Entangled Terrains and Identities in Cuba: Memories of Guantánamo by Asa McKercher and Catherine Krull (review)

This is quite simply a remarkable book. It profiles Alberto Jones, a Cuban of Jamaican descent who grew up in Banes in eastern Cuba, worked for the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, participated in the Cuban Revolution, and ultimately left the country during the 1980 Mariel boatlift. It provides a compelling perspective on prerevolutionary and postrevolutionary Cuba, and Jones’s personal memories reveal a level of complexity left out of most accounts of this era.

Asa McKercher and Catherine Krull conducted several interviews with Jones between 2012 and 2015, and they intersperse his testimonies with contextual historical information. Throughout it all, Jones’s voice shines through. The book begins with Jones’s childhood in Banes. The United Fruit Company (UFC) dominated this region in Cuba, and it disproportionately hired large numbers of British West Indians to work on its sugar plantations. Jones reflects on the Anglophone community in Banes, its schools and churches, and its relationship with the Cuban community. In this section, Jones provides elusive details that I have not encountered in the written record, including his grandfather’s apparent pilfering of medical supplies from UFC’s health clinics and his mother’s experience working in Caimanera, the village closest to the naval base. Jones’s poignant experiences complement scholarship on Caribbean migration to Cuba from historians such as Matthew Casey, Graciela Chailloux, Jorge Giovannetti, and Robert Whitney.

Jones also provides stories that demonstrate his political activism. For example, he recounts his participation in a student strike in Guantánamo in 1948 to improve the local high school. In 1953, he was a direct witness of Fidel Castro’s strike against the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba. Jones then joined the anti-Batista movement in Guantánamo. Ironically, his anti-Batista activity led to his employment on the Guantánamo base. After being chased by Batista police in 1958, he feared arrest and obtained a coveted “pass” that enabled him to enter and work on the base. In this way, the base became a place of safety for a pro-revolutionary worker.

Jones reflects on the “efervescencia” in the air after the revolution and the sense of possibility and change (84). At first, he was a firm supporter of the revolution. He joined a Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) and felt guilty and “dirty” when he illicitly changed his US dollars for pesos on the black market. Ultimately, he chose to leave the base in 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis, creating a rupture with his family, since his mother and brothers chose to stay. Jones then recalls his experiences in the 1960s and 1970s. In the aftermath of the revolution, he had the opportunity to become a veterinarian and receive advanced professional training in East Germany. This would have been unheard of before the revolution, and Jones speaks clearly about its value and importance, particularly for young Cubans of African descent. However, he also became a target of corrupt bureaucrats in his region, and this resulted in the government imprisoning him for more than four years. On release, he left Cuba during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift. This is one of the most provocative sections of the book, and it speaks to the promise, contradictions, and failures of the Cuban Revolution through the prism of Jones’s memories.

The last section of the book gestures toward Jones’s ongoing political engagement and his refusal to summarily denounce Cuba, despite his own politically motivated incarceration: “Whatever the mistakes that led to my imprisonment, they could not obscure all the care and investment that the Cuban government made in me, the opportunities opened to me by the revolution” (137). He continues to support improved US-Cuban relations, and his memoir speaks to his commitment to equality, internationalism, and a politics of solidarity.

This book is an excellent addition...