Cuban baseball: The blockade and the profits
Cuban baseball: The blockade and the profits
Julio Batista • February 17, 2015
HAVANA — The $102,000 that might have gone to the Vegueros team, champion of the Caribbean Series 2015, will not be collected by the players. And no bonuses will go to the four Cubans in the tournament’s All-Star team, prizes that they won fairly at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan.
The big political excuse used so far by the USAmerican institutions to avoid paying the Cuban teams was that the money would end up in the hands of the government, not in the hands of the players.
Since January 2014 — when the new policy on remuneration approved by the INDER took effect — the island’s authorities have established that the total amount of the revenues obtained in competition would go to the athletes (80 percent), the coaches (15 percent) and work teams (5 percent.)
Under that concept, and being unable to access the prize, each of the 25 Cuban players who raised the trophy in the 57th Caribbean Series failed to receive $3,264, the equivalent of 6 years 7 months of the basic salary of a player in a National Series team.
To the Cubans and the connoisseurs of the “economic blockade,” the news is no news at all. U.S. laws are very clear on that point and, even though the tournament is not played in its backyard, it is Major League Baseball that puts up the money, and the MLB has never disobeyed its government.
More:
http://progresoweekly.us/cuban-baseball-blockade-profits/
