By This article is the first installment of the relationship between migration and sport in the global athlete market.
By Sandro Angulo Rincón
Sinbad set sail from Baghdad in his small wooden boat, eventually reaching China. Throughout his journey, he encountered magical species, discovered new lands, faced numerous challenges, learned other languages, and adapted to the foreigner’s thinking and acting. This summary of Sinbad the Sailor’s journey, a fictional character from The Thousand and One Nights, serves as a paraphrase for the modern migrant. This is the view of Fatima Mernissi (1940-1975), a Moroccan writer, sociologist, and historian, as expressed in the documentary “Voices Against Globalization” on Spanish television: Sinbad represents the individual who must travel, risk their life, and live in culturally unknown places because it is in dealing with the foreigner that one may find fortune.
Migration flows have always existed, but since the 1990s, with the rise of globalization, men, women, and children have been moving to countries, especially in the North, where there are hopes for a brighter future. They do so based on the experiences of family and friends who have reached the “promised land” and on the information—sometimes distorted—provided by the media, which broadcast images of wealth, status quo, peace, well-being, and inclusion. Indeed, the report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) indicates that in 2020, there were 281 million international migrants, making up 2.8% of the world’s population, who sent 702 billion U.S. dollars in remittances.
High-performance athletes often travel without international restrictions, unlike others expelled by violence, discrimination, poverty, persecution, natural disasters (many caused by climate change), from low- and middle-income nations, who risk their lives at sea and at border crossings like Melilla, a Spanish city bordering Morocco; the Darien Gap, a tropical forest between Colombia and Panama; and the area between Eagle Pass, Texas (United States) and Piedras Negras, Coahuila (Mexico).
Migrating athletes typically fall into one of these scenarios: (1) those who defect after participating in tournaments or championships of regional or global importance in other countries; (2) those whose parents entered illegally, risking their physical integrity due to climatic conditions, deportations with procedures contrary to Human Rights, or abuses by “coyotes” (human traffickers); and (3) those who secure a sports employment contract.
Since 1961, professional sports were abolished with Fidel Castro’s revolution, alongside Ernesto “El Che” Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos. Until 2023, Cuban athletes have been the leading Latin American exponents in the modern Olympic Games. They have garnered 84 gold medals compared to Brazil’s 37. However, the fall of the Soviet bloc in 1991, the subsequent cessation of economic support from the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the onset of the Special Period (financial crisis and severe scarcity), and the inflexibility of the Cuban regime’s economic and political model, have triggered a sustained and mass exodus of its elite competitors. In this regard, El Diario de Venezuela estimates that 800 athletes have defected from the island in the last ten years.
Journalists Jorge Carlos de la Paz and Enrique Torres from the newspaper El Toque detail the long list of defections since the 1990s. They report that the first was the baseball player René Arocha 1991, who left the delegation during a technical stop in Miami following a friendly match in Tennessee between the Cuban and United States teams.
One of the most painful defections of the Revolution was carried out by the boxer Guillermo Rigondeaux, a two-time Olympic and world champion in the 54-kilogram category. The fighter’s escape occurred during the Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2007, but shortly after, he was arrested and deported back to Cuba. As punishment, he was never allowed to enter the ring to represent the national team again, and even Fidel Castro addressed him with the words: “The athlete who abandons his delegation is like the soldier who abandons his companions in the middle of combat.” With no more opportunities, he fled to the United States in 2009, where he made a successful career as a professional boxer.
At the recent Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, in 2023, six hockey players and one athlete defected. Chilean television reported the event (see video).
This migratory scenario brings dire consequences for the nation that loses its high-performance competitors. In the Cuban case, it is particularly uncomfortable for baseball players to flee to join the MLB (Major League Baseball) teams in the United States, the historical adversary, since they will generate for the baseball franchises what communism detests: surplus value, accumulation, and capital.
Furthermore, in any sports discipline, it implies:
– Wasting resources invested in athlete training.
– Losing talent and experience.
– Deterioration of the national sport’s image and prestige.
– Demotivation for those who remain.
– A setback for the economy by not receiving money from sponsorships.
According to Thomas F. Carter, author of the article “Family Networks, State Interventions and the Experience of Cuban Transnational Sport Migration,” the Cuban state, in an attempt to reduce the diaspora of athletes, allows this talent to be hired internationally, provided that a large portion of the earnings—about 80 to 85%—goes into the public treasury. However, athletes prefer to defect from the island and the state bureaucracy because they prioritize their own and their family’s freedom and economic well-being (at the time this article was written, Cuba had requested aid from the World Food Programme for the first time, due to a lack of milk and wheat flour).
In the second installment, we will discuss the other two scenarios: parents who risk their lives to offer better futures for their children, future elite athletes, and athletes who migrate with a work contract. We will cite cases from France, the United States, Mexico, Spain, Chile, and Fiji.
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