everything would be okay.” -Reinier Alcantara, Cuban soccer player
”All of us who go there [to play in the U.S.] are revolutionaries and believe in the Cuban revolution.” -Leonel Duarte, Cuban soccer player
Perhaps Leonel overstated the appeal of the Cuban Revolution, as two of Cuba’s soccer players made separate flights of freedom during the team’s visit to D.C. to participate in a World Cup qualifier.
Reinier Alcantara did not believe he would have another opportunity to pursue freedom, so on Thursday night, as he and his Cuban soccer teammates were preparing for a team dinner at the Crystal City Doubletree Hotel, the 26-year-old forward made his break.
Sharing details in a telephone interview with The Washington Post last night, Alcantara said he was in the lobby, wearing a casual shirt, shorts and tennis shoes, when he saw the coaches wander into the gift shop. He rode the escalator down to street level and “started running like crazy and didn’t look behind,” he said through an interpreter who arranged the interview and requested anonymity for political reasons.
After sprinting for about eight blocks, Alcantara said he flagged down a taxi and, with the few words of English he knew, told the driver, “Go, go, go!”
Alcantara later called a friend who helped whisk him away to Atlanta.
Pedro Faife’s name was on the Cuban roster for Saturday night’s World Cup qualifier against the United States, but the 24-year-old midfielder was nowhere near RFK Stadium.
He slipped away from the team’s hotel at 2 p.m. Friday afternoon with a maternal aunt and cousins, who drove him 750 miles to their Orlando home. He spent Saturday celebrating his newfound freedom shopping for shoes, clothes and toiletries.
Faife was one of two players to defect from the Cuban national team since its arrival in the nation’s capital, and one of 15 Cuban soccer players to defect while in the United States since 2002.
via The Miami Herald
Apparently, the revolution has nothing on the lure of freedom.
Filed under: Immigration, Politics, Sports | Tagged: Cuba, Defectors, Pedro Faife, Reinier Alcantara, Soccer, Sports, The Lure of Freedom, World Cup
Is it just me or does this happen every time a Cuban team shows up in the U.S. You would think that by this point Cuba would stop sending their people over here.