Hip-hop artist and actor Ludacris will headline the Fourth of July celebration at the Guantánamo Bay US naval base in Cuba.
The base’s Morale Welfare and Recreation office announced the free show as part of their Freedom festival in a Facebook post last week. The Fast and Furious star will hit the stage after fireworks and family activities. The base is home to about 6,000 navy personnel, families and military contractors.
“This is by far the biggest entertainment since I have been here,” said Christina Blevins who has lived on the base for over two years. “I’m thankful we get to see him before we leave. I will take many memories away from this place ... But this one will be a huge highlight.”
The base is, of course, home to the detention camp that has held hundreds of prisoners of the war on terror, mostly without charges, and has a dark legacy of human rights abuses including the torture and forced feeding of detainees. This may make it seem like a strange location for a “freedom celebration” featuring a rapper known for jocular lyrics and racy subject matter.
Most of the base’s residents, though, have little day to day connection to the detention camp portion of the site and for them, the base is not unlike other US military facilities around the world, which regularly book popular acts to entertain servicemen and women. The festivities will be miles away from the secure detention facility, in what is essentially a parking lot along the bay.
“I love this base and I’m dreading leaving,” Blevins said. Both she and her husband have worked for the US Navy on the base. “We have a sense of family here. It’s safe and everyone help each other out.”
Barack Obama signed an executive order to close the detention facility as one of his first actions in office in 2009. He has reiterated this desire as recently as February and after a late push has managed to get the population down to 79, although his prospects of seeing the facility close while he is in office remain remote.
Requests made to Ludacris’s management were not immediately returned.
