Intejcubastud 5 1 0026 PDF

The (Soft) Power of Sport: The Comprehensive and Contradictory Strategies of Cuba's
Sport-Based Internationalism
Author(s): Robert Huish, Thomas F. Carter and Simon C. Darnell
Source: International Journal of Cuban Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1, Cuban Internationalism
(Spring 2013), pp. 26-40
Published by: Pluto Journals
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/intejcubastud.5.1.0026
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The (Soft) Power of Sport:
The Comprehensive and Contradictory
Strategies of Cuba’s Sport-based
Internationalism
Robert Huish Thomas F. Carter Simon C. Darnell
Dalhousie University, Canada University of Brighton, UK Durham University, UK
Abstract
The Cuban government creates and seeks opportunities to engage in collaboration,

diplomacy, commerce, and trade in order to pursue its own concepts of progressive
international development, which involves garnering much needed hard currency and
political benefits for its national interests. Such strategies include the organisation and
deployment of sport and physical activity programmes. Based on our analysis of, and
interactions with, Cuba’s Ministry of Sport – the Instituto Nacional de Deportes, Educación
Física y Recreación (INDER) – we suggest that INDER pursues both sport development and
sport for development – at home and abroad – while simultaneously seeking economic
benefits through its for-profit enterprise division named Cubadeportes. The implications
of this comprehensive and sometimes contradictory approach are considered, in terms of
politics, policy, internationalism and the place of sport therein.
Keywords: sport development, sport for development, Cuban athletes, sport education,
internationalism, capacity building in sport
The Place of Sport in Cuban Internationalism
As this special issue of IJCS demonstrates, the Cuban approach to international-

ism combines aspects of international solidarity, national interest, and the pursuit
of development goals, both at home and abroad. The Cuban government creates
and seeks opportunities to engage in collaboration, diplomacy, commerce, and
trade in order to project its own concepts of progressive development, and also to
garner much needed hard currency and political benefits for its national interests.
In this way, and as Huish and Blue (this issue) note, the Cuban case may well lend
itself to a working example of Joseph Nye’s (2005) understanding of ‘soft power’.
International Journal of Cuban Studies 5.1 Spring 2013
IJCS5_1 26 20/02/2013 09:18

The (Soft) Power of Sport 27
While this strategy of Cuban internationalism has received significant scholarly

attention in policy domains such as health care (Kirk and Erisman 2009; Huish
and Kirk 2007), in this article we suggest that similar consideration should be
afforded to Cuban sport and physical education. That is, while recognising the
political and cultural significance of sport in Cuba (see Carter 2008a, 2009), a
comprehensive understanding of Cuban internationalism needs to include sport
alongside other policy areas like health care, education, and foreign aid.
At the same time, there are policy dimensions particular to sport and physical
education which deserve specific recognition when making sense of Cuban
internationalism. Chief among these policy dimensions unique to sport is the
possible tension between ‘Sport Development’ and ‘Sport for Development’. The
former refers to the building of capacities for sporting success (both elite and
participatory) and is most often concerned with the role assumed by government
in the deliberate and strategic organisation and provision of sporting opportunities
(see Hylton and Brahman 2007; Bloyce and Smith 2010). The latter, by contrast,
suggests a focus on the broader social, health and economic benefits that may
result from the structures and opportunities that sport affords (Coalter 2007). This
strategic organisation, mobilisation and leveraging of sport as a means of achieving
development goals in social, health and economic terms – both domestically and
internationally – has become an increasingly important feature of sport policy in
recent years (see Coalter 2007; Darnell 2012). To a degree, ‘Sport Development’
and ‘Sport for Development’ can be viewed as competing paradigms within the
political organisation of sport; at the least, how best to reconcile the pursuit of elite
sporting success against the opportunity costs for a broader, more transformative
mandate for sport and physical education remains a matter of significance in
sport policy (see Houlihan 2011). That is, even though elite sport is now often
championed as compatible with a social development mandate (Bloyce and Smith
2010), ‘Sport Development’ and ‘Sport for Development’ can still be pitted against
each other in seemingly zero-sum terms.
It is here that the Cuban case deserves particular attention. Based on our analysis
of and interactions with Cuba’s Ministry of Sport – the Instituto Nacional de
Deportes, Educación Física y Recreación (INDER) – we suggest that INDER
pursues both sport development and sport for development – at home and abroad
– while simultaneously seeking economic benefits through its for-profit enterprise
division named Cubadeportes. The goal of this article, then, is both to elucidate
the internationalist dimensions of the Cuban sport system and to demonstrate
that Cuban internationalism based on sport constitutes a mix of programmes that
hold multiple, and at times competing or even contradictory, policy objectives. In
addition, we suggest that Cuban sport should be understood as part of a broader
development agenda, both domestic and international, as well as an opportunity or
IJCS Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/ijcs/
IJCS5_1 27 20/02/2013 09:18

28 ACADEMIC ARTICLE – Robert Huish et al.
avenue through which Cuba pursues its national interests and achieves solidarity
and cooperation with other nations. The result is a model of sporting international-
ism that seeks grass-roots capacity-building, the attainment of elite international
sport goals, and the securing of national interests.
To describe this policy mix, the article proceeds through three ‘streams’ of
Cuba internationalism through sport. First, we show how Cuba facilitates South–
South cooperation through elite sport training in other countries in the global
South, using the 2011 Pan American Games held in Guadalajara, Mexico as an
example. Second, we examine how Cuba works towards community-level sport
for development by investing in capacity-building projects both at home and
within relatively poor and marginalised regions of the global South. Third, we
consider Cuba’s engagement in elite sport cooperation on a for-profit basis through
programmes operated by Cubadeportes. Taken together, these programmes
illustrate the various goals and values of Cuba’s sport-based internationalism:
collaboration, cooperation, development, the pursuit of national interests and
the generation of revenues.
Owning the Podium through Cooperation
Cuba’s unique place in sport development and sport for development stems from
a now 50-year tradition of non-professional sport associations on the island.
Professional sport associations have not operated in Cuba since 1961. Leading up
to the 1959 revolution Cuba had only a handful of commercialised professional
sport associations and very few public spaces for community-based amateur sport.
The revolutionary government viewed sport professionalism as ‘congruent with
national values so that elite athletes could achieve moral and material compensation
for their achievements’ (Huish 2011: 424). Before 1959 most professional athletes
left Cuba for work in the United States. The revolutionary government believed
that sport could be de-professionalised and positioned as a collective good rather
than as a consumed commodity. As a result, INDER was established to coordinate
national sport and physical education activities that included the creation of the
national series of baseball, which was meant to represent non-professional elite
sport. The new era of sport emphasised a decidedly nationalistic undertone of
sport, rather than one of privatisation, individualism, and commodification. The
achievement of elite levels in sport was seen as a reflection of the collective good,
and representative of a broader societal participation in sport (Huish 2011).
This important departure in INDER’s approach to sport worked to establish a
grounded culture of elite-level amateur sport that continues today. However, as we
discuss, this moral grounding faces unique challenges in negotiating international
cooperation and individual desires for greater remuneration.
IJCS5_1 28 20/02/2013 09:18

One of INDER’s clear strengths is its ability to produce a sizeable core of

professionally-trained coaches to serve in domestic sports development. What
is often under-appreciated however, is the extent to which Cuban coaches have
also partnered with numerous countries around the world in order to train elite
athletes in other countries. In fact, of the 31,722 Cuban sports professionals
who work within INDER, 600 of these serve overseas through cooperation
agreements between INDER and the host country (Huish and Darnell 2011).
This international contribution of 0.01 per cent of the coaching work force pales
in comparison to the 22 per cent of Cuba’s 76,000 physicians who work abroad
(ibid.). However, Cuban sports professionals collaborate with some 100 countries,
whereas Cuban health workers are currently working in 76 countries, meaning
that INDER’s international sport programmes actually cover a wider geographical
range than those in health.
These global efforts of INDER facilitated by the international mobility of
their coaches are primarily concerned with the training of elite athletes within
host countries and Cuban coaches have mentored foreign athletes in the world’s
preeminent sports events such as the Olympic Games. A recent example of this
phenomenon is the role Cuban coaches played in mentoring dozens of Guatemalan
athletes prior to and during the 2011 Pan American Games in Guadalajara. From
the 1951 Pan American Games in Buenos Aires through to the 2007 Games in
Rio de Janeiro, Guatemala won just seven gold medals, eleven silver medals and
30 bronze. Similar countries like Panama and Ecuador fared equally, while a
select few countries dominated the Pan American Games with medal counts in the
thousands. For example, the United States earned over 4,000 medals during this
time, with Cuba taking home 1,900 and Brazil over 1,700. In the 2011 Games,
however, Guatemala earned 15 medals including seven gold medals, matching
its number won since 1951. Of these seven Guatemalan gold medalists, five were
trained by Cuban coaches: Sergio Sánchez and Jean Brol both took gold in pistol
shooting under the coaching of Juan Carlos Méndez Garay; Jamy Franco and
Erick Barrondo won gold in race walking with Cuban coach Rigoberto Medina;
and Maria Castellanos earned the gold medal in karate coached by José Andrés
Miralles Betancourt.
This partnering of Guatemalan athletes with Cuban coaches is illustrative of the
internationalist policy whereby INDER makes its coaches available to national
sports associations of host countries for terms that run between two and six
years. The cooperation is grounded in the auspices of South–South cooperation,
wherein both countries contribute towards a shared goal. In this case the goal is
elite sport achievement. Cuba provides the expertise, and Guatemala provides the
facilities, equipment and a modest remuneration to Havana. While we have been
unable to determine the exact dollar amount that is paid from Guatemala to Cuba,
IJCS5_1 29 20/02/2013 09:18

INDER is clear in categorising this collaboration as a programme of solidarity

and cooperation, which assumes modest figures compared to Cuba’s exchanges
with wealthy nations.1 This has clear benefits for improving the international
reputation of Cuba and for building relationships. For example, owing in large
part to the improved athletic performances and medal-winning facilitated through
its Guatemalan partnership, the ongoing presence of Cuban trainers has been
highly praised by national authorities in that country. Following the Pan American
Games, Prensa Latina reported that the Cuban collaborations had resulted in a
new pillar of sport development and national pride for Guatemalans and former
Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom acknowledged the significant contribution
that Cuban collaborators brought to Guatemala’s elite amateur performance
(Prensa Latina, 23 December 2011).
Importantly, while the Cuban coaches who mentored the Guatemalan
athletes in the Pan American Games returned to Cuba in 2012, amateur sport
development collaboration continues between the two countries. The International
Physical Education and Sports Convention held in Havana in December 2011
included delegates from Guatemala in order to foster continued collaborative
sport development programmes. Such activity led Alfredo Lemus, a Guatemalan
delegate to the convention, to tell Prensa Latina that Cuba is a ‘pillar of the
[sports development] culture at world-wide levels’ (Prensa Latina, 7 December
2011). The International Physical Education and Sports Convention demonstrated
inter-regional collaborations in and through sport; in addition, INDER also
organises collaborative conferences with sports professionals from beyond Latin
America as a means of sharing technical expertise and working to facilitate
collaborative efforts.
Clearly, the focus of these partnerships is sports development, or the technical
development of the sport sector, as opposed to sport for development. The par-
ticularities of this approach to internationalism through sport development beg
for analysis of the policy strategies and aspirations upon which it is based, as well
as consideration of the social and political understandings of sport as a form of
cooperation and partnership. In December 2011, Huish and Darnell interviewed
INDER officials and asked why INDER invests its own limited resources in sport
development within the countries against which Cuban athletes compete during
international events. INDER officials replied that from the Cuban government’s
perspective, the value of elite sporting success should not be confined to the
pursuit of domestic interests, and that the lack of sufficient coaches and sports
professionals within neighbouring countries offers opportunities for Pan-American
solidarity, rather than exclusion and competition. However, this view may not
be shared by all Cubans, or even by competitive athletes themselves. INDER
officials also described the benefits in terms of Cuban pride and nationalism that
IJCS5_1 30 20/02/2013 09:18

are produced through the success of athletes in other countries who have been
trained within INDER’s collaborations. Such successes demonstrate, according
to INDER officials, the extent to which sport is grounded in the broader Cuban
values of international solidarity, development and access and, in turn, show that
INDER understands the sharing of sport development knowledge and expertise
abroad to enhance the quality of Cuban sport development domestically.
In our analysis, these perspectives of INDER officials illustrate the extent to
which Cuban sport remains grounded in revolutionary values. While the notion
that sporting success offers states a means of international prestige and stature
amidst the competition of globalisation (see Allison 2005) holds true in Cuba to
an extent, for INDER such standing is facilitated not solely through competition
and success over sporting opponents, but also via cooperation and success with
opponents. This understanding of internationalism through cooperative sport
development not only shows Cuban sport policy to be largely unique among
countries that successfully produce elite athletes and coaches, but also suggests that
Cuban sport challenges the dominant form of sport-based international relations
in which success in international competition continues to serve as a proxy for
global identity, competence, and competitiveness (Houlihan 2011).
Investing in Sport in Eras and Areas of Crisis
While sport development is central to Cuban sport-based internationalism, the

training of elite athletes is by no means the only strategy by which Cuba engages
with other countries, nor the only way in which Cuba can be seen to provide
a counter to the dominant sport policy model. Such features can also be seen
within Cuba’s investment in sport domestically and in its inclusion of sport within
comprehensive international development partnerships.
Here, the political and economic context is of central importance. In the early
1990s, the onset of the Periodo Especial en el Tiempo de Paz (the Special Period in
Times of Peace) led to the breakup of relationships the Cuban state had nurtured
and cultivated over the previous three decades with Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union. The collapse of European state socialism threw into question the
ability of Cuban government officials to meet their obligations towards citizens.
Cuba’s domestic GDP collapsed by an estimated 37 per cent, and 50 per cent of
the economy lost purchasing power.2 The capitalist tendency in response to such
financial crises is the implementation of stringent measures of economic austerity
and the trimming of programmes and public services. However, public services
in Cuba were not cut during the economic crisis, including within the sector of
sport and physical activity. In fact, Cuba dramatically increased its commitment
to sport during this time, most notably by hosting the Pan American Games in
IJCS5_1 31 20/02/2013 09:18

1991, an undertaking that required an enormous financial commitment to build

new infrastructure and to support elite sports training centres across the country.
In other words, Cuba’s response to a dramatic resource shortfall was to increase
domestic elite capacity, broadly and within sport, even though the infrastructure
deteriorated in recreational programmes. This investment yielded some success;
even though the Cuban GDP dropped by 35 per cent between 1991 and 1993,
the country did manage to achieve stable 5 per cent growth throughout the 1990s
and into the millennium.
Partly as a result of its perceived development successes at home and the place
of sport therein, Cuba continued to increase its investment in comprehensive
development initiatives internationally as a means of meeting development goals
and sustaining international cooperation. Not surprisingly, Cuba’s sport-based
outreach to other countries in the global South aligns with this model. Recent
cooperation with Venezuela offers a good demonstration of this approach, with
the programme Barrio Adentro (inside the neighbourhoods) designed to address
issues of underdevelopment including access to community-based sport.
The Barrio Adentro programme is most known for the enormous contribution
of health workers to marginalised communities across Venezuela; some 19,000
Cuban health workers have gone to Venezuela under the campaign. However,
teachers, social workers and health technicians have also participated in the
programme. Barrio Adentro aims to address numerous areas of social development
in parts of Venezuela that before 2002 had little access to public social services.
Indeed, it was this lack of capacity in Venezuela that led President Hugo Chavez
to turn to Cuban technical experts and included in this initial operation were 16
Cuban sports professionals. The group, titled Mision Barrio Adentro Deportivo
came with the stated objective to ‘improve the quality of life of the people through
sport’ (www.ecured.cu). President Chavez praised the sports professionals within
the programme by associating their actions with improved health outcomes. He
stated: ‘Nothing is better than physical exercise to prevent cardiovascular illness.
Nothing is better than sport to improve and change one’s mental health, [and]
family health. And to complement the effort to live longer, people must live better’
(www.ecured.cu).
By June 2003, 57 Cuban coaches had joined the programme with the goal of
bringing sport activities to Venezuela’s 24 states. Cuban coaches organised a wide
range of community-based programmes including: activities for seniors, dance
therapy, community-based physical activity and sports programmes, gym training,
gymnastics for children, pre-natal physical activity, and chess clubs. According to
INDER’s data on Barrio Adentro Deportivo, by 2004, over 7 million Venezuelans
had participated in these activities (www.ecured.cu).
IJCS5_1 32 20/02/2013 09:18

Alongside the Barrio Adentro initiatives, Venezuela established the Universidad

Iberoamericano del Deporte San Carlos (UID). This Venezuelan university now
trains Venezuelan coaches and trainers with the intent that they will take over
and replace Cuban professionals who coordinate the Barrio Adentro activities. As
of 2010, 326 graduates from the University had joined Barrio Adentro. Notably,
Cuba also receives Venezuelan students along with students from 64 countries
at the Escuela Internacional de Educación Física y Deportiva (EIFED). The
Venezuelan graduates of this programme are expected to return to serve in Barrio
Adentro as reciprocity for receiving a six-year university education funded by
the Cuban state. As of 2011, there were more than 4,000 collaborators working
on the Barrio Adentro sport programmes including Cuban coaches, graduates
from UID and EIFED, and technical collaborators, mostly students of physical
education in Cuba.
These efforts in Venezuela offer an important counter point to the training of
elite athletes in Guatemala described in the previous section. Whereas Cuban
efforts to train Guatemalan athletes for the Pan American Games suggests a
commitment to sport development, the Barrio Adentro programme aligns much
more closely with a commitment to sport for development, given its focus on
social and community benefits through sport, rather than elite success. This can
be further seen through the blurring of sport with leisure and recreation that tends
to occur in sport for development; indeed, one of the most successful areas of
Barrio Adentro has been the establishment of community chess clubs. Cuba and
Venezuela include chess as an important community activity for youth embracing
dimensions of both play and education. The time taken to mentor new players
in chess can facilitate social cohesion for marginalised youth. Moreover, Barrio
Adentro organises public chess tournaments in parks and city squares, effectively
reclaiming urban spaces and promoting public activity.
In sum, Cuba’s activities in Venezuela suggest a commitment to sport and
leisure to meet broader development goals, rather than win medals. While it is
important to note that the Venezuelan government does compensate the Cuban
state through cash payments and discounted petroleum purchasing schemes, the
types of programmes facilitated through Barrio Adentro have also been delivered
by Cuban brigades in other areas in the Americas, including Haiti in response to
the 2010 earthquake. These activities suggest an approach to sport-based inter-
nationalism focused not on elite success, but rather improved quality of life, the
provision of recreational spaces, and pursuit of community cohesion. Of course,
the extent to which these Cuban-led sport programmes achieve such goals of
social and community development is largely beyond the scope of this article, but
the point remains that Cuban sport is understood as part of a broad approach to
transformative development in partner countries. Still, financing such outreach
IJCS5_1 33 20/02/2013 09:18

is not without its challenges, and in this regard Cuba has also employed sport on
an international basis in order to earn hard currency.
Sport and Commerce – Cubadeportes
The Special Period forced dynamic changes to Cuba’s legal and economic structures.
It was during this time that the search for foreign capital and technology assumed
new importance, leading eventually to the Cuban Foreign Investment Act, passed
on 5 September 1995. Popularly known as Act No. 77, this law legalised the
attempt to broaden foreign investment and facilitate international participation
within the nation’s economy. Act No. 77 states:
In today’s world, without the existence of the socialist bloc, with a globalizing world
economy and strong hegemonistic [sic] tendencies in the economic, political and military
fields, Cuba, in order to preserve its accomplishments despite the fierce blockade to
which it is subjected; lacking capital, certain kinds of technology and often markets;
and in need of restructuring its industry, can benefit from foreign investment, on the
basis of the strictest respect for national independence and sovereignty, given that such
investment can usher in the introduction of innovative and advanced technology, the
modernization of its industries, greater efficiency in production, the creation of new jobs,
improvement in the quality of products and services it offers, cost reduction, greater
competitiveness abroad, and access to certain markets, which as a whole would boost
the efforts the country must undertake in its economic and social development. (Alarcón
de Quesada 1995)
In essence, Act No. 77 meant that foreign investment became authorised in all
sectors of Cuban society. One of the outcomes of this new law was the institu-
tionalisation of sociedades anónimas or SAs, effectively limited liability companies
(LLCs). The Cuban government had established a number of these corporations
abroad, mainly in Panama and Western Europe, to facilitate foreign trade and
circumvent the US economic embargo since the late 1970s (Cole 1998), and for
the most part SAs were allowed to operate independently of the central state
apparatus. When sited overseas, SAs had little impact on the domestic economic
environment in terms of employment, everyday monetary circulation, or house-
hold-level trading; they behaved as profit-maximising entities and engaged in
joint ventures primarily outside Cuba though a few ventures were implemented
in Cuba as well.
However, things changed after Act No. 77. Across a number of industries,
Cuban officials set themselves up as gatekeepers asserting a somewhat independent
structural control as the economy began to move away from a centralised
model towards a more diffuse one. Foreign investment strategies concentrated
IJCS5_1 34 20/02/2013 09:18

primarily on activities related to the use of natural resources, such as tourism,

mining, petroleum, and agriculture (Dominguez 2004). Officials positioned
themselves, through various state institutions, to act as the primary distributor
of imports within the domestic economy while maintaining a monopoly of Cuban
exports into the global economy. The restructuring of the economy included the
following state-led strategic moves: the legalisation of hard currency possession
by individuals, changing entrepreneurship regulations, renegotiated international
trade agreements, and the emergence of novel forms of foreign investment.
All of these changes had a profound influence on sport in Cuba as the sector
found itself needing to pursue similar strategies. In fact, all of the strategies listed
above informed the structural transformations of Cuba’s sport-based interna-
tionalism in general and led specifically to the formation of Cubadeportes SA.
Today, the purpose of Cubadeportes is to turn Cuba’s prolific sports programmes
into profit-making enterprises within the global market. Not surprisingly, the
creation of Cubadeportes in 1993 was controversial within Cuba’s sports-circles
and became the focus of a political struggle within INDER over the degree to
which Cuban sport should become an exploitable commodity. From field research
carried out by Carter beginning in the mid 90s, we know that many officials
within Cuban sport were embroiled in this ideological struggle to determine the
degree and direction of Cuba’s international expansion of the business of sport
(Carter 2008b: ix–x).
As a result of this internal struggle, and coupled with the rapidly shifting
political economic contexts within Cuba, the role of Cubadeportes over the past
two decades has come to focus on the cultivation and development of international
economic relations with other sporting bodies for economic benefit. Numerous
strategies have been implemented at the behest of, or at the very least, with the
tacit approval of state sports authorities. None of these strategies have been
pursued without controversy and four are discussed here: The nearly complete
abandonment of the sporting goods industry; the marketing of the brand ‘Cuba’
to international sports corporations in order to fund the participation of Cuban
national teams in international competition; the export of Cuban technical
knowledge through the contractual employment of Cuban coaches by foreign
national governing bodies; and lastly, and perhaps most quietly, the operation by
Cubadeportes of a sports tourism business for foreigners wishing to experience
some aspect of Cuban sport as spectator, competitor, or another capacity.
With respect to the first of these strategies, one of the primary functions of
Cubadeportes has become to negotiate contracts and manage the import-export
aspects of all sport-related business for INDER. To this end, officials at
Cubadeportes adopted specific strategies that drew upon Cuba’s recognised sports
expertise by exporting its highly educated, trained, and skilled sport workers while
IJCS5_1 35 20/02/2013 09:18

shutting down the export aspects of the country’s sporting goods manufacturing.
In line with broader transformations during the Special Period, Cubadeportes
shifted its focus from material exports to human resource exports. In times of
dire economic shortages the emphasis switched from material goods to human
capabilities. Cuban brand ‘Batos’ sporting goods ceased being exported at the
initial phase of the Special Period and manufacturing of Batos was transferred to
China. A select few of Batos products, such as boxing equipment, are still sold
overseas but the rest is provided and sold domestically. Ironically much of the
Batos branded merchandise available is replica baseball kit – caps, t-shirts, and
jerseys – of the prominent teams in Cuba’s Serie Nacional, the highest professional
league in Cuba. These goods are sold at prices that extend beyond the economic
capacity of the vast majority of Cuba’s populace. Sold in stores in the Serie
Nacional’s baseball stadiums and in select tourist hotels, the principal market
for these goods is the newly emerging Cuban middle class – those Cubans with
regular access to hard currency – and tourists.
As the economy continued to deteriorate, Cubadeportes entered into various
agreements with sporting goods companies to fund Cuba’s participation in
international tournaments. Initially these sponsorship deals were made amongst
individual sports; baseball had its own sponsor (Mizuno), as did volleyball
(the Japanese company Yaohan), and athletics (the Spanish company Lazio).
However, soon after those initial contracts expired, Cubadeportes reorganised
the way it marketed Cuban national teams into a singular brand rather than
individual products requiring much larger sponsorship deals. Thus, Adidas signed
an exclusive agreement to provide equipment for Cuba’s national teams and to
cover the costs of appearances by Cuban national teams at specific international
competitions. Other tournaments, which previously had enjoyed prominent Cuban
presences, were no longer attended by Cuba’s teams, such as the 2010 Central
American and Caribbean Games held in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico.
These agreements were presented to the public as taking advantage of Cuba’s
athletic talents to foster revolutionary sport. The obvious contradiction of capitalist
corporations sponsoring socialist athletes so they can train outside of Cuba, yet
still compete for the prestige of Cuba in international events, was a compromise
made reluctantly by Cuban officials. As noted earlier by Carter (2008a), Cuban
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 (Carter 2008b). ‘We are taking advantage of possibilities that
they offer us, thanks to the world class of our sport, and that we threw away
previously. We’ll continue to do this whenever it won’t hurt Cuban sport’ (Carter
2008a: 205). Indeed, the Adidas sponsorship does not represent a full immersion
into the global market of sportswear and sporting goods. Although Adidas does
IJCS5_1 36 20/02/2013 09:18

sponsor Cuba, it cannot and does not produce replica kit emblazoned with Cuba
even though it has done so for most other national teams. The commodification
of Cuba and Cuban sport is therefore only partial and Cubadeportes officials
clearly attempt to maintain as much control over such exploitation as possible.
Cubadeportes also began to exploit its renewable resources for profit, primarily
its athletes and coaches (Carter 2007). While Cuba continues to provide
technical knowledge to poor and marginalised countries in sport development,
as described above, they have, however, also placed many of their top coaches and
athletes into a limited, yet expansive, export market. This shift to payment for
knowledge was clearly driven by economic need, as opposed to an abandonment
of revolutionary values.
The level of this exportation is difficult to ascertain. Cubadeportes currently
claims that there are approximately 10,000 professionals working outside Cuba in
some capacity. Since the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the scope of Cubans working
overseas has expanded in terms of numbers and destinations, though most are
still within Latin America. Since 1999, many coaching professionals have gone
to middle and high income countries to provide technical assistance for sport
development. These countries include, Japan (baseball), Australia (athletics), India
(boxing), South Africa (track), Italy (baseball). Unlike the Guatemalan exchange,
these collaborations see handsome remuneration return directly to INDER through
Cubadeportes, and the coaches who participate in these programmes are also paid
generously in the local hard currency. Perhaps most importantly, Cubadeportes
officials now claim Cuba’s sports programmes operate self-sufficiently, that is,
based solely on each programme’s hard currency earnings from these labour
exports and its joint venture sponsorships.
Finally, the fourth facet of Cubadeportes is its tourism provision. The enormous
pressure of the economic collapse forced radical and significant changes to the
way the Cuban economy was to be run and tourism became a priority sector
for economic recovery and development. In this way, tourism evolved from a
peripheral activity into one of the most dynamic sectors of the economy and one
that earns more hard currency than sugar. With increased foreign investment in
joint ventures in the tourism industry, hotel room occupancy and the number
of airlines serving the country rose significantly to accommodate the number of
people choosing Cuba as a tourist destination. Importantly, Cubadeportes was
part of that development of the tourist industry. Cubadeportes now effectively
operates its own travel agency that caters to tourists and foreign groups in need
of logistical support, such as transport, accommodation and food. In this capacity,
they have worked with teams touring to play against Cuban clubs, bike riding
enthusiasts raising money for foreign charities, and organisations wishing to hold
international conferences in Cuba. Cubadeportes also have their own residential
IJCS5_1 37 20/02/2013 09:18

facilities and working agreements with tourist ventures in the country, such as
the Melia hotel chain.
Concluding Thoughts – The New Rules of the Game
The preceding discussion illustrates that Cuba participates in sport-based inter-

nationalism through the training of elite athletes for other national teams,
the organisation and deployment of community-based sport for development
programmes in marginalised communities, and the strategic use of sport for
earning hard currency. As a result, and echoing other policy domains of Cuban
internationalism (Huish and Kirk 2007; Huish and Spiegel 2008), we can conclude
that sport stands as a complementary domain or sector through which Cuba
engages in solidarity and cooperation abroad by implementing programmes that
mirror its domestic strengths. While these international sport programmes abroad
are by no means as extensive as those organised by INDER within Cuba, they do
suggest sport to be an opportunity for, or avenue into, South–South development
processes and cooperation. At the least, the Cuban case offers an example of both
public-sector sport development and sport for development existing in tandem as
both are deemed by INDER and Cubadeportes to offer important benefits and
opportunities for the achievement of political and policy priorities.
From this perspective, the comparative opportunities presented by the case of
Cuban sport are significant. For example, given the critical argument that the
preferred or even hegemonic model of sport for development as led by NGOs,
international sport and corporate entities tends to focus on the facilitation of
individual achievements and capitalist participation (see Darnell 2010), the
commitments to state-led sport for development in Cuba are worthy of ongoing
consideration. Indeed, few other countries, let alone ones with resource-strapped
economies like that of Cuba, have offered up such significant commitments to
sport-based cooperation and development. One explanation for this may be that
sport is, from the Cuban perspective, part of broader comprehensive development
processes, as opposed to a tool for development as often conceptualised within
the sport for development sector (Darnell 2012).
While this may appear as a novel approach to sport development, it brings
about notable challenges. Noticeably, Cuba has fallen back in Olympic standing
in recent years. In the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Cuba placed 28th, and at the
2012 London Olympics Cuba placed 16th. This is a noticeable descent on the
medal table since the 1990s when Cuba consistently placed in the top ten nations.
Could the drop in top elite sport performance be at all connected to the increase
of internationalism in sport? Is the overseas placement of sport experts taking
away from the national calibre of sport? Is the encouragement of international
IJCS5_1 38 20/02/2013 09:18

cooperation putting other sport programmes at risk as well, such as baseball,

where many Cuban players have sought careers in the Major Leagues in the United
States? It is difficult to discern if there is a relationship between the maintenance
of the quality of elite sport in Cuba and broader commitments of international-
ism, but what can be said with certainty is that this may well be a difficult tension
that INDER will need to negotiate.
In sum, as Houlihan (2011: 368) has suggested, ‘…if countries are to be in a
strong position to exploit the “soft power” opportunities that their involvement
in global sports events provides they need to ensure that they have the necessary
domestic resources’. This analysis clearly applies to Cuba, and yet the Cuban case
also demands an expansion of soft power through sport to include international
cooperation, not just competition. We suggest, therefore, that further research and
dialogue about the specific place and role of sport within Cuban international-
ism – as well as understandings of Cuban sport in the international community
– are warranted. Both Cuban studies scholars and those interested in the political
and sociological study of sport can contribute to this project and to yielding
better insights into the practices by which Cuba uses sport to pursue its own
interests while also building solidarity with marginalised communities using sport
for development.
Notes
1. This form of ‘cooperation’ is a long-standing dimension of Cuban foreign policy. Rarely
does Cuba provide services free of charge to other nations (except in cases of natural
disaster). Instead, through bilateral agreements Cuba works out payment schedules
for professional services that can suit the capacities of the host nation. For example,
Venezuela pays Cuba for the receipt of professionals, but also offers Havana preferred
prices on petroleum purchases. South Africa pays large sums for the receipt of Cuban
health experts, meanwhile countries like Honduras, the Gambia, and Bolivia, have given
very little hard currency back to Cuba for the receipt of professionals and technical
assistance. For more information on these exchanges in the health field, see R. Huish,
Where No Doctor Has Gone Before: Cuba’s Place in the Global Health Landscape
(Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013).
2. Pundits disagree on the exact figures but all agree the loss was catastrophic. For varied
discussions see, among many others, Antonio Carmona Báez, State Resistance to
Globalization in Cuba (London: Pluto Press, 2004); Julio Carranza Valdés, ‘La economía
cubana: balance breve de una década crítica’, Temas 30 (2002): 30–4; Julio Carranza
Valdés, Pedro Monreal and Luis Gutiérrez, ‘Cuba: restructuración económica, socialismo
y mercado’, Temas 1 (1995): 27–35; Archibald R.M. Ritter, ‘The Cuban Economy in
the Mid-1990s: Structural/Monetary Pathology and Public Policy’, in M.A. Centeno
and M. Font (eds) Towards a New Cuba? Legacies of a Revolution (Boulder, CO: Lynne
Rienner, 1997), pp. 151–70.
IJCS5_1 39 20/02/2013 09:18

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The (Soft) Power of Sport: The Comprehensive and Contradictory Strategies of Cuba's

The Cuban government creates and seeks opportunities to engage in collaboration,

The Place of Sport in Cuban Internationalism

As this special issue of IJCS demonstrates, the Cuban approach to international-

International Journal of Cuban Studies 5.1 Spring 2013

IJCS5_1 26 20/02/2013 09:18

While this strategy of Cuban internationalism has received significant scholarly

IJCS Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/ijcs/

IJCS5_1 27 20/02/2013 09:18

Owning the Podium through Cooperation

International Journal of Cuban Studies 5.1 Spring 2013

IJCS5_1 28 20/02/2013 09:18

One of INDER’s clear strengths is its ability to produce a sizeable core of

IJCS Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/ijcs/

IJCS5_1 29 20/02/2013 09:18

INDER is clear in categorising this collaboration as a programme of solidarity

International Journal of Cuban Studies 5.1 Spring 2013

IJCS5_1 30 20/02/2013 09:18

Investing in Sport in Eras and Areas of Crisis

While sport development is central to Cuban sport-based internationalism, the

IJCS Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/ijcs/

IJCS5_1 31 20/02/2013 09:18

1991, an undertaking that required an enormous financial commitment to build

International Journal of Cuban Studies 5.1 Spring 2013

IJCS5_1 32 20/02/2013 09:18

Alongside the Barrio Adentro initiatives, Venezuela established the Universidad

IJCS Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/ijcs/

IJCS5_1 33 20/02/2013 09:18

Sport and Commerce – Cubadeportes

International Journal of Cuban Studies 5.1 Spring 2013

IJCS5_1 34 20/02/2013 09:18

primarily on activities related to the use of natural resources, such as tourism,

IJCS Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/ijcs/

IJCS5_1 35 20/02/2013 09:18

International Journal of Cuban Studies 5.1 Spring 2013

IJCS5_1 36 20/02/2013 09:18

IJCS Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/ijcs/

IJCS5_1 37 20/02/2013 09:18

Concluding Thoughts – The New Rules of the Game

The preceding discussion illustrates that Cuba participates in sport-based inter-

International Journal of Cuban Studies 5.1 Spring 2013

IJCS5_1 38 20/02/2013 09:18

cooperation putting other sport programmes at risk as well, such as baseball,

IJCS Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/ijcs/

IJCS5_1 39 20/02/2013 09:18

International Journal of Cuban Studies 5.1 Spring 2013

IJCS5_1 40 20/02/2013 09:18

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