Twenty years ago this June, Guantanamo Base was “closed;” that is, a US Court ordered it
Twenty years ago this June, Guantanamo Base was “closed;” that is, a US Court ordered it closed in order to free the hundreds of imprisoned HIV-positive Haitian refugees who were being kept their indefinitely. Of course, the government maintained its right to hold detainees at the camp indefinitely and reopen the camp for future use… and we all know where that led.This reminds me a of a popular joke I heard far too often as a kid growing up in the 80s. Two gay men are talking, and one says he has AIDS. The other one says he’s so sorry. The first guy responds “Yeah; how am I going to convince my parents I’m Haitian?”There’s obviously a lot to unpack in that joke: trans-national identification, hierarchies of oppressions / identity, AIDS as a signifier in flux, not yet as firmly attached to “gay-ness” as it would come to be, etc. I’m still thinking about it, twenty years later, and learning the history of Gitmo & HIV has brought it all back up again.There’s a great resource on Gitmo history that I urge anyone interested in the topic to check out, The Guantanamo Public Memory Project (from which the photo above is drawn.)It’s a good reminder in the ways in which our histories repeat themselves. -- source link