ABDUL MALIK
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/09/sports-cuba-olympics-major-league-baseball-history-socialsim
In 1972, the Soviet Union defeated the United States in men’s Olympic basketball. This controversial victory overshadowed the story of Cuba’s bronze medal in the same game and the island nation’s extraordinary socialist sports infrastructure that made this success possible.
In 1972, the Soviet Union defeated the United States in men’s basketball to win the gold medal, forcing the United States to settle for the silver medal. The closing seconds of the final remain one of the most controversial moments in sports history. It was the United States’ first defeat since basketball made its Olympic debut in Berlin in 1936. The American team was always waiting to win the gold medal.
Team USA claims the win was illegal and still refuses to settle for the silver medal.
But something is forgotten in this story. There was another team competing in the basketball Olympiad that year: bronze medalist Cuba.
This medal is still Cuba’s only Olympic basketball medal today. For residents of the Global North, the country’s inclusion in the Olympic record books may seem like an outlier. But the bronze win was only the first of many successes of a world-class sports program that challenged all the inequalities Cuba had faced for most of a century. The post-revolutionary Cuban history of sports has a lot to teach us about what a socialist model would look like.
Thomas F. Carter, Olimpismo: The Making of Latin America and the Caribbean In his book, he defines the 1972 Munich Olympics as “announcement of the golden age of Cuban sport”. The tiny island, which had survived the ongoing embargoes and failed Bay of Pigs invasion only ten years ago, returned from the Olympics with eight medals – again a draw with Finland, which won eight medals – and placed fourteenth on the medal standings. He won thirteen medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics and twenty in 1980.
It is quite remarkable that Cuba has achieved such a high standard in the field of sports, despite all the international difficulties it has been through. Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Cuba’s economic collapse due to sanctions during the “Special Period in Peace”, the country has had an extraordinary presence in global athletics. Even at this recent date of the Tokyo Olympics, Cuban athletes, who long past the golden age, won fifteen medals.
“VALUABLE INDIRECT EDUCATION FOR REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITIES”
Fidel Castro was a lifelong athlete. However, accounts of his sporting prowess are often in the form of exaggerated legends or anti-Cuban propaganda. Although Fidel was not a legendary baseball player as is often mythologized, he was a promising basketball player. by Peter C. Bjarkman Fidel Castro and Baseball: The Untold StoryAs mentioned in Fidel basketball
he thought it provided a valuable indirect training for revolutionary activities, … [Fidel’e göre basketbol] It was a game that required speed and agility, real elements of guerrilla warfare, alongside strategic and tactical planning and general cunning.
This attitude revived the whole of Cuban post-revolutionary sports.
Despite pressure from America, Fidel struggled hard to keep Havana’s minor league Sugar Kings club alive. The club’s away trip to Rochester (following substantial pressure from the US State Department) was one of many factors (before the Bay of Pigs) that demonstrated the impossibility of establishing a positive relationship with the US. The event was also concrete proof that Cuban sport needed a new path.
In 1961, former dictator Fulgencio Batista’s General Directorate of Sports was transformed into the National Institute of Sport, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER). The practice of eliminating private sports businesses has progressed rapidly. According to Fidel, INDER provided a vehicle for sport to “serve the revolution”.
INDER’s achievements were astonishing. In his article titled “Punching Above Its Weight: Cuba’s Use of Sport for South-South Co-Operation,” Robert Huish states that elite facilities that train Cuba’s top athletes are open to ordinary citizens. by Margaret Randall Exporting Revolution The book summarizes the numbers as follows: The island nation provides one fitness instructor for every 342 Cubans (for comparison, 980 in the United States), and there are 11,523 sports centers open to the public in the country. There are two million Cubans participating in national and international competitions in thirty-eight sports.
“It’s easy to come across kids playing sports in Cuba,” Huish observes, despite the ongoing shortage of sanctions. Children often use rubber balls and pieces of wood instead of baseballs and bats, but unlike many other resource-strapped countries, the sport is very common here. Cuba has made sport a common leisure activity, an accessible profession for naturally gifted athletes, and a way to protect the health of its population.
America’s disdain for Cuban sports (often expressed with accusations of amateurism) is linked to objections to the pay scale in the country’s sports industry. Cuban baseball manager Higinio Vélez has this to say about wages:
Are they amateurs? Our players [beyzbol yıldızları] You say they don’t make the money that Pujols or Soriano do. I assume you are prepared to say that teachers and lecturers in your country are also amateurs, according to this standard you have set forth. They don’t make the same money as top professional athletes or movie stars, do they? No, no, our players are indeed professionals.
It is often misunderstood that “professional” sports have been eliminated on the island. Promising athletes at the school are selected for Cuba’s top sports programs, and they are given training, equipment and coaching. Sport is therefore a full-time occupation in Cuban society. It was also instrumental in creating racial equality that did not exist before the revolution. Under Batista, sport was largely a field dominated by the wealthy. Where darker Cubans and ethnic minorities were able to enter, the conventions they were subject to were extremely exploitative conventions, a situation that still permeates sports in the rest of the world.
Most Cuban sports, especially baseball, are run similarly to those in the United States. The Cuban League operates similarly to MLB; Teams in each state—largely local talent—play in a traditional league structure and eventually qualify for the National Series championship. There is little difference between being a Havana Industriales fan and being a Toronto Blue Jays fan.
However, admission to the games in Cuba is free.
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY
Cuba borrowed its model export strategy from American baseball. As Bjarkman points out, Cuba is the culprit of MLB executives and the American state.
He had learned how to use baseball as a means of spreading sacred American values to occupied or subjugated foreign outposts in Asia and Latin America—viewed as a positive tool to exercise American dominance around the world, particularly over the Japanese, Koreans, and Taiwanese.
Cuba does much more than that by sending doctors around the world, yet its support for sports infrastructure is not well known. In 2011 there were six hundred Cuban coaches and trainers operating in more than a hundred countries. Cuba also invites athletes from other countries to the island for free. After arriving, the athletes attend intensive Spanish classes and training in subjects such as biological sciences and analytical sports analysis, as well as high-level training. Huish states that Cuba is using this practice as a tool to fight international poverty by “investing in human capital”.
Sport supports Cuba’s will to assert itself on the often hostile world stage. It is thanks to its success in international sports that Cuba has been able to fulfill its desire to maintain its global presence. Cuba is proud to demonstrate the success of the sports culture it has built. Since 2003, Cuba has won 1,492 gold medals at the Central American and Caribbean Games and 649 gold medals at the Pan American Games.
Sport is also a way for Cuba to show international solidarity with the Global South and other socialist countries. The island country participated in the international boycotts of the 1984 and 1988 Olympics as a reaction to the Western bloc foreign policy.
Due to Cuba’s historical and geographic proximity to the United States, Cuban athletes often found themselves competing in sports that were traditionally “American” sports. This was something the United States often made a diplomatic battleground. As a result, as at the 1967 Central American and Caribbean Games, Cuban athletes faced significant problems obtaining visas to participate in international competition—even at events where the United States did not participate.
A SOCIALIST SPORTS MODEL
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the economic crisis during the Special Peacetime were not enough to stop the Cuban sports program. This was probably due to the infrastructure the country has maintained for decades. According to Thomas F. Carter, Cuba’s determination to succeed at the 1990 Olympics was part of an attempt to rebuild its economy. Cuban teams signed contracts with international brands, and the country even made two unsuccessful attempts to host the games.
The skill levels of Cuban baseball players are similar to those of MLB players. This fact did not go unnoticed by the United States. In recent years, many successful Cuban athletes, mostly baseball stars, have moved to MLB, which offers the promise of greater wealth and greater opportunity. As a result, a boutique human trafficking industry emerged, and according to Bjarkman, this
that the streets of Mexico are filled with countless crooks and corpses; thousands of Cuban refugees are stranded in Mexican coastal cities such as Cancún or Mérida.
The appearance of Cuban stars in MLB was largely the result of Cuban goodwill. The parents of Liván Hernández and Luis Tiant Jr were allowed to leave Cuba to watch their children play at the World Series. Cuba has made great efforts in recent years to end human trafficking in sports and has made agreements so that athletes can play internationally. These efforts were mostly unsuccessful; An important reason for this was the INDER official’s “lack of understanding … about capitalist-style contracts”.
From afar, it may seem that Cubans are disconnected from the protocols and conventions of the global sports business because of the failure of their education or, worse, their ignorance of the “modern world”. But in reality it shows the incredible success of this Cuban sports project. Cuba has successfully created a truly socialist model of sports. The incompatibility between the Cuban model and ours is a testament to the triumph of the Cuban model.
Cuba’s bronze medal at the controversial 1972 Munich Olympics may seem like a footnote in sports history. However, it was an important step in the country’s unexpected journey in sports. Every socialist needs to pay attention to this. When conservatives ask how we can enjoy luxury and leisure in a socialist system, the answer need not be theoretical; Cuba’s sports program is an example of how this can be achieved.
(Translation: Pelin Tustas)
