Peacekeeping· Caribbean Operations (Cuba + Haiti)
Caribbean Operations 1991-1996
This record covers the series of Marine operations in the Caribbean during the early and mid-1990s, a period when the Corps was repeatedly called upon to handle the humanitarian and stability crises that arose in the region, particularly the mass migrations from Haiti and Cuba and the turmoil in Haiti itself. Marines ran the camps at Guantanamo Bay that housed tens of thousands of intercepted migrants, conducted the intervention that restored Haiti's elected government, and carried out security and weapons-seizure operations in the unsettled Haitian environment. The work was overwhelmingly humanitarian, constabulary, and stabilizing rather than combat, demanding discipline and restraint in volatile camps and tense streets. The Caribbean operations exemplified the kind of mission that occupied the post–Cold War Marine Corps, where the challenges were migration, failed governance, and humanitarian emergency rather than conventional war. They tested the Marines in roles far removed from the battlefield while drawing on the same organization and professionalism.
Engagements in this conflict (7)
Record no. 803