Jana K. Lipman. Guantánamo: A Working-Class History between Empire and Revolution. Berkeley University of California Press, 2009. x + 325 pp. $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-520-25539-5; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-520-25540-1.
Reviewed by Robert S. Robinson (Ohio University)
Published on H-Diplo (March, 2010)
Commissioned by Dustin Walcher
GTMO and Guantánamo: Labor Relations between Cuba and the United States
A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to serve on a Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations panel with Jana K. Lipman. She stole the show with a fascinating history of Cuban workers laboring on the U.S. military base at Guantánamo (GTMO). This book, _Guantánamo_, is the impressive culmination of that avenue of research. Tracing the history of these Cuban base workers allows Lipman to place GTMO firmly in its Cuban context. With impressive research in Cuban archival records and oral interviews, this work is an important contribution to U.S.-Cuban relations.
These workers lived primarily in the Cuban town of Guantánamo. In Lipman's work, and therefore in this review, the name Guantánamo refers only to the town, while the base is referred to by its well-known acronym. Although Lipman sketches the history of GTMO from the Spanish-American War through the 1930s, her story begins in earnest with the beginning of World War II. At this point, GTMO went from being a fairly unimportant outpost with a few hundred soldiers and sailors, to a massive modern base with thousands of military personnel and up to thirteen thousand employees working for the military and private contractors. The logical source to meet the resulting labor needs was the city of Guantánamo.
During this first stage, U.S. officials were faced with two primary challenges: [...]