Cuba – A Nation Of Olympic Slaves

Dieudonné Lamothe, who was a sports person from Haiti, finished lost in the 5000-meter race at the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984.He lose the Olympic competition, but Lamothe was not assassinated by president Jean-Claude Duvalier, the dictator who became known throughout the world as “Baby Doc Duvalier”. Over the next years, Lamothe revealed that Jean-Claude Duvalier had threatened to kill him if he failed to finish the race…Amnesty International reports secret police,known as Tonton Macoutes, practice torture, assassinations and disappearances including killings of prominent opposition leaders.

Like Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (Cuban dictator) and Idi Amin Dada (Ugandan dictador), Jean-Claude Duvalier loves sports.Certainly, he popularized the sport of soccer, or football, in Haiti, an ex-French colony in the Caribbean. Under his leadership,Haiti qualified for the 1974 FIFA World Cup tournament in Munich (West Germany). It also won the Junior World Soccer Championships in 1975 in Mexico City, Mexico.Soccer is now the national sport of the country.

Between October 12 and October 26, 1975, the Haitian delegation participated in the Seventh Pan American Games held in Mexico City. The national delegation had 12 athletes competing in three sports: track and field (7), boxing (2) and tennis(3).Furthermore, Haiti sent a national team to the 1976 Olympic Games, which were held in Montreal (Canada).Haitian athletes also competed in several events sponsored by international sports organizations, including basketball, golf, judo, volleyball and boxing.

Indisputably one of the worst dictatorships of all time, Fidel Castro Ruz enjoys all types of Olympic sports, including basketball and baseball, and his proudest moment was when his country hosted the Pan American Games in 1991. The people that don´t know Cuba very much think that Cuba is an olympic paradise.

Like Iran, Sudan, Syria and the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea (or North Korea), Cuba is a terrorist state in the 21st century. Fidel Castro Ruz is not Pol Pot (Maoist dictator) and Enver Hoxha (anti-Soviet dictator), but he is a dictator in the Third World. The country has never known a period free of tyranny, repression and political conflict.

A revolution in 1959 transformed Cuba into Latin America´s first socialist republic. From 1962 to 1989, Cuba was a Soviet colony. In 1962, Cuba looked to the USSR (currently Russia,Ukraine, Belarus,etc) to help it consolidate its sport.Sporting projects were strongly emphasized during this decade. The Soviet Union sent Olympic advisers to La Havana and agreed to provide sporting aid to Cuban dictatorship. Recognized the importance of sport to Cuba´s dictatorship, the Soviets construted several sports schools, best known as Escuelas de Iniciación Deportiva Escolar (EIDE, Schools for the Initiation into Scholastic Sport), modernized gymnasiums, and built stadiums. This invaluable sporting support continued through the 1970s and 1980s.

Sport in Cuba continues to be strictly centered in the hands of Fidel Castro Ruz. Castro has instilled a mental toughness in the Cuban athletes. The athletes are forced to deny to the United States, Czech Republic, Hungary, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, South Korea and other countries.

Ongoing violence has forced more than 300 athletes to flee to neighboring countries including Mexico, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, and the United States.

From the outside, the “Lenin Sport School” is certainly impressive. No all the dictatorships have the same situation. Under the dictatorship of Robert Gabriel Mugabe, Zimbabwe´s sport is a disaster. Yoel López always arrives at “Lenin Sport School” early.He says: “I usually go to sport school by car but sometimes I walk”. In Cuba the sports schools usually open 7.30 in the morning. Yoel never watches television. He sleeps seven hours a night. He works very hard. Like many Cuban children, he is a new slave of the Cuban Revolution.Certainly, Yoel López is a volleyball player.

Cuba won the baseball Pan American gold medal in Santo Domingo 2003. Hundreds of Cubans watched TV coverage of the Pan American Games. During the final baseball game, soldiers in camouflage stood around the Cuban dugout and guarded much of the section where Cuba´s delegation was seated. Even credentialed media were kept off the field and guards with loaded assault rifles protected the Cuban national bus. One soldier told a journalist he estimated there were around 400 security workers at the stadium and said if any Cuban got away it would mean jail time for the Dominican patrol. “Our mission tonight is to ensure that no Cuban defects,” he said on condition of anonymity.” If one defects, they´ve threatened us with jail, and said they would dismiss us from the army”.