From Today’s Herald via the AP:
Ambassador: No reprisals for Cuban boxers
The two Cuban boxers who abandoned their national team at the Pan American Games are not being subjected to reprisals from their government, according to the Cuban ambassador in Brazil.
Pedro Nunez Mosquera told Brazilian Bar Association president Cezar Britto on Tuesday that the boxers and their families are living free in Cuba, without any restrictions on what they can do.
Britto said the association wanted to make sure the boxers were not at risk.
”I asked how [the boxers] were and he guaranteed to me that they were free, with their families, and that there were no threats to arrest them,” Britto said
(I Emphasize “free”)
This means that the two boxers, two-time Olympic bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux and 2005 welterweight world champion Erislandy Lara are free to suffer no more “reprisals” than the rest of the captive Cuban population.
It means that they are free to struggle everyday to “resolver” their daily bread, that they are free not to freely associate or talk to foreign reporters, free not to work in their chosen profession, free not to vote, free not to travel, free not to relocate or travel within the island without the regime’s permission, etc, etc..
Additionally, if they don’t do and say as they are told, they’re free to wind up in one of castro’s cells.
… Just like everybody else in Cuba.
Oh sureeeeeeeeeee, of course. No problemmmmmmmm. The two boxers are home with thier familes. All is hunky doryyyy.
One thing is for sure. If they can`t escape by boat…….they will never see the inside of a boxing ring again.
If everything is OK with these two poor guys, then I am Elvis dePresly.
What the ambassador really meant to say is that the recaptured slaves, er, livestock, er, athletes, should be damn grateful they didn’t wind up like those three black kids who tried to hijack a boat to leave Mr. Castro’s Paradise not long ago. The dictatorship, er, government has been generous enough to be content (for now) with the return of its property. Now the former boxers just need to be good little boys and do exactly like Big Daddy says.
Er, uh, yea, they’re “free” to be with their families, but their dreams have been shattered. Still in their 20s [when we are all full of dreams and hopes] and their dreams to be professonal boxers, to excel at their God-given talents in a competitive free market where a talent like their’s is highly valued and rewarded accordingly has been stepped on, destroyed, spit on and pissed on in one fell swoop.
By the way, can you imagine if pre-apartheid South Africa had done this to two black boxers? Al Sharpton and company would be putting EL GRITO AL CIELO! Why is it alright to destroy a black man’s dream in Cuba, but it wasn’t alright to do so in South Africa?
I guess its that old double standard. Some people are just worth more than others, I guess.
they cant ever represent Cuba abroad..
that is the ultimate punishment for a black cuban athlete that doesnot receive remittances from abroad