Life on the U.S. base in Cuba is much like a slice of small-town America, but with more dangerous neighbors, writes the Tribune's E.A. Torriero

LETTER FROM GUANTANAMO BAY

By E.A. Torriero, Tribune staff reporter, recently on assignment in Guantanamo Bay

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- It is salsa dancing night at the bar. The beer flows. The popcorn is free. The music is loud. Couples perform intricate dance steps, seemingly oblivious to their surreal surroundings.

Just a few miles away, terrorism detainees in orange jumpsuits are shackled behind high prison fences. And just over the ridgeline, impoverished Cubans are struggling to get by with a few pesos in the midst of drought.

But on much of this U.S. naval base, life appears as normal and mundane as in small-town America, except that no one can arrive or leave without permission and a security clearance.

"It's not a penal colony; it's a community," insisted Navy Capt. Leslie McCoy, the base's chief administrator.

About 2,600 people live and work for the United States government here, McCoy said. Only about 400 of them serve in the military. Others are members of military families or contract workers from the Philippines, Jamaica and elsewhere.

Most never venture near the prison camps. Instead, they serve as the workers who keep the base running. They do everything from operating shops to serving up cheap food at the canteens.

On golden mornings, the sun rises over the azure Windward Passage. School buses chug slowly along the base roads picking up kids for class. Country music plays on one of the three base radio stations. The McDonald's does big business.

"You can't say anyone is in a hurry around here," said Harry Sharpe, 73, who has lived and worked at the base's restaurants, bars and clubs for much of the last 53 years. "I'd have to say it's a great place to live."

Few people lock their doors. Crime is virtually non-existent.

For fun, folks go to the movies, bowl or scuba-dive. There are softball teams, too.

"It's a throwback to the 1950s, a little like Mayberry RFD but with bad neighbors," said McCoy, Guantanamo's unofficial mayor, who has a weekly base radio show.

Only a few years ago, Guantanamo's strategic value seemed to have run its course.

Leased from Cuba as a base since 1903, Guantanamo remained in U.S. hands after Fidel Castro's takeover in 1959. The U.S. has refused to leave, and Castro has refused to cash the $4,000-per-year rent check.

In the 1990s, the base housed Haitians and Cubans picked up on the high seas, and the Pentagon thought about mothballing the place. Then came Sept. 11 and the war on terrorism.

"It sort of revived a dying horse," Sharpe said.

What better place, the U.S. government figured, to bring terrorism suspects for interrogations than remote Guantanamo?

Since the American base was not on U.S. territory, the government believed its prisoners could not claim U.S. legal protections. But a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month said prisoners did have legal recourse, with Justice Anthony Kennedy writing, "Guantanamo Bay is in every practical respect a United States territory."

But Guantanamo still has the advantage of being remote.

The U.S. monitors the waters by radar and patrols. The major way onto the base is by military flights--twice-weekly charters from naval installations at Norfolk, Va., and Jacksonville, Fla.

And a bay separates the airfield from the main part of the base.

"It's not just a place you can drop into," said Brig. Gen. Martin Lucenti, deputy commander in charge of the prison operations.

Most of the base's social life revolves around a seaside restaurant, bar and a Jamaican jerk food takeout counter.

More than anywhere else on the island, the bar and restaurant area is a hangout for those with sensitive posts: civilian interrogators, federal agents, base commanders and medical staff at the prison. The bar chatter, however, stays strictly light.

After hours of grilling a detainee, one interrogator--who identified himself only as a homicide detective from the Midwest on leave from his job--was asked how the day went.

"I wish I could tell you that," he said with a smile, "but it's classified."

Copyright © 2004