Congratulations to Comparative Study of Religions Lecturer Dr. Diana Coleman on her recent article, “El Sur También Existe: Imagining futures” in Cultural Dynamics Volume 31 Issue 4!
Abstract: Guantánamo is infamous as a site of extra-legal detention in the wake of 9/11; more than a single site, it is part of a web of the United States’ militarization operating in the Global South. An area of the military base is now being revitalized as a new camp for climate change–related mass migration events predicted to occur throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. In February 2018, RQ Construction, LLC (Carlsbad, California) won a 23-million-dollar contract to build a “Contingency Mass Migration Complex” at Guantánamo to house migrants and personnel at the military base in a massive tent city. Though less explicitly worded, other large Department of Defense awards for work at Guantánamo point toward extensive infrastructure development as recently as March 2019. The United States’ militarized response to climate-based migration is an extension of the logic through which economic and political refugees are branded criminals or terrorists.