Join Cuban baseball fans outside of Marlins Baseball park at 6pm on Sept 19th to protest discrimination against Cuban players by Major League Baseball

The Association of Cuban Baseball Fans (Asociación de Apasionados del Beisbol Cubano) is organizing a protest outside of the entrance to Marlins Baseball park at 6:00pm on September 19th "to protest against the discrimination of professional Cuban baseball players who will not be able to participate in the next World Baseball Classic"

Former Cuban prisoner of conscience Regis Iglesias in an OpEd in Diario Las Américas on September 11, 2022 explained the context that has led to this protest.

..."The MLB institution or the MLB Players Association come up with the idea of ​​allowing some franchises to visit Cuba for "friendly" matches or much worse, to make "agreements" with who enslave not only our athletes, but all our people. I will always protest and condemn those unsupportive positions. MLB cannot be a repressive extension of the Cuban Baseball Federation and the criminal and segregationist regime in Cuba. 

Rob Manfred is not the owner of the farm like the commandos of the island and he cannot pressure the players with simplistic reasoning and opportunism to maintain the status quo with the tyranny or take shameful steps of recognition of it." ... "MLB's agreement with the Cuban Baseball Federation cannot be proudly brandished as it is part of the recognition of an institution, supposedly independent from a free country, to a repressive and segregationist institution from a country subjected to the tyranny of a communist party."

Major League Baseball (MLB) has repeatedly made two crucial mistakes, one that has been made by others, the professional baseball organization has confused the Castro dictatorship's junta with the Cuban people, and to highlight social justice issues in the United States, but ignoring them outside the United States, in places like Cuba.

On April 11, 2021 Mary O'Grady reported "Major League Baseball says 'values' compelled it to move this summer’s All-Star Game out of Georgia. But this piety doesn’t square with its long record of collaboration with Cuba’s military dictatorship, one of the world’s most notorious human-rights violators."

In 2016, Major League Baseball sent a proposal to the U.S. Treasury Department that would have turned Cuban baseball players into foreign workers of the Castro family while playing in the United States.  This is not hyperbole, the point man that Major League Baseball was dealing with is Antonio Castro, vice president of the Castro regime's International Baseball Federation, and Fidel Castro's son.

Antonio Castro, Castro regime's point man for baseball business

In 2018, after making their initial proposal, MLB was still trying to go into business with the Castro family.  Cuban baseball players would've been able to play in the Majors, but at a cost. According to Reuters, "MLB teams will pay the Cuban Baseball Federation a release fee for each player to be signed from Cuba." This raised some questions. How big will this release fee be? Will Cuban baseball players have to give up a big chunk of their salaries, like Cuban doctors have had to do?  The proposal was shot down by the Trump Administration.

MLB is tone dead on how this impacts Cuban fans. Even a team based in Miami paid a high price making the same mistake. 

When the Miami Marlins hired Ozzie Guillen to manage the team, who in an interview in Time Magazine on April 9, 2012 declared" I love Fidel Castro" and that he respected both Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, I wrote an OpEd published on April 10, 2012 in Fox Latino.  

In it, I gave a brief and incomplete summary of why Cuban exiles were upset with Ozzie Guillen's comments regarding Fidel Castro.

It began with the observation that "thousands of Cubans have been extra-judicially executed and millions have been driven into exile, while millions more have had their human rights systematically violated. The atrocities and systematic human rights violations have continued to the present."

The essay concluded with my announcement that I would be boycotting the Marlins. Ten years later, and I have not gone to a Marlins game, nor do I plan to. ( I had gone to games prior to Guillen's outrageous defense of tyrants.) 

However, I do encourage all Cuban and Cuban American baseball fans to go to Marlins Baseball Park at 6:00pm on September 19th to demonstrate this community's solidarity with Cuban baseball players, and to hold the Major Baseball League accountable. Cubans should be able to play in the World Baseball Classic representing the Cuban people, and it should be held in Miami, not the other side of the world.

Major League Baseball goes into business with Castro Inc.

The devil is in the details.

 

Two years after making their initial proposal, Major League Baseball (MLB) is going into business with the Castro family.  Cuban baseball players will be able to play in the Majors, but at a cost. According to Reuters, "MLB teams will pay the Cuban Baseball Federation a release fee for each player to be signed from Cuba."  How big will this release fee be? Will Cuban baseball players have to give up a big chunk of their salaries, like Cuban doctors have had to do?

***BREAKING**** #CUBA BASEBALL FEDERATION AND #USA MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL REACH AGREEMENT ALLOWING CUBAN PLAYERS TO SIGN WITH U.S. TEAMS WITHOUT NEEDING TO DEFECT - #MLB DEPUTY COMMISSIONER DAN HALEM TELLS REUTERS @danieljtrotta

— Sarah Marsh (@reuterssarah) December 19, 2018

With all apologies to Sarah March but the reasons for defecting are still there, and they are to be free of the Castro regime. The spin in the media is that this will "limit defections, trafficking of players." Additional questions arise such as:

Will the MLB be turned into a collaborator with the Castro regime in trafficking players as the Pan-American Health Organization has allegedly trafficked in doctors?

Will anyone mention that Fidel Castro's son, Antonio Castro, runs the Cuban Baseball Federation? Antonio likes to live large. What will be his cut?

Not all agree that this is a good idea. Incidentally the more informed appear to have a more negative view.

Like all people, Cuban baseball players should be free to negotiate their own terms and wages. MLB's reported proposal to cede their rights to the regime in Cuba, which profits from the players' labor, institutionalizes their exploitation.

— Mario Diaz-Balart (@MarioDB) December 19, 2018

Human Rights in Cuba: Some new numbers give cause for concern

Things are getting worse

UNPACU activist and political prisoner, Jacqueline Heredia in San José prison

The human rights situation in Cuba remains dire with a regime that is capable of using the appearance of domestic violence to cover up an extrajudicial execution. However there are some facts that are more difficult to coverup. For example, Christian Solidarity Worldwide compiled data that is not exhaustive but  reveals the level of freedom of religion violations, a tenfold increase - with 2,300 separate violations recorded in 2015 compared to 220 in 2014.

The number of short term arbitrary detentions has exploded to levels not seen in decades with monthly detentions increasing from an average of 718 in 2015 to 1,337 on average in the first four months of 2016.  

There are new long term political prisoners in Cuba being added to the existing list of 93. Capitol Hill Cubans provided the following information in English on the newest political prisoners:

Among the newest prisoners of conscience are Xiomara de las Mercedes Cruz Miranda, Yunet Cairo Reigada and Jaqueline Heredia Morales, who were arrested on 15 April for staging a pro-human rights demonstration in Havana’s Central Park. They were held at a police station jail without charges for a while before being transferred to a long-term prison, while still in limbo concerning specific charges. According to Arcelio Molina, a member of the dissident organization UNPACU, Jacqueline Heredia (pictured below) has been transferred to San José prison, where all AIDS-infected Cubans are taken, and Xiomara de las Mercedes Cruz Miranda and Yunet Cairo have been taken to the women’s prison at Guatao. A fourth dissident arrested the same day at Havana’s Central Park, Marieta Martínez Aguilera, remains jailed at the Departamento Técnico de Investigaciones jail known as “la Quinta.”

Meanwhile the policy of engagement with the Cuban government potentially will have the unintended consequences of turning Major League Baseball into an accomplice in worker exploitation by the Castro family. The Cuban regime has announced that workers will be able to work on cruise ships. Salaries will be paid to the Castro regime and a small pittance turned over to the Cuban workers.


According to Freedom House out of the 50 countries designated not free in Freedom of the Press in 2016 out of the ten worse of the worse Cuba came in sixth place on the planet.

These data should give policymakers cause for concern as the human rights situation in Cuba continues to deteriorate.

Major League Baseball proposes to go into business with Castro Inc.

Major League Baseball's indecent proposal

Antonio Castro, Cuban dictatorship's point man for baseball business

Major League Baseball has sent a proposal to the U.S. Treasury Department that will turn baseball players into foreign workers of the Castro family while playing in the United States. This may already be going on informally with some recent "defectors" to the United States who have been allowed to return to Cuba. The Castro regime began "allowing" its players to play professionally in Mexico, Canada and Japan in 2013 for a percentage of their contracts.  

"MLB's proposal includes the creation of a license that allows players from Cuba to enter the United States on a visa. Additionally, the plan includes the creation of a new non-governmental body made up of Cuban entrepreneurs, MLB officials and the MLB Players Association. According to the proposal, a percentage of salaries paid to Cuban players would go to the non-governmental body."

Cuba in 2016 remains structurally a totalitarian state in practice. Independent non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are illegal but the regime there for years now has set up what human rights organizations call GONGOs (governmental non-governmental organizations). These GONGOs are controlled by the dictatorship. What Major League Baseball is proposing to the Treasury Department is a path for it to go into business with the Castro dictatorship which continues to control the entire economy.

The man that Major League Baseball is dealing with is Antonio Castro, vice president of the Castro regime's International Baseball Federation, and Fidel Castro's son. There is a propaganda offensive underway to promote and portray in a positive light the next generation of the Castro regime as the dictatorship now prepares for a generational succession.

However, when the dictator's son was photographed in Turkey in June of 2015 when leaving a restaurant he had his bodyguards beat up the reporters and try to take their cameras.  Antonio Castro had arrived on board his 160 foot yacht from the Greek island of Mykonos and booked five en suite rooms at a luxury hotel for himself and his entourage. 

This lavish lifestyle does not come cheap. The Castro regime exports workers abroad and gets billions of dollars a year with this practice. In 2014 the Cuban dictatorship forecast "$8.2 billion from sending doctors and nurses abroad." In order to achieve these results the health workers are paid miserable wages and as a result some defect.

Under an agreement signed in 2013 with Cuba through the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), the Cuban health workers get only one-fifth of the 10,000 reais ($4,100) a month that Brazil pays each physician in the program. The rest goes to the Castro regime. The Cuban health workers get paid 800 reais ($328) in Brazil and 1,200 ($492) reais are deposited in an account in Cuba for their families, who are not allowed to accompany them to Brazil. One can expect a similar arrangement for Cuban baseball players.

However, in extreme cases this arrangement can descend into de facto slavery as was revealed in the 2006 Curaçao Drydock Company lawsuit which the Business and Human Rights Resource Center described as follows:

In August 2006 three Cuban nationals accused Curaçao Drydock Company of subjecting them to forced labour in a lawsuit in US federal court under the Alien Tort Claims Act and other laws.  They alleged that the company conspired with the Cuban Government to traffic them and other workers to Curaçao to work for Curaçao Drydock Company as part of a forced labour programme.  The workers allegedly worked 16-hour days in dangerous conditions.  The workers were unpaid; instead their compensation was deducted from Cuba’s debt to the company.

The treatment of baseball players in Cuba, as Cubans in general, is as a resource to be exploited by the Castro regime. In the past when baseball players escaped from the dictatorship, friends and family members would be punished by the dictatorship. A high profile example occurred when Liván Hernández fled Cuba in 1995 to play in the Major Leagues. His brother, Orlando Hernández was banned from baseball and living in a shack behind the house of his best friend. Punishment for his brother leaving. Orlando would flee Cuba on December 25, 1997 and go on to a great career in the Major Leagues after having been forbidden to play baseball for two years in Cuba.

Brothers Liván and Orlando Hernández

With this new proposal Major League Baseball is going into business with a regime that treats baseball players like chattel, the same way they do with all Cubans. Shameful.