by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

The United States of America has announced the re-establishing of relations with the country of Cuba, and the US will have an embassy in Havana, the capital of Cuba, and Cuba will have and embassy in Washington, D.C.
Many of you know I was born in Cuba. My family sent me to the United States in 1961, when I was 17 years old to live with my aunt in Miami. The Cuban system of government has been a communist dictatorship for over half a century under the Castro brothers.

True, the US embargo has not worked, but it is also true that during this past half century Cuba continues to be a big Human Rights abuser in the island, as documented by the neutral and non-profit organization Amnesty International. Cuba also trades with many other countries during the US blockade and still is a country “stuck in the 50’s”. That is a failure of their system of government, not of the United States, since (Cuba the closest island in the Caribbean to our coast) has never been a State of the U.S.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 under communism, Cuba lost its main avenue of financial support. The Soviets were supporting Cuba to the tune of billions of dollars. The repression in Cuba has continued for decades. My family had to leave the country soon after they sent me to the U.S. (in 1961) and my late my brother Jay (in 1964) to the U.S. My father used to own a mid-size plumbing company in Havana. The Castro government illegally confiscated the property, as the government there nationalized many companies owned by foreign nationals as well as Cubans.

My way of life was totally and radically changed by the communist system on the island. My dream was never to leave Cuba, but to study to become a architect. But that dream was taken away from me from a totalitarian system of government.
I was glad my parents sent me to the U.S. I could have never lived in Cuba for the past 50 years. The people there have been brainwashed to the communist lifestyle. The government tells the people what to do, or what not to do, the word Liberty=Freedom, has not existed in the Cuban dictionary for a bunch of generations now.

All of the communications/media in the island is totally controlled and centralized by the Cuban government.Whatever the U.S. does, would not work unless Cuba also changes its policy against the U.S. Is Cuba going to change to a democracy? Are they going to have open and free elections? Are they going to become a Democracy? Those are questions that the President of the United States cannot address, for it is Cuba that would have to make those moves.

For business it offers a great opportunity. American capital could invest in Cuba, and Havana would have hundreds of McDonald’s and KFC’s. And a lot of other business interest from the U.S. could return to Cuba, where to the day, no corporation from the U.S. can go there and build a Walmart,for example.As far as baseball is concerned, this is the best news for Cuban players. For decades they have been defecting from the island. When they travel outside of Cuba, asking for political exile, or many escaping the island in man-made crafts and sailing north through the treacherous Florida Straits.

Kendy Morales, now with the Kansas City Royals, tried to escape Cuba 9 different times, and wasdss apprehended, until finally he succeeded. Many of these Cuban players when they escaped, they left their families behind, and as it is well documented, these families where harassed by the Cuban government. I was a kid in Cuba when my dad used to take me to the Cuban Winter Professional League. That league was abolished in 1961 when Fidel Castro eradicated all pro-sports and declared the country a Marxist-Leninist government, I remember guys like Orestes (Minnie) Miñoso who played for the Marianao Tigers in Cuba, and then here he played with the Chicago White Sox.

Before Castro, Cuban baseball players had the freedom of coming to the U.S. to play professional baseball and then returned to Cuba in the off season, obviously that has not been the case under the Castro brothers.One of my heroes, is Minnie Miñoso, he is 90 years young and lives and still works in the community for the Chicago White Sox in the Windy City.

Do not mention Castro to Miñoso, he never supported Castro, and like over 1 million Cubans living here in the US, we all share basically the same experience. Or Rafael Felo Ramirez (about the same age as Miñoso) the Spanish Voice of the Miami Marlins and my mentor, he can tell you stories about the repression he suffered in Cuba, this is nothing new.

Will this “experiment ” work? I have no idea. I honestly believe Cuba would really change when Fidel Castro dies as well as his brother Raúl. They both share the same communist philosophy, although Raúl seems to be more pragmatic. Fidel is still living in the world of Lenin-Marx-Stalin and Mao, he might even be senile, and that would explain why nobody still believes in a bankrupt philosophy like communism.

Whatever happens, relations or no relations, baseball will continue as the #1 sport in Cuba. It is the constant of the largest islands of the Caribbean. The first Latin American country to ever send a player to the United States, when Esteban Bellán played in 1868 after attending Fordham University in New York City.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for Oakland A’s baseball and does News and Commentary for http://www.sportsradioservice.com