The four Cuban basketball players who defected Monday on Grand Canary
are living off the good will of other Cuban residents of that Spanish
island, the Las Palmas newspaper La Provincia reported Friday.
Interviewed in a pub, Taylor García, Grismay Paumier, Georvis Elías and
Geoffrey Silvestre were reticent. "You must understand that our families
are back there [in Cuba]. We don't want anything to happen to them or
negative information to reach them," they told the newspaper. "We are
doing well here, although we're living off borrowed kindness, off the
help from Cuban brothers who live in [the barrio of] Vecindario and the
rest of our compatriots in Grand Canary. We have also enjoyed the
solidarity of the Canarians, who have not abandoned us," they said.
The players' hosts "lend us their homes, give us food, clothing, money,
they don't leave us to ourselves. The situation is not pleasant, but
we're not sorry we did what we did. Some of us came with the idea [of
defecting] in our heads and others made up their minds here."
The Cubans have applied for political asylum and hope to join a
basketball team in the Canary Islands, although Spanish sports
authorities have said that's not likely to happen.
Cuban Colada | Cuban hoopers are not sorry they defected (21 August 2009)
http://miamiherald.typepad.com/cuban_colada/2009/08/cuban-hoopers-are-not-sorry-they-defected.html
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