Dieudonné Lamothe, who was an athlete from Haiti, ended up losing in the 5,000 meter race at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. He lost the Olympic competition, but Lamothe was not assassinated by President Jean-Claude Duvalier, the dictator who became known throughout the world as “Baby Doc Duvalier”. Over the next few years, Lamothe revealed that Jean-Claude Duvalier had threatened to kill him if he did not finish his degree… Amnesty International reports that the secret police, known as the Tonton Macoutes, practice torture, assassinations and disappearances, including assassinations of prominent leaders of the opposition. .
Like Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (Cuban dictator) and Idi Amin Dada (Ugandan dictator), Jean-Claude Duvalier loves sports. He undoubtedly popularized the sport of soccer in Haiti, a former French colony in the Caribbean. Under his leadership, Haiti qualified for the 1974 FIFA World Cup tournament in Munich, West Germany. He also won the World Junior Soccer Championship in Mexico City, Mexico, in 1975. Soccer is now the country’s national sport.
Between October 12 and 26, 1975, the Haitian delegation participated in the VII Pan American Games held in Mexico City. The national delegation had 12 athletes competing in three sports: athletics (7), boxing (2) and tennis (3). In addition, Haiti sent a national team to the 1976 Olympic Games, which were held in Montreal (Canada) . Haitian athletes also competed in various events sponsored by international sports organizations, including basketball, golf, judo, volleyball, and boxing.
Arguably one of the worst dictatorships of all time, Fidel Castro Ruz enjoys all kinds of Olympic sports, including basketball and baseball, and his proudest moment was when his country hosted the Pan American Games in 1991. People who don’t know Cuba very well. I very much think that Cuba is an Olympic paradise.
Like Iran, Sudan, Syria, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (or North Korea), Cuba is a terrorist state of the 21st century. Fidel Castro Ruz is not Pol Pot (Maoist dictator) and Enver Hoxha (anti-Soviet dictator), but he is a dictator in the Third World. The country has never known a period free from tyranny, repression and political conflict.
A revolution in 1959 transformed Cuba into the first socialist republic in Latin America. From 1962 to 1989, Cuba was a Soviet colony. In 1962, Cuba looked to the USSR (currently Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, etc.) to help them consolidate their sport. Sports projects were strongly emphasized during this decade. The Soviet Union sent Olympians to Havana and agreed to provide sports aid to the Cuban dictatorship. Recognizing the importance of sport for the Cuban dictatorship, the Soviets built several sports schools, better known as Schools for School Sports Initiation (EIDE, Schools for School Sports Initiation), modernized gyms and built stadiums. This invaluable sports support continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Sport in Cuba remains strictly centered in the hands of Fidel Castro Ruz. Castro has instilled mental toughness in Cuban athletes. Athletes are forced to refuse to the United States, Czech Republic, Hungary, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, South Korea and other countries.
The ongoing violence has forced more than 300 athletes to flee to neighboring countries, including Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and the United States.
From the outside, the “Lenin Sports School” is certainly impressive. Not all dictatorships have the same situation. Under the dictatorship of Robert Gabriel Mugabe, sport in Zimbabwe is a disaster. Yoel López always arrives early at the “Lenin Sports School” and says: “I usually go to the sports school by car but sometimes I walk.” In Cuba sports schools usually open at 7:30 in the morning. Yoel never watches television. He sleeps seven hours a night. He works very hard. Like many Cuban children, he is a new slave of the Cuban Revolution. Certainly, Yoel López is a volleyball player.
Cuba won the Pan American baseball gold medal in Santo Domingo 2003. Hundreds of Cubans watched television coverage of the Pan American Games. During the final baseball game, soldiers in camouflage stood around the Cuban dugout and guarded much of the section where the Cuban delegation was sitting. Even accredited media stayed out of the field and guards with loaded assault rifles protected the Cuban national bus. One soldier told a reporter that he estimated there were about 400 security workers at the stadium and said that if any Cubans escaped, the Dominican patrol would go to jail. “Our mission tonight is to ensure that no Cuban deserts,” he said on condition of anonymity. “If one deserts, they threatened us with jail and said they would take us out of the army.”