1
Certainly, countries like Honduras – and perhaps all of us – have something or a lot to learn from the achievements and mistakes of other nations. It is a serene exercise seeking to learn from good experiences and also from those that are not. Each country has its specificities, potential and vulnerabilities. It is a matter of listening to its history, processes, characters, institutions and evolution of its thinking and activities.
2
This 2024 left us with the holding of the Olympic Games in Paris during the last days of July and the beginning of August. He drew us a clear map of how countries are in a partial correlation between sporting achievements and level of development.
3
As expected, the United States continues to be the king in the historical medal table. In Paris, they managed to tie with China, both with 40 gold medals, with a margin of advantage for the United States. In silver and bronze medals, accumulating 126 against 91 Chinese, both out of a grand total of 987 medals in dispute, calculating the 32 disciplines and 329 tests.
4
Regarding Latin America and other Americans other than the United States and Canada, Brazil stood out (in position 20). Cuba did not do very “well” but was in 32nd position with 9 medals. It did not meet its goal of being precisely among those first 20, but it participated with dignity considering the modest size of its delegation, the smallest in decades. Even further removed from that feat of being among the first five positions in Barcelona 1992.
5
Very much in keeping with the title of this essay, the Cuban Olympic sport has excelled in boxing, obtaining 80 medals, including 42 gold. It has a total inventory in 16 of the 32 disciplines, of 244 medals accumulated in its 22 Olympic participations, having given up competing on the other 7 occasions. Cuban feats have also been achieved in the disciplines of athletics, with no less than 11 gold medals and a total of 45 silver and bronze medals. A curious and revealing fact derived from the political crisis is that three of the defecting athletes competed in the triple jump representing different European countries and, surprise, they won the gold, silver and bronze medals, respectively.
6
If someone, justified or not, thought about extrapolating the crises and economic limitations of the island regime to sports, would they dare to consider the political system as a failure by extending it to sports?
7
We should learn a lot from the organization, mystique and sporting spirit of Cubans. Taking scientific guidelines, without attempting to mechanically copy those methods adapted to the specificities of countries and societies. Those people who, in a desire for denialism, try to discredit the achievements embodied in a different economic and political system do wrong. In the same way, and always pernicious, it is to enroll or pretend to adhere to alternative regimes to classical capitalism without understanding the rules and changes operated in other models of government only to pretend ideological activism that they have never had and non-existent in their personal lifestyle. . Some, who today, out of monetary opportunism, present themselves as “left”, in reality have only adopted a kind of piratical “franchise” to justify a militancy that they have never had. The basic principle continues to be that each country knows how to govern itself, defining its “plan” for the nation based on the common points within its different strata and sectors of the population.
