Game Changer: The Role of Sport in Revolution

Abstract

Sport is generally understood as a conservative social institution that reaffirms the established values and norms of a society. It is not seen as a mechanism for radical political or social change but a means for individual transformation within a society. This article explores that notion by examining how sport has been used by twentieth-century political revolutions. While considering twentieth-century revolutions, it takes the Cuban Revolution as a particular case study to illuminate the use of sport in remaking of society and persons. The article begins with a general discussion of revolution and sport's relationships to it before briefly considering the two most prominent twentieth-century revolutions, the Russian and Chinese. The thrust then focuses on how the idea of revolution was understood in Cuba prior to the success of 1959 as well as immediately after. The article then examines the Cuban revolutionary state's explicit emphasis on sport as a means for producing the New Man. In all, the article argues that contrary to the common assumption that sport and revolution do not mix, sport can play an important role in the major social and political transformations.

Keywords::

• revolution
• sport
• Cuba
• twentieth century
• political theory
• state

Notes

^1.Riordan, “Soviet-Style Sport,” 38.

^2. This is a modern conception of revolution. See Arendt, On Revolution, 21–58.

^3. For the basics of Riordan's work, see Riordan, Sport in Soviet Society and Soviet Sport. Additional examples of his work can be found cited throughout this paper and elsewhere.

^4.Krüger and Riordan, The Story of Worker.

^5. I am using Joseph Nye's concept of soft power here. See Nye, Soft Power.

^6. A phrase coined by Francis Fukuyama. Triumphalist when first proclaimed in the mid-1990s, it basically crowed that American hegemony was now the way of the world, a premature statement if ever there was one. See Fukuyama, The End of History.

^7.Carter, In Foreign Fields, 97–107.

^8.Carter, “The Olympics as Sovereign.”

^9.Brownell, Beijing's Games; Close, Askew and Xin, The Beijing Olympiad.

^10.Brownell, Training the Body for China.

^11.Riordan, Sport, Politics and Communism.

^12.Macdonald, “Putting Bodies on the Line”; Roubal, “Politics of Gymnastics.”

^13. For generalised historical accounts of these armed conflicts and revolutionary processes in English, see the classics by Hugh Thomas and Louis Pérez (Thomas, Cuba: A History; Pérez, Cuba: Between Reform).

^14.Arendt, On Revolution.

^15.Ruiz Aguilera, El Deporte de Hoy, 93.

^16. Ibid., 95.

^17.Carter, “The Manifesto of a Baseball-Playing Country.”

^18.Carter, The Quality of Home Runs, 42–51.

^19. The Movimiento de Julio was the name of the Castro-led guerrilla movement.

^20.Carter, “New Rules to the Old Game,” 208.

^21.Hobbes, Leviathan.

^22. A number of serious biographies chronicle Castro's sporting prowess, including Castro and Ramonet, Fidel Castro: My Life; Quirk, Fidel Castro; and Szulc, Fidel: A Critical Portrait. The apocryphal story that Castro was an outstanding baseball player who could have played professionally in the USA is reproduced in Balfour, Castro; Oppenheimer, Castro's Final Hour; and Price, Pitching Around Fidel, among others.

^23.Szulc, Fidel: A Critical Portrait, 109, 115.

^24.Anderson, Che Guevara, 27–8.

^25. “Constitution of The Republic of Cuba,” Granma Weekly Review (special supplement), March 7, 1976.

^26.Zatz, Producing Legality.

^27.Bunck, Fidel Castro and the Quest; Medin, Cuba, the Shaping.

^28.Castro Ruz, Discurso a la Primera, 6.

^29.Anderson, Che Guevara, 478–9.

^30.Guevara, Socialismo y el Hombre en Cuba.

^31.Ruiz Aguilera, El Deporte de Hoy, 134.

^32. Ibid., see especially 95–108.

^33. Ibid., 134, 139.

^34.Anderson, Che Guevara, 636–7.

^35.Pérez, On Becoming Cuban.

^36.Morgan, Why Sports Morally Matter, 20.

^37.Ruiz Aguilera, El Deporte de Hoy, 134.

^38.Carranza Valdes, “La economía cubana”; Weinreb, Cuba in the Shadow.

^39.Morgan, Why Sports Morally Matter, 20.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas F. Carter

Dr Thomas F. Carter is Principal Lecturer in Sport and Anthropology at the University of Brighton. He has conducted research on Cuban sport for 20 years and written extensively on Cuban sport. His research on Cuban baseball led to an award-winning book – The Quality of Home Runs: The Passion, Politics, and Language of Cuban Baseball.