By David Abel
Special to The Christian Science Monitor
GUANTÁNAMO, CUBA
No one has paid much attention to the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo
since it served as a
refugee camp for more than 50,000 Haitians and Cubans intercepted on
their way to south Florida in
1994.
The current mission of Cuba's most despised symbol of US imperialism
is unclear. And that makes
Santiago Teofilo nervous. The octogenarian Cuban, a retired base office
clerk, worries that the US
outpost will close, and he will no longer collect his monthly pension
check.
"I'm an honest person and never got mixed up in politics," Mr. Teofilo
says. He is one of thousands
of Cubans once employed on the base, where only 19 remain on the job.
Pedro Hope uses the base to make money in another way. For $5, the English-speaking
guide leads
tourists to a lookout where the cold war hasn't ended.
In a good week, Mr. Hope says, more than 100 tourists - mainly European
- pay government taxi
drivers a few dollars to carry them through three heavily armed Cuban
checkpoints to Mt. Malones,
a 900-foot hill that overlooks the base and the surrounding port city.
On one side of the decades-old trenches, lookout towers, and scattered
land mines, helicopters ferry
uniformed men above manicured lawns and gleaming white and blue buildings.
On the other side, horse-drawn carriages scurry through dank streets
and past dilapidated buildings
whose last paint job predates the bearded rebels' seizure of power
in 1959.
The stark contrast is nothing new to Jorge Harris. The son of Jamaican
immigrants has worked at the
Guantánamo base since 1939.
"I stay here because I'm Cuban and my family lives here," says Mr. Harris,
who, like the other
Cuban base employees, has the option of retiring in the US.
"Many have moved. But, for us, we have the best of both worlds. We can
live in our country and still
have some of the advantages of the US."
Cuban employees may dine in the base's restaurants, shop in its well-stocked
supermarket, and
watch the latest Hollywood flick at the movie theater. But Cuba forbids
them to bring any products
off the base. Tensions over Guantánamo began before US-Cuba
relations nosedived when President
Fidel Castro declared the island a Marxist state. The base, originally
intended to protect the eastern
approach to the Panama Canal, is a legacy of the Spanish-American War.
In 1903, the US government signed a $2,000-a-year lease agreement with
a newly installed Cuban
government. The lease has now crept up to about $4,000.
Despite employing thousands of Cubans and infusing needed cash into
the local economy, the base
became a symbol of US imperialism. The diplomatic divide widened after
the revolution. Citing US
provocations, Cuba cut off water and electricity to the base, and banned
US troops from its
territory. President Castro, who has called the base "a dagger plunged
into the heart of Cuban soil,"
has not cashed the annual checks since coming to power. He is said
to keep them in an office
drawer.
Meanwhile, Teofilo - who began working as a toilet scrubber in 1943
for 32 cents an hour - now
worries about resentment from his neighbors for being relatively rich.
His pension is more than
$1,000 a month, compared with about $10 a month for the average Cuban.
"They think base workers have millions," says Teofilo, who recently
had a team of workers
refurbishing his squat home in Guantánamo. "I just stay in my
house, hold my tongue, and tell no one
what I make."
At the Villa Gaviota hotel in Santiago de Cuba, the island's second-largest
city about 50 miles west
of Guantánamo, tourist officials provide those interested in
glimpsing the base with a glossy brochure
called "Cuba: The Natural Way." Photos show smiling tourists with refreshments
on Mt. Malones.
In the hazy distance, over a cactus-speckled desert, is the network
of roads that make up the
95-year-old naval base.
"It's a very weird view," tour guide Hope says. "At least now, you can
sit at a restaurant, in comfort,
and see a relic of the cold war."