For this weeks reading topic we covered sports and state terrorism and how those two relate to each other. The reading that I read under this category was Defenders of National Honor: Club Atlético de Cuba Tigres in Prerevolutionary Cuban Gridiron Football which focuses on how football contributed to Cuba national identity and how the government affected football during this time.
While reading this section one fact that I already knew was how when the United States was in control of Cuba they put in place many reforms including educational, political, and physical reforms they also shaped how the Cuban government ran during this time. While learning about American history in high school and college we talked about American influence in places they colonized and had influence in during imperialism. Something that is new to me is that upper and upper middle classes saw their connection to the United States as apart of their national identity. These Cubans considered theirselves as white because they had European ancestry and they took in the United States values and culture for themselves. These people would later get jobs in high up positions in the Cuban republic and would be the ones who participated in elite athletic clubs in Cuba. This remind me of earlier topics when we discussed how the elite were the ones in these athletic clubs and were amateur players. I always knew about America having control and influencing Cuba but I never knew that the upper and upper middle class built United States influence into their national identity.
Something else that I learned from reading this article was how governments in certain countries have erased or pushed certain parts of a sports history to the side. In my reading the article talked about how in Cuba they have this long history of football in their country but the revolutionary government helped make it become overlooked within the countries sports history. The revolutionary government put so many limits on football during their reign including banning ending professional sports, ending athletic clubs, prohibiting sports that could cause gambling, and putting all athletics under government control. By doing this they pushed Cuban football to the back burner of their sports history. In another article titled While The World Watched you see this happening again in Argentina with the 1978 team who won the World Cup. In Argentina they try to hide and forgot about the 1978 team because they represent a part of their history that had a dictator that was violent and killed many people. Argentina tries to forget a part of their sports history because of its entanglement to a bad part of their political history. For Cuba and Argentina their governments have shaped how certain sports and teams are currently talked about and viewed in their country and I never new all this information of how governments have affected Cuba and Argentina.
