Cuba responds to the U.S. government's effort to prevent it from playing in the World Baseball Classic in a way the U.S. government could never understand -- by announcing that it doesn't compete for money, and offering its share of the money to Katrina victims.
Last week, the U.S. government announced it would not let a team from Cuba play in the World Baseball Classic, because Cuba would be "making money" from the tournament in violation of U.S. laws.
Yesterday, the Cuban Baseball Federation hit that pitch out of the park:
Money is not the motive adduced by the OFAC for our interest in competing. We are a federation of a modest but dignified country; our only proposal is to cooperate so that baseball can continue to develop and attain its reinsertion in the Olympic Program in the near future. We have never competed for money.
With the objective of offering options, the Cuban Baseball Federation would be disposed to the money corresponding to its participation in the Classic to be destined to the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
For those who scoff at the idea that the U.S. embargo hurts Cuba, and pretend it's some kind of "straw man" used by Fidel Castro to justify economic problems in the country, here is the latest in a long line of concrete examples of the very real effects of the embargo. I have no idea how much money Cuba was scheduled to make from this tournament, but let's say it was $100,000. That's $100,000 that could have been used to buy baseball gloves for kids in Cuba, or $100,000 that could have been used to buy drugs for sick people, etc. $100,000 (or whatever the figure is) very real dollars. If the organizers of this tournament have any sense, they'll take Cuba's offer to donate their share of the money to Katrina victims, and donate medicine or baseball gloves or something else they can get a permit for from the U.S. government to the people of Cuba in return.
By the way, is this a sudden and somehow opportunistic exploitation of Katrina by Cuba? Hardly. Never to be forgotten is that the Cuban President was thinking about (and offering help to) Katrina victims before the American President.
For additional reading, here's Dave Zirin's informative take on the original denial (i.e., before this current news), delightfully entitled "Bray of Pigs."