A Window Briefly Opens: Baseball Players, Musicians Bring Piece of America to Cuba
HAVANA, Cuba Spring, 1999- Does it cost $25 or $2,500 to watch a baseball game in America?
That was the question of the moment in Havana's Central Park, a town square in the city's old section. There, groups of men of all ages and colors gathered to debate, scream and settle on the details of the national past-times of both Cuba and the United States.
One impassioned fan marched about as a crowd of 20 nodded in silence. He punctuated his debating points with brief exits and returns to the impromptu theater, holding his hands high overhead and shaking as if they were on fire.
No more than $25, he insisted. That's the price to see a big-league game in the United States.
His debating partner, who later admitted he lied in an effort to prove that America is no paradise, insisted on the phenomenal $2,500 admission price.
No one else seemed sure who was right.
Although most Cubans have relatives living in the United States, few have an accurate picture of life in America. Decades-old hostilities between Washington and Havana have obscured the view from here.
But now baseball and a music festival have combined to briefly open a window through the wall. Later today, Major League Baseball's Baltimore Orioles will take to a field here to play an exhibition game against Cuba's national baseball team.
Then, tonight, 50 American musicians-including James Taylor Jimmy Buffett, Gladys Knight, Peter Frampton, Mick Fleetwood, the Indigo Girls and composer Burt Bacharach-intend to perform with an equally impressive contingent of Cuban singers at a concert called Music Bridges Around the World.
The last time Cuba held such a star-studded concert, Jimmy Carter was in the White House and the 1970s were winding down.
Major League Baseball teams have not played here since 1959, a couple of months after Castro ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista, and today's game has become a hot discussion on street corners and in parks, homes and bars.
After the long waits, the same-day timing of the events is a coincidence. But an even greater curiosity is the fact that the events come during a growing strain in Cuban-American relations. Not since 1996, when Cuban MiGs shot down two small planes flown by Miami-based exiles, have tensions been riding so high.
Cuba has said it feels under attack by the U.S. government, Cuban exiles in Florida and political dissidents at home.
In January, the Clinton administration announced a series of relatively small changes to Washington's 33 year economic embargo of the socialist island 90 miles south of Florida.
The administration also continued a people-to-people program, which some Cubans view as an attempt to embolden pro-democracy activists.
Ricardo Alarcon, the president of the Cuba's National Assembly, delivered a major speech condemning Washington's "vicious economic, commercial and financial war waged at all levels against our country." Castro also reacted furiously.
Cuba launched a crackdown,putting four prominent dissidents on trial and sentencing each to prison.
The government restricted the number of phone lines between the two nations after a dispute flared over payments by U.S. phone companies.
And last week, Cuba sentenced to death a Salvadoran for a string of hotel bombings. It attempted to trace some of the blasts to Miami exiles.
Their organizers have tried to keep the baseball game and the concert out of the political arena, but they have not been entirely successful.
Although Alarcon patted the Orioles on their backs for "not introducing any element of distortion or politicking" into the game, some Cubans said that the game - to be played at a 50,000-seat stadium before an invitation-only audience - has taken on a David-vs-Goliath theme.
Though playing baseball is their full-time job, Cuba's players are considered amateurs, and many earn no more than the country's average wage of a few hundred dollars a year.
So many in Havana have wondered aloud how their players would measure up to the Americans, some of whom earn millions of dollars for just a season's play.
Some Cubans suggested that because baseball is always competitive, their team has a chance, and they will loudly cheer for it.
But others, frustrated by Cuba's current economic conditions, said privately that they would pull for the Orioles in hopes that a victory by the Americans would embarrass Castro's government.
"If it was just about sports, everybody would want Cuba to win" said a 58-year-old man who would only give his first name, Lazaro. "But this is political. It will be a reflection of the system."
Juan Castillo, 35, a teacher of handicapped students whose mother lives in Miami, agreed that many see the game as a symbol of competition between the two nations.
But he expressed the hope that the game would raise the level of good will between the nations.
"It opens a door to break the stone that separates our two peoples," he said "I want whoever wins to be the team that plays best."
While the game seemed to preoccupy many in Havana, the buzz about the Cuban-American concert hardly existed, mainly because Cuba's state controlled press did little to promote the event until late last week.
Some Cubans said they got wind of the music show from relatives in the United States and were scrambling for a pass to the by-invitation event.
"It's only a 5,000-seat theater," said the show's producer, Alan Roy Scott, and most of Havana's 2 million residents have developed a keen taste for American pop culture.
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