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Since July, 18, 2014 the information started in Internet and many journalists, baseball players, managers, people from Santiago de Cuba, and all Cubans asked the same question: Have Antonio Pacheco asked for political asylum in the United States (U.S.)? Is he dealing with the procedures for refuge?
Between uncertainly and reality the only real fact, for sure and that could be easily checked was that yes, the called Captain of Captains was in Tampa, together with his wife, even for several weeks ago as it was in an amateur video taped by baseball player Yobal Duenas and published in Youtube. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiMymTM01m8)
Since then, the news started to run, as usual, with the political tone, without checking it with migration authorities or other sources the terms of asylum or refugee, without declarations from the main character of the event, who they just showed and valued, one and another times, as the last defeat of the sports system and, of course, the social system built in Cuba since 1959.
It is true that Pacheco was not only an idol of baseball, but also of a country.
He was one of the great examples and models of athletes for more than two decades. Among other important and only awards he was member of all the national baseball team since the child categories to the adult ones. He was the director of Santiago de Cuba team and they won the first place in the national series for three times and in 2008 he leaded the national team for the Olympic Games in Beijing, where they won the silver medal.
However, let’s go back to the news and not to the media homerun they have pretended to give www.cafefuerte.com, www.elnuevoherald.com and www.diariodecuba.com, just to mention three of the most aggressive websites that have replied the interpretation as they wished to demoralize the Cuban Revolution.
If the former baseball player had decided to travel from Canada, where he was legally and publically hired to work, to the US to visit or start a working in project together with Yobal Duenas and Angel Lopez (something is never said in the video and can be checked) is it a crime if we apply the laws established in the US or the most recent laws passed in the Cuban migration policy?
Many of us could not share so morally, it is true and even in the political matter, the decision taken by Pacheco in relation to the place chosen for his new job, if it is finally true he will work there. But it does not mean it is not Cuban anymore, or that he is now an enemy for his people, unless he starts with piracy and conspiracy against the Cuban talents in baseball, to scorn all he had learned in his sports carrier, to say lies and tell stories from the past or flirt with terrorists who really want to destroy Cuba and the million Cubans living here. So far, until July 29, he has not done so.
None of the declaration, interview or public appearance where he has been can be checked in the US media, social networks, blog, and so on, and the websites themselves recognize “at least one of them said so”, they could not managed to contact Pacheco or what is the same thing, he did not want to give declarations.
He does not say a word either in the video, which shows we are witnesses of something so common as going to work to a place and not in his country and that’s all.
It is true that many people from Santiago de Cuba, colleagues and Cubans feel hurt and we are not used yet to demarcate passions, from policy and Cuban feelings with things like these, because it is really difficult to separate them when they represent our icons that are in the sidewalk of the neighbor who have asphyxiated us the most for more than five decades.
On the contrary to what the media had said, this journalist has a taped declaration to Pacheco, after an interview granted at Guillermon Moncada Stadium in 2009. One of the questions was on the decision to he took to stay in Cuba after so many offers to `lay in the Great Leagues. The memories of that answer is not a defense for him, is just a mark of how consistent his people hope him be, wherever he lives.
“Pacheco did not stay because, honestly, I belong to a very humble family, with a father who had been very self-sacrificing who educated me, first of all with the love to the Homeland, the family, friends, to this people that watch me. I was educated this way and after I had the opportunity to grow, see and be able to think, I could see the world is not as it is shown or sold sometimes. I never thought to leave the team or abandon my country. I have always been in the position I had to. I thank my parents for this education, my family, my friends who met with me and talked to me, to the leaders who talked to me, to our Commander in Chief, who is someone of principle and taught me that it was one position. I am happy, I perhaps do not have all I had to, but I have many things, I have a lot, a lot of affection from the people, and forget it, I die rich but this all this.”
We hope he will never forget to die rich with his people.
Acerca del autor
Máster en Ciencias de la Comunicación. Subdirector Editorial del Periódico Trabajadores desde el 2019. Editor-jefe de la Redacción Deportiva desde 2007. Ha participado en coberturas periodísticas de Juegos Centroamericanos y del Caribe, Juegos Panamericanos, Juegos Olímpicos, Copa Intercontinental de Béisbol, Clásico Mundial de Béisbol, Campeonatos Mundiales de Judo, entre otras. Profesor del Instituto Internacional de Periodismo José Martí, en La Habana, Cuba.
