The comedian Andy Vázquez acknowledged the feat accomplished by the Cuban Greco-Roman wrestler Mijaín López, a five-time Olympic champion in this discipline, but stated that he was not happy about the news upon recalling the athlete's off-field history.
"My recognition as an athlete. It's a pity that I couldn't be happy about your feat when I remember how you assaulted a young person for asking for freedom for our Cuba," Vázquez said on the Facebook account 'Facundo Vivir del cuento.'
The popular actor based in Miami, known for his portrayal of the character Facundo in the humorous television show from Cuba, expressed the sentiment of many Cubans who regret the propaganda use that the Cuban regime makes of sports and its champions.
Beyond the purely sporting realm, Mijaín's case is one of the most high-profile, as his achievements, along with his physique, are quite striking and have been exploited by the propaganda of the totalitarian regime, which has turned the Giant of Herradura into a symbol of that violent and ideologized Cubanness constructed by the discourse of the Communist Party.
Associated with the so-called "revolution" and patriotism understood as fidelity to a project of social domination, the concept of Cuban identity defined by the Ideological Department of the PCC and proclaimed by leaders and the official press is a stale, chauvinistic, and exclusionary term. Those who lend their name for that purpose are rewarded, like Mijaín, who was gifted a Mercedes Benz in January 2022.
By stating in their slogans that "Mijaín is Cuba," the communication experts at Palacio aim to highlight in their messages the athlete's commitment to the "revolution," his principles, his patriotism, and his willingness to remain in Cuba at a time when the so-called "revolutionary sport" has experienced the largest exodus of athletes in its history.
Big, burly, unbeatable, loyal, a member of the PCC (the only legal party on the island), and a deputy of the National Assembly of People's Power, Mijaín embodies the archetype of the "comecandela" that the Cuban regime values more than anything in athletes (those who don't fit in disappear from history) and becomes a symbol of that sovereign and victorious Cuba that the official narrative uses in its totalitarian indoctrination.
For the fighter's further disgrace, he has been seen displaying violent behavior towards those Cubans who have had the courage to send a message of freedom and against the dictatorship in his imposing presence, as happened with Damián Montes de Oca Iglesias, the young Cuban who was attacked by Mijaín and other members of the Cuban delegation at the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games.
It happened at the end of October 2023, when Montes de Oca Iglesias displayed a Cuban flag with the phrase "Freedom for Cuba" at the baseball stadium where the Cuban team had just lost to Brazil. "I respected him until today," said the star pitcher from Pinar del Río, José Ariel Contreras, upon witnessing the aggression against his compatriot, a peaceful Cuban who was merely expressing his desire for Freedom.
That was precisely the fact that Vázquez recalled in his post, and that many other Cubans keep in their memories, along with other “details” that have led the Gigante de Herradura to become a fetish object of the regime's propaganda, its standard-bearer and champion in its symbolic war against the “haters.”
"INDER is loaded with repressors. Mijaín López is one more of them. And on top of that, he's a giant, which makes his condition as a repressor seem even more terrible," denounced activist Sayli González Velázquez on her social media, one of the many voices from Cuban civil society that have refused to separate sports from politics, since, in the case of the Cuban dictatorship, it is an inseparable binomial, used by the regime to divide Cubans and impose its vision of the homeland through the "revolutionary" ideological lens.
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