Cultural Preport – Cuba
Cuban Sports
Transforming Cuban sports has been a huge effort to revolutionize Cuban society. Show casing its sporting successes has been one of the ruling regimes sign of success. Sports became a very important symbol of status. The 1960s saw sports as elitist, and the country decided to change this. The Cuban government encouraged mass participation in order to rally the population. It also regiments, educates, and dictates the population. Sports bring recognition to the country as well.
Sports institutions became the guiding school for all sporting events in Cuba in the 1960s. International events have shown its dominance in athletics. Cuba has placed highly in Olympic events. In the 1980s, Cuba beat the United States in many Pan-American Games events! In the 1990s, officials deemed Cuban athletes in the top five of some events in the entire world. The neglect of sports at the grassroots level had less recruits watch sporting events in Cuba. Cuba’s position in athletic events started to wither. In the last twenty years, there was a huge decline in the number of gold medals in the Pan-American Games. They also fell in the Olympic standings as well, however they did start to move back in the right direction in the 2012 London Olympics back to 16th place, after falling to 26th in Beijing in 2008. Their standings in boxing have fallen as well, having won no gold medals in 2008 or 2012. Cuba has also fallen in the standings of baseball. Budget cuts and power outages have a huge impact on and correlation to the athletic standings.
During Fidel Castro’s reign, around 8-9% of the country’s budget went to sports, whereas in the 21st century, it was under 1%. Cubans were encouraged to remain in Cuba with a smaller pay and bask in the admiration of the Cuban citizens, as opposed to having a huge paycheck internationally. This exhibited how a win for them was a win for their country, Cuba. Now however, Cubans are starting to leave the country to compete. There are currently 15 Cuban baseball players in the major leagues in the United States that have come over in the past 10 years. This does not include the many players who have not made it to the majors yet. One way to salvage their athletic standing is to turn to the market. The government is now allowing the Cuban athletes to play internationally, and there is a tax on their contracts, which go back to Cuba. There is now a charge for all Cuban athlete interviews as well, which helps build up revenue for athletic development. Cuba has begun to lease out its athletes and coaches to international teams. In the Beijing Olympics, there were around 45 countries that had some form of Cuban training.
Cuban Health Care
· Education and health care are free.
· Before the revolution, Cuba had good health care. It was only for those who could afford it though.
· After the revolution, they had the highest literacy rate in all of the Western Hemisphere.
· It is a relatively poor country.
· Housing is often very basic, but you will not see street children.
· There are problems in both urban and rural areas.
· The life expectancy is 81.3. It has gone up tremendously after the revolution.
· Every neighborhood or community of a given size is assigned a doctor, nurse, and pharmacist. They live in the community in which they serve, they have daily house calls, and they focus on preventive health care. They also have geriatric teams for every neighborhood.
· Clinic visits are free and are focused on early intervention.
· From the 2002 WHO report, Cuba had the second best doctor to patient ratio after Italy, with 170 people for every doctor.
· They train general practitioners as opposed to surgeons.
· Cuba has one of the lowest maternal mortality rates at 10.6 for every 100,000 births, compared to 158.2 in Guatemala, 130.9 in the Bahamas, and 69.1 in Latin America.
· They also have low infant mortality rates, at around 4.9 for every 1,000 births. This is lower than the 64 in the United States! The world average rate is 46!!
· Their child mortality rates are also lower than the United States with 6 compared to 7.5 for every 1,000 births.
· In the 1980s, 0.05% of the population was living with AIDS.
· All pregnant women are tested for HIV and are provided with free anti-retroviral therapy.
· HIV has actually gone up in the recent years due to widening income inequalities and the growing of the sex industry.
· There are problems with the health system too:
o Low pay of doctors
o Buildings in poor state of repair and mostly outdated
o Problems with provision of equipment
o Frequent absence of essential drugs
o Concern regarding freedom of choice both for patient and doctor
Places to See and Some Advice
· Plaza Vieja
· San Francisco de Asis Square
· El Cobre, close to Santiago (SW area of Cuba)
· Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, associated with Ochum, goddess of love and the rivers.
· “Hotel Nacional,” historical hotel where many celebrities stay.
· La Habana, Jesus Christ Barrio de Regla: culture, traditions, and religion.
· Universidad de La Habana
· The Cuban flag has a lonely star in a triangle on it. It is a very strong symbol for the independence of the will of the Cuban people.
· $1CUC (Cuban Convertible Pesos) = 24 CUP (Cuban Pesos)
· They have old American cars, but the engines are from all different kinds of cars.
