Camp of Fear in Wisconsin

A haven for refugees turns into a place of terror

Behind the barbed wire and chain-link fences at Fort McCoy, in the bucolic farm land of western Wisconsin, young Hispanic men have stripped off their shirts because of the sweltering summer heat. But when asked what the 5,000 Cuban refugees at the sprawling Army base need most, Tomas Rodriguez, president of their governing council, replies: "Warm clothing for the cold weather that is coming." Has he no hope, then, that most of them will be resettled before winter? "No," answers Rodriguez. "If we were to say yes, we would be fooling ourselves."

Chances are that he is right. Fort McCoy once was the gateway to a new life for Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro's island; almost 10,000 have passed through and been placed with American sponsors. Now it is a kind of prison, an extreme example of the difficulties the U.S. faces in assimilating the last of the 120,000 Cubans who have flooded the country since April, emblematic of some of the reasons for the despair that has driven a handful of refugees to hijack American airliners to Havana. The seventh U.S. hijacking in 26 days occurred last week.

The Cubans still at Fort McCoy are a hard-core remnant of the boatlift. More than 90% of them are single men aged 18 to 35 with no relatives in the U.S., few job skills and no knowledge of English; many are barely literate even in Spanish. Some came from Cuban jails or mental hospitals. Among the inmates are 266 juveniles under 18 who are caught in a bureaucratic snarl. They cannot be adopted by American families under a federal administrative ruling that would require the consent of their parents, who are still in Cuba and cannot be reached. Nor can the youths be enrolled in foster-care programs even if they have relatives living in the U.S.; if the teen-agers need long-term counseling, as many may, and the foster parents cannot provide it, the financial burden would fall on a state. Wisconsin and other states claim that they lack the money; Washington has promised to pay but has not sent any cash yet.

Idle, bored and facing indefinite confinement, some of the refugees have turned Fort McCoy into a place of terror. Barely a week goes by without a stabbing incident; there are repeated reports of homosexual and heterosexual rape. Fear of revenge keeps most of the victims from complaining to camp authorities. Monroe County Circuit Court Judge James W. Rice says that one boy who appeared in his court seeking release from the camp "told me that he had a knife held to his throat by a group of older boys. They demanded that he commit a homosexual act." The youth was sent to live with relatives in Florida. Some Cubans also have slashed themselves to gain admittance to the safety of the camp hospital. One young man with deep knife cuts in his left forearm told TIME Correspondent Steven Holmes: "I did it to myself, to get attention."

Camp authorities are indirectly responsible for much of the violence. To keep order in the camp, they have depended mostly on a Cuban security force armed with broom handles, tree limbs and even a few billy clubs and knives. Originally the group was supposed to be small and well organized, but scores of hardened thugs stole the force's symbol of authority--purple jackets donated by the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater--and proclaimed themselves a part of the security force called the Warhawks, after the school's nickname. Some of the Warhawks then used their weapons to rob and terrorize other refugees. According to Thomas Grauman, a former social worker at the camp, "the toughest, meanest men" joined the force, which later changed its name to the Aguilas (Spanish for eagles) but not its terrorist tactics. Says Fernando Machinena, who once served as interpreter for the Cubans' governing council: "The camp officials have let the Aguilas have their own way. They are so afraid of a confrontation that they let almost anything go." While most of the refugees are law abiding, camp officials insist that they place in detention the handful caught doing anything illegal. But U.S. Marshall Robert Thompson, who is in charge of security within the camp, says of the Cuban security force: "I'm not sure who directs them or who controls them. It has never been quite clear to me."

Monroe County Sheriff Ray Harris reports that his deputies catch six to twelve escapees every day, some of them in the act of burglarizing nearby houses. Says he: "Some of the people around here are getting pretty riled." Tensions will be relieved soon: the camp is scheduled to close by the end of September, when all of the 14,000 Cubans still remaining in centers throughout the country are to be concentrated in Fort Chaffee, Ark. But for the great majority of Fort McCoy's refugees, the move probably will mean only that they will be submerged in a larger pool of Cubans who are seeking U.S. sponsors Slim as their chances have been for getting out of Fort McCoy, the hardened refugees from Wisconsin may find that their prospects of being released from Fort Chaffee are even worse.

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