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Havana Hoops
"We’re not religious, but for us, basketball is our religion."
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By Nick Miroff
 Each year thousands of young people leave Cuba. Those who leave on homemade rafts or in fast speedboats get the most media attention, but the majority of Cuban migrants depart in far less dramatic fashion. They file legal immigration petitions through relatives, marry foreigners, or travel abroad for work and don’t return. Youth Radio’s Nick Miroff has this story about how this continual migration has changed a group of close friends in Havana.
Every afternoon behind this rundown middle school in Western Havana, “La Liga” meets to play hoops. “La Liga” means “The League”, but this “League” is really just a group of neighborhood friends who have grown up together and are obsessed with basketball. To call their afternoon routine a “League” may be a stretch, but “La Liga” isn’t a complete misnomer. The term has another, unintended meaning in Spanish: “link”, or “bond”, something that holds things together. Twenty-four year-old Mario Oliva says he’s been going there to play since he was eleven.
MARIO (on tape)
“It’s like a religion for us, like going to mass. We’re not religious, but for us, basketball is our religion. It’s something we do to forget our problems, to feel good, to be with other people.”
NICK
The middle school where they play is only a few blocks from posh tourist hotels and Havana’s embassy row, but their basketball court looks more like the rest of the city: crumbling, dilapidated, held together mostly thanks to ingenuity and improvised repairs. The guys in La Liga have been playing each other over and over for years, and their half-court, three-on-three games are intensely competitive. But it’s more than love for the game that brings them together, says three-point sharpshooter Iznel Soto.
IZNEL (on tape)
“It’s not just about basketball. We also go there to talk, to get things off our chests. We get into debates and everyone gives their opinions, what they think about this or that. It’s not just basketball, it’s about life itself.”
 NICK
As the young men grow older, heated political discussions have also become a part of the afternoon meetings. Unlike their classrooms or workplaces, the basketball court is a place where they are free to openly criticize the government. But the players whose parents hold the best government jobs tend to be Fidel Castro’s most passionate defenders.
The guys here come from different economic backgrounds, and to tell whose families are better off, all you have to do is look at their shoes. 19 year-old Rakim has only recently been able to afford his own sneakers. Before that he played for years in a pair of old boots.
Rakim has grown a few inches taller in the past year, and can now dunk.
He’s also just “graduated” to the south side of the court, where the better players are.
RAKIM (on tape)
They used to tease me a lot and call me “skinny”. But that’s just the way it is here, you know? They wanted me to learn. With time, I’ve gotten better, and now I’m good enough to play at their level.
Rakim has earned his spot, but he probably wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for the loss of so many other players. In the past year or so, nearly half the regular players in “La Liga” have left Cuba. Carlos, a six-foot-six center, went to Spain, as did Yucca, who lived across the street from the court. Emilio, known as “Nike” for the shoes he wore, went to Panama. Iznel was his closest friend.
IZNEL (on tape)
“I felt an emptiness, you know, for the league it was like we were a professional team that had lost three of its best players, they quit the team, or they went to another league.”
NICK
It’s getting harder and harder for the guys to round up enough players for a game. They say Cuba isn’t such a bad place to grow up, with high-quality education and relatively little violence or drugs. But they also recognize that reaching adulthood is a crossroads. If they stay, young men like these, trained for careers in computer technology, physical therapy, and television, can look forward to being some of the worst-paid professionals in the world.
Of anyone in the group, twenty-one year-old Camilo probably has the best future prospects. He’s lived in Cuba all his life, but his parents are foreign residents from South America and it’s easier for him to travel abroad. He’s also the only one in the group with satellite television, so everyone always goes to his house to watch NBA games on ESPN Deportes.
In spite of the privileges he does have, Camilo doesn’t plan to stay in Cuba either.
CAMILO (on tape)
“I’d like to stay in Cuba, this is where my friends are. But there’s this urgency to leave and go somewhere where you’ll have more opportunities. I think that among our friends, and in Cuba in general, every young person arrives at this moment when they think about their future careers and the kind of freedom and independence they’ll have. It’s really difficult because the more you learn and the more experience you gain, the more you want from life.”
NICK
These days “La Liga” is not in session. The guys say maybe they’ll start playing again in a few months. They say Yucca is supposed to visit this summer from Spain, and Emilio might come from Panama too. But right now, the younger boys from the other end of the court have moved down and taken La Liga’s place.
- “Havana Hoops” was produced by Youth Radio's International
Desk, in association with National
Geographic.
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My Cuban Quinceanera
U.S. Medical Students in Cuba
Letters from Cuba
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