After 16 years, Cuba returned to the semifinals of the World Baseball Classic, only to be thrashed 14-2 by Team USA. Despite this, the islanders’ team was received with arms raised and the government found the main culprits behind the debacle in the ‘haters’.
“All of Cuba will receive you with a big hug,” the Cuban president wrote on Twitter. Miguel Diaz-Canel, which ensured that the players returned “joy” to the country and “made history.” While one of the country’s government newspapers accused those who demonstrated in the American city.
“Our team has signed an outstanding performance and faced the semifinal in the most difficult conditions that could be imaginedgiven the hostility of the haters in Miami,” wrote the official Cuban sports newspaper Jit.
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four detainees
Those Cubans who are in exile in the city of Miami, where the semifinal duel took place, took advantage of the spotlight to demand the release of political prisoners and free elections in Cuba and inside the stadium, with a capacity for more than 36,000 people, which was completely filled, many spectators wore t-shirts with the legend “Patria y vida”.
Ramón Saúl Sánchez, leader of the Democracy Movement, stressed in an interview with EFE that “It is not a protest against the athletes who play the World Cup”but “an expression of protest against a dictatorship that for 64 years has imprisoned, oppressed, tortured and murdered Cubans.”
According to Miami-Dade County authorities, Four people, including the activist and graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado, “El Sexto”, were arrested for rushing onto the playing field with banners against the “dictatorship”. Cuban. The journalist and activist Carlos Álvarez is another of those detained.
With information from EFE