When Fulgencio Batista rose to power in the 1930s, he did so partly thanks to an alliance with moderate labor elements, which lent his government popular legitimacy. In 1938 he allied himself with a reformed Communist Party and the new Cuban Workers' Confederation (Confederación de Trabajadores de Cuba, or CTC). With Batista's backing, and widespread popular support, the CTC managed to pass a series of reforms in 1940 that dramatically improved the plight of Cuban labor. Though wary of Communist influence, the United States put up with the reforms in exchange for Cuban cooperation in World War II.
By 1943 the United States had begun to anticipate the need to curb Communist influence in Cuba and throughout Latin America. One vehicle of U.S. anticommunism was the American Federation of Labor, which worked in tandem with the U.S. State Department to promote a moderate, pro-business labor movement in the region.
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The concessions won by Cuban labor in the early 1940s were not recognized on the U.S. base, and in 1940â1941, a series of incidents demonstrated the vulnerability of unprotected Cuban workers. In one notable example, a Cuban worker named Lino RodrÃguez Grenot was unceremoniously beaten by a U.S. Navy officer and tossed into the harbor at Caimanera while attempting to board a boat filled with Cuban workers bound for the naval base. RodrÃguez died in plain view of a
host of Cuban and American eyewitnesses among whom there was no uncertainty about what had happened. But there was indeed uncertainty about who had legal jurisdiction over the case: Americans or Cubans? Had officials concluded that RodrÃguez had died in Cuban waters, then according to the lease agreement by which the U.S. Navy occupied Guantánamo Bay, the case would have had to be tried in a Cuban courtroom, a prospect the navy naturally found unpalatable. But if RodrÃguez had died while on a U.S. vessel, in this case the navy launch that ferried Cuban workers to the base, then the navy would retain jurisdiction over the case, and the alleged perpetrator would be given a court-martial. This is what the navy argued, ultimately exonerating RodrÃguez's murderer of charges of manslaughter, to the enduring chagrin of local Cuban people.
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Several subsequent cases confirmed the appearance of American impunity at the bay. In the wake of an unexplained shooting of a Cuban worker by an American sentry, the base commander told a U.S. consular official that “the US government is in no way responsible nor liable for the criminal acts of its employees, including the personnel of the armed forces.” This overstated the case, though it is true that few if any of the Americans accused of mistreating Cuban workers were found guilty. Meanwhile, the Cuban government was in no position to protest the appearance of injustice. Indeed, in some of these cases, it went out of its way to keep the lid on Cuban reaction.
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It took the outbreak of the cold war to bring labor representation to Cuban and foreign workers on the U.S. base. This seeming paradox is explained by logic similar to that which helped promote civil rights reform in 1950s America: it was a means to deflate Soviet propaganda that American society was racist and unfriendly to workers. The way to combat Communist influence in Cuba, representatives of the American Federation of Labor told U.S. officials, was to encourage the moderate labor movement both in Cuba and on the naval base. The timing seemed propitious. The recent consolidation of political power by the increasingly conservative Auténtico Party of Cuban president Ramón Grau led to a government-wide purge of Communists from the CTC. Though the Americans refused to concede to “unions” on the base, they allowed workers to form “employee groups,” which, in exchange for forfeiting the right to strike, were granted an eight-hour day,
workers' compensation, and pensions, concessions that by the late 1940s could hardly be considered radical. Notably, workers hired by private contractors, usually on a part-time basis, continued to receive no security at all.
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Alert for signs of Communist influence and infiltration, U.S. naval officials at Guantánamo began to recognize it in the many inevitable incidents of petty crime on the base, and resolved to bring the perpetrators to justice. By the terms of the original lease agreement, Cuban fugitives apprehended on the U.S. base were to be returned to Cuban territory for prosecution, just as U.S. fugitives apprehended in Cuba were supposed to be returned to the U.S. base. When Cuban courts demonstrated a persistent lack of will to hold Cubans responsible for crimes committed on the naval base, U.S. officials took the law into their own hands. Claiming the authority of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, they began detaining alleged criminals on the base.
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In the autumn of 1954 one of these detentions got out of hand. A Cuban named Lorenzo Salomon Deer was suspected of pilfering cigarettes from the Navy Exchange. Navy officials detained Deer for a fortnight, allegedly beating him and making him stand for hours on end. Deer accused the navy of torture, and a navy official conceded that the treatment of Deer had been extreme. Deer signed a confession of guilt, and served time in jail in Santiago. The navy's alleged mistreatment of him sparked outrage in local Cuban communities. The base union leaders vented their dismay in the local papers, on the radio, and in correspondence with government officials back in the United States. “We could not conceive that in a naval establishment of the most powerful nation in the world, champion of democracy, things like this could happen,” the leaders wrote in language eerily resonant of post-9/11. The leaders' eloquence earned them dismissal from the naval base. Worse, it jeopardized the union's standing at the base more generally, where officials had only grudgingly conceded to labor representation in the first place and then only to the extent that it did nothing to threaten navy authority.
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Predictably, the firing of the labor leaders did little to mollify local
outrage at alleged abuse on the base, or the demand of base workers to be treated with dignity. Indeed, the more suspicious that base officials became of Cuban workers and the more hostility they demonstrated toward the labor leadership, the more they came to resemble the Batista dictatorship itselfâwith whom, not so incidentally, the U.S. government was in close communication. The base workers wanted nothing so much as justice, the fired labor leaders reminded U.S. officials, an end that had nothing whatsoever to do with communism. “It is not by caressing the RED DEVILS that peace for the civilized world will be achieved; no, it is by practicing SOCIAL JUSTICE; it is by practicing the magnificent postulates of democracy, of which our employers boast themselves to be the champions when in reality the only thing they do is to show their contempt for the things which are really vital to the greatness and sovereignty of countries.” The workers were no less “enemies of Iron Curtains” than the Americans themselves, “but we are also enemies of any type of oppression harming human dignity,” they pointedly announced, especially “the dignity of the country we belong to.” They were the “REAL DEMOCRATS.”
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By the mid-1950s, “real democrats” committed to the “dignity” of Cuba were not welcome on the U.S. base. The U.S. occupation of Guantánamo Bay had never been about promoting Cuban interests. And it was not about to become so in 1954 or 1955, when communism appeared to be on the march in Latin America, and when Fulgencio Batista was all that prevented communism from washing up on American shores.
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Charles Ryan and his family arrived at Guantánamo Bay in mid-1956, amid mounting hostility between base officials and the local Cuban labor movement. Ryan's dad worked in Vector Control, the department responsible for combating infectious diseases. As the base health inspector, Ryan Sr. was responsible for ensuring the cleanliness of food provision and preparation. This work kept him in constant contact with the local Cuban community, which provided the base with all sorts of merchandise, fresh fruits and vegetables, and occasionally meat, poultry, and seafood. Ryan remembers accompanying his mother
to the wharves where the Cubans unloaded their produce. Small, dark, and attractive, Ryan's mother looked more Latin than her native Irish. The Cubans flirted with her, Ryan recalls, often filling her bags while refusing her moneyâan attempt, her husband cautioned, to get in the good graces of the sanitation commissioner.
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The long history of anti-Americanism in Cuba in the wake of the Platt Amendment, the record of U.S. exploitation of labor on the base and throughout Cuba generally, and the increasing suspicion of Cuban activists bred by the cold war made for difficult social relations. The formal hostility masked countless opportunities for and instances of kindness. Open-minded and gregarious, Ryan got to know many of the Cuban and foreign workers. Generous to the Cubans, he found they were generous to him, frequently engaging him in conversation and giving him rides in their cars and trucks.
When he arrived at Guantánamo, Ryan was not your average navy brat. For one thing, he was nineteen years old, older than many of the sailors at the base (the minimum enlistment age at the time was seventeen), and a member of the U.S. Navy Reserve. Isolated today, Guantánamo was just as isolated then. What was a nineteen-year-old doing following his family to Cuba? Cuba was a nice place, Ryan remembers his dad telling him. Ryan could join his parents and younger brother at Guantánamo so long as he returned to high school, from which he had dropped out a few years back. To sweeten the deal, Ryan's dad pledged to give his son a weekly allowance and all the freedom a young man could ask forâso long as he did not date the girls at William T. Sampson School. Ryan's father had himself a deal. A lack of girls, according to the word in navy circles, was not a problem at the place U.S. Marines fondly referred to as “git' mo'.”
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For a nineteen-year-old maverick, Ryan got along well with his father. He joined his dad on hunting trips to the Yateras River, source since 1934 of the base water supply, which meandered from the mountains to the sea just a few miles east of the northeast gate. Ryan remembers sliding down slick rocks at the river's edge. He also occasionally accompanied his father on work trips into Cuba, once in the company of a team of medical workers helping to alleviate an outbreak of cholera. Despite cautioning his wife about exploiting the kindness of the Cuban merchants, Ryan's dad was not beyond exploiting his
own connections when opportunity arose. In one notable example, Ryan did the grunt work for a rum-running operation his dad launched, collecting and recycling empty gallon Coke syrup jugs from the neighborhoods around the base. Into these jugs, Ryan would pour rum from barrels delivered to his family's house by Cuban workers. The boxes would then be hoisted into the holds of navy planes destined for Jacksonville, Key West, and Panama City. Ryan's dad bought the rum for $1.25 a gallon and unloaded it for $2.50 a gallon, not a bad profit, so long as he could maintain an adequate supply. Supply didn't seem to be a problem. So awash did Jacksonville become in cheap Guantánamo rum that the admiral there wrote his counterpart in Cuba to complain. “Stop throwing so many parties,” the commander at Guantánamo shot back, “and you'll stop receiving so much rum!”
Social life at the base was pleasant if unremarkable, according to Ryan. Outdoor movie theaters were its focus. The base had seven outdoor theaters in 1956, the pride of which was Mainside, situated near the officers' club on Deer Point, one of the fingers of land that jutted out into the bay from the eastern shoreline, which was frequented by singles, couples, and officers and their families. Ryan made a name for himself among his teenage peers by revitalizing and later presiding over the teenage club. Situated in an old Quonset hut on Marine Point, just down Sherman Avenue from Deer Point, the teenage club was moribund when Ryan arrived on the premises. He called a meeting, solicited ideas for improvements, and suggested that the navy would happily help the kids transform the place into a youth center. By the time Ryan and the Navy Seabees were done, the hut had a new veranda complete with trellis, live plants, comfortable chairs, and a snack bar with its own cookâ“a Jamaican, who doubled as a chaperone, and who turned out the best burgers on the base.” Kids started coming to the club every night. A movie, a burger, home by elevenâparents loved it as much as the kids. They knew where their kids were at all times and could imagine, or so they thought, what they were doing. This was a nice crowd, Ryan remembers, and a fun place. On New Year's Eve 1956, Ryan organized a party. Tickets to the gala event cost one dollar for couples, two dollars for singles, the better to bring in a crowd. Parents shared the chaperone duty, hour by hour, and the kids made it straight through to breakfast, when the
navy, delighted by the spirit, “sent over a kitchen staff and plenty of bacon” to sizzle in the New Year.
Poised between youth and adulthood, and living simultaneously in the United States and Cuba, Charles Ryan relished his liminal status at the bay. Having accompanied his family on different posts around the world, he welcomed the unfamiliar and took pride in his independence both on and off the naval base. Not long after arriving at the base in the summer of 1956, he befriended a young Cuban named Julio Valdez, a worker at the Navy Exchange. The two struck up a casual friendship, and it wasn't long before Valdez asked Ryan if he could procure a case of .22-caliber bullets for his grandfather's hunting lodge in Cuba. There was nothing unusual in that, Ryan remembers thinking; hunting was popular in southeast Cuba. Like Ryan's dad, navy chiefs and officers regularly spent weekends traipsing local plantations in search of wild boar and deer. It was no big thing to take along guns and ammunition. Shotguns, .30-06s, Colt .45sâall were readily available at the gun shop at the Navy Exchange. (If you didn't find what you liked there, you could have it made to order.) Like food at the commissary, guns and ammo cost next to nothing on a military base in that day; the .22-caliber bullets Ryan smuggled out cost a penny apiece.