The Highlights of Guadeloupe 2022

I wish to share several historical reflections and texts with you following the heat of Guadalupe 2022. Come with me to Mexico City 1926: the Central America Games are finally born. They still don't have the essential and-the-Caribbean tail: it was added in the third edition, Panama 1938. This trip to the past is necessary to make a parallel with the current youth contest of the islands represented there.

Those Games were created to promote sports activities in the region, very weak compared to those of prosperous nations especially, as it happened - and still happens - in the various areas of life; wealth absorbed from the developed nations at the expense of the underdevelopment of others essentially. This is our Olympics and it will help us to better prepare ourselves for the real one, its creators said. From the beginning, it sought that objective, although injured by the prevailing misery far beyond the battles of muscle, with strong blows to the foundation.

The recently inaugurated Caribbean Games bring the same goal, together with the strengthening of the brotherhood of the summoned peoples. They also have great obstacles ahead of them. The most important thing is not the medal chart. Already in the Olympics they tried to make official the places occupied by the countries. But the initiative was annulled when the International Olympic Committee understood that it did not help unite or invigorate love between countries, but rather divided, humiliated the weak and fed the unjust boastfulness of the powers. The medal table remains in the Olympics swayed by the interests of the powerful ones with the support of the press.

The panorama of the competition started is not the same, but it would be unfair to ignore its essence. Precisely, the contest should serve to unite us against the exploiting monsters, strengthen us in the brotherhood that we have without ignoring sports. Let's start from sportsmanship to advance on all fronts, with mutual respect and thriving love.

 Pierre de Coubertin, first and foremost a great humanist, said: “For a long time the renewed athletics of the 19^th century has been nothing more than a pastime for rich and idle youth. Our Committee (the International Olympic) has fought harder than anyone else to make it the usual pleasure of the petty bourgeoisie and now it must be made fully accessible to the adolescent proletarian. All sports for everyone. That is the new formula, somehow utopian, to whose realization we must dedicate ourselves” (January 1919).

Still some weights tears physical culture: sports, physical education, and recreation. Which branch is left untouched by imperialists in the so-called third world, when they largely determine its existence and its misfortunes? Not long ago the Pope spoke publicly about this.

It’s not easy to attained what he said of “sport for everyone”. For the majority, there are almost never exercises in schools (neither school), affordable implements, a recreational activity that inspires so much, beyond medals, physically and spiritually to people. What about the so-called high performance? Champions arise, true, there is even muscle theft, all linked to the business, clearly a destroyer of physical culture.

 Coubertin was against the "... mercantilist spirit that threatens to invade sports circles", the excess of spectacularism, closely related to "... sports having developed within a society that threatens to rot to the core cause of the love for money" (1894). Monopolies back then did not wear shorts.

In Cuba we made a reality and with greater depth sports for everyone: Sport, a right of the people. It was possible because we are free and that has allowed the sector to jump, without denying the support of sister countries, with the former USSR at the head, which today we don’t have instead we have a Yankee blockade increased. Our sports movement, perfectible, fighting against its own failures, massive, democratic, has been a key element in the advancement of America, even in the most neglected places, with the help even of coaches and teachers. The accumulated medals are not the main thing in this effort so much supported by Cuba.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff