Friday, November 27, 1998

Isabel Vincent
National Post

"I'm going to speak slowly so that you understand what I am saying," said Manuel Zayas Teran as he brushed his espresso cup aside with a wave of his hand, lit another cigarette and leaned over the table at the Habana Libre coffee shop.

Mr. Zayas, the head of development and promotion for Cubadeportes SA, the marketing arm of the Cuban government's sports federation, had just spent the last two hours chain-smoking Populares and telling me how Cuban athletes have more integrity than their North American or European counterparts. "Look at Mike Tyson," he had said, by way of example. "That guy is a criminal. In Cuba, children look up to sports heroes because not only are they fine athletes, they are also fine human beings."

But now Mr. Zayas was getting down to business. He was promising to show me the official system that takes ordinary people and turns them into paragons of sportsmanship. My interviews, however, were going to cost. Mr. Zayas leaned over the small Formica table in the noisy restaurant and in slow, deliberate Spanish, strongly suggested that I pay him $450 (US) to set things up. He also made it clear that the fee would not cover interviews with the country's top athletes. Those would be extra.

"We are not charging you as a journalist, you understand," he said, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "We are charging your news organization because we know that they have a lot of money."

Using words like "integrity" and "honesty" and "citizenship," Mr. Zayas' argument seemed almost plausible. "We are a poor country, so I hope you don't mind that what you will see are children training without proper shoes or proper equipment," he said. Not that the money he was asking for would find its way to those children. It would go, he said, to pay the salaries of bureaucrats like himself who would have to put their regular work aside in order to arrange my interviews. Besides, he added, I was getting a bargain. Mr. Zayas said he recently charged a Brazilian television crew $3,500 (US).

In Cuba these days, this kind of chequebook journalism for foreign reporters is now standard practice. With the country still reeling from the disastrous economic effects of the Soviet pull-out in 1989, many of the old rules are breaking, and everything is for sale. And, the biggest capitalist on the island seems to be the Cuban government.

Cuban bureaucrats, raised on socialist principles, have been frantically adopting capitalist ones - soliciting foreign investment and marketing what technical expertise the country has to offer, in medicine and sports, for instance, abroad. Foreign companies that want to set up businesses in Cuba must "rent" Cuban workers, paying the government a salary in U.S. dollars for each Cuban worker they hire. While the government pockets the profits, the worker earns a monthly wage in Cuban pesos, worth a fraction of the U.S. dollar fee. In addition, the cash-strapped Cuban government has put a great deal of pressure on foreign companies to contribute generously to cultural and artistic projects on the island that the state can simply no longer afford.

"Foreign companies just see what amounts to these officially sanctioned bribes as the cost of doing business on the island," said a foreign journalist, who is based in Havana and who did not want to be identified. "So a company like [Toronto-based] Sherritt pours a few thousand dollars into the Cuban ballet to make the bureaucrats happy. They know if they don't, the Cubans will make it really difficult for them to do business here." Now this form of capitalism with a cynical socialist twist is making itself felt everywhere.

When I initially proposed the idea for a story on sports on the island, normally reticent Cuban bureaucrats gushed with enthusiasm, eager to show a foreign journalist why an underdeveloped country such as Cuba could be, in the words of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, "the world's greatest sporting power." In a recent speech, President Castro noted that Cuba consistently wins more gold medals per capita at international competitions than any other country in the world, largely because the country's amateur sports heroes are not sullied by the corruption that pervades the world of professional sport.

But I found myself caught up in a corrupt and repressive bureaucracy that exploits some of the country's finest athletes and coaches.

For $450 (US), Mr. Zayas promised to set up interviews with high school physical education teachers, sports psychologists, coaches and sports bureaucrats so that I could better understand the system that shapes such outstanding athletes as heavyweight boxer Felix Savon, the world record-holding high-jumper Javier Sotomayor, and numerous baseball players, many of whom recently defected from the island and now earn multi-million dollar salaries in the major leagues. Many analysts say that some of these defectors make secret deals with Cuban bureaucrats, in some cases handing the government a cut of their salaries in exchange for allowing their family members to leave the island.

Cubadeportes SA, the organization for which Mr. Zayas works, functions like a microcosm of the Cuban government. In the same way that the Cuban government "rents" out workers to foreign companies, Cubadeportes co-ordinates the transfer of some 600 Cuban coaches to 38 countries around the world. Recipient countries, such as Japan and Russia, pay a fee for the coach directly to the Cuban government, which is in desperate need of foreign capital and pockets most of the coach's fee.

Cuban athletes themselves, of course, are valuable assets to be protected. Although most sports agents approach Cuban athletes while they are in competition outside the island, some Latin American agents have now been boldly showing up at Cuban events, trying to convince the top athletes to defect. For this reason, security is particularly tight for athletes in Cuba.

At a Friday night boxing match at the Kid Chocolate Stadium in the centre of Havana, Cuban boxer Felix Savon refused to speak to me when I approached him and identified myself as a foreign journalist. As Mr. Saxon scanned the room for police officers and his omnipresent official government entourage, he whispered that he could not speak to me without official permission, and then only with a member of the Cuban sports federation present. A Cuban sports journalist with a halting command of English tried to explain to me that I would need the written permission of the Cuban national sports federation to speak to Mr. Savon. The journalist then gave me a lecture on Cuban athletes, and offered me his grandmother's house in Havana for $20 (US) per night.

This way of operating is not just relegated to Cuban sport. When I asked about doing a story about the restoration of Old Havana, I was told that the mayor of the city charges foreign journalists $500 (US) per interview.

One afternoon as I made my way back to my hotel in the Vedado district of Havana, past the crowds of young prostitutes and vendors hawking counterfeit Cuban cigars and rum, I decided to investigate what else was for sale to foreign journalists in Cuba.

How much would an interview with Fidel Castro cost? I decided to make a special trip to the Ministry of External Relations (MINREX) to find out.

"Political interviews are not for sale," said the MINREX official, who identified himself only as Edgardo. Yes, he said, he was aware that it was becoming "more common" for some Cuban officials to charge foreign journalists for interviews. It was just "too bad" that I could not pay the Cubadeportes fee.

After two very frustrating weeks of wading through Cuban bureaucracy, I finally managed to speak - for free - to the vice-president of the Cuban national sports federation, known by its Spanish-language acronym, INDER. Alberto Juantorena Danger is a former track and field star who won two gold medals at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. He is now 48, a lanky, good-humored jock who would rather be watching a baseball game or World Cup soccer match than dealing with official bureaucracy. When I explained to Mr. Juantorena that many reporters find it reprehensible to pay for stories, he picked up his phone and demanded that another sports bureaucrat set up my interviews for free.

"We want you to understand that in Cuba athletes are just like everyone else," said Mr. Juantorena, lounging in his decrepit office, its walls decorated with black and white photos of Fidel Castro and Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara playing baseball in the early 1960s. "We are equal here; we don't consider ourselves more important than anyone else."

I saw Mr. Juantorena a few days later, getting our of his silver Alfa Romeo sedan at the Panamerican Complex on the outskirts of Havana. My efforts to secure interviews, however, weren't going any better. I was there to try to corner high-jumper Javier Sotomayor, who was beginning his mid-morning training at the stadium, a decaying concrete sports complex. Mr. Sotomayor was dressed like one of his North American counterparts, in expensive trainers, and denim shorts and designer sunglasses. He wore a few gold bracelets on his wrists, and a thick gold chain around his neck. Although star athletes like Mr. Sotomayor and Mr. Juantorena receive special perks from the government and foreign companies based in Cuba, most train under precarious conditions. For instance, teenage boxers training at the country's most prestigious boxing school are forced to punch old tires.

Under a blistering mid-morning sun, I waited patiently for Mr. Sotomayor to finish training on the track of the Panamerican Stadium. But the situation did not look promising.

"No pictures," he said in English to a Canadian photographer. A few minutes later, Mr. Sotomayor's coach, Guillermo de la Torre, informed me that I could not interview Mr. Sotomayor or any of the other athletes training at the stadium, unless I had "official permission." For me, the phrase "official permission" had become synonymous with official graft. But I was too tired to argue. In the end, the interviews promised by Mr. Juantorena did not happen.

I never saw Mr. Zayas again after I refused to pay him, but I don't think I'll ever forget the only phrase that he had memorized in English: "Time is money," he said.