|
Reflections by the Commander in Chief
A short while ago I was saying
about the brain drain that is disgusting.
A bit later, a good offensive player on the
Cuban handball team showed up wearing the
uniform of a professional Sao Paulo team.
Betrayal for money is one of the favorite
weapons the United States uses to destroy Cuba's
resistance.
The athlete was a higher education student;
he would be a graduate with a degree in Physical
Education and Sport, an honorable job. His
income is modest, but his professional training
is highly appreciated; whatever the sport or
specialty, if they attract a large audience and
commercial publicity or none at all they are
still useful for human growth.
Those that applied for asylum in Brazil are
doing it after the United States declared
recently that it would not be fulfilling the
exact quotas of the migratory agreements signed
with our country. Suffice it to say that of the
almost two hundred athletes and coaches who
participated in the first week of Pan American
competition, we went missing one handball player
and one gymnastics coach.
I am not going to say, for that reason,
that the Cuban handball team was better than the
excellent Brazilian team and its formidable
athletes, but the Cuban delegation received a
low moral blow in the Pan American Games with
these pleas for political asylum. The Cuban
team was thus knocked out even before the match
for gold began.
Last Sunday, July 22, around noon, the sad
news was received that two of the most
outstanding athletes in boxing, Guillermo
Rigondeaux Ortiz and Erislandy Lara Santoya did
not show up for the weigh-in. Very simply they
were knocked out by a punch to the chin, paid
with American bills. No countdown was needed.
Watching those first matches in Rio, I
exclaimed that our boxers were fighting with
such elegance and technical mastery that they
had transformed their rough sport into an art
form.
In Germany, there is a mafia devoted to
selecting, buying and promoting Cuban boxers in
international boxing matches. It uses
sophisticated psychological methods and many
millions of dollars.
A mere three hours later, the victory of
the Cuban Mariela González Torres in the
marathon, a classic Olympic sport which took her
on a course of more than 40 kilometers, more
than compensated for the treasons and her feat
was engraved with golden letters in the annals
of sports history of her country.
The Cuban people must pay tribute to the
heroic example of Mariela, born in the eastern
province of Granma, where the rates of infant
and maternal mortality were, in 2006, 4.4 per
each thousand live births and 11 per 100
thousand deliveries, better than the figures in
the United States. In her municipality, Río
Cauto, with a population of 47,918, the figure
was zero on both counts.
After all, Cuba has thousands of good
coaches who work abroad with athletes who very
often win gold medals in competitions against
our own athletes. Another fact: there is an
International School for Professors of Physical
Education and Sport where more than 1300
students from the Third World are taking their
higher education courses. A few days ago, 247
graduated. We do not encourage chauvinism or any
superiority complex. We work with science and
knowledge and on this basis we struggle to
create the ethical values of a healthy mind in a
healthy body.
It is totally unjustified to seek political
asylum. If Brazil is not the final marketplace,
it makes little difference. There are wealthy
countries in the First World who would pay much
more. The Brazilian authorities have declared
that whoever wishes to defect must prove the
real necessity for seeking asylum. It is
impossible to prove the opposite. Even
beforehand, we know their final destination as
mercenary athletes within a consumer society. I
think that they have offended Brazil by using
the Pan American Games as the pretext for their
self-promotion. In any case, we consider the
declarations of the authorities to be useful.
We would like Brazil, a sister nation in
Latin America and the Third World, to have the
honor of hosting the Olympics.
Fidel Castro Ruz
July 23, 2007.
6:52 p.m.
| 
