Besides raising charges that compromising legal documents had been destroyed, court papers in the case, together with interviews of black servicemen, confirmed reports of racial division. When Anderson predicted that “the racial blowup on the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk may be a mere firecracker compared with the pow[d]er keg now smoldering” at Guantánamo, Captain Alford's successor, Rear Admiral L. B. McCudden, disputed the portent as utter nonsense. Guantánamo had “no racial problem,” he told Anderson. McCudden's denial was seconded by a
Post
reader and former neighbor of Alford's, who thought to change the subject. Alford was an upstanding man, the writer insisted; it was busybodies such as Jack Anderson who were the problem.
87
In fact, there was a racial problem on the base, and like problems everywhere, this one had a historyâor, rather, histories. In this case, the water fight of 1964 had changed the racial character of the base's labor force, just as civil rights advances in the United States threatened finally to penetrate navy ranks, making black servicemen more common and, at the same time, less willing to put up with second-class status.
Â
Â
By the time of Tom Miller's visit in 1973, the ratio of men to women at the naval baseâthough destined to evolve with the arrival the previous year of the first unaccompanied female officer in the base's history, along with its first female enlisted sailorâwas still ten to one, “and Navy barracks are not quite the most comfortable place to openly share love with another man.”
88
Haiti was the most convenient getaway. “Enlistees have a soft spot in their hearts for Haiti because it is one of the nearby R&R drop-off points, a chance to escape the contradictions of Guantánamo for the less cumbersome ones of Haiti,” Miller continues, his story juxtaposed to a photograph of a bikini-clad woman dancing on a pool table at the Chiefs' Club. “Immediately upon landing in Haiti a serviceman gets into a cab and, with no words spoken, is taken to the door of a local whorehouse.”
89
Like many visitors to Guantánamo, where courtesy to guests is a stock-in-trade, Miller was invited to attend a dinner party at the home of Commander Alford. “Guests are beginning to arrive at the home of Margaret and Zeb Alford for a small dinner party,” he reports. “Zeb is Captain of the Naval Station, a well-liked, outgoing man. He and Margaret socialize a lot.” The Alfords' home is thoughtfully decorated in what Miller calls “modern style.” Seashells are the leitmotif. “There is a fascinating ten-shelf display of a thousand shells Margaret has found on Cuban beaches, and a Picasso print rests on the bathroom wall, two feet above the toilet. Most of the evening's guests are young commissioned officers with a clean, liberal, white-collar attitude about things. The Alfords' eldest daughter acts as bartender while the Filipino houseboy Legaspi cooks a thirty-five pound red snapper caught two days previously.”
The party starts off in the usual manner with small talk about recreational options on the base. It is interrupted when Alford's wife (“well into her third drink”) sweeps away the veil of self-satisfaction.
“âYou know, you could go to parties for two years here and never hear a thought,'” she says. “Somewhat surprised at first, the others turn to her and agree.” Still, several guests note that, if not
thoughts
, exactly, regular life at the base affords the population an occasional
idea
âin the banter of high school students, for instance, in callers to the base
radio station, and in good “old-fashioned bigoted babble” down at the BOQ (bachelor officers' quarters). A late arrival finally turns the conversation to sex. The latecomer, a physician, wants to know how you can tell the difference between a sailor and a marine. Answer: it's how they respond to the problem of VD. “âIt always happens right after they come back from R&R in Jamaica or Haiti. A Navy man will come in and whisper,' etc., embarrassed, circumspect; a Marine: âDoc, I'VE GOT CLAP AGAIN.'” Guests dissolve into laughter “and more drinks are poured.” Later, Commander Alford, cigar in hand, insists that “âGuantánamo doesn't lack anything any other Caribbean island resort has, except it has a fence around it. When the fence goes down it'll be the best assignment in the military.'”
90
THE HAITIAN PROBLEM
Under the best conditions, sailing up the Windward Passage from the Caribbean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean can be difficult. When the wind is in your favor, the current is typically not. The Passage acts as a vortex, sucking water from the ocean into the Caribbean Basin and toward the Gulf of Mexico. At all seasons of the year, the Passage can be rough. It is frequently impassable for all but the largest ships. Still, an efficient, seaworthy vessel can make the journey in one piece, though the Passage almost always leaves a lasting impression.
Ask President Harry Truman. On February 25, 1948, Truman traveled to Guantánamo Bay from the southwestern tip of Haiti aboard the 243-foot presidential yacht
Williamsburg
, on a goodwill tour of the Caribbean Basin. With “groundswells whipped by a moderate gale,” the
Williamsburg
“rolled and tossed about making it somewhat uncomfortable for all hands,” in the understated words of the ship's log. “Nobody got seasick,” the president told the press corps upon arriving at Guantánamo, his fingers crossed behind his back. Asked how he had stood up under the rough passage, the president quipped: “I stood up alright for the simple reason I didn't get up. I stayed in bed. Whenever I felt uneasy I just leaned my head back.”
1
The
St. Joseph
, a forty-foot, unpowered wooden sailboat, was neither seaworthy nor efficient. On August 5, 1977, it departed Port Salut, southwest Haiti, bound for the Bahamas with 101 passengers
aboard. Five days later, on the night of August 10, the
St. Joseph
appeared off the mouth of Guantánamo Bay, having failed to clear the Windward Passage. The boat was taking on water, and many of its passengers were sick. Its captain headed for the naval base in the hopes of borrowing tools to patch a leak in the boat's rotting hull. Towed to a wharf on Windward Point, the
St. Joseph
was found to be too crowded to allow for immediate inspection and repair. The Haitians were brought ashore and provided shelter for the night, thus beginning a month-long stay at the naval base.
2
Â
These were hardly the first Haitian refugees to arrive at Guantánamo Bay. Since the TaÃno cacique Hatuey first abandoned Hispaniola for Guantánamo in 1511, emigrants from today's Haiti have regarded southeast Cuba as a land of second chance. At the end of the eighteenth century, French colonists fleeing what would become known as the Haitian Revolution turned up at Guantánamo in droves, establishing a diversified agricultural economy while laying the foundation for Guantánamo City. The Guantánamo Basin continued to serve as an outlet for Haitian immigrants (until Fidel Castro restricted immigration after coming to power in 1959). In the eighteen months preceding
St. Joseph
's call at Guantánamo Bay, two small boatloads of Haitian refugees had sailed to the U.S. base. The navy seized their boats and quietly returned the refugees to Haiti. Most of the Haitians who ended up at Guantánamo in the late twentieth century did so by accident, swept up in a whirlpool of natural and political currents that cut short their dreams of escape.
Haitians weren't the only refugees who arrived at the base in the second half of the twentieth century. After the Cuban Revolution, thousands of disgruntled Cubans also made their way to Guantánamo Bay. Beginning with a mere handful in 1960, their number rose from more than five hundred in 1967 to more than a thousand the following year. In a single episode in 1969, eighty-one Cubans shot their way past Cuban guards ringing the base perimeter, leaving sixty-nine compañeros behind. In the 1970s the flow of Cubans to the base diminished considerably before spiking again in 1980 and in the early 1990s. In contrast to the Haitians, most of whom were returned to Haiti, the
vast majority of the Cubans who made it to the naval base ended up in the United States.
3
At the time the
St. Joseph
departed Port Salut in the summer of 1977, U.S. policy toward Haitian refugees was fast evolving. After the dictator François Duvalier rose to power in Haiti in 1957, some forty-five hundred mostly wealthy Haitians fled to the United States. A second wave of thirty-five thousand Haitian professionals followed in the next decade. Hailing from the middle and upper tiers of Haitian society, these immigrants attracted little attention from U.S. officials. Settling largely in the Northeast, many in New York City, they quickly established themselves on a solid legal and economic basis.
In the late 1960s and '70s, a third group of migrants began to flee Duvalier-era Haiti. Poorer and less well connected than their predecessors, this group arrived in small boats off the Florida coast, unsettling local government officials and prompting the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to warn of a potential flood of migrants from across the Caribbean Basin and Latin America. Thomas Jefferson's nightmare of over a century and a half earlier appeared in danger of becoming a reality.
4
As evidence of trouble to come, the INS pointed to the roughly two thousand Haitians who applied for political asylum in the four years preceding
St. Joseph
's visit to Guantánamo Bay. A mere 10 percent of those requests were granted, leaving eighteen hundred Haitians facing deportation hearings, their cases mired in immigration court. Meanwhile, thousands more Haitians continued to arrive in Florida. To forestall the flood and unclog the courts, the U.S. government launched a program to deport Haitian boaters on an expedited basis, denying them due process while summarily declaring them economic rather than political refugees, hence ineligible for political asylum. Which is more or less where things stood when the
St. Joseph
pulled into Guantánamo Bay.
Â
Upon awakening at the naval base the morning after their arrival, the
St. Joseph
's passengers discovered that the navy had seized their vessel and made arrangements to return them to Haiti. An examination of their boat “indicated that it would require about five working days to
slow the leaks at a cost of about $650.00,” the base commander reported, and “about 8 full working weeks to make the boat sea worthy at a cost of about $7200.00.” Even then, much of the
St. Joseph
's hull “was dry rotted and the feasibility of repair was doubtful.” From the navy's perspective, the sooner the base was rid of the Haitians the better. They had “only become our responsibility because they landed on our property,” a U.S. Defense Department official told journalists. “We hardly want to keep them there. We want them to go back where they came from.”
5
But the
St. Joseph
's crew did not want to return to Haiti. When a bus pulled up to take them to the airfield, the refugees refused to climb aboard. Many had left home without proper documentation, they explained; they feared reprisals from the Haitian government. Reassurances on the part of naval officials that the Haitian government was preparing only the warmest welcome did nothing to persuade the refugees. They asked for their boat back and to be allowed to continue on their way. The navy refused, and when “all efforts, short of force,” failed to get the Haitians aboard the buses, the navy arranged for the group to spend a second night.
The next day the
St. Joseph
's crew awoke not to buses but to Haitian and U.S. government officials flown in from Port-au-Prince. Weber Guerrier, Haiti's director of immigration, and Andrew McKeon, vice consul at the U.S. embassy, personally greeted the migrants and urged them to return home. The officials were “successful in allaying the fears of the group as to possible retributions,” the base commander observed, yet still the Haitians refused to depart for Haiti. As Guerrier and McKeon flew back to Port-au-Prince empty-handed, still “higher naval authorities” and U.S. State Department officials descended on the naval base. Over the next several weeks, American officials interviewed the Haitians to establish the validity of their asylum claims. In the end, four out of
St. Joseph
's 101 passengers were granted political asylum. The rest were returned to Haiti.
Looking back on the Haitians' visit, the navy viewed the outcome with satisfaction. Though accustomed to dealing with scores of Cuban refugees at a time, the Haitians had tested base officials' “foresight, patience, and courtesy,” according to the chief of naval operations. Still, the base had passed with flying colors. All praise for “the officers
and men, Navy and Marine Corps, whose leadership and initiative were instrumental in resolving a potentially volatile situation.”
6
What could the Haitians expect upon returning home? A hint of what awaited the returnees was potentially discernible in the person of Weber Guerrier, the director of Haitian immigration, who, along with Andrew McKeon, had been so successful, in the words of the base commander, in easing the group's suspicions. The Haitians knew better. Retribution was Guerrier's middle name. Before assuming his current office, Guerrier had been commander of Fort Dimanche, the most notorious of Duvalier-era Haiti's prisons, “a place of execution” and “unrivaled cruelty,” where individuals unlucky enough to end up were seldom heard from again.
7
A wolf in sheep's clothing, Guerrier was the point man of a Haitian security system that regarded asylum seekers as enemies of the state. In his new post, Guerrier enjoyed unimpeded access to new victims for the Haitian security system held in foreign detention centers such as Guantánamo Bay.
8
In retrospect, navy and State Department personnel appear to have been credulous in accepting at face value Haitian officials' promises to treat the emigrants humanely. Surely, Guerrier and company did protest too much. Why would Haitian officials make such promises unless they were warranted? From the moment the
St. Joseph
arrived at the naval base, there was something grudging about the Americans' treatment of the Haitian refugees. If the United States granted the Haitians asylum, one State Department official remarked, it would “open a Pandora's box of attempted entries by refugees” into the United States. “They know the score,” another observed, referring to the refugees; though a few might face punishment if returned to Haiti, “the great majority of considerations for leaving Haiti were economic.”
The Washington Post
conceded that the United States was disinclined to admit the Haitians no matter what their motivation. To “have granted them political asylum could have strained relations with Haiti,” the
Post
noted; “to have let them stay for economic reasons could have encouraged other Haitians to try the same thing.”
9
Moreover, the Haitians were exacting a heavy toll on the naval base. “It is not clear how long the Navy will be able to continue providing for the 101,” the
Post
reported. “Guantánamo is an isolated outpost, dependent for supplies on frequent Air Force planes and supply ships.” The base faced “shortages
of most goods,” and yet “the laws of the seas demand that the Navy feed, clothe, house, and provide medical care for the Haitians.” If reporters were skeptical about how 101 Haitians could discomfit a naval facility capable of absorbing up to 1,000 Cuban fence jumpers per year, they didn't say. And so a base that had stood up to Fidel Castro and the Russians became suddenly, disconcertingly, vulnerable in the face of one hundred destitute refugees.
10
The plight of
St. Joseph
's crew upon returning to Haiti from Guantánamo Bay would have been forgotten but for a lawsuit filed on behalf of five thousand Haitians denied political asylum in Florida in the late 1970s. The lawsuit,
Haitian Refugee Center v. Civiletti
(1980), accused the U.S. government of discriminating against Haitian asylum seekers on the basis of national origin, conduct outlawed by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
11
In defending itself, the government pointed to evidence about happy political conditions in Haiti based partly on interviews of thirty out of the ninety-seven
St. Joseph
passengers denied asylum at Guantánamo Bay. Besides extending the saga of the
St. Joseph
's crew,
Civiletti
illuminates U.S. government policy toward Haitian refugees, ultimately foreshadowing two episodes from the 1990s when more than fifty thousand Haitian boaters (along with thirty-five thousand Cubans) were detained at Guantánamo Bay before being forcibly sent home.
Notably, it was during the crush of Haitian migrants that prompted
Civiletti
that the U.S. government first considered exploiting Guantánamo's exceptional legal statusânot Cuba and not the United Statesâto deny Haitian asylum seekers the constitutional right to counsel, a characteristic of both the 1990s migrant operations and the post-9/11 prison camp. There are other parallels between U.S. government conduct described in
Civiletti
and more recent developments at Guantánamo: the setting aside of established international protocols that did not jibe with U.S. interests, the deliberate distorting of political conditions abroad to promote U.S. government policy, the hyping of the threat detainees in U.S. custody allegedly posed to the United States, and, finally, the use of intimidation to compel outcomes desired by U.S. officials. In short,
Civiletti
reads like a primer for the policies and behavior that has recently made Guantánamo notorious.