Diary of a Cuban-American Hopeful: Baseball Just Changed Everything

A momentous milestone happened on Sunday as President Obama descended on Cuba, becoming the first American president to visit Cuba in 88 years.

In what many are calling the most stressful baseball game ever played, the Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays took home a victory against the Cuban national team on Tuesday. Just to make things more interesting, there was a cocktail of diplomacy and business in the mix, as President Obama met one-on-one with Cuban President Raul Castro.

As a first generation Cuban-American, I can’t help but notice the criticisms around President Obama’s decision to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba.

There are still many who think this is a wrong move for our country, and that this policy is going to do more to strengthen Raul Castro’s “brutal regime” than it will to liberate the Cuban people. Miami Herald columnist Dan Le Batard called the game a reminder of “the pain of loss to a Miami exile family.”

And here lies the problem. Instead of seeing this as an opportunity – for businesses, for brands, for the Cuban people, for world governments, for schools, for educators – critics see it as a relationship built on a lifetime of lies. Their rants often note we shouldn’t trust communists or dictators, but fail to mention the failure and damage the embargo has had on the very families it’s meant to empower.

For decades we have nurtured a plan, and for decades we have put off accepting its results. I have witnessed first-hand how the embargo has affected the Cuban people, depriving them of lower-cost food and other goods that could have been bought from the United States. While Cuban workers and entrepreneurs lost independence and income from tourists and private-sector growth, the U.S. economy lost between $1.2 and $4.84 billion annually due to this policy.

And the story is always positioned as if this is universally accepted as the right move. Meanwhile, the United Nations has been denouncing the embargo against Cuba for 22 straight years.

You may be wondering to yourself, “If it’s such a lose-lose situation, why were we still doing it? What’s the big deal?”

Here’s some perspective.

Before The Cuban Revolution, my dad’s father owned a shoe factory. His shoe designs were well known in Havana. We were not wealthy by any standards, but we were at the very least what the average American would consider middle class. On my mother’s side, we had a street named after us. My uncle was a doctor, and a great one at that.

But It was a different time then. Americans were experiencing Cuba as an escape from everyday life, visiting luxurious hotels and spectacular entertainment events. For good reason too, Cuba had the largest number of movie theaters in the world, beating both New York and Paris. Cuba was also the second country in the world to broadcast in color television. The island was dominating baseball, winning seven out of the first twelve Caribbean Series titles from 1949 to 1960. The first edition was even held in Gran Stadium in Havana, where Cuban player Agapito Mayor, a pitcher with the Almendares Club, brought home the title of Most Valuable Player.

Tourism was making many Cuban businessmen rich. Hotels, nightclubs, restaurants and casinos were springing up all over the island to cater to wealthy moguls from all over the world. Celebrities and larger-than-life socialites like Ernest Hemingway, Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner were seeking an escape in the island, so logically to many Americans this was paradise at arm’s reach.

Then it all changed. Cuban stars were barred from playing professional overseas by the government in 1961, making it impossible for them to participate in any series. This drained talent from the country, driving more than 100 players to leave the island in search for their chance at the big leagues. Opportunity stood in treacherous defections sometimes requiring Cuban players to abandon their team during international tournaments to escape, many by boat, to seek refuge in safe houses where their talent was auctioned off to the highest bidder.

It didn’t stop at baseball. The regime discouraged entrepreneurship, and took away my grandpa’s shoe factory, as well as my dad’s house, leaving us with a battered down tiny shadow of a home. This happened to many business owners, and logically, a movement began to occur. It was a whisper of a resistance, so brittle that simply saying the words aloud could make it disappear. My grandpa was part of that resistance against Castro, and he was arrested and imprisoned as a result. With the regime, came discrimination against homosexuals. My uncle lost his practice and narrowly avoided being sent to the labor camps for “re-education and rehabilitation,” which was a euphemism for being disgraced, marginalized, beaten and imprisoned. He took his life shortly after. 

This was the story for many Cubans, and it’s the story handed down to many Cuban-Americans. As Gabriel mentioned in his column, the “pain is very much borrowed.” The sacrifices and troubles that our families have experienced lead us to be resistant to change. We’re resistant to progress because sometimes that progress means dealing with the very people that killed or hurt our family members; took away our homes; made us suffer from poverty and lose the hope of opportunity that one day life would get better.

And that loss lives on in family members and friends who still live on the island. One of my cousins is a psychiatrist, but he makes a better living fixing radios on the weekend. My other cousin a speech pathologist, he brings home the bacon by painting houses. My aunt is a doctor, specializing in infectious diseases. In our little town in Havana, she’s the person we go to when we need to make adjustments to our clothing.

The building structures lay decrepit and many areas are still covered with battered down roads. Many experts say the talent level of players left on the island, both at amateur and professional level, is the worst in Cuba’s history. Former Cuban baseball players have described the state of baseball in Cuba today as a team “plowing in the mud.” The people are hungry and looking to relatives in the U.S. for money, medicine, clothing and more. It’s almost impossible to survive legitimately.

That’s the type of loss that makes our people weary of change. The last time someone spoke of massive change, hope and a revolution, we lost everything we had.

Still yet, change marches on. Luckily for us, it has a habit of happening whether we like it or not.

Since the beginning of our American history, we have engaged in change.

We have seen moments of greatness that changed our country for the better, reuniting the nation when we needed it most. We have also seen divisive moments, highlighted most prominently during election seasons by those striving to win voters come November.

For most, this new change signals a post-Castro political era where opportunity and U.S.-style capitalism could bring a brighter future to the island; a once in a generation opportunity to reset the dynamic between the people of Cuba and the U.S.; a chance for economic boom is “So Near and Yet So Foreign.” For baseball, it means re-establishing Cuba as an international athletic force, where players like Yasmany Tomas, Rusney Castillo and Jose Abreu could find success on the island and avoid illegal expeditions to the U.S. that often cost them a “percentage” of their future earnings in order to finance the trip and survive in the interim.

As businesses prepare to wonder what this new sliver of hope will mean for their brands, for their customers both old and new, and for the boundless opportunities on the island, I’ll leave you with this:

The window of opportunity is hanging wide open. This is your chance. This is not about diplomatic relations or about being open to risk in business; It’s about us finally having the confidence to walk up to the edge and know we are not going stumble or fall.

For those looking to figure out what risks may lie ahead for their brands, sports teams or organizations, our next post will highlight specific scenarios you should be aware of when considering bringing your presence to the island.

If you are looking for a trusted advisor to guide you through the unknown, call AIM Sports Reputation Management at 1-855-AIM-8661, and we’ll help you transition into the next chapter in international sports business.

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Eduardo Lopez serves as a digital strategist for AIM Sports Reputation Management. He bridges the gap between social psychology and marketing to translate research into media strategies. Before entering the marketing industry, Eduardo spent two years researching social cues and coercion in a social psychology laboratory. Follow him on Twitter @NomadStrategist.