Cuba confines deported men to guesthouse
By Ray Sánchez | Havana Bureau
August 7, 2007
Havana, Cuba To the family of Cuba's top boxer, Guillermo Rigondeaux, it
mattered little Monday whether the Olympic bantamweight champion climbs
into the ring again.
"We'd rather have him back as a simple, ordinary man," his
sister-in-law, Marily Clavero, said the day after Brazilian authorities
deported Rigondeaux and his teammate Erislandy Lara.
"Fame is hard," she said. "Now he'll belong to his family again.
Rigondeaux, 25, won Olympic gold medals for Cuba in 2000 and 2004, while
Lara, 24, is an amateur welterweight world champion. They failed to
appear on July 22 for weigh-ins at the Pan American Games in Rio de
Janeiro, and since then their supposed defections have taken one bizarre
twist after another.
Convalescing President Fidel Castro has written several newspaper essays
on the defections and blamed the boxers' desertions on the temptation of
American money.
The German boxing promoter Arena later announced that the fighters had
signed five-year contracts. Last week, Rigondeaux and Lara were arrested
at a Brazilian beach resort after partying and running up an exorbitant
bill. Reports published in Brazil said the boxers claimed they were
drugged by Arena representatives and removed from the Pan American
Village. Arena Box Promotions could not be reached for comment.
Before dawn Sunday, the boxers returned home, with Castro saying that
they would be confined to a government guesthouse but not punished harshly.
"We don't know if he'll ever box again," Clavero said of Rigondeaux.
In the days before the boxers were found and deported, relatives in
Havana and the eastern cities of Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo said
they were surprised by the defections. They described Rigondeaux and
Lara as humble, unassuming men who lived for their sport.
In Guantanamo, where Lara lived with his mother, Marisol, and his
sister, a medical student, a wall in the family's dilapidated two-room
flat was covered with boxing medals and certificates. A little girl
played a computer game on a PC the family said Fidel Castro awarded to
Lara after a world championship.
"The computer came with a letter from El Comandante but we can't get on
the Internet because we have no telephone," Lara's mother said.
Relatives said Lara had been trying to persuade sport officials in
Guantanamo to help him find a better house for his family.
"The inattention wasn't from the Comandante," Lara's mother said. "It
was from the people under him."
In Havana last week, Rigondeaux's family said the boxer's Mitsubishi
sedan, a gift from the state after winning gold in the 2000 Sydney
Olympics, was seized days after the defections. Rigondeaux's brother,
Jorge, said the two-time Olympian medalist had difficulty buying gas and
parts for the car.
"For a while, he had to hitch a ride to training sessions because his
car was broken," Jorge Rigondeaux said.
Ana Ortiz, Rigondeaux's mother, said she spoke with her son by phone
after his departure from the boxing team.
"He said he was well and that he was sorry he did it this way," she
recalled him saying. "I said, 'Look at what you have done. We're here
with this awful feeling.' He didn't say anything."
Ray Sánchez can be reached at rlsanchez@sun-sentinel.com.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-flacubaboxers0807nbaug07,0,4176202.story
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