[NYTr] Fidel Castro: Is Brazil the USA's Latin American Stand-in ?

[nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com]

Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN)
http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles

Reflections by the Commander in Chief

Is Brazil the United States' Substitute?

by Fidel Castro Ruz

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.

Havana, July 23, 2007, 6:52 p.m.