Liz Sevcenko

“I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late,” wrote hunger striker Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel in his 11^th year of detention. Our eyes have looked away before:  twenty years ago this month, another group staged a hunger strike to bring attention to their indefinite detention at GTMO. They were Haitian refugees seeking asylum in the United States, first rescued at sea and then held in makeshift tent cities behind barbed wire while their cases were considered. In 1993, the hunger strike drew international attention.  After an intense legal battle supported by a strong social movement, in June a US district court judge “closed Guantánamo.” So why is it still open?

GTMO has over a century of history before 9-11. It’s been used and reused to contain a whole variety of perceived threats, from communism to communicable disease. While the Haitian camps were closed in 1993, the government’s right to hold people at GTMO indefinitely was ultimately upheld – allowing “Gitmo” as we know it to open just a few years later.

But for many military families, GTMO has never been forgotten. “My most vivid memories of Guantánamo was everything just being free down there,” says Anita Lewis Isom, whose father was stationed there in the early 1960s. “I would give anything to be able to go back.”

How can Guantánamo represent both freedom and confinement? What can we learn from this contradiction?

The Guantánamo Public Memory Project works to share GTMO’s myriad stories – and the historical context that shaped them – to foster dialogue on the future of this place, its people, and why they matter to all of us. In 2012, the Project invited students at 11 universities around the country to ask: what can GTMO’s history tell us about what’s happening now—there, and here at home? They dug through historical and visual archives; talked to people who worked there, lived there, or were detained there; and explored how GTMO relates to issues, people, and places in their own communities. They created the Project’s first video testimonies, web platform, and traveling exhibit (appearing in 9 cities so far) sharing their discoveries—and the difficult questions they struggled with.

The Project’s primary goal is to open – and sustain – exchange and engagement in GTMO and the questions it raises for us at home. The dialogue began among the students themselves, a post-9-11 generation confronting this history for the first time, through the Project’s blog and video conferences. The Project sought to involve students in the widest variety of political and cultural contexts possible, in collaboration with people with diverse direct experience – from Cuban refugees to base workers.

LIfe at Gitmo in the 60's

Students from the University of West Florida lived among a highly organized community of “Gtimoites”: American service people and their families with fond memories of attending the base’s WT Sampson High school; celebrating “Cuban-American Friendship Day”; or barbecuing at Windmill Beach. Teams from UFL and the University of Arizona participated in a string of GTMO reunions, including a Caribbean cruise for people evacuated from the base during the Cuban missile crisis. They worked with Gitmoites to integrate their stories, personal photographs, and perspectives into the exhibit, conducting over 100 oral histories.

“It was like being in my backyard at home. It was not just safe, it was so enjoyable… It was a wonderful life,” remembers David Pruett of GTMO in 1962-3. This feeling persisted after 9-11:  one officer wrote us of 2008-2010: “GTMO was home and is the fondest memory in my heart. While so many people are blinded by the detention facility the sense of community and family is often overlooked.”

Students were stunned. Of all the “secrets” of the base, the memories of GTMO’s military community drew by far the greatest response. “The most shocking discovery I had was when I found out that to some of its residents, Guantánamo was paradise,” wrote Kavita Singh of IUPUI in Indianapolis.

Now led from Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, the Project was conceived by the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, whose museums celebrate multiple perspectives and dialogue. But students struggled hard with these ideas when it came to Guantánamo. Singh demanded, “How can these two opposing viewpoints coexist in a place people were forced to call home?” For Mandy Charles, learning “what [GTMO] has meant to all people throughout its history is a positive step towards understanding what should and can be done with the site.”

Haitian refugees

Here’s the question for me: Can we simultaneously create a space for collective memory – something layered and continually contested – and for collective accountability – something that challenges us to take responsibility for past injustice and prevent it from happening again?

The University of West Florida students put it another way: “Should memories of past residents be part of the current dialogue on GTMO?”  In the exhibit’s “Shape the Debate” feature, visitors are invited to vote and comment on this and other questions via text message (or the web); responses are then displayed in the exhibit as it travels across the country. Thus far, responses are fairly evenly split. What’s your take? Add your voice by going to http://gitmomemory.org/participate/question-10/

Want to bring this conversation to your community? Learn how to host the exhibit and other ways to join the National Dialogue.