Guantánamo
An American History
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
An on-the-ground history of American empire
Say the word "Guantánamo" and orange jumpsuits, chain-link fences, torture, and indefinite detention come to mind. To critics the world over, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is a striking symbol of American hypocrisy. But the prison isn't the whole story. For more than two centuries, Guantánamo has been at the center of American imperial ambition, first as an object of desire then as a convenient staging ground.
In Guantánamo: An American History, Jonathan M. Hansen presents the first complete account of this fascinating place. The U.S. presence at Guantánamo predates even the nation itself, as the bay figured centrally in the imperial expansion plans of colonist and British sailor Lawrence Washington—half brother of the future president George. As the young United States rose in power, Thomas Jefferson and his followers envisioned a vast "empire of liberty," which hinged on U.S. control of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Politically and geographically, Guantánamo Bay was the key to this strategy. So when Cubans took up arms against their Spanish rulers in 1898, America swooped in to ensure that Guantánamo would end up firmly in its control.
Over the next century, the American navy turned the bay into an idyllic modern Mayberry—complete with bungalows, cul-de-sacs, and country clubs—which base residents still enjoy. In many ways, Guantánamo remains more quintessentially American than America itself: a distillation of the idealism and arrogance that has characterized U.S. national identity and foreign policy from the very beginning.
Despite the Obama administration's repeated efforts to shutter the notorious prison, the naval base is in no danger of closing anytime soon. Places like Guantánamo, which fall between the clear borders of law and sovereignty, continue to serve a purpose regardless of which leaders—left, right, or center—hold the reins of power.
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Guant namo has been in the headlines as a prison for so many years that its history as a naval base, a source of contention with Cuba, and a symbol of America's century-old hegemonic ambitions in the Caribbean have become obscured. Hansen, lecturer at Harvard (The Lost Promise of Patriotism), presents Guant namo's military, political, and cultural history in a work combining comprehensive research and critical perspective. He begins with the arrival of Columbus in 1494, analyzes the geology that made Guant namo Bay one of the Caribbean's strategic focal points, and describes its occupation by U.S. Marines in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. Hansen presents that as merely one element of America's systematic discounting of the Cubans' contribution to Spain's defeat and the accompanying conviction that Cubans were unfit for self-government. The 1903 cession of Guant namo as a naval base confirmed Cuba's dependent status and was a subject of contention even before Fidel Castro's 1959 seizure of power. Since then Guant namo's status as a political symbol has come to outweigh its significance as an operational base. Hansen approvingly quotes a senior officer who dismissed Guant namo as adding "absolutely nothing to the navy" strategically. Yet Cubans can also foresee the U.S. presence "as salutary as it is humiliating" a refuge for dissidents fleeing Castro's regime. 16 pages of b&w illus.; map.