This article was downloaded by: [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile]

On: 31 October 2014, At: 20:27

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954
Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,
UK

Identities: Global Studies in

Culture and Power
Publication details, including instructions for
authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gide20

NEW RULES TO THE OLD GAME:

CUBAN SPORT AND STATE
LEGITIMACY IN THE POSTSOVIET ERA
Thomas F. Carter

Chelsea School of Sport, Faculty of Education and

Sport at Chelsea School, University of Brighton ,
Brighton, UK
Published online: 01 Apr 2008.

To cite this article: Thomas F. Carter (2008) NEW RULES TO THE OLD GAME: CUBAN
SPORT AND STATE LEGITIMACY IN THE POST-SOVIET ERA, Identities: Global Studies in
Culture and Power, 15:2, 194-215, DOI: 10.1080/10702890801904610
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10702890801904610

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the
information (the Content) contained in the publications on our platform.
However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no
representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,
or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views
expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and
are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the
Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with
primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any
losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,
and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or

indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the

Content.

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.
Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,
sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is
expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 15:194215, 2008

Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1070-289X print / 1547-3384 online
DOI: 10.1080/10702890801904610

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

New Rules to the Old Game: Cuban Sport and State

Legitimacy in the Post-Soviet Era
Thomas F. Carter
Chelsea School of Sport, Faculty of Education and Sport at Chelsea
School, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

After the collapse of the socialist states of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the
Cuban state faced its greatest crisis. How the state managed to maintain sufficient
legitimacy in light of the growing economic hardships and class restructuring
Cuban society underwent in these initial post-Soviet years remains somewhat
mysterious. A crucial element of the legitimating discourse of the Cuban state,
domestically and internationally, has been the relative success of its sports teams
in international competition. As symbols of the strength of the state and one of the
few remaining successes of the Revolution, Cuban sports performances remain
vital symbolic capital for current and future administrations. The problem that
state officials continue to face is how to transform that symbolic capital into economic capital without sacrificing ideological principles. Drawing on ethnographic
fieldwork conducted in Havana during the late 1990s and on interviews with sports
officials, athletes, and coaches since then, this article examines Cuban officials
efforts to transform Cuban sport from a modern, centralized bureaucratic institution to a revenue generating industry within the neoliberal, capitalist, competitive,
and post-Soviet world. In particular, I concentrate on the strategies pursued by
Cuban sports officials in their efforts to maintain world-class sporting excellence
and the ramifications of the emergence of Cuban sport as an export industry to
provide a small suggestion of how legitimacy of the state was maintained and
what the future of Cuban sport may hold.
Key Words: state legitimacy, sport, symbolic capital, Cuba

Two grandmotherly ladies, Inz and Amelda, sit on their balcony overlooking one of Havanas main thoroughfares sharing their experiences
and wisdom with me over a cup of tea. Inz turns to me and asks if I
know what the three successes of the Revolution are. She gravely
informs me that those three successes are health, education, and sport.
Then, her eyes beginning to twinkle, she asks if I know the three
failings of the Revolution. Amelda starts clucking in disapproval,
apparently knowing what is coming. Inz tries to solemnly tell me that
the three failings are breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but her smirk gives
away the joke and she starts cackling as she finishes the punch line.
194

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

Cuban Sport and State Legitimacy

195

This joke was a common one retold in quiet company throughout

Havana during my ethnographic fieldwork there in 1997 and 1998. It
was a well-worn and well-known piece of humor by that time because
of the economic crisis the residents of Havana faced during the 1990s.
Inz and Amelda probably first heard it in the nearby agricultural
market because the two elderly ladies did not go out much. The joke
identifies both the immediate failings that undercut claims to legitimacy and also social programs that clearly provide weight to state
claims of representing the national interests of all Cubans. The heart
of the joke itself cuts to the core of the matter: how do states obtain
and maintain legitimacy?
It is these successes that interest me here. They remain three pillars
upon which state legitimacy rests amongst the Cuban populace.
Cuban health care is renowned worldwide with lower death rates per
birth than many major United States cities. Its education system is
widely regarded as excellent with basic indicators among the highest
in the world. Cuban sport, especially its track and field, baseball, and
boxing, is also recognized as world-class. While health and education
are important and have relatively straightforward benefits, how sport
lends itself to the legitimacy of state rule is not as obvious. Yet socialist
states in particular drew upon and continue to use sport as an important aspect of their legitimacy. It is the third of these successes that is
examined in greater detail here.
Data for this examination draw on ten years of multi-sited ethnographic research. Two extended stints of fieldwork conducted in 1997
1999 and in 20062007 in Cubaalong with shorter research in a
variety of sites throughout North America, the Caribbean, and Europe
provided the core of the data. The extended fieldwork conducted in the
late 1990s centered upon the permutations of and contestations over
Cuban identity as embodied and expressed within Cuban baseball
(Carter in press). More recent fieldwork in Cuba has focused upon
Cubans understandings and experiences of the transnational connections of Cuban sports migrants, the impact these lengthy absences have
on family members, and the state policies and controls of transnational
sport migration. Fieldwork involved attending as many baseball games
as possible at various skill and age levels; participating in the debates
held in various peas deportivas (Carter 2001; Eastman 2007); and conducting interviews with journalists, officials in the Comisin Nacional de
Bisbol, Cubadeportes SA, and the Instituto Nacional de Deportes,
Educacin Fsica y Recreacin (INDER), as well as athletes, coaches, and
fans. These interviews focused on a number of baseball-related topics
such as state controls, migration, athlete and coach development, ethos
and values taught through participation, and other related topics.

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

196

T. F. Carter

This article considers the problem of legitimacy faced by socialist

states and their relationship with and use of sport by using the current Cuban state as a case study. Of particular concern in this article
is the use of sport to support revolutionary claims of state legitimacy
and the importance of state control over the infrastructure and practices of sport. The problem of state legitimacy, the roles sport played in
state socialism, and the post-Soviet changes to Cuban sport structures
are considered. In particular, it is argued that Cuban sports officials
have created a system of control that encourages a small proportion of
sports professionals to display socialist ideals to reap fiscal rewards
toward the end or after their athletic careers have ended. The article
concludes by discussing the current status of Cuban sports programs
and possible future strategies for maintaining its position as a prominent symbol of the Cuban state.

On socialist state legitimacy

Socialism is a uniquely modern form of organizing a state. Its secularist ideology draws upon ideals, symbols, and practices that are specific
to the twentieth century even as those remaining socialist states evolve
in the early part of the twenty-first century. Because all socialist states
were revolutionarymeaning they emerged out of armed struggle
against an existing statethe symbolic capital of national histories
was sometimes invalid as legitimating discourses of the new socialist
states. Revolutions, by their very nature, are social, political, and economic upheavals, often destroying existing power hierarchies in favor
of new configurations. These upheavals are major obstacles for nascent
revolutionary states precisely because they require reconstituted social
relations. A major aspect of the challenge a revolutionary state faces is
that the discourses informing the symbolic capital legitimating a
former states rule cannot be used to justify its own legitimacy precisely because the justification for the revolution is predicated upon the
overturning of the former state. The symbolic capital that validates
any state is created in a dialectic process between official ideological
and popular discourse in which divisions and commonalities are naturalized so that both become part of the taken-for-granted daily life yet
remain sufficiently flexible to respond to changing political and
economic circumstances. This process is part of what the state masks,
of course; to make this a transparent process would render the state
seemingly inept at best and impotent at worst (Abrams 1988). Consequently, the legitimating symbolic capital of socialist states was predicated more upon the control and employment of discourse than on
historical practices which were illegitimate and therefore could not be

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

Cuban Sport and State Legitimacy

197

used in the new political economic system. Ironically, this struggle was
not ordinarily contested within the hallowed halls of government but in
everyday social life where consensus is built. Furthermore, because
reorganization was inevitable (according to socialist ideology), the production of such discourses, including reinterpretations of earlier histories, takes on tremendous significance (Watson 1994).
The socialist reorganization of society resulted in state legitimacy
resting precariously upon a self-consciously constructed control over the
discursive realm (Verdery 1991; Burawoy and Lukacs 1992). European
revolutionary leaders could not legitimately draw upon the historical
nationalist discourses of statehood because it was these very discourses that they had challenged and overthrown.1 Eastern European
state socialism developed along a specific historical trajectory that
belies any sort of universal model for socialist revolution. In other
socialist revolutions around the world the dynamic differed. Many
coalesced out of anti-colonial movements and involved the overthrow
of imperialist powers. Cuba was one such revolution.
The initial challenges for the Cuban Revolutions leaders, then,
were the establishment of a discourse that legitimated their overthrow of the existing state, the establishment of revolutionary practices that reorganized social relations, and the creation of the requisite
symbolic capital legitimating all of these changes (Medin 1990; Bunck
1994). Revolutionary leaders could and did draw on historical
discourses that legitimated struggle against a tyrannical ruler, often
seen as a puppet of a foreign power. These contemporary leaders
framed their struggles as the continuation of earlier nationalist
projects of independence, struggles that began against the Spanish
but were co-opted by the United States during the 1898 War for Independence (Prez 1988; Thomas 1998). In each case, despite Cubas
democratic constitution, the Cuban state was ruled by a singular dictator with the extensive and explicit support of the United States.
Drawing upon earlier failed revolutionary moments in Cuba, especially the 1898 and 1933 Revolutions, revolution became an unfulfilled
historical process until Castros forces succeeded in driving Batista
from the country and consolidated their victory. In constructing a discourse that stretched back through failed historical struggles, the
Castro-led Revolution presented itself as the latest and ultimately
successful struggle for independence from foreign rule. Quite simply,
the Cuban Revolution was the culmination of the centuries-long struggle for national independence and not a singular event that invalidated the historical struggles that preceded it. But that revolution
was nationalist in character, and the turn toward a socialist revolution required the recasting of some Cuban symbolism.

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

198

T. F. Carter

The utopian aspirations of socialist states presented an acute problem of how to bridge the chasm between ideological rhetoric and lived
reality. Three basic strategies were open to socialist leaders: (1) initiate
radical transformations of reality to bring it closer to socialist ideology,
(2) make the populace accept the difference between the two as inevitable and normal, and (3) convince the populace with the help of symbolic discourses that reality actually corresponds to socialist ideology
(Lane 1981: 27). Although all three strategies were used by socialist
states throughout the twentieth century, the last option was particularly apt because it could portray the present as actually existing
socialism and society as a happy reality. It also stabilized power without the risk of radical change by presenting ideas in sensual form
rather than in direct statements about lived experience. Consequently,
socialist leaders had to find new symbolic discourses and practices
that edified and reinforced the reorganized society. One highly significant symbolic practice that the Revolution harnessed was sport
because it had no historical connections with any previous Cuban
state, yet it played a prominent role in independence struggles against
the Spanish (Prez 1999: 7583). Much of the leaders attention was
focused upon inculcating new bodily practices and values in the
population.
The concern over the formation of proper socialist persons necessitated
the penetration of various everyday activities not normally associated
with political supervision of the state. Sport was one of those activities
that drew particular interest precisely because of its ambiguous
nature that could be harnessed by any ideological discourse. Top-down
sport structures are by no means unique to socialist states, but socialist states in particular made explicit use of sport.2 The recent academic
interest in Chinese sport illustrates both the contested ideological
nature of sport and the implementation of a top-down approach used
by a post-Soviet era socialist state to shape national identity and consumption practices, as well as the production of elite athletes (Hwang
and Jarvie 2004; Morris 2004; Maguire 2005; Lozada 2006; Zhang and
Silk 2006).

Socialism and sport

It could be argued that humanitys most reliable, continuous, and comprehensive metaphor for life and its meaning is the body. As a symbol,
the body is a rich reservoir of meaning but is not inherently political in
itself. Rather it is an ideological variable (Hoberman 1984: 53) that
has the capacity to express the positive feeling of community and
social solidarity as well as racial intolerance and class struggle. The

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

Cuban Sport and State Legitimacy

199

ritualistic display of bodies serves to represent society as a whole and

legitimates the leadership of that society as the promoter, protector,
and creator of such a society. Multiple bodies moving in concert producing prearranged, choreographed forms en masse become saturated
with political meaning. The ritual parades of socialist workers and
other members of the proletarian state played an important role in all
socialist states, whether as part of an annual ritual cycle, such as the
May Day parades at Red Square in the Soviet Union or Felvonulsi
Square in Hungary, respectively, or as an independent event such as
the Turnund Sportsfests in the GDR (Roubal 2003: 2). Mass performances involving thousands of bodies certainly served to reinforce
socialist ideology, yet it was the individual athlete competing in sport
that proved especially iconic for socialist leaders.
Sport was an ideal vehicle for the inculcation of socialist ideals and
transforming people into model socialists. Socialist leaders use of
sport transformed its ludic qualities into a compulsory activity necessary to overcome mental and material obstacles in the pursuit of a
utopian socialist future (Girginov 2004: 27). Whether through mass
gymnastic performances (Roubal 2003; MacDonald 2004) or via the
preeminence given to international sporting success, the strength,
youth, beauty, power, and discipline of athletes bodies were transformed into symbols of the socialist state (Brownell 1995). In doing so,
sport fulfilled four vital functions in the reformation of socialist
society: (1) it served as a means of ensuring the state had healthy and
obedient citizens, (2) it provided a form of group identification and promoted a collective culture, (3) it acted as an engine for urgent social and
collective action, and (4) it (re)produced allegiance to the party-state by
ensuring everyones place in the society (Girginov 2004: 34). These four
functions served to advance the notion of a people-as-one image equating the people with the proletariat and the proletariat with the party,
thereby allowing the party-as-the-people to be identified with state
leadership. This process of dual identification is best captured via the
symbolism of the body.
It is an old strategy linking the symbolism of the body with the
state. The health of Medieval monarchs was frequently taken to literally be the health of the state; if the monarch was ill, so was the country. Modern body symbolism across the political spectrum, from
fascism to democratic capitalism, follows the same equation of linking
leaders health with the health of the state (Hoberman 1984: 11). But
it is also the physical prowess of a countrys athletes that political
leaders draw upon to create the link between corporeal and state
power in the modern era. It is evident in the old Leni Riefenstahl films
glorifying the Nazi regime; in the demonstrated health of American

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

200

T. F. Carter

presidents when they jog in public, throw out the first pitch to start a
baseball season, and invite American champions in all sports to the
White House; and in Castros greeting of Olympic champions at the
airport. The dynamism, energy, power, and discipline evident in athletes bodies become the dynamism, power, and strength of not just
state leaders but the state itself.
The use of athletes bodies as iconic representations of the vitality of
the state was not directed solely at a states population. It also provided
a vehicle for legitimization among other states in the global political
economy. A principal means for accomplishing state recognition in the
late twentieth century was to excel in an international sporting competition, most especially the Olympics (Hoberman 1984). It was
through this route that socialist states initially gained international
recognition in global political bodies. East Germanys dramatic
successes in the 1948 Olympic Games led to its recognition by other
international bodies such as the United Nations. Similarly, the Soviet
Unions emphasis on sporting achievements not only reproduced the
rivalries of the Cold War but provided a tangible result in which it regularly outperformed its rivals (Riordan 1999). Indeed, it was the only
arena in which the Soviet bloc was able to demonstrate superiority
over the worlds industrialized capitalist nations (Riordan 1993: 42).
Defeating an athlete from a rival country provided a ready-made symbolic discourse articulating the superiority not only of one athlete over
another but the superiority of one political and economic system over
another within the Cold War context.
Like all socialist states, from its inception Cuba has relied heavily
on the symbolic capital of its sporting prowess, most especially its
athletes international successes, to legitimate the states presence in
the global community of states. The Revolutionary Cuban state made
explicit use of sport from its early days and continues to make explicit
use of sport in a variety of ways. Victorious guerilla leaders demonstrated their Cubanness by engaging in exhibition baseball games and
attending the International League Championship finals between
Havana and Minneapolis in the first heady months of the Revolutions
triumph. These initial symbolic gestures of leaders participation in
popular sporting events reinforced the discourse that the revolution
was in fact Cuban. Indeed, the leaders credited sport for training them
for guerrilla warfare.
Do you know how we learned to fight the war? You cant believe that we
learned to fight the war in the Sierra Maestra; we learned to fight the
war when we were young men like you all. Do you know how? Do you
want me to tell you? Well, we learned to fight the war playing baseball,

Cuban Sport and State Legitimacy

201

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

playing basketball, playing soccer; we played all sports, swam in the sea,
swam in the rivers and climbed mountains (Castro quoted in Ruiz
Aguilera 1991: 93).3

The Revolutionary state did more than just use sport in a symbolic
manner, however. Prior to the Revolution, sport was racially,
geographically, and economically segregated across the island with
more opportunities for the urban, white elites in Havana than anyone
else. The new government created the Instituto Nacional de Deportes,
Educacin Fsica y Recreacin (INDER)4 on 23 February 1961, to oversee and develop all aspects of sport and recreation, from childrens
physical education to the development of international championship
quality athletes.
One of INDERs first acts was to organize a national baseball team
to play in the 1962 World Championships in San Jos, Costa Rica.
Cuba dominated the tournament, reinforcing the sentiment at home
that Cuban baseball was the best in the world. Cuba had never won
an international tournament in any sport before the Revolution.
Cubas previous success was limited to a handful of professional baseball players and a couple of boxers. The only Olympic success came at
the turn of the twentieth century from a Cuban fencer, Ramn Fonst,
who lived and trained in Paris. Successful international athletes
simply were not plentiful on the island because sporting facilities and
opportunities were not readily available to the majority of the Cuban
populace before 1959. Sport as a system was virtually nonexistent at
the advent of the Revolution. Starting with a few hundred facilities
scattered throughout the major cities of Cuba, INDER has methodically
constructed sport facilities throughout the country to provide a venue for
all aspiring athletes. With nearly 10,000 venues built by 1990 for a variety of sports, the state literally constructed the infrastructure required to
inculcate the bodily practices and values Revolutionary leaders desired.
Concentrating particularly on youth sport and childrens physical
education, many of these facilities cater to a broad age range and cultivate not only necessary physical skills but also help to instil socialist
ideals, such as volunteerism, dedication, and sacrifice.
In addition to providing numerous mass participation programs for
the Cuban populace, since 1960 INDER has used those programs to
identify likely talent for development into world-class athletes, who
would demonstratively prove the vitality of the Cuban state. Since
that initial success in San Jos, Cuban sport has dominated international tournaments, frequently winning medals and championships in
a variety of disciplines. Men such as Teofilo Stevenson and Alberto
Juantorena and women like Ana Fidel Quiroz became more than simply

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

202

T. F. Carter

Olympic medalists. The personal qualities of Cuban athletes become

qualities of the state embodied in the athletes. They are no longer personal attributes but social attributesattributes of all of socialist
Cuba.
Embodying the Revolution, Cuban athletes represent the power,
strength, tenacity, and youth that is required for world-class sport.
The twentieth-century socialist world was always presented as a
young one that stood at the brink of a happy era . . . that belongs to
children (Roubal 2003: 21). It is no coincidence that Cubas international athletes are euphemistically and ideologically referred to and
revered as the Children of the Revolution. The state begets these
athletes upon the nation who become the product of this union while
simultaneously these children become the fetish of the state. As children, these athletes are stripped of any social power their individual
bodies may be able to produce in Cuban society while simultaneously
coming to represent a broader affirmation of the nation-state as
authority figure. In a dialectical manner, the athletes youth, power,
tenacity, and dynamism become emblematic of the social processes the
state is attempting to engineer, which are in turn confirmed by the
socialist systems ability to produce world-class athletes whose skill,
determination, and strength are the result of their upbringing, training, and overall love of the state. Furthermore, the state retains an
authority over athletes lives that renders the athletes politically
silent and powerless precisely because the state makes all important
decisions for them as any childs parental figure would do. This discursive construction remained unchallenged until outside circumstances
forced officials to reconsider the roles sport plays in Cuban society and
athletes to reassess their position in Revolutionary society.

New rules: The post-Soviet era

The Cuban states position changed rapidly and dramatically in the
1990s. The sudden shift in the global political economic context
dramatically affected domestic Cuban affairs resulting in what became
known as El Periodo Especial or The Special Period in Times of Peace.
This crisis became a struggle for survival at every level of Cuban society, from the state down to the everyday concerns of individual
Cubans, as it effectively amounted to war-time rationing without
state-level hostilities. Individual responses resulted in increasingly
diverse strategies involving the movement of capital away from
centralized state control. Responses to the implosion of the Cuban economy also varied widely from industry to enterprise. Some processes
begun under the Rectification Process were accelerated while others

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

Cuban Sport and State Legitimacy

203

were abandoned (compare Azicri 2000: 2049 with Cole 1998). These
state-led adjustments in the 1980s were a response to shifting global
and domestic economic contexts and included the diversification of foreign trading partners and of foreign investment in Cuban industry
and the creation of new enterprises to specifically attract and exploit
foreign investment, capital, and expertise.
The demise of the Soviet-led economic bloc resulted in the loss of
from 80 to 85 percent of Cubas external trade and 50 percent of its
purchasing power (Carmona Baez 2004: 86). All previously existing
trade agreements had been shredded, and everything was open to
renegotiation thereby accelerating and rapidly transforming a process
of change already under way. Foreign investment strategies concentrated primarily on activities related to the use of natural resources,
such as tourism, mining, petroleum, and agriculture (Domnguez
2004; Monreal 2004; Prez Villanueva 2004). Newly created enterprises, while remaining state-owned, were not centrally controlled
entities; rather, they represented diverse strategies in which ministries competed with one another for highly sought after hard currency.
Tourism replaced sugar as the islands primary source of hard currency (Monreal 2002). Tourism in particular became a major field of
competition between the armed forces and the Ministry of Interior,
both of which set up companies (Gaviota and Cubanacan) to develop
Cubas burgeoning tourism trade. Prices were mandated by the state
so that these companies could not compete domestically for tourists
money while they are in Cuba. Instead, each competes with its rivals
for transnational corporations financing and expertise within the global tourism industry and through the marketing of tourist packages
outside of Cuba. Despite this shift from an agricultural to a service
economy, the country essentially remains an exporter of natural
resources.
The Cuban state positioned itself, through its various institutions,
to act as the primary distributor of imports within the domestic economy while maintaining a monopoly of exports in the global economy,
thereby functioning as a gatekeeper state (Corrales 2004). Such
states fragment the economy into different sectors of varying profitability and then determine which citizens shall have access to each
respective sector. By doing so, state officials solidify and even increase
their control of the small and profitable sectors connected to foreign
currencies. As a gatekeeper, the payoff for cooperating with the state
elicits loyalty by controlling access to those sectors involved in foreign
trade (e.g., tourism, agriculture, music, and biotechnology).5 The
establishment of such a state requires a transformation of party
apparatchiks into business managers of their specific industry, and

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

204

T. F. Carter

behind such reforms high-ranking government officials concentrate

their own power by determining who can benefit from market activities
and by how much.
Managers pursued a variety of strategies both to increase efficiency
and to create hard currency income for their specific industries. These
same state-owned institutions also controlled all hard currency earnings of Cuban products sold overseas, including labor, by acting as the
central employment agency for foreign firms desiring Cuban labor
either in or outside Cuba. In so doing, state institutions tapped into
essential products vital to the Cuban economy, such as remittances
and tourism, through the introduction of dollar stores providing
scarce goods, and by entering into joint ventures with foreign firms
willing to invest in Cuba, again with an emphasis on tourism (Espino
1994; Henthorne and Miller 2003.) By 1993 all state-run enterprises,
including sport, had to become economically viable or face being shut
down.
All sport industries were supervised directly by INDER until 1993
when INDER officials decreed that each sport had to become economically viable for its continuation. In response to the circumstances of
the Special Period, INDER officials created a state-owned corporation,
CubaDeportes, S.A., whose purpose was to turn Cubas prolific sports
enterprises into profit-making enterprises in the global market.
Recognizing that the hard-line position of Socialism or death! was
likely to end with the death of socialism in Cuba, the Cuban government
entered into joint ventures with multinational sporting goods companies to cover the costs of Cubas national teams competing in international competition. The primary functions of this corporation were to
negotiate contracts and deal with the import-export aspects of all
sports related business for INDER. Officials at CubaDeportes adopted
specific strategies that drew upon Cubas recognized sports expertise
by exporting its highly educated, trained, and skilled sport workers
while shutting down the export aspects of the countrys sporting goods
manufacturing.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Cuba exported its baseball equipment to other Latin American countries. Pablo, one of the many sales
agents for CubaDeportes, insisted that the quality of these goods was
sufficient to compete with Mizuno, Wilson, and Rawlings, three major
sporting goods manufacturers. This sales strategy had success: the Central American and Caribbean Games chose to use Cuban equipment in
the 1970s instead of Rawlings. But Cubas repositioning in the global
market of sporting goods and the policy that all industries must be
self-sufficient in terms of hard currency resulted in the termination of
the exportation of sporting goods, according to Pablo. Batos brand is

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

Cuban Sport and State Legitimacy

205

still produced for domestic use in the Cuban leagues but is no longer
exported, and production levels have been seriously curtailed.
Prior to the Special Period, the Cubans had provided all of their
own training facilities and equipment or acquired it from other socialist states. But as the economy continued deteriorating, CubaDeportes
entered into various agreements with sporting goods companies to fund
Cubas participation in international tournaments. These agreements
were presented to the public as taking advantage of Cubas athletic
talents to promote socialist ideals through the patriotic fervor of Cubas
international athletes. The apparent glaring contradiction of capitalist
corporations sponsoring socialist athletes so they could train outside
of Cuba and compete for the prestige of Cuba in international events
was a compromise that the Cuban sports authorities reluctantly
made. Despite this compromise, these authorities averred that the
acceptance of corporate sponsorship was not a change in ideology but a
means of exploiting the capitalist system to extend their socialist
national agenda. Conrado Martnez,6 then president of INDER, said
that there was nothing extraordinary in this dramatic shift.
What is new is the name of the firm on the shirts of our athletes during
the long European season of competition. We are taking advantage of
possibilities that they offer us, thanks to the world class of our sport,
and that we threw away previously. Well continue to do this whenever
it wont hurt Cuban sport. What will be tried is the exploitation of a
characteristic advertising path that does not imply a change in our politics or that our athletes will be sports merchants.

Despite protests that such a maneuver was in no way a compromise of

socialist values, these agreements between state and sporting goods
corporations clearly produced contradictions in Cuban socialist ideology and in individuals economic realities within Cuba. For example,
recognizing the vicarious value various organizations garnered from
the Cubans presence at international sports festivals, Cuban officials
negotiated deals with international governing bodies like the International Olympic Committee and with transnational corporations to
defray the costs of sending a representative contingent.
On those occasions when negotiations failed, the Cubans refused to
participate, even in events in which they had a long illustrious
history. One such instance was the 2002 Central American and
Caribbean Games in San Salvador, El Salvador. Cuban authorities
refused to send athletes to El Salvador because of alleged threats of
violence from the disaffected minority centered in Miami, Florida, but
some observers suspected that the Cubans also feared the risk of

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

206

T. F. Carter

prominent athletes defections.7 It remained unacknowledged that

many of the Cuban athletes who would have participated in those
Games did not have sponsorship deals in place for this particular
event because many of their contracts had expired and renewals were
still being negotiated.8 In short, Cuban non-attendance was an
economic decision and not a political one in which any potential gains
in symbolic capital were heavily outweighed by the economic costs of
participation.
Today, transnational sporting goods corporations continue to supply
Cubas elite athletes with their equipment and travel costs. The seemingly rapid acceptance of corporate sponsors for Cubas national
squads shows the degree of erosion in the socialist discourse of state
officials in the face of practical needs. While the degree to which capitalist practices have penetrated Cuban society is a provocative and
debatable question (Prez-Lpez 1997; Peters and Scarpaci 1998;
Jatar Hausmann 1999; Peters 2000; Togores and Garca 2004;
Barbassa 2005), it is abundantly clear that Cuban sports authorities
have maneuvered themselves and their sports into lucrative contracts
with a variety of multinational corporations. The irony is that these
contracts place Cuban bureaucrats, identified by party apparatchiks
as good Cuban socialists, in positions where they can exploit their
connections in a capitalist environment. These administrators negotiate
multi-million dollar contracts with some of the largest transnational
corporations in the world acting as agents of the state. In doing so,
they enter the capitalist workplace while the state maintains its
control over the local economy, thereby assisting the states maintenance of its control over the availability of imports in Cubas domestic
economy. As a result Cuban administrators find themselves in the difficult yet potentially lucrative position of having personal contacts
with multi-million dollar corporations and access to consumer goods
and brands desired by Cuban consumers in the domestic market, all
while presenting a faade of socialist ideals.
Unlike other industries that have entered into joint ventures,
however, the Cuban sports industry does not involve the importation of
goods or services. There are no signs of such institutional agreements
with sporting goods companies in Cuba. The marginal visibility of
sporting goods is primarily evident when returning individuals bring
back commodities for familial consumption. Sporting goods retailers
established a commercial presence in 2001, yet the prices of such goods
are far beyond the means of the vast majority of Cubans. Instead, the
relationship is most prominently evident when Cuba competes in international tournaments, although Cuba has not hosted a significant
international sporting event since 1991.9 In a reversal of the usual joint

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

Cuban Sport and State Legitimacy

207

venture structure, sponsorship agreements between CubaDeportes and

various transnational sporting goods corporations involve the provision
of Cuban services overseasthat is, athletes in competition, in
exchange for advertising on a globally recognized product of high quality, Cuban athletes. Sponsorship has become an important income
generator for Cubas sports programs. The Japanese firm Yaohan
funded the womens national volleyball team, who were Olympic
Champions in Barcelona, in the mid-1990s. Mizuno, a Japanese sporting goods firm, has provided the national baseball teams equipment,
including bats, spikes, gloves, and uniforms, over the last decade. The
Spanish company Larios initially funded the training and other
expenses incurred by the Cuban track and field teams during the 1993
and 1994 European track and field seasons, only to be replaced by
Adidas in subsequent years. Adidas took on the entire sponsorship of
all Cuban national teams in 2001, including baseball.
The pervasive acceptance of corporate sponsors of Cuban sport
became glaringly evident at a 1999 exhibition baseball game between
the Cuban and Venezuelan national squads. This exhibition game was
rife with open political symbolism as the purpose of the game was to
celebrate the growing friendship between Cuba and Venezuela,
especially the burgeoning relationship between Fidel Castro and Hugo
Chvez. Both heads of state took active roles in the spectacle. Castro
managed the Cuban side while Chvez actually took part in the game
by both pitching and playing first base. Each head of state also led
their respective contingents onto the field of play prior to the game
itself. As Castro led the Cuban national team onto the diamond in
Estadio Latinoamericano, he wore the teams warm-up jacket and
baseball cap. The cap was identical to the ones the Cuban team wore
when they played the Baltimore Orioles in an exhibition series earlier
that year. Those red caps bore two symbols: the prominent white C
on the front and on the left side, and just above the ear, the corporate
logo of New Era Corporation, a baseball cap manufacturer who provided
the caps expressly for the Baltimore-Cuba series. That Castro would
be seen wearing any article of clothing with a capitalist corporate logo
on it is striking. It is even more suggestive that he did so in front of
over 50,000 Cubans in the stadium. Even more striking is Cubans
apparent nonchalance to Castro appearing in national gear that had
more capitalist symbols than national ones. Further evidence of this
shift was perceptible during Castros recent convalescence in 20062007
while he recovered from stomach surgery. Videos offering proof that
he still lived showed him in a Cuban tracksuit with the Adidas logo
readily apparent. The presence of a capitalist transnational corporate
logo remained ignored.

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

208

T. F. Carter

The breadth of transnational corporate penetration of the Cuban

economy and the states active role in trying to limit the extent of this
penetration is striking when it directly affects a pillar on which the
states legitimacy rests. Corporate sponsorship is not the only aspect
of capitalist transformation of the Cuban sports industry. A related
yet separate strategy being pursued simultaneously is the exportation
of Cuban expertise. This strategy involves the exportation of Cuban
sports expertise in the form of both athletes competing in foreign
leagues and coaches working for a variety of foreign sports programs
at the Olympic and professional level.
The extent of this export of Cuban coaching expertise is difficult to
ascertain. Statistics are sketchy and often contradictory. For example,
Pettavino and Pye report that there were 150 Cuban coaches working
overseas in 1992 (1994: 150). Yet in 1997 interviews with CubaDeportes
officials, they provided evidence showing that there were 150 Cuban
sport specialists working in Mexico alone in preparation for the 1992
Olympic Games in Barcelona. Since Barcelona, the scope of Cuban
migrants working overseas in sport has expanded both in terms of
numbers and destinations. Cubans have worked with a large variety
of Olympic contingents. The Irish, Chinese, Thai, Indian, Spanish,
and Mexican boxing teams have all had Cuban coaches since the
collapse of the USSR. In addition to boxing, several Olympic judo,
baseball, and volleyball teams have had Cuban coaches. In 1998 Radio
Havana reported that in 1997 there were over 600 trainers and
coaches working in thirty-three countries, including Spain, Italy,
South Africa, Ghana, Indonesia, and Japan. Another official at
CubaDeportes told me Cuban coaches in volleyball, track and field,
boxing, and baseball, primarily, were working in approximately sixty
different countries in 1998. For baseball alone, according to CubaDeportes representatives and Cuban journalists, former baseball players
now work as coaches teaching baseball skills and knowledge in Mexico,
Nicaragua, Colombia, Ecuador, Italy, and Japan. Sports personnel
were still exported as of 2000, including an entire soccer team that was
sent to Germany to play as a team in a minor German professional
league, three levels below the Bundesliga, the premier professional
league in Germany.
Overall, though, the majority of coaches for all sports worked in
Latin America, with over 100 coaches in Mexico and over ninety in
Colombia per year during the 1990s. Since 1999, many have gone to
Venezuela because of the increasingly amicable political and economic
relationship between the two governments. In 2001 there were as many
as 600 sports specialists working in Venezuela as part of an economic
agreement that brings an estimated half billion dollarsworth of

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

Cuban Sport and State Legitimacy

209

oil per year. Journalists and CubaDeportes officials reported in more

recent interviews estimates between five and ten thousand sports personnel working in Venezuela alone in 2006 with another estimated
three and a half thousand in Mexico. More recently, according to
CubaDeportes officials, Cubas sports programs (baseball, boxing, volleyball, and others) now operate self-sufficientlythat is, solely on
each programs hard currency earnings from these labor exports and
its joint venture sponsorships.

The future of Cuban sport

The economic viability of Cuban sports programs is essential for
Cubas national teams to remain important symbols of the state.
Cuban sport has undergone significant restructuring due to circumstances beyond the control of state officials. These changes were
carefully considered because of the intimate connections between the
state and sport. Some sports have lost their preeminence in Cuba.
INDER has heavily invested in others because of the perceived lucrative contracts that Cuban success might bring. Soccer is one such
example. Soccer was never a popular sport in Cuba, yet in recent years
the Cuban soccer program, through international exchanges with the
Argentines, has rapidly improved. The ultimate goal, here, is to make
the FIFA World Cup finals, a quadrennial tournament that rivals the
Olympics in worldwide attention. Cuba narrowly lost out to making
the cut for Germany 2006.10 Considering that fifteen years ago Cuba
did not even field a national team in international competitions,
Cuban soccer is rapidly becoming another success.
Equally, Cuban officials realized that any symbolic capital produced
through athletic success needed to be converted to economic capital
wherever possible. The exportation of Cuban expertise prior to 1991
consisted solely of cultural exchanges designed to promote goodwill
between countries. After the collapse of the Soviet trading bloc, acquiring hard currency quickly became paramount and Cubans needed to tap
into existing resources that did not require years of development or
great initial outlay of capital. They needed immediate, lucrative
exchanges in which hard currency could be brought into the governments coffers. In effect, the state became a sports agency, representing
both athletes and coaches to potential overseas clients. Cuban athletes
and coaches leapt at the chance to earn hard currency and live overseas,
and even though a minimum of eighty percent of any salary earned
went to CubaDeportes, individuals retained the remaining percentage
after their costs of living overseas were subtracted. This amount,
invariably, was significantly more than their annual salaries in Cuba.

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

210

T. F. Carter

The negotiated relationships with various transnational sporting

goods companies were something of a Faustian pact necessitated by
the economic circumstances of the post-Soviet era. The use of equipment with prominent capitalist corporate symbols subsequently calls
the relevance of Cuban sport into question as legitimate symbolic
capital in the implementation of statecraft. Such equipment is
intended for use solely outside of Cuba, yet, even so, sports officials are
acutely aware that the sporting nation of Cuba can hardly be represented by a corporation. So while conceding to global realities that they
cannot afford to provide everything their vaunted sports programs
require and maintain the stratospheric level of athletic success the
country has enjoyed for nearly five decades, they do recognize that in
international competitions, Cuba must remain prominent, athletically
and on their uniforms, because this symbolic capital remains central
to the legitimating constructs of the state.
The marketing and exportation of Cuban sports skills and knowledge is part of the transformation of the class structure that Cuban
society has been undergoing these past fifteen years (Barbera et al.
2004; Prieto 2004). Many Cubans have changed careers and made use
of a variety of strategies to obtain hard currency. Although returning
Cubans engaged in sport do not have the same domestic opportunities
for earning hard currency as others do (because of their required
training regimens), the chance to work overseas provides an opportunity for substantial changes of fortune and, ultimately, class mobility.
The costs of this reorientation are and will be significant. Having
the chance to live and work overseas provides many Cubans with
opportunities that the majority of Cubans do not have. Once overseas,
the state has less control over an individuals movements, and several
Cubans have taken advantage of that situation by refusing to return
to the island. Already several prominent Cubans now compete for
other countries. Others have returned significantly wealthier in relation to their comrades and neighbors. In a move that reinforces these
emerging class-based divisions yet is designed to counteract the
increasingly frequent departures of elite athletes in their prime,
INDER announced that effective 1 March 2007, any Olympic or World
Championship medalist would receive a monthly pension for life. The
amounts vary depending upon which medal the athlete earns. Gold
medalists will be eligible for an additional monthly stipend of 300
convertible Cuban pesos (CUC) or 1,000 pesos (moneda nacional) paid
in the currency of the athletes choice. Silver medalists will receive 200
CUC or 700 pesos and bronze medalists 150 CUC or 700 pesos.11
Whether this stipend is to be paid per medal or is based upon the most
valued one an athlete earns in his or her career remains to be seen.

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

Cuban Sport and State Legitimacy

211

Although this new policy has the potential to affect many of Cubas
most highly prized athletes, it will have little effect on its baseball
players because the International Olympic Committee removed baseball from its sanctioned events. Consequently, baseball players have
virtually no opportunities to earn this stipend because there is no
regular World Championshipcaliber event for baseball unless the
recently inaugurated World Baseball Classic achieves such status.12
The costs will also directly impact Cuban sport and its success in
international tournaments. Cuban coaches training foreign athletes in
various disciplines are bound to affect Cuban sport itself. They are
expert at producing world-class athletes with limited resources, something many national sporting bodies desire. It would not be surprising
to see other countries close the gap between Cuban performance levels
and their own in the next decade or so. If the frequency and level of
Cuban success at international competition lessens, then the value of
sport as symbolic capital is also likely to be affected. Such a development
would obviously impact Cuban sports ability to serve as a legitimating
symbol of the socialist state.
At the same time, the future of Cuban sport is only partially dependent on its ongoing association with the current socialist state. It is
presumptuous to believe that Castros eventual death will lead to the
collapse of the socialist state and a post-socialist era in Cuba. Whatever
form the post-Castro Cuban state takes, the various relationships that
have been cultivated with transnational corporations and international non-governmental bodies are built on personal relationships
that middle-level administrators have fostered over the past decade.
These particular individuals are not essential for the maintenance of
the state and could very easily transition into new roles if the socialist
state were to dissipate. It is not safe to assume that the death of Castro
would herald a transnational capitalist free-for-all for the services of
various athletes and coaches managed by those same middle-level
bureaucrats. Such a dilution of the value of Cuban sport would leave
any future state with much less symbolic capital to draw upon in the
implementation of statecraft. Thus, it is likely that state officials
would act to protect Cuban sport from unfettered depredations by
transnational corporations.

Notes
Received 12 February 2006; accepted 22 January 2007.
Support for this article was provided by the British Academy, which permitted the most
recent fieldwork in Cuba. Early versions were much improved by critical comments
from Susan Brownell, Tracey Heatherington, Martin Bruhns, Eriberto Lozada, and

212

T. F. Carter

Hastings Donnan. I also thank the two excellent anonymous reviewers who provided
suggestions for improvement and additional resources. As always, any errors are mine
and mine alone.

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

Address correspondence to Thomas F. Carter, Chelsea School, University of Brighton,

Hillbrow, 1 Denton Road, Eastbourne BN20 7SR, United Kingdom. E-mail: t.f.carter@
bton.ac.uk
1. There is a specific temporal and spatial geography distinct to each revolution,
whether or not it is socialist (Knight 1994: 41). For the purposes of this article, my
comments are restricted to socialist revolutions.
2. For an example of a non-socialist state deploying sport in a top-down approach see
Silversteins discussion of how the French state used sport to attempt to control discontented ethnic minority groups in France (2004: 121150).
3. All translations are my own.
4. The National Institute of Sport, Physical Education and Recreation.
5. For recent discussions of how each of the mentioned industries (other than sport)
are structured in this manner, see the following: For tourism, consult Garca
Jimnez 2005 and Colantonio and Potter 2006; for agriculture, see Roman 2004 and
Bas 2006; for music and art, read Thomas 2005, Remba 2006, and especially
Fernandes 2006; for the biotech industry, see Majoli Viani 2005.
6. Because Martnez was a public figure who made similar public statements reported
in the Cuban press, I use his actual name and title at that time. Similarly, the
Olympic medallists mentioned earlier are internationally recognized public figures,
so their real names are used in this article as well. Any other Cuban mentioned in
this article has been given a pseudonym.
7. The rate of athlete defection has gradually increased in scope and frequency over
the past decade. Initially, such defections were limited to a few veteran baseball
players seeking riches at the end of their careers or youngsters simply seeking a
career as a baseball player. The practice has since spread to boxers, basketball, volleyball, and soccer players as well as judo practitioners.
8. The Cubans did participate in the Pan American Games held in Santo Domingo,
Dominican Republic, the following year. Sponsorship deals had been finalized by then.
9. Cuba hosted the Olympic baseball qualification tournament in 2006 for the 2008
Beijing Olympic Games, which did allow Cubans to gain first-hand experience of
seeing the Cuban national team in sponsored uniforms.
10. Cuba was eliminated in a CONACAF quarter-final. The three CONACAF representatives in Germany were the United States, Mexico, and Trinidad and Tobago.
11. While the exchange rate between the two currencies is roughly 20 pesos to 1
CUC, the choice is not based solely on equivalent currency values. In the short
term it makes more sense to choose CUC. But there is an inherent risk in choosing CUC because it is a fictional currency of the state that has no value outside
of Cuba. The CUC could easily be eliminated, which would also eliminate
exchanges, including payments by the state, based on it. Unless contracted by a
foreign employer, a Cuban is paid in moneda nacional. Imported goods and tourist services are priced in CUC. Foreigners are expected to pay CUC prices for
services that Cubans also obtain, but Cubans usually pay in moneda nacional.
For example, entrance to the Museo de la Revolucin is 5.00 CUC for tourists but
2.00 pesos for Cuban citizens. However, this is not the case when dealing with
imported consumer goods, such as designer clothing, electronic appliances, or
mobile phones.

Cuban Sport and State Legitimacy

213

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

12. For example, boxers who medal in the World Amateur Boxing Championships or
sprinters who medal in the World Athletics Championships would earn this stipend.
Although there is a World Baseball Cup, there is no World Championship that is
equivalent to, say, the FIFA World Cup or other globally popular international tournament. The World Baseball Classic was played in 2006 in the United States and
was organized and funded by Major League Baseball.

References
Abrams, Phillip 1988. Notes on the difficulty of studying the state. Journal of Historical
Sociology 1: 5889.
Azicri, Max 2000. Cuba Today and Tomorrow: Reinventing Socialism. Gainesville, FL:
University Press of Florida.
Barbassa, Juliana 2005. The New Cuban Capitalist. In Capitalism, God, and a Good
Cigar: Cuba Enters the Twenty-First Century. Lydia Chvez, ed. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press. Pp. 1730.
Barberia, Lorena, Xavier de Souza Briggs, and Miren Uriarte 2004. The End of Egalitarianism? Economic Inequality and the Future of Social Policy in Cuba. In The
Cuban Economy at the Start of the Twenty-First Century. Jorge I. Domnguez, Omar
E. Prez Villanueva, and Lorena Barberia, eds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press. Pp. 297316.
Bas, Japji Anna 2006. Reorientation in Agriculture. In Cuba in Transition? Pathways to
Renewal, Long-Term Development and Global Reintegration. Mauricio Font and
Scott Larson, eds. New York: Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies,
CUNY. Pp. 5170.
Brownell, Susan 1995. Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the
Peoples Republic. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Bunck, Julie Marie 1994. Fidel Castro and the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture in
Cuba. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Burawoy, Michael and Janos Lukacs 1992. The Radiant Past: Ideology and Reality in
Hungarys Road to Capitalism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Carmona Bez, Antonio 2004. State Resistance to Globalization in Cuba. London: Pluto
Press.
Carter, Thomas F. in press. The Quality of Home Runs: The Passion, Politics, and
Language of Cuban Baseball. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Carter, Thomas F. 2001. Baseball arguments: Aficionismo and masculinity at the core of
Cubanidad. The International Journal of the History of Sport 18(3): 117138.
Colantanio, Andrea and Robert B. Potter 2006. Urban Tourism and Development in the
Socialist State: Havana during the Special Period. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
Cole, Ken 1998. Cuba: From Revolution to Development. London: Pinter.
Corrales, Javier 2004. The gatekeeper state: Limited economic reforms and regime survival in Cuba, 19892002. Latin American Research Review 39(2): 3565.
Domnguez, Jorge I. 2004. Cubas Economic Transition: Successes, Deficiencies, and
Challenges. In The Cuban Economy at the Start of the Twenty-First Century. Jorge I.
Domnguez, Omar E. Prez Villanueva, and Lorena Barberia, eds. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press. Pp. 1748.
Eastman, Benjamin 2007. Baseball in the breach: Notes on defection, disaffection and
transition in contemporary Cuba. The International Journal of the History of Sport
24(2): 264295.
Espino, Mara Dolores 1994. Tourism in Cuba: A Development Strategy for the
1990s? In Cuba at a Crossroads: Politics and Economics after the Fourth Party

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

214

T. F. Carter

Congress. Jorge F. Prez-Lpez, ed. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

Pp. 147166.
Fernandes, Sujatha 2006. Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of
New Revolutionary Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Garca Jimnez, Alfredo 2005. Turismo y desarrollo econmico: Un acercamiento al caso
cubano. Temas 43: 4355.
Girginov, Vassil 2004. Totalitarian sport: Towards an understanding of its logic,
practice and legacy. Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 5(1): 2558.
Henthorne, Tony L. and Mark M. Miller 2003. Cuban tourism in the Caribbean context:
A regional impact assessment. Journal of Travel Research 42(1): 8493.
Hoberman, John 1984. Sport and Political Ideology. Austin, TX: University of Texas
Press.
Hwang, Dong-Jhy and Grant Jarvie 2004. Sport, Postcolonialism and Modern China:
Some Preliminary Thoughts. In Sport and Postcolonialism. John Bale and Mike
Cronin, eds. Oxford: Berg. Pp. 7390.
Jatar-Hausmann, Ana Julia 1999. The Cuban Way: Capitalism, Communism, and
Confrontation. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press.
Knight, Alan 1994. Weapons and Arches in the Mexican Revolutionary Landscape. In
Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in
Modern Mexico. Gilbert M. Joseph and David Nugent, eds. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press. Pp. 2466.
Lane, Christel 1981. The Rites of Rulers: Ritual in Industrial SocietyThe Soviet Case.
Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Lozada, Eriberto 2006. Cosmopolitanism and nationalism in Shanghai sports. City &
Society 18(2): 207231.
Macdonald, Charlotte 2004. Putting Bodies on the Line: Marching Spaces in Cold War
Culture. In Sites of Sport: Space, Place, Experience. Patricia Vertinsky and John
Bale, eds. London: Routledge. Pp. 85100.
Maguire, Joseph 2005. Civilised Games?: Beijing 2008, Power Politics and Cultural
Struggles. In Power and Global Sport: Zones of Prestige, Emulation and Resistance.
Joseph Maguire, ed. London: Routledge. Pp. 145158.
Majoli Viani, Marina 2005. Science and Biotechnology in Cuban Development. In Cuba
in the 21st Century: Realities and Perspectives. Jos Bell Lara and Richard A. Dello
Buono, eds. La Habana, Cuba: Editorial Jos Mart. Pp. 167184.
Medin, Tzvi 1990. Cuba, the Shaping of Revolutionary Consciousness. Boulder, CO:
Lynne Rienner.
Monreal, Pedro 2002. Development as an unfinished affair: Cuba after the great adjustment of the 1990s. Latin American Perspectives 29(3): 7590.
Monreal, Pedro 2004. Globalization and the Dilemmas of Cubas Economic Trajectories.
In The Cuban Economy at the Start of the Twenty-First Century. Jorge I. Domnguez,
Omar E. Prez Villanueva, and Lorena Barberia, eds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press. Pp. 91118.
Morris, Andrew 2004. Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in
Republican China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Prez, Louis A. 1988. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Prez, Louis A. 1999. On Being Cuban: Identity, Nationality, Culture. Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press.
Prez-Lpez, Jorge F. 1997. Cubas Second Economy and the Market Transition. In
Towards a New Cuba? Legacies of a Revolution. Miguel A. Centeno and Mauricio
Font, eds. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Pp. 171186.

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 20:27 31 October 2014

Cuban Sport and State Legitimacy

215

Prez Villanueva, Omar Everleny 2004. The Role of Foreign Direct Investment in
Economic Development: The Cuban Experience. In The Cuban Economy at the Start
of the Twenty-First Century. Jorge I. Domnguez, Omar E. Prez Villanueva, and
Lorena Barberia, eds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pp. 161198.
Peters, Philip 2000. The Farmers Market: Crossroads of Cuba's New Economy.
Arlington, VA: Lexington Institute.
Peters, Philip and Joseph Scarpaci 1998. Cubas New Entrepreneurs: Five Years of
Small-Scale Capitalism. Arlington, VA: Alexis de Tocqueville Institution.
Pettavino, Paula J. and Geralyn Pye 1994. Sport in Cuba: The Diamond in the Rough.
Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Prieto, Mayra Espina 2004. Social Effects of Economic Adjustment: Equality, Inequality
and Trends toward Greater Complexity in Cuban Society. In The Cuban Economy at
the Start of the Twenty-First Century. Jorge I. Domnguez, Omar E. Prez
Villanueva, and Lorena Barberia, eds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pp. 209244.
Remba, Natania 2006. Art in a Changing Cuba. In Cuba in Transition? Pathways to
Renewal, Long-Term Development and Global Reintegration. Mauricio Font and
Scott Larson, eds. New York: Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies,
CUNY. Pp. 285292.
Riordan, James 1993. Soviet-Style Sport in Eastern Europe: The End of an Era. In The
Changing Politics of Sport. Lincoln Allison, ed. Leicester, UK: Leicester University
Press. Pp. 3757.
Riordan, James 1999. The Impact of Communism on Sport. In The International Politics
of Sport in the Twentieth Century. James Riordan and Arnd Krger, eds. London:
E&FN Spon. Pp. 4866.
Roman, Peter 2004. Anatomy of the Bill on Agricultural Cooperatives. In Cuba Today:
Continuity and Change since the 'Periodo Especial'. Mauricio Font, Scott Larson,
and Danielle Xuereb, eds. New York: Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere
Studies, CUNY. Pp. 187208.
Roubal, Petr 2003. Politics of gymnastics: Mass gymnastics displays under communism
in Central and Eastern Europe. Body & Society 9(2): 125.
Ruiz Aguilera, Raudol 1991. El Deporte de Hoy: Realidades y Perspectivas. Ciudad de la
Habana: Editorial Cientfico Tcnica.
Silverstein, Paul A. 2004. Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation. Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press.
Thomas, Hugh 1998 [1971]. Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom. New York: Da Capo Press.
Thomas, Susan 2005. Cosmopolitan, International, Transnational: Locating Cuban
Music. In Cuba Transnational. Damin J. Fernndez, ed. Gainesville, FL: University
Press of Florida. Pp. 104120.
Togores, Viviana and Anicia Garca 2004. Consumption, Markets, and Monetary
Duality in Cuba. In The Cuban Economy at the Start of the Twenty-First Century.
Jorge I. Domnguez, Omar E. Prez Villanueva, and Lorena Barberia, eds.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pp. 245296.
Verdery, Katherine 1991. Theorizing socialism: A prologue to the transition. American
Ethnologist 18(3): 419439.
Watson, Rubie S., ed. 1994. Memory, History, and Opposition Under State Socialism.
Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
Zhang, Tan and Michael L. Silk 2006. Recentering Beijing: Sport, space, and subjectivities. Sociology of Sport Journal 23(4): 438459.