Understanding Guantánamo through its Parallels with Slavery

There are tangible and unsettling links between the age of the Atlantic Slave Trade and the peculiar nature of capture, transportation and detention of terror suspects in the War on Terror. The detainees of Guantánamo Bay Detention Center share much with the slaves who, over a century before, lived and worked in the lands of eastern Cuba. They are mostly racially distinct from their captors, with different languages, different cultures and religions. As with the imported slaves, they have been transported to Cuba against their will, chained, bound and shackled and sensorially deprived. They are deliberately separated from kin in order to prevent bonding in captivity, housed in barracks, overlooked by guards in a watchtower, deprived of legal rights, labelled barbarous, and are brutally punished if perceived to dissent. Above all, they are denied their basic identity, their names, their background, and their voice. In this article I chart the parallel conditions, examining the echoes of the Atlantic Slave Trade in the process of capture and incarceration in today's conflict. This will lead to a discussion of a discordant Marxian model of production within this slave system, which will in turn lead to a reflection on the particular dimension of Guantánamo Bay and Gitmo Detention Center as prominent markers of a US imperialist venture in Cuba.