Guantánamo: Cuban Base Workers and the Question of “Crisis,” 1959–64

This paper explores how Cuban base workers on the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay (GTMO) redefined the Cold War stand-off between the United States and Cuba.  As men and women who worked “in between,” base workers subtly critiqued and set limits to the perceived binary between the Cuban revolutionary state and the US military.  Despite increasingly hostile relations between the US and Cuba, approximately 3000 local workers commuted to the base between 1959 and 1964.    
Through a close reading of the Cuban local press, US popular periodicals, US government documents, and oral interviews, this paper re-evaluates the question of “crisis” for these base workers.  I contrast base workers’ experiences of the “triumph of the Cuban revolution,” the 1962 Missile Crisis, and the lesser-known 1964 water crisis.  Workers’ stories alter the perceived chronology of US-Cuban relations, de-centering well-known events, like the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion and the 1962 Missile Crisis, in lieu of alternate moments that had greater resonance and consequence on the ground.   
Moreover, I argue that Cuban base workers influenced and shaped the contours of US military power in Guantánamo even after the revolution.  Fired workers railed against the US base as an unjust employer in the international press.  Alternately, dozens of workers defied the revolutionary government and defected onto the base, thus taking the US military at its word that it stood for freedom.  Finally, a select cohort of workers (topping out at 700 in 1964 and dwindling to a handful today) continued to work on the base from the 1960s until the present.  These workers negotiated pensions and financial support from the United States, successfully making claims on both the US and Cuban governments.  As diplomatic actors, these workers’ stories redefine the historiography of US-Cuban relations and demonstrate how workers set limits to US power.