POWER PLAYS: THE ROLE OF SPORTS IN CUBA’S HEALTHCARE REVOLUTION

By

HEATHER LEE GONYEAU

A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2018

© 2018 Heather Lee Gonyeau

To Lauren and Morgan

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am eternally grateful to the Department of History at the University of Florida for funding my research. The opportunithy to work and study alongside incredible colleagues and scholars has been both humbling and inspiring. I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Heather

Vrana, for her guidance in this process. Her enthusiasm and optimism are always appreciated. I am grateful for Dr. Jeffery Needell and Dr. Paul Ortiz for their time and dedication as members of my committee. Dr. Lillian Guerra served as a mentor and her expertise on Cuba propelled much of the earliest drafts of this research. I am thankful for the librarians at the Latin American

Collection who generously offered assistance throughout my studies. Finally, I would like to thank my parents Robert and Brenda Gonyeau for instilling in me a love of learning. I would not be here without their support, love, and encouragement.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

LIST OF FIGURES ...... 6

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... 7

ABSTRACT ...... 8

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 10

2 INCORPORATING THE CORPORAL: THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF SPORTS AND MEDICINE ...... 22

Sports Pre-Revolution ...... 23 Sport Under Socialism ...... 24 Revolutionizing Healthcare ...... 30

3 ¿POR QUÉ LA MASIVIDAD? FOSTERING A CULTURE OF WELLNESS ...... 35

Creating Cultura Física ...... 36 Effects of Sports on Social and Physical Health ...... 47

4 CREATING CHAMPIONS ADVANCEMENTS IN SPORTS MEDICINE ...... 58

Sports and Medicine in the Public Sphere ...... 59 Victories in Science and Sport ...... 62 Sports and Medical Internationalism ...... 64

5 CONCLUSION...... 67

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 70

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 76

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure page

2-1 A diagram from a youth pamphlet depicting the Cuban athletic structure...... 26

2-2 The children’s magazine Pioneros ran public health content like this graph showing the amount of air necessary for physical exercise...... 33

2-3 An infographic from Verde Olivo compares cancer rates in males and females...... 34

2-4 The differences in this cartoon from Verde Olivo correspond to breaches of hygiene norms in the kitchen...... 34

3-1 Chess and Checkers exercises found in the monthly sports publication Deportes...... 38

3-2 An article in the periodical Verde Olivo promotes teaching children to swim with the caption; "Like a Fish in Water" ...... 41

3-3 This infographic quantifies the increase of female participants in masividad and in international competitions like the Olympics, the Pan-American Games, and the Central American Games...... 45

3-4 A notice in Verde Olivo warns about the "invisible war" against bacteria...... 49

3-5 Mothers to be debate if their children will be track champions or soccer stars...... 55

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

BNJM Biblioteca Nacional José Martí José Martí National Library

CDR Comités de Defensa de la Revolución Committees for the Defense of the Revolution

CVD Consejos Deportivos Voluntarios Voluntary Sports Councils

EIDE Escuelas Initiativas Deportivas Escolares Sports Initiation Schools

EIEFD Escuela Internacional de Educación Física International School of Physical y Deporte Education and Sports

ESPA Escuela Superior de Perfeccionamiento Superior School for Athletic Atlético Perfection

FMC Federación de Mujeres Cubanas Federation of Cuban Women

INDER Institución Nacional de Deportes, National Institute of Sports, Educación Física y Recreación Physical Education and Recreation

IMD Instituto de Medicina del Deporte de Cuba Sports Medicine Institute of Cuba

LPV Listos Para Vencer Ready to Win

MINSAP Ministerio de Salud Pública Ministery of Public Health

SNS Sistema Nacional de Salud National Health System

UJC Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas de Cuba Union of Young Communists of Cuba

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Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

POWER PLAYS: THE ROLE OF SPORTS IN CUBA’S HEALTHCARE REVOLUTION

By

Heather Lee Gonyeau

December 2018

Chair: Heather Vrana Major: History

In 1982, Fidel Castro announced his goal for Cuba to be recognized as an international medical power, or potencia médica. In the two decades since the Cuban Revolution, the government had reorganized the national health system and expanded medical care in an effort to raise the nation’s health indicators. Official speeches and national archives show that an intense amount of planning, resources, and time went into creating and sustaining national interest in health and wellness. This thesis proposes that the Cuban state promoted physical exercise and mass athletic participation as a means of furthering its medical ambitions. Establishing a culture of fitness could raise the population’s overall health, prevent curable diseases, and improve life expectancy. In other words, recreation was the key to unlocking Cuba’s medical potential.

Health, discipline, and fitness became embedded in revolutionary dialogues of citizenship. State institutions in sports and medicine collaborated on initiatives in public health, preventative medicine, and general wellbeing. Looking at health through the lens of fitness not only elucidates these collaborations, it reveals the Cuban government’s ability to effectively unify the population towards common goals with significant benefits for the state and citizens alike. By the early

1970s, Cuban statistics in health and international competitive sports indicate notable achievements, whether by Latin American or general international standards. While undercut by

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the economic effects of Soviet Collapse, sports and medicine remain important measures of the intent and successes of Cuba’s revolutionary policies.

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Sports must not be viewed simply as physical activity. Rather, they must be seen in the context of man and his environment; sports must come to be a symbol of well-being and health, helping future generations to appreciate the true value of work and study.1

-Rolando Lahera, February 13, 1977

In 2005, the World Health Organization reported the life expectancy in Cuba at 79 years.

This was on par with the United States.2 To some, this statistic might seem like a mistake—but to others, it was a miracle. How did a tiny, capital-poor island with a population roughly the size of Ohio come to have some of the world’s most impressive health indicators in infant mortality, disease eradication, and maternal care? One key to Cuba’s success may lie with a rigorous set of social reforms in healthcare, fitness and education, which were enacted by the Cuban state in the

1960s and 70s. The medical sector experienced its own revolution as the country underwent massive transformations to increase the scope, accessibility, and sophistication of the health system. Official speeches and national archives show that an intense amount of planning, resources, and time went into creating and sustaining national interest in health and wellness.

This thesis examines the government’s efforts to promote a culture of fitness that could improve the overall well-being of the Cuban population and aid its ambitions to become a medical power, or potencia médica.3

In the late 1950s, young, middle-class intellectuals waged a guerilla war against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The leaders, including future premier Fidel Castro, accused the

1 Rolando Lahera, “Major Manuel Fajardo Higher Institute of Physical Education,” Granma Weekly Review, February 13, 1977, sec. Special Feature.

2 World Health Organization, “World Health Statistics 2007” (Geneva, 2007).

3 Castro used the phrase “potencia médica” frequently in the 1980s and 1990s. The first instance appears in a speech to the Union of Young Communists in April 1982

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Batista regime of corruption and tyranny. Upon the guerilla’s victory in 1959, the former rebels sought to end the bitter class divides in the country and the long history of exploitation by the

United States. The hostile relations between the US and Cuba escalated in the years following the rebel victory. American lawmakers disapproved of Cuba’s nationalization of foreign businesses and its support for revolutionaries in other Caribbean nations. Cuban officials criticized the US’s exploitative economic policies and its past attacks on the island’s political autonomy. The 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, which was planned and funded by the American government, spurred Cuba to strengthen its ties with the Soviet Union and led Castro to officially recognized Cuba as a socialist state. The US responded with economic regulations, which by

1962 included an embargo on almost all exports, as well as foreign travel. The antagonistic relationship between the two nations created a bitter rivalry that played out in political, economic, and cultural spheres.

The emergence of the revolutionary state at this tumultuous historical moment meant

Cuba had to battle for recognition in the increasingly polarized Cold War between the United

States and the Soviet Union. The Cold War created a new type of conflict where rather than demonstrations of military strength, countries jostled for global influence through shows of physical, moral, and intellectual superiority. Though violent anti-Communist struggles played out in battlefields in Latin America and Southeast Asia, the US and USSR never combatted directly. Instead, symbolic victory was gained through power struggles like the Space Race, the

Arms Race, and the Olympics.

Cuba’s lofty ambitions stem from insecurity about its place in twentieth-century politics.

While Cuba was a staunch ally of the Soviet Union, it struggled to define itself apart from the

Soviet Satellites of the Eastern Bloc. Cuba was not content with being neo-colony of the USSR,

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the state sought its own international power and influence. Despite its proximity to the US and its prominent role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, Cuba was consistently left out of diplomatic conversations between the two superpowers.4 Regulated to the bleachers by the First and Second

World countries, the Cuban state turned to the non-aligned and developing nations of the Third

World. Often without the consent of its chief ally, Cuba assisted revolutionaries from across the

Americas and Africa.5

Through medical, military and athletic cooperation, Cuba established itself as a leader in

Third World Internationalism.6 Castro presented Cuba as a country of social development, scientific sophistication, and progress that was worthy of emulation by other non-aligned nations.

The Cuban healthcare system advanced and expanded so rapidly following the revolution that by the 1980s, the country was able to export its pharmaceuticals, technology, and health professionals worldwide for both symbolic capital and hard currency.7 Cuba’s prominence in the health sector provided strategic benefits like diplomatic cooperation, economic revenue, and national pride.

As the revolution worked to nationalize and reform the country’s medical system, it also targeted deficiencies in Cuban sports programs. Before the revolution, average Cubans had little time or resources to devote to recreation and leisure.8 The new government cemented its

4 Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 (Chapel Hill, N.C. London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

5 Julie M. Feinsilver, “Cuba as a ‘World Medical Power’: The Politics of Symbolism,” Latin American Research Review 24, no. 2 (1989): 2

6 Third World Internationalism is a political concept that promotes solidarity between non-aligned or developing nations. These countries shared thoughts and resources to issues of development and decolonization.

7 For a more thorough examination on Cuba’s use of symbolic politics, especially in the medical field, see Julie M. Feinsilver, Healing the Masses: Cuban Health Politics at Home and Abroad (University of California Press, 1993), 9-25

8 Robert Chappell, “Sport in Cuba: Before and After the ‘Wall’ Came Down,” The Sport Journal, January 3, 2004,

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commitment to recreation when it declared sports as a right of all people in its 1976 Constitution.

Castro was an avid sports fan himself, and from the earliest days in the revolution, athletics played a key role in the developing society.9 Because of increased participation, attention and funding, Cuba’s athletic standings on the world stage improved rapidly in the years following the revolution. By 1966, Cuban athletes took home 78 medals in the Central American and

Caribbean Games and in 1976, the island of just a few million inhabitants place eighth overall in the Montreal Olympics. By 1999, Cuba ranked first in the world in Olympic medals won per capita.10

Though its international victories were impressive, the Cuban state did not think exclusively of sports in terms of records and medals. It hoped to foster a culture of fitness that could propel other revolutionary goals, especially health and education. As the quote in the epigraph elucidates, the government viewed sports as a symbol of the country’s values of wellness, skill, and discipline. To Castro, the strength of the revolutionary citizen was his or her sense of ethics based on courage, self-sacrifice, and fidelity.11 This “New Socialist Man” represented the radical, virile, and humanist identity that all Cubans should emulate.12 The state sought to create a well-rounded, revolutionary citizen, “fit” both physically and mentally. In the physical sense, fitness required active, enthusiastic involvement in revolutionary spectacles and

9 The Cuban baseball league even hosted a one-time game in 1959 featuring the revolutionaries playing as the military team “Los Barbudos,” with Fidel starring as pitcher. From Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

10 Paula Pettavino and Philip Brenner, “More Than Just a Game,” Peace Review 11, no. 4 (December 1999): 524

11 Lillian Guerra, Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959-1971 (Univ of North Carolina Press, 2012).136-138

12 For a thorough examination of Guevara’s theories of “The New Man,” as well as how the construct developed in Cuban society see: Ana Serra, The New Man in Cuba: Culture and Identity in the Revolution, 1st edition (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007).

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productive labor. It also meant subscribing to standards of health and hygiene to keep the population free of diseases and raise the collective standard of living. Mental fitness required strategic thinking and a comprehension of Marxist economic and political thought.13 Recreation and athletic activities provided a means for developing both these qualities.

As the Cold War increasingly pitted First World countries against Second,14 Castro and his fellow statesmen proposed to birth, grow, and train an enhanced generation of Cubans that could showcase the success of Marxist-Leninism. The early years of the revolution had instilled the population with a revolutionary consciousness that promoted the loyalty, morality and selflessness of the “New Man.” Lillian Guerra explores this consciousness as part of the creation of a “grand narrative” of the Cuban Revolution. Through publicity campaigns, mass mobilization, and the radicalization of discourse, Cubans learned, participated in and supported revolutionary ideology.15 Having established the population’s loyalty to the ideals of the revolution, by the early 1960s Cuba sought to develop a citizenship that was also intellectually and physically fit for the challenges of defending socialism. Health and recreation initiatives represented the state’s switch from policing the minds of its citizens, to policing their bodies.

The government enacted programs that promoted constructive use of leisure time, encouraged productivity, and prioritized corporal and mental stamina. The Castro administration believed a

13 Instruction in Marxist ideology was common in schools and workplaces. Magazines and newspapers also ran lengthy articles on topics like pluralism or dialectical materialism.

14 I use the terms First, Second, and Third World as understandings of economic and geopolitical spheres rather than development. First World largely consists of democratic, capitalist countries associated with American/Western influence. Second World is those countries that aligned with the communist-socialist states of the Eastern Bloc. Third World is understood as non-aligned nations that hoped to stay neutral in the Cold War. Though Cuba was close allies with the Soviet Union, Castro imagined the country as a leader of the Third World.

15 Dr. See Lillian Guerra, Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959-1971 (Univ of North Carolina Press, 2012).

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healthy, active, and well-rounded population could defend the nation from threats, physical and ideological alike.

This thesis is not intended to be a study of Cuba’s Olympic prowess or a review of its medical initiatives. There are already several works devoted to those subjects. Instead, I bridge the gap between both historiographies by showing how state-sponsored sports and healthcare were united by the same goal: to create a fit, well-rounded, and internationally impressive population. Surprisingly neither sports historians nor anthropologists have discussed the connection between the fields of fitness and health. Ethnographies on the Cuban medical system occasionally mention a push for “lifestyle changes” or “preventative care,” but rarely link these efforts with the country’s numerous fitness and active-living campaigns.16 Several studies laud

Cubans advancements in healthcare—some even suggest the United States should look to Cuba as a guide. Primary Health Care in Cuba: The Other Revolution by Linda Whiteford and

Laurence Branch investigates why Cuba’s model of primary health care has been so successful.

Aside from better quality and more accessible doctors, the authors praise Cuba’s efforts to establish preventative—rather than reactionary—healthcare. However, Whiteford and Branch do not discuss how exercise contributes to preventative care, as frequently mentioned by Cuban officials.

Like Whiteford and Branch, Julia Feinsilver also argues for Cuba’s success in preventative medicine. In Healing the Masses, Cuban Health Politics at Home and Abroad she asserts that the country’s promotion of public health education, medical measures, and socioeconomic development increased the population's sense of well-being. Though the book

16 Julie M. Feinsilver, “Cuba as a ‘World Medical Power’: The Politics of Symbolism,” Latin American Research Review 24, no. 2 (1989): 2.x

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offers a thorough study on the development of the Sistema Nacional de Salud (SNS), the benefits of fitness and nutrition only receive a combined two pages. Feinsilver notes that Cuban doctors promoted “lifestyle changes” but she fails to cover the extent that exercise was pushed as a potentially life-saving habit. The Editorial Cientifico-Tecnica in Havana published Actividad

Física y Salud by Raul Mazorra Zamora, a specialist in Sports Medicine. The author highlights the importance of exercise in the modern lifestyle by exploring the muscular, respiratory, and cardiovascular benefits of regular physical activity. Zamora and other health professionals are also featured in articles of the sports magazine Deportes, where they promote exercise as a form of preventative medicine.17 Despite this frequent association of sports with health in Cuban publications, foreign accounts of Cuba’s health revolution omit the state’s efforts to promote access and participation in fitness. My work expands on the existing historiography of Cuban medicine by elucidating how fitness became an integral part of public health discourse.

Similarly, histories of the country’s athletic feats rarely attribute these successes to

Cuba’s advancements in sports medicine and physiology. The state-owned presses in Havana are the largest publishers of post-revolution sports histories. These publications read like hagiographies of Cuban champions and are saturated with ideological dogma. Books like No nacieron campeones by Hector Quintero, Pasiones y leyendas de la pelota cubana by Juan A.

Martínez de Osaba y Goenaga and Alberto Juantorena: Astro y ejemplo by Enrique Montesinos paint Cuban athletes as pillars of humility, dedication, and sacrifice. In addition, the athletes are portrayed as deeply loyal, even indebted, to the state. In Félix Savón: Esplendor y récords boxísticos by Enrique Montesinos, the boxer dedicates his testimony to the revolution “que todo

17 Mario Torres, “Por qué la masividad?,” El deporte: derecho del pueblo en Cuba., September 30, 1983.

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me lo ha dado.”18 In crediting the state for his success, Savón situates the government as Cuban athletes’ benefactor. This association furthers the state’s paternalistic role as the gatekeeper to health, recreation, and leisure.

Outside the island, the historiography of Cuban sports is sparse and almost exclusively focused on baseball and boxing. Unfortunately, critical views that Fidel “killed” Cuban baseball after the revolution lead to most works centering on the pre-Castro era.19 The Quality of Home

Runs: The Passion, Politics, and Language of Cuban Baseball by Thomas Carter, The Pride of

Havana by Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, and Havana Hardball: Spring Training, Jackie

Robinson, and the Cuban League by César Brioso, discuss baseball’s role as an integral part of

Cuban identity. While they highlight Cuba’s long-standing love affair with sports, they do not analyze the revolutionary period. They can be useful, however, in understanding the continuities between pre- and post-revolution athletic culture—a subject also lacking secondary study.

All-encompassing histories of Cuban sports are rare and generally fail to incorporate

Cuba’s investment in sports research. The historiography lacks a timely, well-researched investigation of Cuban sports that analyzes the revolution’s dedication to athletics from diverse perspectives. Paula Jean Pettavino and Geralyn Pye analyze the revolution’s prioritization of sports in Sport in Cuba: The Diamond in the Rough. The work seeks to quantify and explain

Cuba’s success in international athletic competitions. It examines the Castro administration’s attempts to structure and encourage mass participation in athletics. Pettavino centers her pre- revolution chapter mostly around baseball, despite archival evidence that tennis, fencing, sailing

18 Enrique Montesinos, Félix Savón: Esplendor y récords boxísticos (La Habana, Cuba: Editorial Cientifico-Tecnica, 2013). 2

19 Bjarkman, Peter C. “Fidel Castro and Baseball.” Society for American Baseball Research, March 25, 2016. https://sabr.org/bioproj/topic/fidel-castro-and-baseball.

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and other “elite” leisure activities were popular amongst the pre-1959 middle class.20 The work is also based almost exclusively on foreign sources like North American newspapers. Pettavino noted in The Politics of Sport Under Communism: A Comparative Study of Competitive Athletics in the Soviet Union and Cuba that she had only spent a week in Cuba and was largely unable to access archival material within the country. Thus, she lacks the wealth of state-produced newspapers, magazines, and publications that frequently addressed mass athletic participation.

This limitation could be why her books overlook the state’s association of sports with medical innovations and health initiatives. Despite these shortcomings, she remains one of the few scholars of Cuban sport after the revolution. I will continue to cite her publications going forward as my research builds off her early contributions to the field.

A discussion of sports medicine is also absent in Pitching Around Fidel: A Journey into the Heart of Cuban Sports. S.L. Price, a Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated, investigates the revolution’s sports culture through interviews with famous athletes. The revolution fiercely controlled the bodies of its champions, overseeing all of their housing, treatment, and care. The state provided athletes with special medical care, physical therapy, and technique training aimed at producing superior competitors. Despite Cuba’s emphasis on technical and corporal perfection, its dedication to sports medicine is not present in Price’s analysis of post-revolution athletics. Like Price, my work occasionally addresses successful Cuban athletes. However, I examine their symbolic value to the revolution rather than Cuba’s impact on them.

This thesis recognizes the shared goals of state-sponsored sports and medicine and seeks to bring the existing historiographies together under a new narrative—one that emphasizes the collaborative character of the revolutionary government’s reforms. Chapter 2 examines the early

20 Robert Chappell, “Sport in Cuba: Before and After the ‘Wall’ Came Down,” The Sport Journal, January 3, 2004.

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years of the revolution and the institutionalization of the athletic and medical sectors, focusing on the creation of the Instituto Nacional de Deportes, Educación Física y Recreación (INDER) and the growth of the Sistema Nacional de Salud (SNS). It discusses the antecedents of the current government-run programs and the revolutionary state’s efforts to rebrand and reorganize previous models like the mutualista system of single-payer healthcare. The chapter tracks the development of fitness culture through athletic campaigns including Listos Para Vencer,

Círculos de Abuelos and Día de Cultura Física. In the medical sector, early initiatives included the training of a new generation of socialist medical professionals and the expansion of primary care to underserved rural and impoverished populations. As testimony to the success of this expanded coverage, I discuss the creation of “health literate” citizens through public health programs that emphasized general medical knowledge and pharmacological vocabulary.

Chapter 3 explains the Cuban concept of masividad to explain the reasoning behind the state’s push for health and recreation reform. I explore how becoming the “Socialist New Man” demanded not just ideological loyalty, but also corporal health and stability. Recreation activities like team sports or chess educated citizens on the moral values of the revolution while providing less time for vices and delinquency. I also explain how promoting athletics at the individual level raised the collective well-being of the population by the early 1970s. Doctors recommended cardiovascular training at least three times a week to target pervasive societal health problems like obesity, diabetes, and preventable diseases.21 Popular participation in athletics became a key part of the SNS’s preventative medicine strategy.

Chapter 4 focuses on Cuban advances in research and technology through the lens of sports medicine. One section is devoted to the athletic training of high caliber athletes and the

21 Pettavino and Pye, Sport in Cuba. 111

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role of biomechanics and physiology in Cuba’s victories in international athletic competitions. A second section discusses sports as therapy for the general population, including the treatment of asthma, physical disabilities, and mental health. The chapter concludes with an examination of sport and medical internationalism, a process where Cuba exported doctors, trainers, coaches, and sometimes athletes to foreign countries in exchange for social capital and hard currency.

My conclusion brings together these thematic chapters to show, once again, how the

Cuban government valued sports as a means for developing the health and fitness of the population and disseminating revolutionary ideology. Official discourse frequently associated sports with medicine, highlighting that the sectors shared the goal of producing an active, fit population. A world-class medical system and a consistent stream of athletic champions raised

Cuba’s symbolic capital. If the island could compete with the U.S. on an international level, it would raise serious doubts about the perceived superiority of capitalism, in turn legitimizing

Castro’s socialist revolution. The role of sports in Cuba’s healthcare ambitions is an understudied element of revolutionary culture in Cuba. By emphasizing these aspects of Cuban statecraft, I illustrate how the government approached the rationale, planning, and execution of public health and wellness initiatives. I also show how athletes, experts, and average citizens engaged with government programs for personal benefit.

Though the chapters are organized thematically, they follow the development and evolution of state-sponsored recreation. The early years of the revolution initiated the institutionalization of sports and medicine as part of the realm of government responsibilities.

These state agencies then focused on incorporating the masses into revolutionary projects. By the

1980s, Cuba engaged in what government officials considered a worldwide scientific-technical revolution. It applied medical advancements to the sports field as a means of improving athletic

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training and physical therapy. As I discuss briefly in my conclusion, economic difficulties following the collapse of the Soviet Union stunted most of the field’s growth. Faced with more pressing financial and political issues, the state relinquished some control over recreation back to the citizens.

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CHAPTER 2 INCORPORATING THE CORPORAL: THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF SPORTS AND MEDICINE

By the early 1960s, Fidel Castro’s regime increasingly sought to turn its political and military victory into a cultural revolution; but becoming the gatekeepers of Cuban culture required the incorporation and reform of previous state and private enterprises. After the guerrilla victory, the new administration affirmed responsibility for the population’s health and well- being, citing the lack of attention devoted to such goals in previous eras. Castro proclaimed, “It will be shown how superior this society is compared to the former one in which sports and education were privileges of a few, in which sports and education were not within reach of the immense majority of our children.”1 The revolution prioritized equal access to recreation and leisure. These obligations would be codified in the new Socialist Constitution in 1976; however, the incorporation of the individual and collective body began almost immediately. From baseball games to maternity wards, there was seldom an aspect of life in Cuba that the revolution did not touch. This chapter will focus on the prioritization of health and wellness as part of the revolutionary agenda. It will also cover the expansion and integration of previous sports and medical models. Unlike previous systems which provided sparse and unequal access to health and recreation, the revolution expanded the state’s sports and medical network. These changes brought health and wellness under the direct authority of the state. Government-run institutes in

Havana oversaw regional and local offices in the provinces. This system meant that rural or impoverished populations would not be left out of health and fitness reforms. The successes of

1 Fidel Castro, “Castro Calls Youth to Be Good Students” (Speech, August 23, 1963), http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1963/19630823.html.

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these new institutions would be referenced for the next several decades as indicators of the efficacy of revolutionary progress.

Sports Pre-Revolution

In Cuba’s national discourse, sport before 1959 was characterized by elitism, racism, and deviance. Athletic participation in pre-revolutionary society reflected these divisions, as access to sport was primarily restricted to wealthy, white males. Only the privileged classes had enough leisure time and capital to belong to private sports clubs. Equestrian, tennis, fencing, and hunting were popular with Cubans of Spanish descent.2 The Havana Yacht Club provided social and recreation opportunities for upper-class Cubans who preferred sailing and other watersports. The pre-revolutionary government neither emphasized nor invested in recreation and leisure for the general population. Only an estimated 15,000 participated in sports, these numbers divided between boxing or baseball athletes and wealthy students at private schools.3

Few recreation opportunities existed for the lower classes. Beaches were privately owned and usually reserved for tourists. Children still played versions of soccer or baseball in streets and public spaces, but they likely would have lacked quality equipment. For many poor young males, baseball and boxing presented a possible ticket out of poverty through a chance at

American professional sports. A small population did gain international acclaim, but the majority did not receive lasting material reward. These athletes, who were often poor and black, ended up broke and discarded once out of their prime.4

2 Robert Chappell, “Sport in Cuba: Before and After the ‘Wall’ Came Down,” The Sport Journal, January 3, 2004, http://thesportjournal.org/article/sport-in-cuba-before-and-after-the-wall-came-down/.

3 Paula J. Pettavino, “Novel Revolutionary Forms: The Use of Unconventional Diplomacy in Cuba,” in Cuba: The International Dimension, ed. Georges Alfred Fauriol and Eva Loser (New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers, 1990), 381

4 John Griffiths, “Sport: The People’s Right,” in Cuba: The Second Decade, ed. John Griffiths and Peter Griffiths (London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, 1979), 251

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Pastimes for the public reflected the national and rural economy. Though sports participation was not encouraged, betting certainly was.5 Lower classes gambled their earnings on various diversions like cockfighting, horse races, roulettes, lotteries, and other games of chance.6 After the revolution, many of these spaces were transformed into recreation areas. In a speech at the First Scholastic Games in 1963, Castro boasted that a stadium once filled with bettors was now filled with athletes. He lauded the revolution for freeing the proletariat from corrupt bourgeois influence and establishing virtue in a place previously filled with vice.7

Sport Under Socialism

In 1978, a journalist visiting Cuba wrote: “for this land, whose boundaries are set by the sea, sports has become a kind of Cuban equivalent of 19th century American Manifest Destiny.”8

The Cuban Revolution transformed most of island society, and sports were no exception. To make up for lost decades of participation, the 1976 Constitution asserted that sports were a natural right of the Cuban citizen. As a testament to this new mantra, the Cuban baseball league even hosted a one-time game in 1959 featuring the revolutionaries playing as the military team

“Los Barbudos,” with Fidel starring as pitcher. The Barbudos lost to a team of police officers 3-

0.9 The guerrillas’ strengths, it appears, were better suited to the mountains than to the baseball

5 Chappell, “Sport in Cuba.”

6 Pettavino, “Novel Revolutionary Forms: The Use of Unconventional Diplomacy in Cuba.”

7 Fidel Castro, “Castro Calls Youth to Be Good Students” (Speech, August 23, 1963)

8 Thomas Boswell, “Idle Play Not in Cuba Game Plan,” Washington Post, April 9, 1978, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1978/04/09/idle-play-not-in-cuba-game-plan/78d6adcf-251f-49f4- a91d-7b641684f3fe/.

9 Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 353-4

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diamond. Nonetheless, the new leaders’ passion for recreation hinted that athletics would be major focal point of the revolutionary agenda.

Reforms to the sport system started almost immediately. Less than a month after his victorious entry into Havana, Castro established a General Directorate of Sports. In February

1961, the Cuban government passed Law 936, creating the Instituto Nacional de Deportes,

Educación Física, y Recreación. INDER’s importance is underscored by the size and location of its headquarters. Its massive Cuidad Deportivo (Sports City) is situated on the south side of

Havana. The complex boasts a colosseum, multiple stadiums, athletic fields, and an Olympic swimming pool and countless more training facilities. Even today, many of these amenities

(however decrepit) remain open to the public.

The government-sponsored sports programs had two primary goals: to develop the wellbeing and health of the public; and to find champions to convert into symbols of the revolution. The development of INDER allowed these goals to work in unison. At the general level, INDER promoted recreation opportunities for all ages to promote healthy families. They also worked in coordination with the Ministry of Education to bring athletics into public schools.

From these physical education programs, the institute could discover and field new talent. To train potential champions, the institute ran several special academies. The image below shows how talented children moved through INDER’s “Pyramid of High Performance.” Athletically gifted children advanced from public schools to regional Escuelas Initiativas Deportivas

Escolares (EIDE). The most talented moved to the national Escuela Superior de

Perfeccionamiento Atlético (ESPA) located in Havana. The most elite of these students went on

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to represent the country on national teams.10 The image below claims that in 1978, more than five million citizens participated in athletics—over half of the island’s total population.11

Through INDER’s dedication to athletic participation and the training of future competitors, the revolution cemented its commitment to “sport for all.”

Figure 2-1. A diagram from a youth pamphlet depicting the Cuban athletic structure.12

The importance of athletic academies is shown by the time and attention paid to them by the Cuban media and the attendance of top government officials. In 1977 alone, the Granma

Weekly Review covered the openings of four different training institutions. Fidel personally inaugurated at least two of those schools. In September, he and several of his ministers attended a ceremony at the Orestes Acosta School for Basic Training in Sports in Santiago de Cuba. Fidel challenged several students to basketball and ping-pong games before exploring the extensive training and medical facilities.13 The 1,500-capacity school offered specializations in twenty-five sports. It also had a hospital and facilities for pediatric, dental, orthopedic, and psychological

10 XI Festival Mundial Juventud. Grupo Deportivo, Sentimiento, Pensamiento Y Conducta de Los Atletas Cubanos (Habana, 1978).

11 The World Bank reports Cuba’s population as 9.7 million in 1978. The World Bank. “Population” 1960-2017.

12 XI Festival Mundial Juventud. Sentimiento

13 Rene Camacho and Gabriel Molina, “Fidel Opens Capitan Orestes Acosta School for Basic Training in Sports, In Santiago de Cuba,” Granma Weekly Review, September 18, 1977, sec. National News.

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care. The inclusion of a hospital at this training school again emphasizes the regime’s association of sports with medicine.

As a further commitment to equality, the country ended the practice of professional sports in 1962. The administration argued that professionalism was a phenomenon of capitalism that supported man exploiting another man. This type of system had no place in a socialist state. An

INDER publication explained: “Professionalism is the vile merchandise of social consumption, sold in the form of a show, where the so-called ‘athlete’ depends on the well-known law of mercantilist character of supply and demand.”14 The state claimed that paying athletes led to corruption, betting, and other vices, as evidenced by the state of athletics in the United States.

Additionally, competition for wealth and success wreaked havoc among amateur athletes. The new Cuba expected competitors to play for the love of the game and the love of their country rather than material gain.15

By 1965, the U.S. embargo threatened Cuba’s emerging sports successes. Equipment was difficult and costly to secure because of trade restrictions. To reduce its dependency on outside suppliers, the state approved the creation of a national sports industry that could satisfy the nation’s recreation needs domestically. The expansion into sporting goods further integrated athletics into state operations. Cuban laborers in these facilities stitched, sewed, and tested sports equipment. Without the aid of mass production machines, Cubans made each baseball bat by hand. Recognizing the limits of this production capacity, INDER encouraged citizens to maintain, repair and reuse athletic implements. The book Cuidado y Mantenimiento de

14 XI Festival Mundial Juventud. Grupo Deportivo, Sentimiento, Pensamiento Y Conducta de Los Atletas Cubanos.

15 Fidel Castro, “Castro’s Speech to Returning Athletes from Central American and Caribbean Games,” Havana Domestic Radio (Cuba, March 20, 1970), Castro Speech Data Base - Latin American Network Information Center, LANIC.

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Implementos Deportivos, published by INDER, explains the detailed care and maintenance for equipment across a wide spectrum of athletic actives. The manual notes that the proper care and reuse of athletic implements supports socialism, which criticizes the materiality and waste of capitalist society.16 “Every time a fan throws a foul ball back into play so it can be used again, we are breaking the blockade,” praised one baseball player.17 Rather than fall to the equipment shortages, Cubans responded to their problems by creating their own products and promoting the elimination of excess.

The year 1965 also marked the graduation of the first class of instructors and sports teachers at the Escuela Superior de Educación Física Comandante Manuel Fajardo. Now the country’s school children could be trained by licensed professionals who oversaw the nation’s expanding physical education program. By 1977, the school had evolved into a prestigious, state- of-the-art facility for physical educators. The entrance requirements of the institute included a physical exam based on sports ability and physiological measures. The school also required students to be trained in morphology, biochemistry, sports psychology, physiology, biomechanics and other hard sciences. Physical education students also studied political economy and scientific communism as part of ideological training.18 This theoretical training provided students with an understanding of their role in the revolution and the future of socialist society.

16 Francisco García Andreu, Cuidado Y Mantenimiento de Implementos Deportivos I (Habana, Cuba: Editorial Pueblo y Educación, 1977).

17 Thomas Boswell, “Idle Play Not in Cuba Game Plan,” Washington Post, April 9, 1978,

18 Rolando Lahera, “Major Manuel Fajardo Higher Institute of Physical Education,” Granma Weekly Review, February 13, 1977, sec. Special Feature.

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To highlight the reformed athletics system and enthuse the public, INDER organized holidays, special events, and national games. For instance, to celebrate the country’s love of baseball, the institute held an Amateur Baseball Tournament in January 1962. A month later,

Fidel himself hit the first ball at the inaugural “Día de la Pelota.”19 Other mass sporting displays included the National Sporting Games, the Scholastic Games, and the National Day of Physical

Culture. In 1967, as an effort to make sporting events more accessible to the public, the administration passed Resolution 1030 that abolished entrance fees at games. INDER claimed charging for admittance was a legacy of the class divide in pre-revolutionary society.20

Eliminating fees was one of several ways that the revolution sought to end years of sporting discrimination and bring athletics to the general populace.

With athletic participation on the rise, the revolutionary government needed spaces and institutions that reflected its dedication to recreation, modernity, and socialist values. The construction of Ciudad Deportivo stood as a shining example to socialist athletics. The Estadio

Latinoamericano, the largest stadium in Latin America, underwent expansion and renovations in the early 1970s. These large-scale projects did garner some negative attention abroad. The

Washington Post reported: “critics of Castro's high-priority sports empire say that he puts stadium building ahead of apartment building, and that his innumerable new 20,000 to 60,000 seat ballparks are simply the cathedrals of a socialist society.”21 Though critics denounced construction as excess, the Cuban government saw the development of sports infrastructure as a point of pride. Nationally circulated papers praised technological innovations like the installation

19 Fidel Castro and Mario José Torres de Diego, Fidel y el deporte: selección de pensamientos 1959-2006 (Editorial Deportes, 2006). 405

20 XI Festival Mundial Juventud. Grupo Deportivo, Sentimiento, Pensamiento Y Conducta de Los Atletas Cubanos.

21 Boswell, “Idle Play Not in Cuba Game Plan.”

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of synthetic running tracks or the construction of a rowing tank.22 These structures not only highlighted Cuba’s modernity, they allowed Cuban athletes to train with the same caliber of equipment as wealthier countries.

Revolutionizing Healthcare

Like sports, deep class divides characterized healthcare prior to 1959. Most of the population, especially those in rural areas, did not have access to medical care. In Havana,

Spanish ethnic societies established a mutualista system that provided medical care for its members. These organizations largely restricted membership to the upper and middle classes of

Spanish descent. The Transport Workers Union founded its own mutualist clinic 1938. For the first time in Cuba, blacks were included in the healthcare system.23 Despite this increase in coverage, most poor Cubans were left with no preventative care and certainly no security in case of emergency.

In fact, Castro had long pointed to the healthcare plight of the rural citizen as a sign of government failure. In his famous “History Will Absolve Me” speech, he argues:

Only death can liberate one from so much misery. In this respect, however, the State is most helpful - in providing early death for the people. Ninety per cent of the children in the countryside are consumed by parasites which filter through their bare feet from the ground they walk on. Society is moved to compassion when it hears of the kidnapping or murder of one child, but it is indifferent to the mass murder of so many thousands of children who die every year from lack of facilities, agonizing with pain.24

22 Sigfredo Barros, “Cuba Now Has A Rowing Tank,” Granma Weekly Review, April 24, 1977, sec. Sports.

23 Julie M. Feinsilver, Healing the Masses: Cuban Health Politics at Home and Abroad (University of California Press, 31

24 Fidel Castro, History Will Absolve Me: Castro’s Court Argument, trans. Pedro Álvarez Tabío and Andrew Paul Booth (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015).

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The four-hour speech went on to criticize the cost and corruption of the healthcare system in

Cuba, outlining in graphic detail the horrors of poverty in Cuba. During the revolution, the guerillas encountered the poverty and poor living standards of the rural population. These experiences made a lasting impression on the revolutionaries. After the guerilla victory, healthcare became a primary focus of government reform.

The government sought to solve the gaps and inequalities of the previous healthcare system. First, however, it needed to solve the “brain drain” dilemma. Following Castro’s victory, roughly half of Cuba’s doctors fled the country, creating a severe deficiency in health providers.

In 1960, only sixteen professors remained at the country’s only medical school. Before it could address expanding coverage, the nation’s priority was to train a new medical corps that could staff the budding public health system.25 In addition to traditional schooling in health sciences, medical training in Cuba taught ideology and socialist values. Students learned that public health was a human right, available to all citizens regardless of class, race or gender.26 Graduates of

Cuba’s medical schools swore loyalty to the principles of the revolution instead of the

Hippocratic Oath. This change placed revolutionary morals, instead of the traditional Hippocratic ethical standards, at the core of a physician’s duty. To encourage a new class of students, the revolution heavily promoted the study of medicine. Emphasizing the high social value of doctors helped the revolution rebuild its population of professionals. In 1964, the Havana Medical

25 P. Sean Brotherton, Revolutionary Medicine: Health and the Body in Post-Soviet Cuba (Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2012). 67

26 John M. Kirk, “Cuba’s Medical Internationalism: Development and Rationale,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 28, no. 4 (October 1, 2009): 507.

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School graduated 394 physicians, and by 1971, medicine was the major of thirty percent of all university students.27

With its rapidly growing student body, Cuba could begin restructuring medical care under the new Sistema Nacional de Salud (SNS). Inspired by a vision of a new social order, the government invested in expanding and improving the public health care system. In addition to principles of healthcare for all, universal coverage, and scientific advancement, the revolutionary system placed preventative care as the primary goal of public health. In 1961, Law 949 established the Ministry of Public Health as the overseer of all health activities in Cuba. Working through a framework of regional and local polyclinics, state health institutions promoted various initiatives aimed at eliminating diseases of poverty through vaccination, treatment, and proper hygiene.28

The revolution’s lofty health ambitions required the combined effort of medical professionals and the public. Brotherton explains how the state encouraged Cubans to be aware of their own health. He describes a health literate population where citizens, regardless of age or education, could speak at length about diseases, symptoms and pharmacology. Many of the individuals he interviewed owned professional-grade first aid kits with extensive supplies of pills, needles, gauze and ointments. Brotherton suggests Cubans are invested in a “biomedical culture in which medicalized understandings of the body were concomitantly couched within larger conceptual framings of scientific advancement and socialist modernity.”29 The Cuban conception of modernity meant having intelligent, informed citizens that were active participants

27 Brotherton, Revolutionary Medicine. 67-68

28 Feinsilver, Healing the Masses: Cuban Health Politics at Home and Abroad. 40-55

29 Brotherton, Revolutionary Medicine. 58

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in their own health. It is likely that the creation of a health literate society emerged from the

SNS’s promotion of preventative medicine. A population capable of understanding health issues is better able to seek treatment and provide care.

MINSAP and other health institutions inundated the public with announcements, articles, and pamphlets about well-being, disease prevention, and medical technology. Often, these materials were not only found in medical journals or health magazines, they featured prominently in publications meant for general readership. For example, Verde Olivo, a magazine published by the Cuban armed forces, ran a story on cancer rates in men and women. It draws attention to the high rates of lung cancer, warning citizens about the dangers of smoking. A different volume of Verde Olivo featured a “spot the difference” game that asked readers to identify hygiene violations in a kitchen setting. Though framed as a logic quiz, these cartoons informed understandings of health and cleanliness. Even children and youth magazines published health and science infographics like the one below, instilling health consciousness in even the youngest revolutionaries. These examples show the omnipresence of wellness dialogues.

Figure 2-2. The children’s magazine Pioneros ran public health content like this graph showing the amount of air necessary for physical exercise.30

30 From Pioneros, March 1971.

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Figure 2-3. An infographic from Verde Olivo compares cancer rates in males and females.31

Figure 2-4. The differences in this cartoon from Verde Olivo correspond to breaches of hygiene norms in the kitchen.32

Reforms to the medical and sports sectors targeted the rampant inequalities and discriminatory policies of the previous era. However, this chapter argues that these changes also gave the government increased control over citizens’ bodies by bringing health and wellness into the revolutionary government’s domain. The state’s incorporation and expansion of these fields built a network of care from which socialist ideology and revolutionary goals could be disseminated to the public. Through recreation and health, the government invited citizens to be a part of the new Cuban society. The willing and enthusiastic participation of the masses would become integral to achieving Cuba’s medical powerhouse status.

31 From Verde Olivo, May 31, 1970.

32 From Verde Olivo, March 1970.

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CHAPTER 3 ¿POR QUÉ LA MASIVIDAD? FOSTERING A CULTURE OF WELLNESS

The mass carries out with matchless enthusiasm and discipline the tasks set by the government, whether in the field of the economy, culture, defense, sports, etc. The initiative generally comes from Fidel, or from the revolutionary leadership, and is explained to the people, who make it their own.1

- Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Socialism and Man in Cuba

As covered in the last chapter, the 1961 institutionalizations of sports and medicine through INDER and the SNS brought physical health into the domain of the Cuban State. These networks of care could now be used to disseminate revolutionary ideology to a wide audience.

If health and physical well-being were going to be vital parts of Castro’s plan for a potencia médica, the state had to “police” the social body to ensure that foundations of a healthy life were instilled in all citizens. The Castro administration hoped to improve health indicators like infant mortality and life expectancy through mass participation campaigns in health and fitness. By encouraging individuals to engage in positive habits, the state hoped to raise the overall health of the nation.

The Cubans have a special term for this method: masividad, which a Cuban journalist defined as “the movement of large numbers of men and women dedicated to an end.”2 The above quote from Guevara explains the process of masividad in Cuba. Tasks are passed from government officials to the masses who then adapt the initiatives into their own lives. According the journal Deportes: El Derecho del Pueblo, the concept of masividad was born on January 1,

1959 upon the guerillas’ successful march into Havana.3 With the triumph of the revolution,

1 Ernesto Guevara, Global Justice: Liberation and Socialism (Ocean Press, 2002). 31

2 Mario Torres, “Por qué la masividad?,” El deporte: derecho del pueblo en Cuba., September 30, 1983. 38

3 Rene Camacho and Gabriel Molina, “Fidel Opens Capitan Orestes Acosta School for Basic Training in Sports”

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Fidel Castro took the country away from the imperialists and the corrupt elites and gave it back to the people.

The revolution’s promises of a reformed society would take brigades of educators, health professionals, and other volunteers to raise the country out of its neo-colonialist past. As part of the initiative to indoctrinate the masses with the revolutionary ideology, Cubans were strongly encouraged to join collective organizations like the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC), the

Federación de Mujeres Cubanas (FMC), and the neighborhood-based Comités de Defensa de la

Revolución (CDR). Youths had their own special role to play in the revolution, with groups like the Pioneros, the Union Juventud Communista (UJC), and the Federación Estudiantil. These organizations played a key role in reorganizing Cuban society and producing a passionate, involved, and productive citizenship. The government expected all sectors of the population were expected to actively participate in revolutionary reform.4

Creating Cultura Física

The participation of the masses would be achieved through creating a revolutionary culture of fitness where health and citizenship were intrinsically linked. When Che Guevara spoke of his ambitions for a New Man, he envisioned a loyal, diligent, and educated citizen driven by morals rather than material incentives. Sports provided a method to create a revolutionary citizen, ‘fit’ in all aspects of physical and ethical character. According to the

Ministry of Education, citizens needed a “soul of gold in a body of iron.”5 Under Socialism, men and women would become well-rounded citizens ready to defend the Patria from physical and

4 P. Sean Brotherton, Revolutionary Medicine: Health and the Body in Post-Soviet Cuba (Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2012). 64

5 Cuba. Ministerio de Educación. Asesoría de Educación Física. “Queremos un alma de oro en un cuerpo de hierro.” La Habana, 1960.

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ideological threats.6 Athletics provided a way to engage the citizenship in character building while also ensuring life-long health habits. Castro and other top leaders routinely praised the ability of sports to develop physical strength, mental aptitude, and moral character.7

Dr. Raudol Ruiz Aguilera, an official at INDER, wrote Cuba’s goal was “to convert sports into an inseparable aspect of education, culture, recreation, and well-being of the population.”8 The government’s successful incorporation of athletics made recreation more accessible than ever. INDER, the CTC, and the Instituto Superior de Cultura Física saturated

Cuban society with opportunities for leisure. A Washington Post article from 1978 jested “from calisthenics for housewives, through reckless driving for everybody, Cuban society is permeated by games. ‘Solve the chess puzzle,’ blares the radio, ‘and win 20 trips to the Soviet Union.’"9 In popular magazines, checkers scenarios, memory exercises, word games and sports-based

‘fotoquizes,’ appear alongside comics and political cartoons. Verde Olivo included weekly game sections including riflery quizzes, military mental drills, and the “spot the difference” games featured in the previous chapter. Deportes regularly featured chess and checkers problems for readers to exercise their logic skills. The children’s publication Pioneros included a Pasatiempos section with mazes, quizzes, and word games. For older audiences, the arts and culture periodical

Bohemia featured similar sections with puzzles and crosswords. Recreation in Cuba was rarely

6 Miguel Ángel Masjuan, El Deporte y Su Historia (Habana, Cuba, 1984).

7 Fidel Castro and Mario José Torres de Diego, Fidel y el deporte: selección de pensamientos 1959-2006 (Editorial Deportes, 2006). Selections from August 8, 1962 (pg. 35) and August 22, 1963 (pg. 44)

8 Miguel Ángel Masjuan, El Deporte y Su Historia (Habana, Cuba, 1984). 6. In “Prólogo” by Prof. Dr. Raudol Ruiz Aguilera, original: “Convertir el deporte en parte inseparable de la educación, la cultura, la recreación y el bienestar de los pueblos.”

9 Thomas Boswell, “Idle Play Not in Cuba Game Plan,”

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idle play, as every sporting event, crossword, or leisure activity was an opportunity to instill the population with socialist values.10

Figure 3-1. Chess and Checkers exercises found in the monthly sports publication Deportes.11

Though INDER serves as the country’s highest promoter of sports policy, at the local and provincial level, recreation was coordinated through Consejos Deportivos Voluntarios (CDVs).

An ethnography of Cuban sports, published in 1979 reported over 5,000 CDVs functioning in

Cuba, staffed by a volunteer army of over fifty thousand administrators, trainers, and coaches. 12

These voluntary sports councils serve as the backbone of community sports. They work alongside the national organizations like INDER and MINSAP to promote participation in sports, fitness and recreation. A council’s responsibilities could range from organizing team games for factory workers, running fitness classes, writing press reports, and generally popularizing athletics within the local community.

10 State archives are filled with works concerning free time and socialism. See: García Gallo, Gaspar Jorge. La Educación física, el deporte y la recreación como un principio fundamental de la educación socialista. La Habana 1964; Hieck, Willy. La Correlación entre las horas libres y las horas laborables en relación con el desarrollo universal del hombre en el socialismo. Leipzig 1962; or Oelschlagel, Gottfried. Karl Marx and la Cultura Física. 1969

11 Deportes. July 1987

12 Pettavino and Pye, Sport in Cuba. The authors note that while several non-Cuban sources report fifty thousand members, a Cuban periodical, LPV, from 1977 reports figures between eighteen to twenty thousand.

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In addition to CVDs, the state created the Listos Para Vencer (LPV) program in 1961 to further its goals of popular participation and the search for athletic talent. Like the Presidential

Youth Fitness Program in the U.S. and the Ready for Labor and Defense (GTO) initiative in the

Soviet Union, LPV consisted of a series of tests to determine an individual’s physical condition.13 Political Scientist Paula Jean Pettavino’s The Politics of Sport Under Communism: A

Comparative Study of Competitive Athletics in the Soviet Union and Cuba outlines Cuba’s adoption of the athletic structure of the USSR. The Soviet GTO program featured a series of tests to evaluate participants’ physical condition. While the early years of the program (pre-World

War I) tested youth in skills necessary for war like shooting, climbing, and marching, the state revised the initiative in 1946 to better emphasize a focus on health and wellness. 14

By 1961, the Soviet program had existed for three decades and undergone several revisions. Trainers and advisors from the USSR worked with Cuban officials to create a program similar to GTO that could fulfill the athletic needs of the islands’ population.15 The Cuban program promoted a healthy lifestyle by testing athletic skill sets and awarding prizes for performance. Participants were encouraged to compete against themselves, not each other, in tests of speed, resistance, and strength. Different target standards were set according to age and gender and participants could earn certificates or badges for their successful completion of tasks.16 By 1964, LPV evaluated over 380,000 Cubans in gymnastic skills, short-distance

13 Paula Jean Pettavino’ The Politics of Sport Under Communism: A Comparative Study of Competitive Athletics in the Soviet Union and Cuba (University of Notre Dame, 1982).

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Griffiths, “Sport: The People’s Right.” 251

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running, swimming abilities, and various jumping and throwing tests.17 Cuban media covered the program on tv, radio and the press; and the Postal Service even issuing a set of collectible stamps to commemorate the event. Though the program sought to engage all ages of the population, they had an extra incentive for young people. Youth showing special talent in LPV tests were eligible for entry to one of Cuba’s elite training schools where they could maximize their athletic potential.18 In the hopes of further popularizing and normalizing athletic participation, the program was evolved and expanded in the late 1970s under the joint coordination of INDER, the

CDRs, and the Ministry of Public Health.

Creating a revolutionary culture of fitness required integration of all genders, ages, and abilities. Miguel Ángel Masjuan, a founder of INDER, wrote: “Health is not for the few, neither is sport. The benefits of mass participation will be for everyone.”19 While programs like CVD and LPV encouraged general interest in sports, there were also several campaigns aimed at the inclusion of particular sectors. With special emphasis on youth, women, and the elderly, the country could fulfill its promise of popular participation at every level.

Children were a particularly valuable resource to the revolutionary government. By the late 1970s, many had known no life other than socialism and no idols other than the revolutionaries. The “Seremos como Che” generation, as it came to be called, were active participants in state programing.20 It was common for children to take part in several communist youth organizations as they aged. Many were also sent to rural boarding schools where they

17 Pettavino and Pye, Sport in Cuba. 101

18 Ibid., 253

19 ¿Torres, “Por qué la masividad?”

20 Anita Casavantes Bradford, The Revolution Is for the Children: The Politics of Childhood in Havana and Miami, 1959-1962 (UNC Press Books, 2014). 184

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performed agricultural labor along with their studies. The state took on an increasing role as a surrogate parent as these field schools essentially removed children from their influences of their homes.

The Revolution turned out to be a strict and demanding parent, especially in matters of health and fitness. Official “corporal perfection” of children started in preschool where toddlers developed motor skills and health habits.21 Pamphlets, articles and television programs articles advised teachers and parents on the best methods for infant physical education.22 In 1978, one traveler noted: “Children are put in water at eight months of age to show them the first movements of swimming.”23 Swimming was an important indicator of modernity in Cuba for both reasons of safety and as a sign of leisure time. Citizens, especially Afro-Cubans, were denied access to most pools and beaches before the revolution. Universally teaching aquatics at an early age eliminated this segregation of leisure activities. Public service announcements, like the one below, encourage parents to teach young children to swim.

Figure 3-2. An article in the periodical Verde Olivo promotes teaching children to swim with the caption; "Like a Fish in Water"24

21 Mario Torres, “La Educación Física: Mas que una asignatura,” El Deporte: Derecho del Pueblo, July 30, 1987.

22 Pettavino and Pye, Sport in Cuba. Also see: Jana Berdychova, “La educación física preescolar para las escuelas de formación de educadoras de círculos infantiles. 1980; Miriam Valdés García, “Teoría y metodología de Educación física pre-escolar” 1990; and “Independencia y disciplina en el niño” Verde Olivo, November 1975

23 Boswell, “Idle Play Not in Cuba Game Plan.”

24 Verde Olivo, April 19, 1970

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Though training began in infancy, athletic participation intensified as youths reached adolescence. Pettavino writes: "It is too risky to leave any childhood activities to chance. The games children play are still supposed to be fun, but they constitute a means to an end—with that end being a Cuban molded into the new socialist man.”25 Sports in Cuba were both a right and a duty. Not participating could mark one as a social deviant. In a 1961 speech, Castro announced

“it’s inconceivable to have a revolutionary youth that is not also an athlete.”26 In addition to health benefits, sports taught discipline, patience, and teamwork: ideal qualities for future soldiers.

Physical education was the primary means of spreading athletic participation to youths.

The physical education programs were a joint effort by INDER and the Ministry of Education and both institutions put considerable resources into researching the theory, methodology, and implementation of sports culture. They drew from a deep well of fitness scholarship, sometimes from their fellow Soviet allies, but just as often from first-world countries like the U.S., Spain,

France and Sweden.27

In “Sport in Revolutionary Societies,” Eric Wagner writes “I observed one large primary school in Santiago de Cuba, where each day forty-five minutes were devoted to sport and physical education. During this time six physical education teachers and one gymnastics

25 Paula J. Pettavino, “Novel Revolutionary Forms: The Use of Unconventional Diplomacy in Cuba,” in Cuba: The International Dimension, ed. Georges Alfred Fauriol and Eva Loser (New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers, 1990), 373–403.

26 Fidel Castro and Mario José Torres de Diego, “Speech on Oct. 5, 1961” Fidel y el deporte: selección de pensamientos 1959-2006 (Editorial Deportes, 2006). 26

27 INDER, Bibliografía Educación Física Tiempo Libre y Recreación, 1971. And INDER, Centro de Investigación e Información del deporte, Catálogo de Traducciones (Habana, Cuba, 1981).

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instructor taught the fundamentals of twenty-six different sports.”28 While physical education was important in instilling good health habits, the state also viewed schools as a “fertile quarry”29 where it could mine the next generation of Cuban superstars. Encouraging students to try a variety of sports helped instructors identify students with particular aptitudes. Talented students moved on to elite regional or national training schools, passing through the Pyramid of High

Performance explained in the previous chapter.

Though the youth were the heirs to the revolution, Castro also highlighted the need for the athletic participation of all ages, including the elderly. He considered sports as important “to conserve what energy they have left and to safeguard their health which is necessary for a full life. 30 Exercise fought aging, raised social value, and sustained cognitive abilities. An article in

Deportes, promised readers that “biological” age was much more important than “calendar” age and that exercise could add ten years—or more! —energy to a man.31 To prolong health and quality of life, INDER worked in cooperation with the Ministry of Public Health to create exercise plans and organize recreational activities aimed at elder participation. In 1988, twenty thousand members over the age of sixty took part in these Círculos de Abuelos in Havana. By

1990, the participants had grown to over one hundred thousand.32

28 Eric A. Wagner, “Sport in Revolutionary Societies: Cuba and Nicaragua,” in Sport and Society in Latin America: Diffusion, Dependency, and the Rise of Mass Culture, ed. Joseph L. Arbena, Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1988), 85–97. citation

29 Jaime Caminada, “Fértil Cantera,” El Deporte: Derecho Del Pueblo En Cuba., July 30, 1987.

30 Fidel Castro, “Speech at the Inauguration of the School for Basic Training in Sports of City of Havana Province.” (October 6, 1977).

31 Torres, “¿Por qué la masividad?”

32 Pettavino and Pye, Sport in Cuba. 111

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Though eighty percent of Círculos de Abuelos were women, female athletic participation lagged behind men. Noting this gap in the early years of the Revolution, INDER and The

Federation of Cuban Women sought to mediate this gap by encouraging physical activity—albeit in a very narrow scope. In an article from 1977, titled “Physical Education Really Catching on

Among Cuban Women,” basic gymnastics was the sole form of exercised discussed.33 This article was not a unique case. Apart from elite athletes, female athletic campaigns promoted low impact activities, almost exclusively gymnastics or stretching. INDER and the FMC celebrated basic gymnastics as an ideal hobby because it could be performed with little time and no equipment.34 Exercise articles lured readers in with promises of “¡Mantener la forma!”

¡Mantener la línea!” “¡Ser más bella!” These headlines suggest that, appearance, not health, was the primary motivator for most Cuban women. Regardless of personal incentives, the Cuban government did report a substantial increase in women’s participation by the mid-1970s.

According to the chart below, the number of female athletes grew both for ordinary citizens and international competitors.35

33 Sigfredo Barros, “Physical Education Really Catching on Among Cuba Women,” Granma Weekly Review, November 27, 1977, sec. Sports.

34 Mario Torres, “La Voluntad Rompe Barreras,” El Deporte: Derecho del Pueblo, July 30, 1986.

35 XI Festival Mundial Juventud. “Sentimiento”

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Figure 3-3: This infographic quantifies the increase of female participants in masividad and in international competitions like the Olympics, the Pan-American Games, and the Central American Games.36

A survey of Cuban participants at the XI Festival Mundial Juventud provides insight into how the “Che” generation viewed women in sports.37 In addition to queries about socialism and the revolution, the questionnaires asked the athletes two questions on gender roles. The surveys asked: “1. Mark with an (x) your opinion of women’s equality and explain why. 2. Mark with an

(x) your opinion of the incorporation of women into sports and explain why.” Below each question were a series of multiple-choice answers. Of twenty participants, 18 responded either that women are equal to men in everything, or that they are equal in labor and sports. Ironically, when asked about women’s participation in the next question, only eight respondents believed that women should have access to all sports. Many athletes answered that women should practice some sports, but not all, or that they should dedicate themselves to “feminine sports.” The explanations are fairly consistent. Many replies questioned the physical limitations of female strength or expressed concern about safety in rough sports like boxing, weightlifting, or rugby. A shocking fifty-percent of respondents who answered that women should not practice all sports

36 From XI Festival Mundial Juventud. Sentimiento

37 Ibid. The respondents came from a varied background of sports. Of the twenty featured athletes, only three were women.

45

cited detriments to proper female development. One athlete even attested that non-feminine sports “caused harm to women’s organs.”38

These results elucidate two realities of post-revolutionary athletics. First, the FMC’s rhetoric of female equality made a lasting impression on youth of this generation. Many reported enthusiastically that Socialism showed women deserved equal rights and equal participation in society.39 Yet, it also highlights that sports lagged in the general population’s ideas about female equality. Revolutionary women participated in the military, voluntary cane cutting, and other labor-intensive activities, but sports seemed to be a unique sector reserved for male dominance.

Second, there was a prominent debate that female physical activities caused stunted development. Because there is no mention of this in official discourse, these ideas were likely circulating at the popular level. This could stem from the reality that some competitive teenage girls experienced delayed puberty, but experts attribute the cause to especially low body fat percentage or intense exercise. Thus, only extremely-active young athletes would be at risk, not the general female population. Additionally, long term effects on growth and maturation have not been established by medical science. It should also be noted that the most common sports for concern are traditionally “feminine” sports like gymnastics, ballet, and figure skating.40 This suggests that hesitation to accept women’s athletic equality may be less a health concern and more a response to maintaining traditional gender norms.

38 XI Festival Mundial Juventud. “Sentimiento”

39 At least so far as the non-anonymous answers of a government-sponsored questionnaire indicate.

40 A. D. G. Baxter-Jones and N. Maffulli, “Intensive Training in Elite Young Female Athletes,” British Journal of Sports Medicine 36, no. 1 (February 1, 2002): 13–15

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Effects of Sports on Social and Physical Health

Why did the state place such emphasis on uniting all sectors of the population in physical health? Corporal and mental fitness were important character traits for the development of the

New Man, but athletic participation provides more benefits to society than pure physical strength. Socially, recreation activities strengthened community ties and deterred social deviance. In the health sector, physical activity united the population around communal goals, aided the preventative care system and raised the nation’s health indicators.

For a population as social as Cuba, recreation and leisure could only be a community activity. CDRs and CVDs were actively involved in the planning and execution of family and youth activities. Even occupations served as a site for athletic participation. Workers formed leagues and competed against each other in friendly games of baseball, basketball, and other team sports.41 Recreation was a means of building teamwork and productivity, two essential qualities of a socialist society.

These community activities provided young people with opportunities, social engagement, and a healthy use of free time. The administration hoped that by providing structured and constructive opportunities, youth would turn away from petty crimes, black marketeering, and other forms of deviance.42 Castro himself promoted recreation as vital for youths to burn off excess energy and develop discipline, health and good habits. Sports, he argued, are an “antidote to vice.”43 Sports personnel shared this view. In an interview with The

Washington Post, Director of the Cuban Olympic Committee Manuel Gonzales explained:

41 Pettavino and Pye, Sport in Cuba. 101

42 Ibid. 103

43 Castro, “Speech at the Inauguration of the School for Basic Training in Sports of City of Havana Province.”

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Our young people don't have time for marijuana in Cuba. Prostitution, drugs . . . they are extremely hard to find. I would say impossible, because that is the case, but I know Americans cannot conceive of that. With work and study and play and, of course, romance, who has time for vices?44

The morality of Cuban society as opposed to American vice was a popular theme in

Cuban publications. In June 1970, the journal Verde Olivo published a memo from the American government titled “Notice to U.S. citizens in Spain about Drugs.” The text warned Americans about the repercussions of drug use during holiday travels in Europe. The subsequent analysis by

Cuba journalists, asserted the note’s content expressed the “corrupted nature of the Yankee

Imperialist Society and the self-assurance with which its representatives face these social problems.”45 According to the article, Americans were fervent drug users incapable of self- control. In addition, their government cared so little for ethics that it thought drug abuse could be solved by a one-paragraph warning notice. This narrative of deviant Westerners would arise again in doping scandals of the 1980s.

Community ties also benefitted from the collective aspects of public health and fitness campaigns. As part of on-going efforts to militarize and medicalize society, the Castro administration framed the “fight for a healthy life” within a revolutionary context.46 Feinsilver argued that, “for the purposes of creating social cohesion at home, it is necessary for Cuba to either maintain a hostile relationship with the United States or else invent another external threat.”47 Castro understood that maintaining internal social and political control required a constant external struggle to reinvigorate fealty and dependence on the revolution. In most cases,

44 Boswell, “Idle Play Not in Cuba Game Plan.”

45 “Notice to U.S. citizens in Spain about Drugs” reprinted in Verde Olivo June 14, 1970.

46 Mateev, Dragomir. Problemas de la lucha por la longevidad. Bol. Cient. Tec. INDER. Habana 1965

47 Feinsilver, Healing the Masses: Cuban Health Politics at Home and Abroad. 14

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the adversary was the northern imperialists, but wellness campaigns brought new enemies to the table: disease, sedentarism, and drugs. Dialogues about health and wellness included conflict- heavy terminology like struggle, combat, and battle.

Figure 3-4. A notice in Verde Olivo warns about the "invisible war" against bacteria.48

Public health campaigns against disease started early in the revolutionary period. By the early 1970s, Cuba had eliminated most diseases of poverty and eradicated polio from the island more than a decade before the United States. Cuba’s new classes of trained medical professionals led the charge in these movements. The most notable mobilization of the populace was Cuban’s battle against dengue in 1981. The new strain, dengue-2, brought obvious health risks but it also carries the threat of imperialist intervention. As the deadly epidemic tore through the nation,

Fidel Castro publicly accused the CIA of introducing the disease to Cuba. According to Castro, this biological warfare was the latest assault in a decades-long series of attempted sabotage by the U.S.49 Castro’s fiery speech imbued the fight against dengue with symbolic and political

48 Verde Olivo. April 26, 1970

49 Special to the New York Times, “Epidemic in Cuba Sets Off Dispute with U.S.,” The New York Times, September 6, 1981, sec. World, https://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/06/world/epidemic-in-cuba-sets-off-dispute-with-us.html. In an ironic twist, officials from the U.S. State Department proposed that the introduction of the disease was the result of the return of Cuba troops from Africa. To this day, the government upholds the accusations of biological warfare, with an exhibit dedicated to the dengue epidemic in Havana’s Museo de la Revolución.

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significance. Continuing with the battle terminology, the administration organized “health armies” of thousands of trained lay men and women, rigorously selected by the people’s power, municipal health administrations, the FMC, and the UJC.50 These volunteer health brigades inspected and eliminated possible breeding grounds for mosquitos. National publications disseminated diagrams of the aedes aegypti mosquito, the principle transmitter of the disease, and public service announcements about reducing still water. The brigade’s attack on mosquitos succeeded and the epidemic subsided by the year.

Health and fitness professionals applied this battle-like framework to other societal issues like sedentarism. In Salud vs. Sedentarismo, Dr. Luis Rubalcaba Ordaz, outlines the dangers of an inactive lifestyle. Along with obesity and smoking (two other dangers broached by public health officials), sedentarism was at the top of the list of risk factors for cardiovascular disease.51

The elderly were especially prone to periods of inactivity, facilitating the need for the Círculos de Abuelos discussed earlier. Dr. Raul Mazora Zamora attributes sedentarism to the dangerous comforts of a modern lifestyle which enables immobilization. In Actividad Física y Salud, published by INDER, Zamora calls for Cubans to “combat sedentarism in all of its manifestations.” Regular physical exercise, he explains, is the key to fighting the ill effects of contemporary society.52

By the 1980s, the sports medicine community aimed it ongoing health war towards anti- doping. Hoping to protect its newfound international success, INDER distanced its athletes from the scandals associated with illegal drug use. One article contended it was important for athletes

50 Brotherton, Revolutionary Medicine. 128

51 Rubalcaba Ordaz, Luis. Salud vs. Sedentarismo Havana 1989

52 Mazorra Zamora, Actividad Física y Salud.150-1

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to stay clean “for the defense of the Country’s dignity,” lest a wayward competitor discredit their victories in front of “enemies of the revolution.”53 According to one INDER official, the force of ideology and the pride in one’s society should be more powerful than any steroid or artificial drug.54 The moral values of socialism were promoted as a deterrent to illegal athletic advantages.

In contrast, free market societies were seen as havens for such vices. In 1977, an article appeared in Granma Weekly Review titled “Sports in the Capitalist World: Go-Ahead on Drugs.” This exposé revealed the unsavory and unethical methods taken by West German athletes. One soccer player exposed that his team members were all hooked on drugs. Although though the author admits the player “didn’t say it in quite those words,” there are plenty other alleged quotes from the players about their questionable tactics.55 Apparent methods included blood transfusions into the buttocks and members of the Olympic Swimming Team inducing enemas to gain greater buoyancy in the water. According to the article, these vices were not surprising in a capitalist society where “the dollar too, is a drug.”56 The author notes that narcotics are a pervasive issue in

West German society where overdoses are a regular occurrence, drug peddlers number in the thousands, and twenty percent of all schoolchildren take drugs regularly.57 Cuba officials asserted that socialist values, education, and recreation could free youth from delinquency.

The Cuban state emphasized fitness as one of citizen’s many revolutionary duties. Health was simultaneously the responsibility of each and the goal of all. The discourse of fitness is full of references to morality and discipline, fitting in with already established virtues of the New

53 “Contra el Doping” in Deportes, June 30, 1987, also see “Semanario Anti-doping” in Deportes July 30, 1987

54 Thomas Boswell, “Idle Play Not in Cuba Game Plan,”

55 Miguel Hernandez, “Sports in the Capitalist World: Go-Ahead on Drugs,” Granma Weekly Review, June 5, 1977.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid.

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Man. According to anthropologist Jen Pylypa, “the unfit and overweight body is deviant. It is associated with personal irresponsibility and immorality. Lack of fitness is the individual's own fault--she maintains an unhealthy "lifestyle"; she is lazy, gluttonous, idle, unvirtuous.”58 In this theory, “health” (as identified through a thin or fit body), is achieved through rigorous, disciplined adherence to self-imposed diet and exercise regimes. The Cuban state could not force fitness upon its citizens; but through masividad, they could encourage the population to adopt a healthy lifestyle thus establishing a cultural norm.

Normalizing a culture of fitness works in tandem with Cuba’s healthcare goals. Castro used health indicators like longevity, infant mortality, and maternal care to rank Cuba’s progress in contrast to other developing nations. These rankings provided a tangible, independent analysis of the socialist commitment to health for all. Thus, most of the country’s medical efforts were aimed at the improvement of such health indicators and their causes. As outlined in chapter one, the structure of Cuba’s local and regional polyclinics was aimed at bringing primary care to the masses while establishing a doctor’s familiarity with their community. It was hoped that by living and working alongside of their constituents, doctors would be able to better identify and alleviate the health risks of a particular population. Preventative medicine was intended to be the hallmark of the new system, where problems could be addressed quickly and efficiently at the individual level.

Even before medical intervention, many of the obstacles to Cuban health and longevity could be addressed through lifestyle changes. The new health care system transformed the pattern of morbidity in Cuba from diseases of poverty (parasites and infectious disease) to

58 Pylypa, “Power and Bodily Practice: Applying the Work of Foucault to an Anthropology of the Body.” 27

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diseases of development like heart disease and cancer.59 According to the publication Actividad

Física y Salud, risk factors for the country’s principal causes of death were smoking, sedentarism, and obesity. The author, Dr. Raul Mazorra Zamora, asserts:

Historically, humanity, always yearning for perpetual youth, has sought the solution of this problem through miraculous means. But the true continuation of life came not through miraculous means, nor through supernatural means, but as a consequence of the process of economic and social changes that allow the principles of science to be brought to daily life as a product of the revolutionary process.60

According to Dr. Zamora, the Cuban Revolution brought forth the conditions for life-long vitality. His book outlines the way to unlock this secret to longevity, mostly through regular aerobic training.61 Cuban officials saw sports as “the greatest of all preventative medicines” capable of keeping the population healthy while the country grew its hospital system.62 Physical exercise brought well-being to the masses, invigorating the fight for longevity. The state saw this ambitious goal realized by 1971 when the country’s life expectancy at birth reached seventy years—a full decade longer the Latin American average.63

In addition to longevity, the country vigorously confronted its maternity and infant mortality indicators. Cuba ranked far behind first-world countries for deaths per live births.64

Efforts to rehabilitate this statistic led to an obsession with maternal care. Campaigns for women’s health developed in tandem with broader socioeconomic changes to gender roles. The

59 Brotherton, Revolutionary Medicine. 82

60 Mazorra Zamora, Actividad Física y Salud. 16

61 Ibid. 22

62 Boswell, “Idle Play Not in Cuba Game Plan.” 1

63 The World Bank, “Life Expectancy at Birth, Total (Years),”

64 The World Bank, “Mortality Rate, Infant (per 1,000 Live Births) | Data”

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state encouraged women to take equal part in labor and revolutionary organizing, while requiring men to share responsibility in the domestic realm. This egalitarian approach made it easier to incorporate women into wellness and health education campaigns.65

The government invested resources in pregnant women in the hopes of raising the productive capacity of future generations. Recognizing women’s integral role in reproduction, the state sought to control pregnant women’s bodies through medical initiatives. MINSAP established several norms aimed at maternal care including psychological counseling, birth exercises, and at least nine prenatal examinations. If pregnant women did not meet these standards, the Ministry instructed health professionals to actively follow up with mothers at home. Lastly, the state institutionalized childbirth despite the massive expenditure of hospitalizing all deliveries. To even further incorporate the care of pregnant women and instill good habits, rural women were often sent to a maternity home a few weeks before their expected delivery. Under these MINSAP-run centers, women learned about nutrition, childcare, hygiene and how to breast-feed.66 The capital and resources devoted to maternal care highlights Cuba’s obsession with raising its health indicators.

Castro believed that health, habits, and even athletic inclination began before birth. At a startling speech in 1970, the leader announced: “An interest in sports will begin within the womb of a mother because it is here—and do not think that I am exaggerating—in the care given to mothers, medical care, hygienic conditions, and nutrition, that the athlete begins to be formed.”67

The state promoted gentle physical activity during the prepartum period for the health of both the

65 Brotherton, Revolutionary Medicine. 76

66 Feinsilver, Healing the Masses: Cuban Health Politics at Home and Abroad. 48-52

67 Castro, “Castro’s Speech to Returning Athletes from Central American and Caribbean Games.”

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mother and the child. Spearheaded by the Federation of Cuban Women, “prenatal gymnastics” gained popularity with plans to extend the programs into all municipalities.68 A selection of comics from the humor magazine Palante stresses the supposed correlation between maternal health and children’s athletic talent. Titled “Children are born to be athletes” the panels depict pregnant mothers predicting the future sports accomplishments of their babies. In the comic below, one woman says she can tell from her baby’s strong kicks that the child will be a soccer player. The other woman proposes that her child is powerful enough to be a champion in the triple jump. In Cuba, expectations for athletic excellence came early. Birthing fit, healthy children was just another duty of the revolutionary woman.

Figure 3-5. Mothers to be debate if their children will be track champions or soccer stars.69

The obsession with healthy infants did not slow down with birth. The state viewed parents as the gatekeepers to healthy children, and thus a healthy society. Articles on nutrition, care, and infant health appeared in general publications like Verde Olivo—not just parenting magazines.70 The nuclear family was no longer a system of kinship, it became an environment for maintaining, training, and developing future socialists. According to Foucault, it is through these efforts that the family becomes an agent of medicalization because they inscribe healthy

68 Federation of Cuban Women’s Greeting, Vilma Espín de Castro, published in Granma Weekly Review March 6, 1977

69 Palante, October 29, 1971

70 “Guía para la alimentación del recién nacido” Verde Olivo, October 5, 1975.

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habits on their offspring.71 The paternalistic views of the socialist state, however, meant that the government adopted this responsibility once a child advanced from infancy. Through physical education, sports schools, and youth activities, the Castro administration gradually supplanted the parents as the instructor of well-being.

Curiously, these dialogues about health and family change when an athlete is the parent.

A story in the biographical collection No Nacieron Campeones follows the career of Mireya Luis

Hernandez, a female volleyball player. After Mireya gives birth to a baby girl, the book narrates her internal struggle over staying with her baby when an important championship is coming up.

Fearing that her team’s loss would be her fault, Mireya traveled abroad, leaving her nine-day old child behind. She thinks: “Cuba needed her and if the team lost she would feel guilty, the little one would not get angry when she grew up, but on the contrary, she would feel proud.”72 For

Mireya, the guilt of losing the championship was greater than the guilt of leaving a newborn infant. In this case, the importance of maternal care did not extend to parental bonding. Another athlete, Alberto Juantorena, also missed out on important paternal milestones. According to an article in Granma Weekly Review, the track star missed the birth of his son to train in Europe. He finally got to hold his child for the first time a month later.73 These cases suggest that infant health was not always the primary goal of the family. To Cuba, Alberto and Mireya’s value as athletes superseded their responsibilities as parents.

The country encouraged masividad to foster a culture where fitness was highly valued and desired. Along with better medical care, public health campaigns and sports programs like

71 Michele Foucault, The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rainbow (New York, N.Y., United States: Pantheon Books, 1984). 267

72 Héctor Quientero Travieso, No Nacieron Campeones (Habana, Cuba, 1994). 20-21

73 Granma Weekly Review July 24, 1977

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LPV contributed to the overall health and longevity of the population. This chapter examined how the state targeted sectors of the population with campaigns promoting wellbeing for all age groups and genders. It also showed how the state used revolutionary rhetoric to situate health as a unifying goal of socialist society. “Battles” against sedentarism, disease, and obesity encouraged the population to be actively involved in their own health, raising the population’s overall fitness. The rapid increase in participation and the success of these health measures established Cuba as a leader and innovator in sports and medicine.

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CHAPTER 4 CREATING CHAMPIONS ADVANCEMENTS IN SPORTS MEDICINE

That is why we say that it is a triumph of technique, of culture and educational development, considering sports as part of that development of our country, as an outcome of the triumph of spirit, of awareness, and of morality, which can be summed up in a single word: the triumph of the revolution.1

-Fidel Castro, March 20, 1970

The previous chapter showed how Masividad represented a rational, planned effort for societal transformation by bringing advancements in sports and health to the Cuban people.

Cuban officials believed the 1970s and 80s marked an era of scientific-technical evolution, fought with equal passion by capitalist and socialist societies. Like its socialist allies, Cuba embraced a vision of modernity that involved not only benefitting from technological advances but becoming a leader in innovation themselves. As the quote above illustrates, Castro viewed the revolution as a commitment to development and modernization. Increased social development through scientific sophistication would become a hallmark of the new socialist society.2

Cuba’s attempts to become a medical powerhouse relied on an image of deep societal commitment to health, but also a vigor for scientific and technical progress. Government speeches and international press releases regularly praised the health advances in Cuba. The revolution provided ample funding for state-of-the-art hospitals, labs, and medical facilities and trained scientists to understand their vital role in societal transformation. A group of prize-

1 Fidel Castro, “Castro’s Speech to Returning Athletes from Central American and Caribbean Games,” Havana Domestic Radio (Cuba, March 20, 1970), Castro Speech Data Base - Latin American Network Information Center, LANIC.

2 “The Scientific-Technical Revolution,” Granma Weekly Review, February 20, 1977, sec. Articles and Commentaries.

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winning researchers said: “our society strives for the development of the sciences and we feel that our work must help promote and safeguard public health, one of the main tasks of the

Revolution.”3 Science and technology was an indispensable element in a national strategy for economic, social and cultural development.

Castro believed that the development of new technology, combined with the training of thousands of new instructors and health professionals, would increase Cuban capacity for athletic excellence. And, as we have seen, Cubans did experience a period of unprecedented victories in international competitions over the first three decades of the revolution. Sports and medicine were often grouped together in official narrative due to their efforts to transform the habits and bodies of citizens. Castro announced: “sport is health and physical education professors are lifesavers equal to doctors.”4 If Cuba was going to be a potencia médica, it needed to be equally impressive in the athletics field. Fitness aided primary and preventative care, but the sports and medical sectors could also be combined to provide more sophisticated healthcare for the general population and elite athletes alike.

Sports and Medicine in the Public Sphere

“In Cuba, madness is the only acceptable reason for not participating in sports” wrote an

American journalist after experiencing the country’s athletic fervor.5 Though his analysis was well intended, it was not correct. In Cuba, sports were a therapy for mental illness just as they were a therapy for other diseases of society. Historian Jenny Lamb wrote in her monograph

Madhouse that Havana’s psychiatric hospital promoted the use of physical activity and

3 Jose de la Osa, “The Ministry of Public Health Prize Is a Source of Satisfaction, but It Also Commits Us to Continue Working Harder,” Granma Weekly Review, June 12, 1977, sec. National News.

4 “Deporte En Cuba,” Ecured, accessed September 4, 2018

5 Boswell, “Idle Play Not in Cuba Game Plan.”

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ergometric therapy as part of mental health treatment. The asylum even constructed a 6,000-seat sports stadium to hold baseball games for patients.6 In Cuba, it seems, the mentally ill just provided a wider audience for the benefits of masividad.

Sports medicine provided tangible benefits for several sectors of the population. When

Cuban children suffered from asthma, they were directed to try ergometric rehabilitation like breathing and calming techniques as coping methods. INDER, along with the Ministry of

Education and MINSAP, organized week-long mountain retreats outside of Havana for asthmatic children. At these camps, doctors instructed children on the medical causes of asthma.

Psychologists and physical education teachers then worked with the children on respiratory physiotherapy. They believed that simple exercises could eliminate cases of bronchial asthma without the need for medical intervention. According to interviews with campers, many found that the rehabilitation programs noticeably improved their symptoms.7

Health concerns about heart disease, one of the top causes of death in Cuba, led to researchers focusing time and resources into cardiology. The fitness magazine Deportes devoted several articles about Cuban medical advances in heart health. The article “Salvaguardar la

Salud” praised Cuba’s perfection of heart surgery and heart transplants. The Hospital Hermanos

Ameijeras had ample experience, not just in this life-saving surgery, but in aloo the process of post-operation physical rehabilitation. The article closes by reminding readers that although the hospital has tremendous success in these surgeries, frequent exercise is the best method for preventing heart attacks and hypertension.8 The Institute of Cardiology and Cardiovascular

6 Jennifer L. Lambe, Madhouse: Psychiatry and Politics in Cuban History (UNC Press Books, 2016). 152

7 Raisa Pages Vila, “Vacation Camp for Asthmatic Children,” Granma Weekly Review, January 30, 1977, sec. Special Feature.

8 Jaime Caminada, “Salvaguardar la salud,” El Deporte: Derecho del Pueblo, May 30, 1987.

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Surgery also promoted physical therapy for heart disease patients. A team of treatment specialists in their institute created a complex program of physiotherapy for heart attack victims. Physical education instructors worked alongside doctors and cardiologists in physical therapy exercises. A primary goal of these rehabilitation programs was to instill a habit of exercising into at-risk patients.9

The archives at the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí show that sports and health officials were concerned with applying the benefits of physical activity to more than just preventative medicine. Their resources include reports on athletic rehabilitation for disabilities, the therapeutic nature of physical activity, and the application of psychology to physical education.10

The Institute of Sports Medicine (IMD) worked closely with the SNS to support cultura física through public health programing like LPV, covered in the previous chapter. In an interview from Granma Weekly Review, the director of IMD reported that in the future, sports doctors could offer consultations in local polyclinics and advise family physicians on the rehabilitation of patients through physical exercise. Medical-biological research was not just for the success of high-performance sport, it was tied to wellness and physical culture for the masses. The institutionalization and promotion of health and fitness as outlined in the previous chapters combined with the commitment to scientific and medical advances detailed above to create quantifiable improvements in the physical wellbeing of the Cuban people.11

9 Jose de la Osa, “Physiotherapy for Cardiac Patients,” Granma Weekly Review, July 10, 1977, sec. National News.

10 Some titles from the BNJM archives include: Paul Cheilley-Bert, “Actividad física y terapeutica.” En Medicina Educación Física Deportiva. Madrid 1965; Esperanza Vilaro Fernandez, “Psicología aplicada a la educación física”; and Guttman, Sir Ludwig “Deporte para los deficientes físicos” UNESCO 1976.

11 As evidenced by the control or elimination of diseases of poverty, the reduction in infant mortality rates, and the longer average lifespan.

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Victories in Science and Sport

While sports played an important role in Cuba’s healthcare successes, medical innovations provided similar benefits to the island’s growing international athletic acclaim.

Science offered new possibilities to sports research. The Major Manuel Fajardo Higher Institute of Physical Education featured several fully modernized labs for biochemistry, morphology, physiology and psychology. Its purpose was to “further the physical and mental health of the people and to contribute to the development of physical education in general with a view to maintaining and improving Cuba’s outstanding position on the international scene.”12 Under the supervision of specialists and doctoral candidates, students trained for careers in physical education and sports medicine. The institute fostered a pool of skilled personnel while also promoting applied scientific research in the field of sports.13

Founded in 1966, the Institute of Sports Medicine (IMD), provides medical services to athletes and sports scholarship holders, as well as for their families and INDER employees.

Research directives included the medical problems of sports, including rehabilitation, kinesiology, and the optimal physiological conditions for physical performance but the staff has carried out hundreds of research projects in general medicine, psychology, and dentistry. Doctors of sports medicine at the institute sought to improve speed, resistance, and strength in elite athletes. The IMD created a special department for physiotherapy, providing treatment to eliminate muscle soreness.14 Practitioners also utilize massage therapy, including hydromassage

12 Rolando Lahera, “Major Manuel Fajardo Higher Institute of Physical Education,” Granma Weekly Review, February 13, 1977, sec. Special Feature.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

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and therapeutic ultrasound.15 Success in sports medicine developed because of the close working relationship between INDER, MINSAP, the government, and partnerships between various hospitals and research institutes. The prominence of teaching hospitals in Cuba allowed university medical students constant opportunities to engage in scientific and hands-on studies.16

The IMD, for example, worked closely with medical students and the Higher Institute of

Physical Culture.17 Another collaboration between the IMD and the Frank País Orthopedic

Hospital focused on treating traumas affecting Cuban sportsmen. One of their success stories is the track star, Alberto Juantorena, who regularly visited the institute for rehabilitative care and physical therapy. Juantorena became a two-time Olympic champion and one of Cuba’s most prized champions.18 Cuba’s participation in the scientific-technical revolution advanced its innovations in sports medicine.

The intersection of sports and medicine grew in the period following the revolutionary victory. Under the Castro administration, a doctor accompanied every Cuban delegation that competed abroad in important sporting events.19 Upon the triumphant return of athletes from the

Central American and Caribbean Games, Castro gave special praise to the delegation’s health professionals. He declared: “there was a large and most efficient medical team accompanying our delegation. Several of our symbols were unfolded there. Our successful delegation was a

15 Manuel C. Valle, “Manos que curan,” El Deporte: Derecho del Pueblo, December 30, 1987.

16 “Castro Addresses Medical Students” (Havana’s Karl Marx Theatre: Havana Domestic Television Service, March 14, 1982), Castro Speech Data Base - Latin American Network Information Center, LANIC.

17 Juan Velásquez, “Galenos del deporte,” El Deporte: Derecho del Pueblo, August 30, 1987.

18 Lahera, “Institute of Sports Medicine.”

19 Ibid.

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symbol of development and education in our nation.”20 Castro asserted that for every worthy delegation of athletes, there was an equally worthy set of trainers, professors, and doctors bolstering their success. Revolutionary leadership recognized the advantages of applying medical and technological advances to sports. In a speech in 1977, Cuba’s Minister of Public Health also praised that the care of top athletes contributed to the island’s rapid advancement in international competitions.21 As its impressive list of victories grew, Cuba earned a reputation as a world power in the field of sports medicine, especially among other developing nations.22

Sports and Medical Internationalism

The expectation and deliverance of quality, affordable care legitimized Cuba’s claims of medical prestige. Cuban used its image as a potencia médica to export its health practitioners and medical training worldwide. This “medical internationalism” has come to symbolize Cuba’s place as a leader in both health care and international solidarity. In a widely known and successful practice, Cuba sends its doctors and health professionals on international missions, often to underdeveloped nations but sometimes to wealthier countries in need of reliable, skilled personnel. The government receives remuneration for its international programs, with compensation largely based on the host state’s wealth. Cuban physicians receive small pay raises as well for their positions. Despite foreign criticisms of indentured servitude, an impressive 97%

20 Fidel Castro, “Castro’s Speech to Returning Athletes from Central American and Caribbean Games,” Havana Domestic Radio (Cuba, March 20, 1970), Castro Speech Data Base - Latin American Network Information Center, LANIC

21 Jose de la Osa, “Ministry of Public Health Research Institutes, with Their Modern Equipment and Laboratories, Serve Our People,” Granma Weekly Review, January 30, 1977, sec. National News.

22 “Guillermo Lopez Portill, Director of National Sports Institute of Mexico, Visits Cuba,” Granma Weekly Review, December 18, 1977, sec. Sports.

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complete their contracts (compared with 95% in Canada).23 International Development Professor

Robert Huish argues that Cuban medical internationalism operates within the ethics of solidarity

(a term which Huish defines as neither charity nor imperialism, but a mutually beneficial cooperation). He believes that Cuba’s commitment to global health allows it to meet its own national interests through cooperative frameworks.24

As Cuba’s medical and sports prowess grew, the state found it could enact a similar internationalist program in the athletic sector. The program both exports Cuban professionals and imports foreign students. Cuba sends physical educators and trainers to work alongside health brigades in the third-world. These delegations bring instruction in physical wellness to underserved communities, while also building relationships and solidarity between the two nations.25 Additionally, the island earns hard currency by renting coaches, trainers, and players to teams in wealthier nations. The country signs a contract with the Cuban Sports Federation, not with the players themselves. After the Sandinista Revolution, Cuba sent 55 specialists in baseball, basketball, physical education, and other activities to help foster cultura física in

Nicaragua.26 By 1999, there were 500 sports personnel in 38 countries, including Venezuela, El

Salvador, Spain, Greece, Iran, and Hungary.27 Additionally, the Escuela Internacional de

Educación Física y Deporte (EIEFD) allows international students to study sports medicine and

23 Robert Huish, “Why Does Cuba ‘Care’ So Much? Understanding the Epistemology of Solidarity in Global Health Outreach,” Public Health Ethics 7, no. 3 (November 1, 2014): 261–76, https://doi.org/10.1093/phe/phu033.

24 Ibid.

25 Robert Huish and Simon C. Darnell, “Solidarity, Counter-Hegemony, and Development: Exploring New Dimensions of Cuba’s Sport-Based Internationalism,” Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revue Canadienne Des Études Latino-Américaines et Caraïbes 36, no. 71 (January 1, 2011): 139–64.

26 José Luis Salmerón, “Ayer y Hoy del Deporte Nicaragüense,” El deporte: derecho del pueblo en Cuba., September 30, 1983.

27 Paula Pettavino and Philip Brenner, “More Than Just a Game,” Peace Review 11, no. 4 (December 1999): 529.

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physical education tuition free. The school trains foreigners as coaches and physical trainers, who then return to serve in marginalized communities in their home countries.28

Cuba’s commitment to scientific advancement benefitted the social and medical sectors, which collaborated to improve the health and wellbeing of citizens. Doctors found new ways of using physical therapy to treat and prevent illness, while sports medicine provided rehabilitation and training to improve the performance of competitive athletes. Cuban Sports medicine receives little attention in the historiography despite the contributions of such research to the Cuba’s international success. Innovations in physical therapy and physiology prepared Cuban athletes for the stresses of high-performance competition. Cuba’s success in the international arena also allowed it to acquire much needed capital through exporting trainers, coaches, and athletes to wealthier nations. The demand for their personnel demonstrates that Cuba achieved prominence as a sports leader as well as a potencia médica

.

28 Huish and Darnell, “Solidarity, Counter-Hegemony, and Development.” 141

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CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION

Southeast of Havana, past the crumbling facades of the Malecón and the eroding palaces of Vedado lies a different type of ruin. The remains of the once glorious Ciudad

Deportivo look like an apocalyptic wasteland; weeds tangle around broken gym equipment, tennis courts crack down the middle, and a rusted sign barely makes out the word “baloncesto.” The ambitious sports development once marked Cuba’s hopes for a glorious athletic triumph. The compound boasted several stadiums, a swimming pool, and multipurpose courts where athletes practiced their skills. Though the area today looks abandoned, life still flourishes in this decrepit complex. Teams of men young and old duck under rusted fences to play weekly softball games; teenagers gather under a collapsed pavilion to play soccer; and children throw basketballs through broken hoops.

The funding that built this monument to sports has long since dried up, but the Cuban’s love for athletics has not been extinguished so easily.

The state of Cuban athletics today looks drastically different than the extravagant displays of participation shown in Deportes or Granma in the 1980s. The economic disaster that followed the fall of the Soviet Union hindered Cuba’s burgeoning fitness movement. Though obesity did decrease during the Special Period in the 1990s, historians believe it was more due to food rationing than to exercise.1 Julie Fiensilver notes that while a rise in petroleum prices forced some Cubans to adopt walking or biking to work, most Cubans would rather wait at a bus stop then walk a few blocks.2 Children and young men continue to live active lives, though these are loosely organized games

1 Feinsilver, Healing the Masses: Cuban Health Politics at Home and Abroad. 72

2 Ibid.

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with friends or coworkers rather than state-sponsored recreation. INDER, elite sports academies, and physical education programs still exist, but for the general population the government seems to have removed itself from the fitness dialogue.

Despite the abandonment of cultura física in the Special Period, it would be inaccurate to say that Cuba did not have a very real health and fitness revolution in the

1970s and 80s. The importance of physical activity appeared frequently in government speeches, publications, and media. Large sections of the population participated in diverse programs like Círculos de Abuelos, LPV, and festive sporting events. Public health campaigns mobilized the masses against diseases and towards a healthier, more active life. These movements had noticeable effects on Cuba’s reputation internationally, as countries rich and poor requested medical and sports assistance from the small island nation.

Importantly, the state’s incorporation of the sport and medical sectors allowed more direct control over the bodies of its citizens. INDER, MINSAP and the SNS frequently collaborated in efforts to foster well-rounded, healthy individuals. Physical activity reduced risk factors for diabetes, heart disease, and other illnesses that threatened

Cuba’s health indicators. Additionally, advancements in sports medicine helped propel

Cuban athletes to international victory. The cooperation between these seemingly disparate sectors helped Cuba to reach its goal of becoming a potencia médica and earn surprising acclaim on the Olympic stage. Looking at health through the lens of fitness not only elucidates these collaborations, it reveals the Cuban government’s ability to effectively unify the population towards common goals with significant benefits for the state and citizens alike. By the early 1970s, Cuban statistics in health and international competitive sports indicate notable achievements, whether by Latin American or general

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international standards. Despite its relatively small population, Cuba fielded Olympic

teams that successfully competed against world superpowers like the US and the Soviet

Union. Cuba’s health statistics in longevity, infant mortality, and disease prevention were

also on par with the US and other first-world nations.3 While undercut by the economic

effects of Soviet Collapse, sports and medicine remain important measures of the intent

and successes of Cuba’s revolutionary policies.

3 The World Bank. “Life Expectancy at Birth, Total (Years),” 1960-2017. The World Bank. “Mortality rate,

infant (per 1,000 live births),” 1960-2017.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Heather Lee Gonyeau was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. She earned a B.A. in

History and a B.A. in Latin American Studies from George Mason University. A study abroad trip to Cuba inspired a deep appreciation for the island’s people and culture which she hoped to turn into a career. In 2016, she accepted an offer to the history Ph.D. program at the University of Florida.

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