Escape to Miami by Elizabeth Campisi;

Author:Elizabeth Campisi;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
Published: 2016-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Camp Alpha Street, 1995.

Creating the park had taken a great deal of effort because a lot of vegetation had to be bulldozed by the military, and then paths had to be laid out with gravel and defined by sandbags, which needed to be filled. The wood left over from the clearing later served as raw material for sculptures. The result was a pleasant refuge from the monotonous camp environment that provided people with opportunities to socialize and relax in more normal surroundings. Eventually people from other camps would gather there as well.

Pancho describes what people did when they got to newly built Camp Alpha upon being sent back from the camps in Panama after rioting there in December of 1994.

We went back to Guantánamo with another mentality; we were prepared differently, we felt more comfortable, understand? It was already different, because we went back prepared, understand. So then, in Guantánamo there were more amenities waiting for us. They put in electricity and the entire camp was made of wood, the tents were made of wood and everything was very well prepared. They made a park, we made it ourselves.

Taking into account that when the riots happened the military … sent all those people [who had rioted] to prison, all those people that didn’t have any, in other words, even a little of an idea … you know. … And so, the people who were left were the people who were more educated, more intelligent. And so, what we did was unite. We created our own amenities with the help of the guards. In other words, we made a park. We made a basketball court. We made a barbershop. We made a school. We made a church, understand. We made a dining hall. We created everything for our own comfort, so there wouldn’t be any problems with the guards. We helped the guards clean, we did everything, vaya.

We got together and created the park ourselves. The guards brought the equipment for cutting the brush, and the trucks, and we the balseros and the guards got to know each other. In my camp, there were never any more problems with the guards, because, well, we had been purified. Purified in the sense that they had taken out everyone who was no good. In other words, the people who remained were the people who were cultured, the people who wanted to progress, who wanted to feel good, to be comfortable, not to have any problems, understand.

We made a barbershop there with the help of the camp captain, Captain Coleman. He was very nice. I spoke with him. He was a good guy. I told him that I was a barber and I wanted a barbershop, understand, to have more amenities in the camp, because people were already waiting for me to cut their hair over in the camp. So the captain told us that “Oh, there is a cabana over there where you can make a barbershop, perfect, I’ll help you.”

And, well, we built a barbershop.

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