Guantánamo Bay, Cuba Sixty years after the United States' failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the remnants of the US and Cuba's fractured relationship are tucked away in a small neighborhood of the US Naval base at Guantánamo Bay. Nineteen Cubans still live on the base almost 60 years after the base closed its borders with the island nation it sits on the edge of. In a small neighborhood on the base known as Center Bargo, one of the many military housing complexes where the 6,000 military service members, civilians and other residents of the base reside, sits the Cuban Community Center. The squat government building is one of the only reminders of a country and culture that the 45-square-mile base leases its land from. Noel West, 89, lives across the street from the community center. West and the other 18 Cubans still living on the base are known as Special Category Residents, or SCRs. They were given that designation by the US State Department after the border between the Naval base and Cuba closed permanently in the 1960s. Under the designation, they are considered US citizens. While the US and Cuba restored full diplomatic ties in 2015, relations between the two Cold War-era foes remain tense. West and the other Cubans have been on this side of the base for so long, many of them are older and have since retired. The US Naval base provides them with home health care and has built a home health facility for the ones who are not able to live at home alone. West started working on the base as a clerk in 1955. Originally from the small Cuban town of Guaro, West was living in Guantánamo City when he got the job as a clerk ordering fuel for planes and vehicles on the base. For nine years, West commuted back and forth from his home in Guantánamo City to the Naval base, passing through the gate between Cuba and the base every day on his commute. In February 1964, West decided to spend the night at the Cuban barracks on the base instead of commuting home because he said he wanted to watch a baseball game. The next day, his neighbor called him and said that Cuban soldiers had come to his house looking for him the night before."My next-door neighbor that lived on the Cuban side called me from his work here on the base and he asked me if I had gone out the night before. I said, 'No, why?' He said, 'Well, there was about eight soldiers looking for you," West said. West never went back to his home in Cuba after that. He stayed on the US Naval base and has lived here ever since. West believes the soldiers were looking for him because he had made some comments to his friend with whom he played baseball about not liking the new Castro communist regime on the island. Shortly after that conversation, guards appeared at his door, he said."My mother ... she never saw me in Cuba again," West said.
All data is taken from the source: http://us.cnn.com
Article Link: https://us.cnn.com/2021/09/12/politics/cubans-who-live-at-guantanamo-bay-naval-base/index.html
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