Guantanamo says goodbye to last Cuban 'commuters'

By SUZETTE LABOY and BEN FOX [AFP]

In this photo, Harry Henry, 82, back, and Luis La Rosa, 79, front, leave at the end of a working day at the U.S. base in Guantanamo, Cuba, Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012, where they have been working since they were in their late teens. La Rosa started working on the base at the age of 18 and Henry when he was 17. La Rosa and Henry, the last of what were once hundreds of Cubans commuting daily to work at the base, are retiring at the end of the December. Suzette Laboy / AP Photo

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GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- One of the world's most unusual commutes is coming to an end.
For more than a half century, Luis La Rosa and Harry Henry have left their homes before dawn each workday in the communist-run city of Guantanamo, where old American cars rumble past posters of the Castro brothers in a Cold War time warp, climbed into taxis and traveled to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, where troops shop at a Wal-Mart-like store and eat at McDonald's and Subway.
The commute takes less than an hour but spans two worlds and a heavily guarded border fence.
Now it is coming to an end. La Rosa, a 79-year-old welder who works at the base's motor pool, and Henry, an 82-year-old office worker, are retiring at the end of the month. They were honored Friday at a retirement ceremony celebrating the uniqueness of their situation.
The close friends, who have a kind of celebrity status on the base, are the last of what were once hundreds of Cubans commuting daily to work at this isolated U.S. military installation.
For them, it is a bittersweet moment - a severing of one of the last real links between Cuba and the U.S. Navy base that has been an unwelcome presence on the island for generations.
"I feel a bit sad because I'm leaving, but I'm going to my country," La Rosa said on Thursday after passing through the coils of razor wire and a checkpoint guarded by U.S. Marines that separates the base from the rest of Cuba.
Both men brought their wives and other family members to the base for Friday's ceremony, the first time anyone else in their families had been able to visit the place where they worked for decades. La Rosa and Henry thanked the U.S. government and his colleagues; the older man, the only one of them who speaks English, drew laughs when he joked that "I think I can be here a few more years."
Over the years, the Cubans who worked on the base would present retirees with a wooden cane. It started as a joke and became a tradition. The base commander, Capt. John Nettleton, gave Henry and La Rosa each a wooden cane, carved with a wooden horse's head at the handle. A guest speaker, Cuban-born Navy Cmdr. Carlos Del Toro, thanked the men for their service to the base and the government.
"Both of you have made a difference," Del Toro said. "A difference in the United States, a difference in your homeland in Cuba."
Though this spot is best known for the base's prison for terrorism suspects, there is a substantial Cuban city of Guantanamo, which has a colonial downtown and a population of about 250,000. It lies to the northwest of the base, separated by mountains and marshland. A smaller city called Caimanera along the bay is the closest town to the U.S. installation.
There are about 30 other Cubans who live on the post, and the base commander has a monthly meeting with his Cuban counterpart to discuss logistics and administrative issues. But the base and Cuba have almost nothing to do with each other, and that fact is more pronounced with the two men's retirement.
"It is a real symbolic link that is disappearing," said Jonathan M. Hansen, author of the book "Guantanamo: An American History."

The U.S. seized Guantanamo Bay, which is considered an ideal natural harbor, from Spain in the Spanish-American War in 1898, retained it during the occupation of Cuba and then forced the Cuban government to sign a lease for the 45-square-mile base. Relations deteriorated after Fidel Castro took power in 1959 and then turned into outright hostility as the young rebel embraced Soviet-style communism. Keep reading >>