The Other Guantanamo

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To many people the name Guantanamo conjures up images of detainees in orange, allegations of torture, controversy and trauma.

But to those who live there, Guantanamo means green hills and tumbling waterfalls, distinctive son and guajira music and mouth-watering Jamaican and French influenced cuisine.

In this programme, award-winning travel writer Polly Evans goes in search of the other Guantanamo, talking to local people about their home and how they feel about it becoming synonymous with what Amnesty International called "the gulag of our times".

She delves into the history of the open-ended American lease of this corner of the island - and asks whether the nearly ten thousand Cubans who held construction jobs on the site (and still draw a favourable US pension) have different feelings about it.

As President Obama faces ever mounting pressure to make good his original pledge to close the infamous camp by January 2010, Polly examines the personal, political and cultural stories of a place almost never out of the news - from a perspective that is seldom considered.

First broadcast on May 5 2010.