Pensions, Politics, and Soul Train: Anglo-Caribbean Diasporic Encounters with Guantánamo from the War to the Special Period

Abstract

Centering the narratives of Cubans of Anglo-Caribbean origin, this chapter examines encounters with the Guant\xE1namo naval base. For some black immigrants and their Cuban-born children, the Base was a space of transnational conviviality and source of status and upward mobility. With the 1959 revolution, it became one of the theatres of the escalating hostilities between the United States and Cuba, catching this community in the crossfire. Now, in the post-Soviet era, the Base continues to create a loud echo in the lives of Anglo-Caribbean Cubans. Exploring the contours of the Base’s impact in the political, economic, and cultural spheres, this chapter engages questions of identity, citizenship, and asymmetries of power at the intersections created by this particular case of militarization.