When Rafael Velazquez talks about the U.S. Navy base and detention center in Guantánamo Bay, he thinks about work opportunities.
He is from the southeastern Cuban province of Guantánamo. Vazquez said he was born and raised in the municipality of Caimanera, in the fishing town of Martires de Las Fronteras, near U.S. base's razor-wire.
Vazquez said the residents of the town of about 550 people don't really interact with the people at the base. The only connection to the base Vazquez has are the Cubans who retired from the U.S. base in 2012 and received a hefty retirement pay.
"I think it is time for Cubans to be able to start working there again," Velazquez said.
The U.S. Navy set roots there during the Spanish-American War of 1898. And it wasn't until a few years after Fidel Castro took power in 1959 that the thousands of Cubans who worked at the base knew they were in trouble. They had to pick sides when President Lyndon B. Johnson issued orders of dismissal in 1964.
Most recently, Raul Castro, recently said the 1903 U.S. base leasing agreement (including an annual payment of $4,085 a year set up in 1934) was a point of contention, as the island and the U.S. moved forward with normalizing relations.
The fate of the 23 Cuban retirees who have been living at the base for decades is up in the air. They haven't been allowed to see their families in Cuban territory, where retirees get about $15 a month.
"It’s kind of early," Cuban base-refugee Ramon Romero said during an interview with the Wall Street Journal. "You can never trust Castro because he can say one thing and turn around and do another thing."
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama's administration was set to announce closure plans this week. The U.S. military prison within the base was set up in 2002 to hold War on Terror combatants, some of whom were never charged with a crime. U.S. lawmakers oppose their relocation to mainland prisons.
"I guarantee you there will be strong resistance, because in the aftermath of Paris, I think that there is just a very strong tendency for us to get worked up around issues that don’t actually make us safer but make for good political soundbites," Obama said during a press conference in Manila.
Velazquez did not express any fears or concerns about living so close to the detainees. He seemed mostly concerned with joining in the base's workforce of mostly Jamaicans and Philippines.
The Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg has been traveling to the base regularly for more than a decade. In 1999, she reported there were Cubans who were commuting to work at the base. She gets a tent and escorts follow her shadow.
"Gitmo was a gas station in the middle of the Caribbean for ships and airplanes," the veteran reporter said during a 2013 Poynter interview. "It has a church, a golf course, a school and a bowling alley. There is also one McDonald’s there."
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In 2010, the U.S. Navy reported there were more than 30 Cubans living at the base and three Cubans -- Harry Henry, Luis LaRosa and Ricardo Simono -- who passed through the Northeast Gate daily to work and were responsible for delivering pensions to retired Cuban employees who lived off base. LaRosa and Henry reportedly crossed the gate for one last time December 2012.
Vazquez said they are still alive.
Rosenberg later reported the U.S. Navy found a way to pay some $45,000 in pensions to 67 retirees. They would get an average of $684, as part of benefits that were promised during the Kennedy administration.
Some of the Cubans, who had children in the base, made their way to South Florida. Some are at the assisted-living facility built for them and some were buried there next to U.S. Marines and sailors.
