Ray Sanchez | Cuba notebook
November 18, 2007
HAVANA
Guillermo Rigondeaux, Cuba's top boxer and two-time Olympic bantamweight
champion, still lives in an apartment provided by the sports ministry.
He still drives a yellow-and-black Mitsubishi sedan the government gave
him for his gold medal win at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The communist
state still provides him and his family a weekly food subsidy that's
more generous than the rations of most Cubans.
But nearly four months after Brazil deported Rigondeaux, 27, following a
defection attempt at the Pan American Games, his boxing future is uncertain.
"I don't know what's happening," he said. "I want to fight and win again."
At a time when leaders are encouraging Cubans to openly discuss the
shortcomings of the socialist system, Rigondeaux and his wife, Farah
Colina, 32, said government officials have refused to listen to the
hardships of one of the island's top athletes.
"We've been trying to talk to them for more than a year but no one
listens," Colina said. "We've had no access. This is a two-time Olympic
gold medalist. Imagine ordinary people just trying to be heard."
In many ways, the problems plaguing Rigondeaux and his family — low
wages, inadequate housing and unresponsive state bureaucracies — reflect
the concerns of many of Cuba's 11 million people. For more than a year,
Rigondeaux and his wife said they have sought a meeting with top
government officials about finding permanent housing for the family of
four. Since the boxer's return from the 2004 Athens Olympics, they have
lived in a leaky, run-down apartment belonging to Cuba's sports ministry.
On other occasions, the couple went to the sports ministry for help in
finding housing for Rigondeaux's parents, who live outside Santiago de
Cuba, and a refrigerator for the elderly couple. Finally, they gave up
on the apartment, and bought a refrigerator themselves.
"I believe that if our Comandante knew about our situation something
would have been done," Colina said, referring to Fidel Castro. "Our
athletes are not treated properly. The state wants them to train and to
win gold medals but it doesn't care about their personal problems or
their housing situation or what's happening with their parents."
On July 22, Rigondeaux and teammate Erislandy Lara, an amateur
welterweight world champion, vanished for about two weeks during the Pan
Am games in Rio de Janeiro. The fighters, who were later arrested and
deported on Aug. 5, said they never intended to defect and asked to
return to Cuba. But a German boxing promoter insisted that both signed
five-year contracts, and officials at the German embassy in Brazil
claimed the pair had sought visas.
"That was all a lie," Rigondeaux said of the promoter's claims. "There
was no contract."
Rigondeaux declined to provide details about the disappearance but
Colina suggested the boxers had been drugged and kidnapped.
"They didn't know what they were doing," she said. "They were not
disciplined. They went out with strangers and this happened. We all make
mistakes."
Castro, who has not been seen in public since emergency intestinal
surgery forced him to cede power to younger brother Raul in July 2006,
seemed unforgiving in essays he wrote on the supposed defections. On
Aug. 8, he wrote that Rigondeaux and Lara "had reached the point of no
return" with the national boxing team.
"The athlete who abandons his delegation is not unlike the soldier who
abandons his fellow men in the midst of combat," Castro said, adding
that officials were not convinced the boxers wanted to return to Cuba
before their arrests.
In October, heeding Castro's fears about additional defections, Cuba
pulled out of the world boxing championships in Chicago. The competition
is one of three qualifying tournaments for the 2008 Olympics.
Rigondeaux said he hoped to box at next year's Olympics in Beijing. But
that no sports ministry officials — not even his trainers — have come to
see him. "They're hypocrites," he said. He has been paid his monthly
athletes' salary of $19 only once since returning to Cuba in August.
He said he trains on his own — exercising, running and shadow boxing —
in hopes of boxing again. He spends most days watching cartoons with
5-year-old son Guillermo, or watching the traffic from his balcony.
"I stare into heaven," said Rigondeaux, who still has a chiseled
physique despite chain smoking and drinking strong Bucanero beer.
"I wait. Some people recognize me and wave. Others shout, 'Hey, why did
you come back? You should have stayed.' I don't respond. I just come
back inside and close the door behind me."
Ray Sánchez can be reached a rlsanchez@sun-sentinel .com.
BOXERS' REBELLION? Erislandy Lara, left, and Guillermo Rigondeaux
vanished for about two weeks during the Pan Am games in July while in
Rio de Janeiro. They were arrested and deported back to Cuba on Aug. 5.
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