Tyler Cadenas | December 20, 2018
Cuba has been the hub for baseball for over 100 years. First with the Cuban League founded in 1878, then the Cuban National Series founded in 1961 after the wake of the Cuban Revolution. As of 2016, Cuba ranked third on most international players currently rostered on an MLB team. Since the embargo placed on Cuba by the United States in 1958, there have been a number of economic, commercial, and civil restrictions placed on the Cuban nation. This has prevented the many professional baseball players that Cuba hosts from playing in American and Canadian Major League Baseball. Since the Obama administration, however, many of the bans had been lifted from the embargo. In 2009, he lifted a travel ban, which permitted Cuban Americans to travel freely to Cuba, then students and missionaries under certain circumstances. Under the Trump Administration, the MLB and Cuban Baseball Federation came to an agreement to lift some of the embargo’s restrictions. Under the agreement, Cuban professional baseball players are permitted to come to the United States and play for the MLB. The MLB has also agreed to pay the Cuban Baseball Federation a percentage of each signed players bonuses. It’s hoped that this agreement will prevent future player trafficking.
Under the previous embargo restrictions, players needed to defect, or abandon, their country in order to play for the MLB. In order to escape the strict communist rule of Cuba, many baseball players have resorted to being illegally smuggled through American borders by human traffickers. These smugglers are often tied to Mexican cartels. These traffickers, who looking for a cut of the professional players’ pay, often use violence to ensure their arrival in America. The traffickers responsible for the Los Angeles Dodgers player Yasiel Puig was escorted by traffickers who resorted to murder.
The embargo restrictions that have been lifted are one more step towards Cuba-United States cooperation. Through lifting the ban on baseball athletes, policymakers are hoping to solve the problem of player trafficking at its source, all while strengthening economic, cultural, and civic ties.