The Guantanamo Problem

Even if we have a short memory, this is one of those promises made with such gravity and statesmanship, trying to show a difference, that it cannot be swept under the carpet easily. Certainly everyone remembers the special circumstances in which the then recently inaugurated President of the United States, Barack Obama, promised to close the prison; or should we say the torture center and concentration camp of Guantanamo?

Obama wanted thus to guarantee that with him everything would be different from the disgrace in which the Bush administration had been mired, that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would end, Guantanamo closed. It could be, but it isn’t the time to talk about Afghanistan and Iraq — nor about Syria, Yemen or Libya because there would be too much to say; let’s stick with appalling case of the prison in the occupied territory of Cuba.

It has now been 10 years of operation for this concentration camp created inside a misused military base, thanks to the power of force, on the sovereign island of Cuba. And there are no signals on the horizon of the promise being kept by Obama, who is a year away from the end of his term. Guantanamo, like clandestine prisons spread throughout submissive countries in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world, goodness knows where, is an instrument used by the United States government to flee United States’ justice. Nothing more. It is a center of torture in a country that preaches to the whole world — and dares to claim to punish alleged perpetrators — against torture. Guantanamo is also a symbol of how the hypocritical and unprincipled man can pollute the work and the memory of honest men who died for liberty.

Before becoming synonymous with terror and shame, Guantanamo was the subject of one of the most simple and moving songs about humanity and liberty in the world. It was Guantanamera, words by José Martí, father of Cuban independence, a Creole poem about brotherhood dedicated to the peasant woman, “guajira guantanamera,” set to music in the best-known version by the brilliant Pete Seeger — unable, of course, of being a prophet in his own American homeland, nor did he want to be.

Guantanamo was all this. With the Sierra Maestra looming on the horizon, it almost makes us forget that arrogant piece next to the sea occupied since 1902, with independent Cuba declining the rent that the empire says to deposit. Afterward came the “war on terror,” followed by the creation of that den of human rights violations exploited by those who point the finger at their annoyed hosts for violating human rights. Is it that human values were turned upside down and we didn’t notice?