By SwingCompleto / contacto@swingcompleto.com
It is true that Cuban sports have long been open to professionalism through recruitment in international leagues. But charging depending on your results in the profession you dedicate in priority order was only externally.
Some may say that for this last time the athletes of the Island should be classified as such. But… in the first place they charged for their connection with a work center where many times they only went to sign the payroll, and in recent years all players receive the same salary for playing the National Series. Only individual and collective awards together with medals at foreign events deserve additional encouragement. For some it is a matter of state professionalism or semi-professionalism, but all income and responsibilities revolved around the same INDER or the government, which is the same in the end.
What is called real rented sport has not existed within Cuba since 1961 when it was completely abolished from the island’s sports movement. The last vestiges of decades were those players who did not emigrate to the United States and other places, as happened with Andrés Ayón, Waldo Velo and a few others.
But steps are being taken that, although slow and a contingency blow, continue to overturn that law that truncated the most powerful non-American baseball league in the world.
In a meeting held in the province of Camagüey, the National Director of Heritage Sports Juan Reinaldo Pérez, declared that the Latin American stadium it will begin to have economic autonomy with the presence of a non-agricultural cooperative. Something like a private company that will operate most of its areas and will receive the benefits of what is provided to the people there.
Although too many details have not yet emerged about it, the fact of being publicly confirmed is a radical change from what has happened until today.
The “Coloso del Cerro” is not only a sports stadium that serves as the home of the Industrialists of Havana. It is also an installation large enough to aspire to develop multiple socio-cultural activities within it, as is the case in many spaces of this type around the world.
In addition to this, Pérez said that “as part of the new work strategy that his agency intends to implement, some facilities and academies are going to move to new forms of economic management (non-agricultural cooperatives, TCP or MIPYMES),” he shared in his profile of facebook the journalist from Camaguey Felix Anazco.
Everything will begin with the capital’s baseball park as it was known at the meeting itself with the intention that with this step the aforementioned financial independence exists in those places and they are self-sustaining.
This is part of the new government strategy to encourage small and medium-sized companies to invest in many productive and commercial spheres within the Island with the aim of looking for alternatives that give more freedom and try to get out of the existing economic crisis.
For a long time, different administrators of the “Latino” had presented projects or simply conversed with the INDER to house much more than baseball games and develop diverse initiatives for fans in the middle of the games with the support of state companies and individuals. . At that time, the negative responses were based on the argument that this place was for baseball, together with the reluctance to apply commercial offers that were out of the ordinary. The truth is that this seems to also change as before with the signing of contracts to play abroad. It is clear that first it will be necessary to see the duties and real rights of those who invest in sports facilities, and that it still does not indicate that the National Series acquires truly professional nuances. In theory, at least, progress has been made on an important point. The whole will come sooner or later if they really want to try to save the Cuban baseball system.