Cuba’s Backyard Exiles
In 1961, Ramon Baudin got wind that Fidel Castro ’s security forces were looking for him. He hid in a bus headed to this U.S. military base, sneaked past a police checkpoint, then pleaded with the American sentry: “Hey, buddy, I’m running away. Open the gate.” Mr. Baudin has been here ever since, part of a small group of Cuban exiles who, in a hot moment of the Cold War, won permission from the U.S. government to stay at the Guantanamo Bay Naval base until Cuba was free.
For more than 50 years, the exiles have waited out Mr. Castro, circumscribed by a 17-mile razor-wire fence that separates their present from their past. They have married and divorced, had jobs and children. They have danced at base clubs and drunk at base bars. They play dominoes and listen to singer Celia Cruz. They have also seen their adopted home become synonymous with prisoner abuse since the U.S. housed nearly 800 terror suspects here. The ill are treated at the Navy hospital, and the dead buried by the beach in the base cemetery, alongside sailors and Marines who perished in the tropics 100 years ago.
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With few exceptions, they have never returned home. Many have made their way to the U.S. But a core group chose to stay, even though they acquired U.S. citizenship or residency. The U.S. Navy provides them free housing, utilities and medical care, along with subsidized meals at base mess halls.. Now, the two-dozen remaining exiles are aging at a pace that is outstripping the Navy’s ability to care for them. The Navy flies the seriously ill to military hospitals in the U.S. Navy personnel have converted former nurses’ quarters at the base hospital into a 24-hour assisted-living facility. Government drivers transport the Cuban exiles to doctor appointments, exercise classes, McDonald’s and the all-in-one base store, the Navy Exchange.
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As a boy, Mr. Romero accompanied his grandfather on a 30-foot banana boat, steering it along the shore. They stopped at the base each day to sell fruits and vegetables. By 1960, the family’s standing with the Castro government had become precarious. Two of Mr. Romero’s cousins had been killed, and another was languishing in prison, he said. Mr. Romero’s grandfather, who cared for the boy, sent Mr. Romero to live on the base. “My grandfather said, ‘Stay here, otherwise you’ll be in jail or dead,’ ” Mr. Romero, now 71, recalled. “So I’ve been here ever since.”
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Navy officials can’t find the documents that laid out the Kennedy administration’s original promise. The broad outlines have been passed down from one base commander to the next, reinforced by a 2006 law authorizing the Navy to “provide for the general welfare, including subsistence, housing, and health care” of the Cuban residents.
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By 1987, the number of Cuban exiles on the base had dropped to 80. Today, there are 28 special category residents, including five Jamaicans who had won the status through marriage to exiled Cubans. Capt. Nettleton estimates the Navy spends about $200,000 a year on salaries for civilian aides who assist the elderly Cubans. The Navy said it had no estimate of the cost of providing housing, utilities, medical care and other services for the exiles.
Gloria Martinez, an 81-year-old cancer survivor, said she has stayed on the base in part because of the promise of lifetime care. Her late husband was a Cuban army sergeant in the 1950s who fought against insurgents led by Raúl Castro, Fidel Castro’s brother and now Cuba’s president. In 1959, Ms. Martinez’s husband, Eduardo Martinez, got a job helping build the base bowling alley. Each night he returned to the Cuban side of the fence. As the Castro regime cracked down on opponents, the couple’s house was repeatedly searched, Ms. Martinez recalled. She kept two hand grenades hidden in the house and said she had planned to use them if her husband ever faced a firing squad. She sealed her husband’s army medals in a jar and buried them under the patio.
“I told my husband they were looking for him, and he was never to come back to our home,” Ms. Martinez said.
One day in 1961, Mr. Martinez went to work on the base—and stayed. Ms. Martinez remained behind for a short time before making her own move. She glued her photo onto someone else’s ID card and headed to the base, repeating her fake name to herself: Jorgelina, Jorgelina. Jorgelina. Their two children, now in their 40s and living in the U.S., were born on the base. Her husband died in 1988. When she fell ill with kidney cancer the following year, she was treated at a U.S. military hospital in Washington, D.C.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/cuban-refugees-fled-to-the-u-s-naval-base-in-guantanamo-bay-a-half-century-agoand-never-left-1421427942
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