states. left bank books in st. louis hosts this hour-long event. >> it is a pleasure to be here. i have a few prepared remarks to bigot one thing that i wanted to say at the outset is of course we have all been i'm sure pay attention to the tragedy that has occurred in haiti. and one of the things that interests me about to guantanamo is particularly in their early years we had the base in the early 1900's there was an earthquake in her in jamaica and president theodore roosevelt dispatched relationships with doctors and nurses on board to jamaica, the governor of jamaica who was a bit of an idiot didn't like the of u.s. interference but nevertheless we provided the

very quick medical assistance and needed supplies. guantanamo is serving that function even as we speak. one of the first ships to arrive in haiti after the earthquake i read in "the new york times" this morning was the military ship in the coast guard that was based at guantanamo and i also understand that a number of people who have been rescued who were injured in the earthquake including the spanish ambassador to haiti have been taken to guantanamo for medical attention. so this is something that i think if and when relations between the united states and cuba become much more amicable

relations are restored i would like to see this to be considered as a way of which guantanamo can be used because earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, this is a seismic era, the caribbean, and of course repeated hurricanes. there are disasters that occur throughout that region almost every year. okay i call this talk my way of discovery and i will tell you how this became a research topic of mine because when i first decided to write about guantanamo, it was 2003 and there was practically nothing written about the history of guantanamo, and of that time it hadn't achieved the infamous reputation that has subsequently

acquired as an interrogation and detention center for suspected international terrorists. well i had written the paper about the good neighbor policy and i wanted to get published and it mentioned the guantanamo in passing and one of the old site readers who hated my essay asked rhetorically how would mr. schwab feel about it if cuba had a major military base on the u.s. soil? well, the notion of course seemed preposterous but my wife, diana, said well, there's your research topic. and my graduate adviser virtually said the same words after shooting me away from another proposed topic. i knew very little about guantanamo at that time. it was the oldest u.s. overseas base and the only one in the nation with which we had not had formal diplomatic relations at

that time over 40 years. now of course 50 years. virtually nothing had been written about its history. and this led me to ask my own rhetorical questions. why did we get it? why have we kept it? had always been a sore point in the u.s. cuban relations. why had historians ignored it. i didn't know the answers to any of those questions. and i was literally amazed to find at that time there were only to history dissertations that focused specifically on guantanamo won by a fellow named brad leaf reynolds who hated the subject that limited its scope to the period from 1895 to 1910. the reason he hated it was he had a hard time finding any information and the second was by a woman named mary that

covers a much broader period but it is essentially a marxist interpretation that takes as gospel fidel castro's claim that our presence at guantanamo is the legal chuck legal despite the fact there are two separate treaties that the have the releasing of arrangement from every president from the doors about certainly to george w. bush and i would say president obama has essentially affirmed the right to be there. i think the options i mentioned just a few minutes ago are a kind of test of information that guantanamo can be useful in times of serious distress. shortly after i decided to consider this topic seriously, iowa read a brief historical essay also by bradley reynolds

that lacked the unifying theme in a bill called the u.s. navy and marine corps bases overseas, a rather dry book but they did sketch of the guantanamo history from 1898 to the president it at least told me guantanamo had served multiple functions over this 90 year period and had been an ongoing prominent factor in the u.s. to the relations. on the basis of this rather skimpy s.a.. i decided if nothing else i could use ronald's articles as a draft outline and a guide to the work that i would like a major focus of my book is on the period 1934 to the present for it was in 1934 that the united states government aggregated the plight amendment but renewed the treaty concerning the least for don guantanamo and franklin roosevelt used exactly the same

language that his cousin theodore roosevelt had dictated in 1903. now there were at least a couple of events affecting my research that occurred i would say serendipitously. early on a new york literary agent found out that i was doing this. i'm not sure how he discovered me but he contacted me to offer services and request that i write a book proposal that he could flog with various publishing houses. this prompted me to organize my thoughts and white will essentially became the introductory chapter to my work. ultimately this agent informed me he had learned another writer signed a contract with a major new york publishing firm to write a history of guantanamo and he didn't think the commercial market what have to work on the subject. the other book has materialized.

the second serendipitous was that one of the first places i went to do research was the washington navy yard, and what i do whenever i plan to go to an archive is i get in touch with the darkest before i come and i say this is my topic and this is what i want to do is it worth coming there and can you help me out that way i at least have some idea as the way of the land before i go. the artists on the second day i showed up he had a little glint in his eye and motioned for me to come over and he said mr. schwab, he said, i have an idea for you and he said but before i share my idea, he said what you promise me that when you finish your dissertation you will give me a copy of the

dissertation for the library, and if it becomes a book which i suspect it will would you give us a copy of the book as well? and i said sure assuming you have a good idea to which i think you do, and he said well, do you have time and money to travel and do research and i said yes i have some grants from the university. and he said well, i think if you would go to various presidential libraries perhaps starting with herbert hoover's library in on u.n. and going at least through every presidential library through lyndon johnson, he said i think he would find a lot of stuff in presidential papers that has not been redacted by your former employe year the central intelligence agency. so i say that is a great idea and that is exactly what i did. i went to austin texas and hyde

park and some places i can't stand other places i stayed in a hostile sleeping in a room with 46 other guys because i like to eat well so that's what i did. so that was the second serendipitous event and then the third one occurred one day as i was walking out of the navy department library at the end of the day's research. a gentleman coming out of the adjoining building noticed i was walking towards the bus stop and he said where are you going and i told him and he offered me a ride. he turned out to be a navy historian who had published a work on naval operations during the cuban missile crisis that had a few pages on guantanamo. and he not only offered to give me a copy but he invited me to use his unclassified files that were in the secure area where he worked and they contained a lot of information that was most informative but is now in my

book and would not be there if this chance encounter had never happened. the main argument of my book briefly stated is that from 1898 to the present guantanamo has endured in large part because it serves both cubin and american nationalistic purposes that have made it both the point of friction and a point of diplomatic compromise. the longest period of friction began shortly after fidel castro came to power and began railing against the u.s. military presence in southeastern cuba which at various times he has described to as and in the realistic and not for us some and as an illegal occupation of cubin territory. most students of latin american history have some knowledge of

castro's hostility towards the base. but what is generally not known is from the early 1900's to the present guantanamo has also been a site for diplomatic accommodation, compromise and cooperation. the terms dictated by the platt amendment only stated the united states would buy or lease naval stations, dalia word lease them in cuba. it did on specify the number of such stations, nor their locations. that was a matter of a negotiated compromise between cuban president and theodore roosevelt that the united states would obtain only one major naval station and that would be guantanamo, not havana. now obviously the united states

has always had the upper hand in these negotiations. when i say diplomatic compromise, i'm not suggesting that the two parties started on a level playing field. they're certainly would not be the case. the second major compromise occurred in 1934 when the united states eckert did it the platt amendment which had become increasingly unpopular with various sectors of the cuban people and also a member of u.s. legislators to help the cuban president's seeking to extend their terms beyond the constitutional limits would manipulate the platt amendment to their own advantage. in both 1903 and 1934, the united states in dictating the terms either of the original lease which basically said the

united states would occupy guantanamo and inhabit so long as military forces were present, the u.s. military pulled out it would revert to cuba or if by mutual agreement it was decided that the united states would turn the base over to cuba. and the exact language was as i said dictated by theodore roosevelt in 1903 and his cousin franklin roosevelt when he aggravated the platt amendment heave railroad or he reasserted the validity -- or asserted the validity of the lease and used the exact language theodore roosevelt dictated in 1903.

now, i have passed out some photographs and there are two photographs of the guantanamo bay itself. and if you look at them and look at small boats in both pictures you will get some sense of the expanse of the bate. i was in guantanamo for about four days back in 2007 as the guest of the commander of the base, and i could not take a panoramic photographs nor could i look at the entire expanse of the day itself. it is a huge. christopher columbus passed by guantanamo i think on his third voyage to this part of the world and he pronounced [inaudible]

-- large port. and it is in these huge. and it could easily accommodate for decades the entire united states fleet and that is what it did. it was the winter quarters for the u.s. fleet certainly in the 1920's, the 1930's, 40's and so on. now, i think it's important for me to know to that the united states assistance on acquiring a naval base in cuba was largely the result of a collaborative effort between theodore roosevelt and the foremost naval historian or naval geopolitical the rest of his day alfred bohon. both of these gentlemen in the late 19th century dream of the

caribbean becoming america's much iranian and they came to visualize guantanamo as america's to alter. it was the naval theorists to proposed this idea and roosevelt, the policymaker who made it happen. now this of course was never the dream of cuban nationalists, nor was it a concession they freely granted. but most to the scholars interestingly had been reluctant to criticize theodore roosevelt because he fought for to the independence and never stop to annex cuba or make its a u.s. colony and that was in contrast to his close friend leonard who was military governor of cuba and wanted very much to genex him. it might be partly because the history of guantanamo evokes

conflicting emotions that most cubans have been reluctant to write about even in the spanish literature. there are not that many cuban histories at guantanamo. as for american students of cuban history until recently, most of them have either ignored guantanamo or discussed it in terms of the spanish-american war, the squabbles over the platt amendment as a bone of contention between the united states and castro or in its current controversy context has a maximum security prison and interrogation center. surprisingly naval historians frequently ignored or claimed no knowledge of its history. guantanamo has served u.s. interests and many ways since

1898. it was instrumental in our defeat of the spanish warships a federal so thereof the were bottled inside the harbor of cuba 45 miles down the coast from guantanamo and the u.s. naval commander william sampson once he realized that sevara had gone into the port ordered a marine detachment to take guantanamo and the ticket in an afternoon and they took it from the sea. and until this -- at this time in the marine corps history the marines or perhaps in danger of going out of business because they really didn't have a very well-developed sense of mission and most of them at that time were doing her guard duty and

amphibious warfare became a new mission for the marine corps and many marine corps history is date that the sins of amphibious warfare as a mission from guantanamo. anyway, guantanamo is 35 miles east of santiago de cuba and once it was occupied by the u.s. marine corps, it became almost immediately a colin facility and repair facility. what happened was that simpson was able to impose a naval blockade outside the port of santiago de cuba nothing that sevara at some point was going to have to come out of that port and he intended for the ships to blow the spanish naval detachment to smithereens which they did. but what would happen is that at

night a lot of ships would leave the blockade and under the cover of darkness they would go down the coast to guantanamo to take on more coal or do any necessary repairs and for a time clara barton had a hospital ship in guantanamo during this period. and i point out the cover of the book shows as an illustration showing the marines raising the first flag in cuba at guantanamo. well, after we decided we had not only to get, guantanamo, we would keep it. and the reasoning at that time i would argue on the part of people like theodore roosevelt and his secretary of war was that cuba, once independent, would still be very vulnerable to seizure or certainly attack

from rapacious european powers particular imperial germany under the kaiser wilhelm ii who was looking for his own place in the sun and was certainly interested in the caribbean and was also interested in some of wet and the pacific, so that in a large part was i think the reason for the platt amendment and the insistence in article 6 of the platt amendment that we would either buy or release colin stations in cuba. over time it became the winter headquarters for the u.s. fleet as i said. it was in the darkest days of the world war ii that guantanamo provided the greatest service to u.s. cubin and allied interests. in 1942 and for much of 1943, guantanamo served as the caribbean hub of the convoy

system that provided protection for allied shipping, particularly ships, a merchant marine ships coming from places like aruba. they were carrying oil or other precious strategic supplies that we wanted to go either to new york or the halifax to aid the allied cause into this sheltering of these merchant marine ships by with destroyer escorts and in some cases planes flying in overhead turned guantanamo into the caribbean hub into the interlocking convoy system and eventually it persuaded admiral of the third right to withdraw his will fax -- wolf packs in germany.

for a time guantanamo was the second only to new york as the busiest port in the western hemisphere and because the convoy system worked, strategic wartime materiel was not only petroleum but sugar got through to the allies and the u.s. military presence in cuba also deterred the fascists and the nazis from trying to turn cuba into a caribbean version of the channel islands. guantanamo became a flashpoint for cubin u.s. animosities. toward the end of the eisenhower administration win raul castro kidnapped and held hostage for a little more than a month 24 u.s. servicemen included 11 marines who were returning to the base from liberty in guantanamo city.

now he justify this kidnapping on the basis of the united states about guantanamo to be used for refueling purposes by batista, his military -- refueling his military aircraft and also transferring arms to battista's forces after the eisenhower administration placed an embargo on all weapons sales to the cuban belligerence. as the relations between washington and cuba deteriorated following the installation of the revolutionary government which of course took havana on january 1st, 1959. guantanamo was viewed by both washington and havana with concern. castro believed that a u.s. invasion might begin at guantanamo. and at various times, particularly during the to the missile crisis, washington feared that the cubans with

soviet encouragement and possible assistance might attack the base. there was also concerned that if the united states ever decided to leave guantanamo it might become a soviet naval facility. if you look at cuba, guantanamo is i might say described as strategically positioned to overlook those what is the when word passage between the caribbean and the land tick. it's also fairly straight shot from guantanamo down to the panama canal which of course theodore roosevelt intended to build, and perhaps equally important cuba could provide easy access to one of our major ports, the port of louisianan or you might call it the port of

new orleans. and i think at various times there was concern that if the soviets were to during the cold war take over guantanamo, the port of new orleans would be another region that would be threatened and our national security concerns would focus on that particular area. now, now during this period when senior u.s. military and civilian officials including robert kennedy the deceptive operations might be staged at guantanamo to justify a full-scale u.s. military invasion and to announce the

u.s. government under castro. fortunately that never happened. castro's antipathy to guantanamo is well known but guantanamo has also provided fidel castro with an anti-american platform that he otherwise would have lacked. it is not really clear that castro wanted to get us out of guantanamo by force. he would posture, threatened he would back down. president lyndon johnson's administration and castro renewed his harassment of the base personnel by shutting off the portable water supply. president johnson and defense secretary robert mcnamara retaliated by firing most of the cuban workers who lived in cuba

but committed to guantanamo. when castro realized he was going to lose considerable foreign-exchange as a result of his action he offered to turn the water back on and off for that johnson quickly rejected. what i would like to do is read too short sections from this book to give you some flavor what i have written about. starting at the beginning and then go pretty close to the end. guantanamo bay lies at the southeastern tip of cuba facing the caribbean that encompasses a large naval base that occupies an area of approximately 45 square miles of land and water. the day itself is shaped and about 12 miles long in the northeast southwest direction and 6 miles across at its greatest length. ships enter and exit the day

between the the point through a one and a quarter mile wide channel with a 42-foot dredged depth. because of its deep draft, length and with the, guantanamo bay historically has as i have said been able to accommodate a sizable portion of the u.s. navy fleet at any time. the geographical surroundings has its beautiful aspects a broad stretch of blue water framed by crescent shores but this is an area section of cuba and the hills that have the coastline of rocky and adopted with shrubs and bushes. the most compelling description of this tropical setting and its naval activity was written by a navy officer pc macintosh who conceived the following picture for the american mercury during the seven month assignment to guantanamo bay in 1926.

and i will quote on the steep shores cut through the mangroves is a naval station. here are the target ranges and recreation for the oil tanks, powerpoint and houses. along the cliff top the bungalows of the quarter's missile in a tangle of palms and finance, a flower oasis in the desert of fornes. then it comes steaming in. the battleship dropped ponder as anchors near the naval station. lynn cruisers and double rhodes take positions just below and then come the clumsy vessels of the train, starships, repair ships and tankers, the formation broken by the startling light of the floating hospital. the grassy surface of the bay is crisscrossed with the weights of 100 busied boats, barges speed

back and forth carrying seniors, on official visits. that is all we hear between now and april yelps the officer. come on, let's go. this portrayal of a bustling but normal day between world war i -- world war i and world war ii at this navy station should suggest to the reader imperialism viewed only as exploitation fails to capture certain essentials qualities of guantanamo. as the following history of the military outpost will the street guantanamo provides a useful prism through which the u.s. cuban relations from the spanish-american war matt to the present. now before i read the excerpt i would like to say that to me by one of the most fascinating developments in recent history

has been the initiation of the so-called fence line talks in 1996. a diplomatic initiative that continues to this day. it was originally proposed by the to the military to reduce accidents and fatalities caused by haitian refugees trying to ease get from guantanamo through the surrounding minefields and by cubans trying to get to guantanamo from cuba. this is particularly the problem with would be to the refugees or the united states deciding to repatriate some of these cubans that they did not want to grant asylum to in the united states. so the cubans can to the days come to the military and said we need to talk and these talks began and fairly quickly were

routed into a monthly exchange just inside the northeast entrance, land entrance to the base. now the talks have resulted in a number of things. american planes flying in and out of guantanamo have to execute a rather dangerous beeline approach from going out over international waters and then making the direct approach to avoid violating cuban airspace. one of the planes had a rough landing and load off the runway and nobody was injured but it damaged the plan. after this happened when of the american negotiators, the senior state artificial came to one of these meetings and said what it be possible for us to borrow a

quattrone or squadron of cubin aerospace and the military office or the military commanders at certainly. he said the to the government has no interest with military planes crashing on military soil. and so that was done just like that. another request which did go to havana worse for approval it was also granted was the americans asking if pilots flying in and out of guantanamo could report oncoming hurricanes or import and weather conditions over to bin air frequencies. that request was also granted. more recently, what has happened is that the whole issue of what would happen if a forest fire were to break out along the fence line and particularly of

people fighting the fire on either cubin or american soldiers were burned while the other is no burn unit on the basis of guantanamo. but there is a burn unit at a hospital in guantanamo city. so the cubans drove up one day and loaded up the navy commander on the base and the senior state department official to come to guantanamo city and the unit there and then the tree to this into a big barbecue. rather interesting. it was at a hotel that to the cuban hotel that actually overlooks the base command the senior state department official said to me he was there at that time. he said ali turned to the to the commander and i said you know,

with your binoculars you could have watched me shaving this morning. so, rather interesting incident. now this is the only place in cuba where face-to-face diplomacy takes place. and as the cubans have said it is precisely here that it is needed because it is here where our military confronts each other. and according to the cuban government's stated view that military enclave guantanamo is the exact place american and cuban soldiers stand face-to-face and this is the place serenity and a sense of responsibility are most required. consequently, what prevails today is not what could be described as an atmosphere of hostility or war, that is the

official statement of the cuban government. even if this were interpreted as propaganda, i think it is well documented by recent history. and so i would like to answer or address any questions we may have. >> what is the possibility that those contacts could be broadened and lead to a more substantive discussion of the relationships between the two enemies? >> well i think would be a great place to begin to move towards normalization of relations. i think the fact that that mechanism exists i think that gives both cuba and the united states a letter that could be used at guantanamo and used to possibly lead towards

normalization of relations. i just published an op-ed in the fort lauderdale sentinel in which i said it's pretty clear the detention center at guantanamo is in a close long before we decide to pull out of the navy base itself. but if we were to decide, we and the cubans were to decide to move towards normalization of relations of course the most likely thing that could happen is that guantanamo, the base itself would become a bargaining chip and that normalization of relations, and i begin with the most likely we would turn the base over to the cubans. after all that is on cuban soil but i don't think we could propose that now without in the

current environment without risking political suicide for any politician who would propose at. but i would hope that personally speaking we could end the embargo. i think the embargo frankly in my opinion makes very little since today. we have normal relations with vietnam. we have relations with lots of governments that we don't particularly like and let's face it to the embargo doesn't hurt raul castro. it doesn't hurt the senior members of the cuban military. it doesn't hurt the senior members of the communist party. it hurts the man and the woman in the street. i have a friend in havana who teaches at the university of havana.

he makes the equivalent of about $50 a month and also to push this a little bit more we are increasing our trade with cuba. ed is currently limited the export of u.s. medical supplies and agricultural goods but i understand that export figures the past two years have skyrocketed from around 325 million to over 750 million. so i think things are moving in that direction. i think that what ever i have read, and i also know the senior state department official in fact he is the one who took me to guantanamo who engages in these kind of talks -- i really think everything i've read about what goes on their just is common sense. it just is. centuries or guards making

obscene gestures or firing shots over the fence line ended a long time ago. ever since these talks have begun if anybody does something like that they are out of their. they are just pulled out. other questions? yes? >> i assume you're in the directorate of intelligence. >> i was. >> [inaudible] >> yes i was. >> i'm not all that familiar with some things in south america. can you tell me basically were you in north, south america or in a southern section? >> will actually i was an analyst with the cia. i worked on every country -- i worked on the caribbean, i worked on central america, i worked on mexico, south america. the one country i never worked on was cuba. [laughter]

>> that was a monopoly. >> that's right. but i was the caribbean analyst for haiti and the dominican republic and jamaica and so on and then i was chief of the indian branch and then i worked on argentina and lived in argentina and also lived in brazil. >> you were involved with venezuela? >> yes, to some extent. >> i didn't know that to cover all of south america. >> i was a regional analyst. let me say a few words since you mentioned venezuela about hugo chavez. william going to say may sound a little radical for what most people think of a cia analyst would think.

a few years ago i read a book by a diplomatic historian about latin america, a fellow named martin and he made the assertion that i actually agree with and he said that ever since the end of the 19th century up to the present when the united states wanted something from latin america and it didn't get it by asking for it nicely it tended to get nasty. i can think of a lot of cases in which that happened. so the appearance from time to time people like hugo chavez or juan peron at times or other latin american populist leaders i think is the payback that we've gotten and having a big stick policy towards this region

i am not exactly sure how quickly and why we developed this hegemonic approach or attitude, and i think it did begin in the late 19th century because before that all the we were interested in latin america it may have actually begun to some extent it may have been a foreshadowing of that in the monroe doctrine of course written by john quincy adams but i think in terms of -- it seems to have been a kind of sort of a approach that we have often taken i do think that hugo chavez is probably not, and i may be wrong in this production but i don't think that he's going to be around all that much longer because he's spending himself into a predictable

financial crisis. he is so much in favor of populist policies that address the needs of the poor and that is certainly not a bad thing at all. but by making enemies of major lenders, and turning to governments like north korea, he is dealing with problems of debt and inflation, and i think he is not bright enough frankly to get himself out of the fix he's putting himself in. but also i would have to say that there are a number of countries in latin america that do not share chavez's views

either towards the united states or the rest of the world. certainly the government in peru doesn't. the government of mexico doesn't and while brazil under lula to a certain extent has to deal with venezuela because it is close by, i certainly think that actually lula is a wonderful president for brazil. i think he has put his country on a path that is leading it to become one of the great powers in the future. >> other questions? >> i was wondering if in your opinion if you believe that guantanamo is strategically important to our military today.

>> no. not right now. since the 19 70's and 80's, guantanamo has become primarily a coast guard facility and there also is a place it's no longer called immigration and naturalization service, but csis and the process people who want asylum. however, there are plans underway to expand the panama canal so that it can accommodate much larger ships than it has been able to of course with the development of very large battle ships and aircraft carriers and freighters and so on.

assuming that expansion of the panama canal takes place, once it is completed then guantanamo might assume a kind of strategic significance that it hasn't had in recent decades and i think that right now today guantanamo is proving its worth once again as a deployment center and a place to take people to be rescued out of haiti who needed medical attention, and i think that's, you know, something that may certainly put a more positive spin on the image that guantanamo will have the and it has had in recent years.

yes? >> what would you see as cuba's political and economic future after fidel castro pass is? i mean if you were projecting into the future. >> well, i think that raul castro, there is some evidence that he would like to increase commercial ties with the united states and people have suggested he would like to sort of deal with the united states in a way similar to the way mainland china deals with the united states. the problem is that of course you don't have human rights, very good human rights record in cuba, and at least from the u.s. perspective. and you certainly don't have space elections. and i would say the most powerful organizations in cuba

right now are the cuban communist party and still the cuban military. cubin generals have made millions of dollars off of the recent increase in the tourist trade to cuba, and i not sure or i certainly don't think that those groups want to see a normalization of relations with the united states that would in any way threaten their position. but once the castro brothers have gone from the scene, events may very well force their hand or just simply be too powerful for them than to fight. who knows? i don't have any better crystal ball than anybody else but i really do think that there are lots of people who would like to make money in cuba, and that

capitalist incentive i think over time will become even more powerful. other questions? >> his, richard. >> how do you foresee that the cubin hierarchy and communist party and the army might emerge as the new capitalist elite in cuba? >> that is an interesting thought. i don't know. sure, that could happen. well i'm wondering about is the american political side of that equation and and my friend john roach might be able to speak more about that than i can. i don't know. [laughter]

>> that is the chinese model. >> sure. >> and we certainly worked out a motive with china. i don't see any great distinction certainly with the cubin thing as a lot simpler because it is much less powerful interlocutor. >> once fidel castro and raul departed from the scene a lot of the animosity that cuban-americans have felt towards the revolution will abate or disappear and i would suggest that is already a dating because now you are talking about people who are yes the children or grandchildren of the cubans who fled cuba to the

united states 1959, 1960 and 1961, but that generations has gray hair. if they are still around and they are not as dynamic or as influential as the new generation. and i have some students at the university of alabama who our grandchildren of cuban refugees and what they know and what i try to do is get them when they want to write topics on the caribbean i teach a course caribbean history. i tried to get them to go and interview. their grandmother, grandfather if they are still alive and find out what it was like for them to come to the united states much of that history unless they are forced to learn about. >> if i might one more about

your book about chapter for mabey, chapter 3 you elude it to periods teetering on the brink of rebellion and author of the guerrilla war and the years following the treaty and to indicate indirectly that there might have been a racial component. i believe at one point to indicate the future in washington was that there would be more likelihood of an outbreak among the former slaves in cuba. >> well, you know, there's a new book that has come out, i don't think it is a particularly good book. it's called the imperial clues i believe. it does about the trip that theodore roosevelt said his daughter alice along with

william taft who fall alongside the americans and, you know,

americans who die in cuba during the war of 1898, a number of them got congressional medals of honor. they were sort of being handed out like hotcakes posthumously and all of them got military burials to. the cubans were buried where they fell. in some cases if they were near the local villages people might come out and reclaim the bodies but they were normally buried in ditches and had no names. and yes, there were a number of people in that, theodore roosevelt, leonard blood and others who really didn't appreciate or give any sign of a full appreciation for the service that the cubans had provided. after all the cubans had been

fighting since 1895. we get into the war and 1890's yet and the cubans had been there three years and had fought an unsuccessful war for the ten year war. so the new lot. a lot about guerrilla fighting and topics. and this cuban leaders, and they were denied cubin participation in the celebrations of the end of the war. this was grist for people like fidel castro to seize upon and to make guantanamo and not just guantanamo but the whole u.s. intervention and their struggle for independence and object of nationalisti