Word: guantanamo
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...December. But as for wide-ranging negotiations -- no way, responded Clinton; that would look like capitulation. Yet something had to be done with the balseros, or rafters, as Cubans dubbed them. So Secretary of Defense William Perry calmly assured his Administration colleagues that a tent city under construction at Guantanamo to house the first Cuban refugees could be rapidly expanded to hold many more...
...never mind that shipping the Cubans there is the ultimate in stopgap solutions. "It's a day-by-day situation, and that's how we're looking at it," acknowledges a top White House aide. Another Administration official declines to discuss how stashing the fugitives at Guantanamo might fit into any long-term policy toward Cuba. Says he: "We're focused now on the immediate problem -- handling the refugees." Nor will anyone speculate just how long the Cubans might have to stay in Guantanamo. The standard answer is "Indefinitely," but does that mean months? Years? Until the 68-year...
Since Castro cut all connections between the base and the rest of the island in 1964, Guantanamo is entirely dependent on its own resources and supplies flown in from mainland U.S. or floated by barge from the Florida Keys. Massive new shipments of water, desalinating and generating equipment may be needed. Plus food, of course. And people -- maybe 4,000 more U.S. troops to build, cook for and police the camps...
...begging them to accept tiny slips of paper or bits of Kleenex boxes scrawled with names and numbers. "Call my mother," refugees pleaded. "Please let my uncle know I'm O.K." They do not even want to talk about what they will do if they have to stay in Guantanamo for good, and refuse to believe that will happen. Says Lazaro Rubio, a 30- year-old sculptor who has both parents, three brothers and three sisters living in Miami: "Our only struggle is to be unified with our families...
Nonetheless, that is what the Clinton Administration insists will not happen soon or ever. But interning the refugees in Guantanamo is an expedient, not a policy. A contradictory expedient at that. The U.S. long lashed Castro for keeping his people prisoner; now it is urging him to stop them from fleeing -- while simultaneously cutting off family remittances and worsening the poverty driving most of the balseros to brave the perils of the Straits of Florida. Clinton loudly proclaims he will not let Castro "dictate American immigration policy" -- in the very act of reversing the 35-year policy of welcoming Cuban...