake lived with his young family in Caimanera, at the Oasis Hotel, from the autumn of 1956 through the summer of 1958, a period that coincided with Castro's return to Cuba and subsequent guerilla campaign waged from the nearby Sierra Maestra. Long after the end of World War II, the base population continued to exceed available housing, and it was not unusual for U.S. servicemen and civilians and their families to live in Guantánamo City and Caimanera.
In fact, Lake reports, Caimanera had more than the one street that Mills remember in his recollection of liberty parties off the U.S. base. Though Lake would come to appreciate Caimanera over the course of his two and a half years there, the town didn't make a good first impression. “Except for the main street through town, all the streets of Caimanera were dirt,” he writes.
In the rainy season, they were a sea of mud. Most of the population was terribly poor. One large area of shacks was built on stilts over the water. All garbage, including human waste, was simply dumped out the door or window into the bay. It helped keep the home clean, but the smell from the bay was atrocious. The odor along the little dirt streets from the rotting sewage in the ditches would nearly take your breath away. Children played in these streets and somehow many survived. Typhoid was always a fear for the many American families with small children like ours.
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The “one street” in Caimanera that Mill recalls was undoubtedly what others knew as “the District.” It was indeed a memorable street. Here is “where all the sailors came to drink and make whoopee with the local girls.” For the bargain rate of $2.50, sailors could take their pick of the local talent (“many of whom were very lovely”) that spilled out of the bars lining the District's lone thoroughfare. “Unfortunately,” Lake notes, “for your $2.50 you could also get a grand case of venereal disease. Gonorrhea was the main attraction, but syphilis ran a close second. To protect its young, healthy sailors, the navy set up a first aid station at the entrance to the District and dispensed free condoms and penicillin pills. This was indeed a strange and unusual life style far from the normalcy of home.” As strange as it was unpredictable. Lake knew two sailors
from his group “who fell in love and married their prostitutes from the District and took them home to the United States.”
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from his group “who fell in love and married their prostitutes from the District and took them home to the United States.”
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By the late 1940s and early '50s, with Prohibition long since over, one didn't have to leave the base to have a drink. As a result, Grenquist reports, a marked change occurred in the social atmosphere at Guantánamo City, where the nightlife quieted significantly.
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In contrast to the “industrial brothels” that Mill, Sacks, and Lake describe in Caimanera, in Guantánamo City the sex trade moved indoors to people's homes, where Cuban prostitutes and U.S. sailors would sit around in living rooms before hooking up and heading off to do their thing. This trade, though obviously organized, seemed “informal, if not amateurish,” Grenquist reports. Typically the U.S. sailors arrived one day and returned to the base early the next day: “There was no illusion” that they were in town “just to have a drink.”
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In contrast to the “industrial brothels” that Mill, Sacks, and Lake describe in Caimanera, in Guantánamo City the sex trade moved indoors to people's homes, where Cuban prostitutes and U.S. sailors would sit around in living rooms before hooking up and heading off to do their thing. This trade, though obviously organized, seemed “informal, if not amateurish,” Grenquist reports. Typically the U.S. sailors arrived one day and returned to the base early the next day: “There was no illusion” that they were in town “just to have a drink.”
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Some sailors went out of their way to flout their sexual prowess. In one case, a young “mustang” (a career sailor promoted up through the ranks to officer status) of Falstaffian bearing arrived at the Guantánamo station one morning drinking a beer and evidently “quite pleased with himself.” Before arriving at the bay, he was greeted at a local depot by a pair of Cuban girls “who looked like twins.” Full of giggles, they waved at him; he toasted them. As the shore patrol in charge, Grenquist couldn't decide if the man had actually spent the night with the women or simply paid them to show up as a means of impressing the others.
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It is hard to say what the navy made of this. Grenquist suggests that someone evidently had misgivings, for, though officers could go on liberty parties, too, the navy went out of its way try to keep officers entertained at the base. There they would be paired with “proper, nice Cuban girls from respectable families at Guantánamo City” at base dances at the officers' club. The events resembled “high school proms.” Boats arrived with young Cuban women in a “rainbow of pastels.” Most did not speak much English, and few officers spoke much Spanish, making these dances exercises in mime. These were
not
enjoyable, Grenquist emphasizes, for either the Cubans or the Americans. For the Cubans at least there was a reward. The young women were allowed to go to the
ships' store at the officers' club and shop tax-free. Grenquist could not recall the effect of these abstemious encounters on the young officers. But he concedes that they may have made the officers ripe for a visit to Guantánamo Cityâto “have their ashes hauled.”
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not
enjoyable, Grenquist emphasizes, for either the Cubans or the Americans. For the Cubans at least there was a reward. The young women were allowed to go to the
ships' store at the officers' club and shop tax-free. Grenquist could not recall the effect of these abstemious encounters on the young officers. But he concedes that they may have made the officers ripe for a visit to Guantánamo Cityâto “have their ashes hauled.”
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In 1950, the journalist Gervasio G. Ruiz traveled to the U.S. base for a story to be published in the travel journal
Carteles
.
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Ruiz's account suggests that over a decade after
Bohemia
compared Guantánamo City to a sewer, the place had improved, but only a little. When Gerardo Castellanos visited Guantánamo Bay in 1930, Guantánamo City was just opening to U.S. servicemen again after a several-year hiatus; when
Bohemia
sent its correspondent to Guantánamo in 1938, Guantánamo City was once again off-limits, thanks to poor sanitation and its generally unsavory social climate. At the time of Ruiz's visit, the Americans continued to shy away from Guantánamo City, a fact regrettable to the entrepreneur in Ruiz, and something he hoped to rectify. Sanitation improvements were a good start. “Until recently,” Ruiz reports, “Guantánamo was a dirty and dusty place, with poor hygiene. Today its streets are paved and can count on a sewer system, which, if not perfectly efficient, offers, at the least, a minimum of health to those who dwell or visit there.”
Carteles
.
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Ruiz's account suggests that over a decade after
Bohemia
compared Guantánamo City to a sewer, the place had improved, but only a little. When Gerardo Castellanos visited Guantánamo Bay in 1930, Guantánamo City was just opening to U.S. servicemen again after a several-year hiatus; when
Bohemia
sent its correspondent to Guantánamo in 1938, Guantánamo City was once again off-limits, thanks to poor sanitation and its generally unsavory social climate. At the time of Ruiz's visit, the Americans continued to shy away from Guantánamo City, a fact regrettable to the entrepreneur in Ruiz, and something he hoped to rectify. Sanitation improvements were a good start. “Until recently,” Ruiz reports, “Guantánamo was a dirty and dusty place, with poor hygiene. Today its streets are paved and can count on a sewer system, which, if not perfectly efficient, offers, at the least, a minimum of health to those who dwell or visit there.”
But substandard sanitation was not the only impediment to luring U.S. business back to Guantánamo City. Local opposition to “Yankee imperialism” had made Guantánamo City an unfriendly place. Ruiz confirmed Grenquist's account of base officials importing young women from Guantánamo City's “best” families to spice up Thursday night dances at the officers' club. Sometimes these courtesy visits stoked fierce local opposition, and one particularly belligerent protest forced the base commander to cancel a dance, shelter the young women for the night, and return them by plane directly to Guantánamo City. To Ruiz, the so-called patriotic critics of the base were really “Stalinists” determined “to provoke yet another scandal against Yankee imperialism.”
Yet a third cause for American wariness toward Guantánamo City were the hustlers who assaulted American sailors when the trains pulled in from the bayside stations at Caimanera and Boquerón. “No
sooner had the sailors set foot in Guantánamo station,” Ruiz reports, “than tour guides and ticket sellers and salesmen would converge on them like a plague of locusts to rob them blind.” The good citizens of Guantánamo opposed the traffic in alcohol, women, and other contraband, Ruiz insisted. And the base authorities tried to put an end to it. Reluctant to offend the Americans on whom Guantánamo's revitalization would depend, Ruiz did not blame the U.S. sailors, who, though not entirely innocent, “would probably have steered clear of Guantánamo's underworld if it weren't for the encouragement of the local merchants.”
sooner had the sailors set foot in Guantánamo station,” Ruiz reports, “than tour guides and ticket sellers and salesmen would converge on them like a plague of locusts to rob them blind.” The good citizens of Guantánamo opposed the traffic in alcohol, women, and other contraband, Ruiz insisted. And the base authorities tried to put an end to it. Reluctant to offend the Americans on whom Guantánamo's revitalization would depend, Ruiz did not blame the U.S. sailors, who, though not entirely innocent, “would probably have steered clear of Guantánamo's underworld if it weren't for the encouragement of the local merchants.”
If eager to protect the Americans' reputation, Ruiz bent over backward to try to please base officials. Against all the evidence of other eyewitnesses, Ruiz insisted that “one shouldn't confuse the behavior of American troops who pass through the base with the long-term residents and their families.” With a population of twelve thousand, the base community propelled the local economy. Base residents got along very well with the Cuban population. So well, in fact, that twenty or so “senoritas guantanameras” had married into the officers' club.” The town of Caimanera, meanwhile, was “moribund,” totally off-limits to U.S. servicemen.
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Ruiz had not expected to visit the naval base; most visitors to Guantánamo Bay were not admitted. But
Carteles
had connections with Antonio Civit Jané, a local doctor and a figure well-known at the base, who introduced Ruiz to Hugh Barr Miller, the head of naval intelligence. “The first thing that struck me,” Ruiz reports, describing the base, “was the cleanliness of the placeâthe roads, the gardens, the buildings, indeed, everything we saw.” Fumigation and hygiene machinery abounded, and seemed to be used “without stop for getting rid of mosquitoes and cleaning every last aspect of the place.”
Carteles
had connections with Antonio Civit Jané, a local doctor and a figure well-known at the base, who introduced Ruiz to Hugh Barr Miller, the head of naval intelligence. “The first thing that struck me,” Ruiz reports, describing the base, “was the cleanliness of the placeâthe roads, the gardens, the buildings, indeed, everything we saw.” Fumigation and hygiene machinery abounded, and seemed to be used “without stop for getting rid of mosquitoes and cleaning every last aspect of the place.”
As the local intelligence officer, Miller was the liaison between the base and the local Cuban community. At every moment, he told Ruiz, the Americans had tried to demonstrate their fondness for the Cuban people and government. Ruiz asked him when the Americans would lift the ban on travel to Caimanera. As soon as the reasons for it are alleviated, Miller responded.
Like Castellanos before him, Ruiz was also struck by the absence of visible signs of ammunition on base. “On our tour,” he writes, “we
didn't see a single cannon, nor armaments that disfigured the natural beauty of the place.”
didn't see a single cannon, nor armaments that disfigured the natural beauty of the place.”
Ruiz returned to Guantánamo via Caimanera. In contrast to what he had seen at the base, he found Caimanera desolate and depressing. His encounter with the two Cuban cities and the U.S. base left him pondering what it would take to move eastern Cuba forward. Clearly, force was needed to discourage the “wolves” who preyed on the U.S. visitors. But force alone would never be enough, and Ruiz hoped that Cubans themselves would demonstrate enough pride to get their house in order. As a journalist, Ruiz knew the history of the place. It never occurred to him that the United States might be part of the solution.
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SEEING RED
On the evening of November 3, 1956, a thousand Soviet Army tanks surrounded the Hungarian capital, Budapest, center of an anti-Soviet uprising and home to the new National Government of Imre Nagy. Sparked by a student protest on October 23, the Hungarian Revolution spread rapidly across a nation weary of Communist oppression and suffering prolonged economic stagnation. For a time, things seemed to be going the Hungarians' way. On November 1,
The New York Times
proclaimed “Victory in Hungary”; that same day, Nagy announced that Hungary had withdrawn from the Warsaw Pact. While the
Times
cautioned that “communist despotism” might yet be restored by “Soviet troops,” the Soviet Army appeared to be heading for the border, as if acknowledging that the people of Hungary had spoken.
1
The New York Times
proclaimed “Victory in Hungary”; that same day, Nagy announced that Hungary had withdrawn from the Warsaw Pact. While the
Times
cautioned that “communist despotism” might yet be restored by “Soviet troops,” the Soviet Army appeared to be heading for the border, as if acknowledging that the people of Hungary had spoken.
1
But early in the morning of November 4, Soviet tanks crashed through the center of Budapest, and, amid heavy aerial and artillery bombardment, Soviet troops occupied government ministries and began rounding up revolutionary leaders. Simultaneously, Nagy took to the airwaves, assuring democratic allies that his government remained in power, while appealing desperately for their help. Within several hours, he had taken cover in the Yugoslav embassy as the
Times
announced, not quite accurately, that “Soviet Attacks Hungary, Seizes Nagy.”
2
It took a fortnight for Soviet officials actually to get their hands on Nagy, whom they executed in June 1958. By November 10, the
revolution was essentially over. In its wake, some 2,500 Hungarians were dead and 200,000 more bound for exile.
Times
announced, not quite accurately, that “Soviet Attacks Hungary, Seizes Nagy.”
2
It took a fortnight for Soviet officials actually to get their hands on Nagy, whom they executed in June 1958. By November 10, the
revolution was essentially over. In its wake, some 2,500 Hungarians were dead and 200,000 more bound for exile.
Six thousand miles away, at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Charles Ryan, the nineteen-year-old son of a navy hospital corpsman, followed the events in Hungary with rapt attention. Like young men and women throughout the world, Ryan quickened to media accounts describing the Hungarians' valor and likening them to America's founding fathers. As a young man in search of a calling, Ryan was inspired by the Hungarians' commitment to liberal democracy in the face of the most powerful army in the worldâall of which made America's tepid response to the Soviet assault bitterly disappointing. Through CIA-operated Radio Free Europe, the Eisenhower administration had spurred on the Hungarians, even suggesting that the United States would come to their assistance in the face of Soviet aggression.
3
But the American government did nothing once the Soviets mobilized, in effect offering up the students for slaughter. Over the course of the ensuing days and weeks, as
Time
magazine named an anonymous “Hungarian Freedom Fighter” its Man of the Year, Ryan struggled unsuccessfully to get the Hungarian Revolution off his mind.
4
3
But the American government did nothing once the Soviets mobilized, in effect offering up the students for slaughter. Over the course of the ensuing days and weeks, as
Time
magazine named an anonymous “Hungarian Freedom Fighter” its Man of the Year, Ryan struggled unsuccessfully to get the Hungarian Revolution off his mind.
4
Â
In the autumn of 1956, a kid drinking beer on a beach at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, with sympathy for peoples suffering oppression did not need to venture far to embroil himself in revolution. Four years earlier, Fulgencio Batista, the self-styled custodian of Cuban law and order, had launched his second military coup. The coup gave rise not only to a dictatorship more interested in rewarding cronies and pleasing foreign business interests than in addressing Cuba's problems, but also to a host of dissident political groups determined to restore constitutional democracy. Batista did not introduce corruption to Cuba, but under him, corruption reached unprecedented heights, as Cuban politicians entered into an unholy alliance with U.S. gangsters, corporations, and political and law enforcement officials to keep the island safe for capitalist exploitation. The eight years of Batista's final reign saw a burst of commercial development across the country that featured the construction of hotel-casinos and private resorts geared to Cuba's exploding gambling and sex trades, along with the infrastructure required to
bring foreign clients to the tables (and beds). With Batista at the helm, Cuba was up for sale, and U.S. investments in Cuban sugar, oil, financial, and other industries soared from $142 million in 1946 to just shy of $1 billion by 1959. Surely some people were making money from what one historian has labeled this “capitalist Shangri-La,” but it wasn't ordinary Cubans. Ordinary Cubans provided the services and labor that kept Batista and the notorious U.S. mob boss Meyer Lansky and his associates in business. Cubans who thought to complain about the moral and political bankrupting of the country were brutally suppressed.
5
bring foreign clients to the tables (and beds). With Batista at the helm, Cuba was up for sale, and U.S. investments in Cuban sugar, oil, financial, and other industries soared from $142 million in 1946 to just shy of $1 billion by 1959. Surely some people were making money from what one historian has labeled this “capitalist Shangri-La,” but it wasn't ordinary Cubans. Ordinary Cubans provided the services and labor that kept Batista and the notorious U.S. mob boss Meyer Lansky and his associates in business. Cubans who thought to complain about the moral and political bankrupting of the country were brutally suppressed.
5
If sheltered from the most insidious effects of Batista rule, the Guantánamo naval base was not immune to it. Ryan could sense the weight of Batista's bullying on the faces of Cuban laborers who commuted to the base each day, many of whom he came to know as friends. And he experienced Batista's bullying firsthand on his many excursions off the base.
6
6
Sympathetic to the Cubans' plight, Ryan joined the Cuban resistance quite by accident. Only slowly did he come to learn that the ammunition he purchased at the Guantánamo gun shop and turned over to Cubans off the base was bound not for the hunting lodge of this or that Cuban friend, as he had been led to believe, but for a weapons cache being accumulated by one of several local resistance factions. At first Ryan's smuggling of arms and ammunition had little to do with Fidel Castro, who didn't return to Cuba until early December 1956. But Castro's arrival along the southeast coast lent the opposition a focus it had previously lacked. Secluded in the Sierra Maestra, and desperate for weapons and ammunition, Castro's lieutenants canvassed the local territory for support, finding it in unlikely placesâat the Guantánamo naval base, for instanceâand in the affable, apparently directionless Ryan. When the cry for ammunition yielded to a call to arms in February 1957, Ryan led two teenage drinking buddies from the base up into the mountains of the Sierra Maestra, where the spirit of Hungaryâto Ryan, the spirit of Americaâlived on in the resistance movement of Fidel Castro.
Ryan's story complicates the received notion of Guantánamo Bay as a bastion of political reaction in cold-war Cuba. As an isolated imperial enclave of the United States, the naval base spawned unpredictable
political alliances as well as uninhibited social behavior. At the very moment when Batista was digging in his heels, supported by $16 million per year in U.S. military aid, many U.S. Navy officers and their families were passing food, money, and ammunition to the Cuban resistance. By the early 1960s, Fidel Castro would become the focus of U.S.-Cuban cold-war recrimination. But the cold war long preceded Castro's rise to power in Cuba. After World War II, Castro was a mildly anti-American member of Eduardo Chibás's nationalist Orthodox Party (with a soft spot for Americans themselves); as late as April 1959, Castro sought recognition from Eisenhower officials for his revolution. Haunted by the specter of communism in Latin America, Eisenhower mistook Castro's nationalism for Marxism, ultimately denying him recognition and radically curtailing America's purchase of Cuban sugarâCuba's (and Castro's) lifeline. Castro concluded that he had no choice but to seek the support of the Soviet Union. As a result, by the early 1960s a climate of hostility and brinkmanship displaced the low-level reciprocity between some Cubans and Americans at the U.S. base personified by Charles Ryan. But that result was hardly inevitable at the time Charles Ryan and his buddies took to the hills.
political alliances as well as uninhibited social behavior. At the very moment when Batista was digging in his heels, supported by $16 million per year in U.S. military aid, many U.S. Navy officers and their families were passing food, money, and ammunition to the Cuban resistance. By the early 1960s, Fidel Castro would become the focus of U.S.-Cuban cold-war recrimination. But the cold war long preceded Castro's rise to power in Cuba. After World War II, Castro was a mildly anti-American member of Eduardo Chibás's nationalist Orthodox Party (with a soft spot for Americans themselves); as late as April 1959, Castro sought recognition from Eisenhower officials for his revolution. Haunted by the specter of communism in Latin America, Eisenhower mistook Castro's nationalism for Marxism, ultimately denying him recognition and radically curtailing America's purchase of Cuban sugarâCuba's (and Castro's) lifeline. Castro concluded that he had no choice but to seek the support of the Soviet Union. As a result, by the early 1960s a climate of hostility and brinkmanship displaced the low-level reciprocity between some Cubans and Americans at the U.S. base personified by Charles Ryan. But that result was hardly inevitable at the time Charles Ryan and his buddies took to the hills.
Â
The Cuban government's opportunistic courtship of Communists did not last beyond necessity. In the 1946 midterm election, President Ramón Grau's Auténtico Party won a majority of both houses of Congress, making the Communist Party, reorganized once more as the Partido Socialista Popular (PSP), dispensable. With the cold war heating up, and President Grau determined to ingratiate himself to U.S. and Cuban businessmen, the government purged Communists from the major trade confederation (the Confederación de Trabajadores de Cuba, or CTC), which promptly joined officials from the American Federation of Labor in talks about how to combat Communist influence in Latin America. Auténtico's banishing of Communists from the CTC had the unintended consequence of making Cuban communism more radical and more anti-American than it had been since the early 1930s.
7
7
But the big story in Cuba in the aftermath of World War II was less the split in labor ranks between conservatives and radicals than the
bloating of government bureaucracyânational, provincial, municipalâalong with escalating political corruption. By 1950, 11 percent of Cuban workers held government positions, which consumed a staggering 80 percent of the federal budget. Elected president in 1948, Carlos PrÃo Socarrás, a genial if uninspiring man, was more concerned with securing government posts for his family and friends than protecting the country from the armed gangs that terrorized the population, often at the behest of local politicians.
8
bloating of government bureaucracyânational, provincial, municipalâalong with escalating political corruption. By 1950, 11 percent of Cuban workers held government positions, which consumed a staggering 80 percent of the federal budget. Elected president in 1948, Carlos PrÃo Socarrás, a genial if uninspiring man, was more concerned with securing government posts for his family and friends than protecting the country from the armed gangs that terrorized the population, often at the behest of local politicians.
8
Into this breach came Batista once more. In March 1952, he deposed PrÃo, setting aside that fall's scheduled presidential election while restoring order. As always, U.S. and Cuban capital responded to the restoration of order favorably. Parties opposed to Batista's suspending of elections were unable to reconcile their differences. This opposition included a young member of the new Ortodoxo, or Orthodox, Party named Fidel Castro, who on July 26, 1953, the hundredth anniversary of José MartÃ's birth, led a futile assault on the Moncada Barracks at Santiago de Cuba. The assault was a dismal failure, and resulted in the capture, torture, and death of many of the young insurrectionaries. Still, the cause endured, thanks partly to Batista's overreaction, and the date of the attack, the Twenty-sixth of July, became the name of the revolutionary movement waged by Castro against Batista from the mountains surrounding the naval base.
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9
Meanwhile, labor and other dissident groups who opposed Batista were met with brutal force. An attack on the Matanzas Barracks, outside Havana, in 1956 followed an unsuccessful military coup the preceding year. In March 1957 a student group based in Havana stormed the presidential palace in an attempt to assassinate Batista. Though these efforts all failed, they succeeded in gradually rallying Batista opponents into a loose coalition finally oriented around Fidel Castro, who returned to Cuba in December 1956 aboard a ship named
Granma
. This loose coalition issued a joint communiqué calling for the return of civil government and a program of liberal social and economic reforms. By this time, Batista was deaf to calls for liberal reform. By 1958 even his U.S. sponsor had become alienated by his increasingly brutal tactics, prompting the U.S. government to suspend military aid. By midsummer 1958, Cuba was in a state of social, economic, and
political collapse, and the immediate future, at least, seemed to belong to Castro.
10
Granma
. This loose coalition issued a joint communiqué calling for the return of civil government and a program of liberal social and economic reforms. By this time, Batista was deaf to calls for liberal reform. By 1958 even his U.S. sponsor had become alienated by his increasingly brutal tactics, prompting the U.S. government to suspend military aid. By midsummer 1958, Cuba was in a state of social, economic, and
political collapse, and the immediate future, at least, seemed to belong to Castro.
10
Â
Just as in Cuba proper, the cold war came to the naval base itself long before the rise of Castro. The surge of Cuban and other foreign labor on the base associated with World War II expansion had the potential to promote a sense both of reciprocity (jobs for Cubans!) and of suspicion (who could be sure that the workers weren't Communists?). The wave of hiring coincided with a series of political reforms in Cuba protecting workers' rights. On the U.S. base, American officials historically opposed labor protections, as they typically made the local workforce less exploitable and more expensive. As the cold-war tensions mounted across the Caribbean, naval officials came to interpret all but the most modest labor demands as evidence of Communist activity.
Complicating labor relations on the base, much of the hiring was done not by the U.S. Navy itself but by contractors such as the Frederick Snare Corporation, whose responsibility to U.S. and Cuban labor laws was ambiguous at best. Like the contractors themselves, the U.S. Navy exploited the ambiguity to keep costs down. Hence there evolved at the naval base a multitiered system of labor rights and labor compensation, with U.S. civil service employees at the top and Cuban maids and part-time Cuban and West Indian labor at the bottom.
11
Snare was skilled in manipulating the distinction between part-time employees, to whom it owed virtually nothing, and full-time employees, to whom it potentially owed a lot. Snare hired part-timers whenever possible, thereby further cutting costs. The company was no more sympathetic than the U.S. government to criticism of its labor policies; like the U.S. government, it tended to equate criticism with communism, contributing to a growing blacklist of workers unwelcome on the base.
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11
Snare was skilled in manipulating the distinction between part-time employees, to whom it owed virtually nothing, and full-time employees, to whom it potentially owed a lot. Snare hired part-timers whenever possible, thereby further cutting costs. The company was no more sympathetic than the U.S. government to criticism of its labor policies; like the U.S. government, it tended to equate criticism with communism, contributing to a growing blacklist of workers unwelcome on the base.
12
The navy and private contractors were also skilled at manipulating racial distinctions to divide workers and drive down wages. U.S. officers and their wives paid dark-skinned maids less than they paid light-skinned maids, just as American sailors generally paid less for
dark-skinned prostitutes than for light-skinned prostitutes. In the early 1940s a premium on English-speaking ability dramatically raised the currency of West Indian labor on the base. In exchange for their loyalty, naval officials protected West Indian workers from having to confirm their foreign status with Cuban authorities, and reserved for them the most desired jobs. The elevated status of West Indian labor inevitably created tension with their Cuban counterparts. Such preferential treatment tapped into latent resentment dating back to the importation of Chinese indentured servants in the mid-nineteenth century. Though Africans and Chinese were originally imported to work on the sugar, coffee, and tobacco plantations, the seasonal and cyclical nature of these industries left labor markets flooded with foreign workers who competed with Cubans for scarce jobs. There was hardly a labor platform in Cuba that did not include a demand that the Cuban workforce be at least 50 percent native-born.
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dark-skinned prostitutes than for light-skinned prostitutes. In the early 1940s a premium on English-speaking ability dramatically raised the currency of West Indian labor on the base. In exchange for their loyalty, naval officials protected West Indian workers from having to confirm their foreign status with Cuban authorities, and reserved for them the most desired jobs. The elevated status of West Indian labor inevitably created tension with their Cuban counterparts. Such preferential treatment tapped into latent resentment dating back to the importation of Chinese indentured servants in the mid-nineteenth century. Though Africans and Chinese were originally imported to work on the sugar, coffee, and tobacco plantations, the seasonal and cyclical nature of these industries left labor markets flooded with foreign workers who competed with Cubans for scarce jobs. There was hardly a labor platform in Cuba that did not include a demand that the Cuban workforce be at least 50 percent native-born.
13
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