“One Team, One Dream”, the motto of the FEPCUBE was slowed down, but not eliminated by the Castro regime, currently administered by the ruler Miguel Diaz-Canel when the tentacles of the dictatorship reached Colombia to prevent the team, made up of players in exile, from participating in the 2024 Intercontinental Baseball Series that was going to be held from January 26 to February 1 in the city of Barranquilla.
In recent days, the Ministry of Sports and the Colombian Olympic Committee spoke out in rejection of the legitimacy of the FEPCUBE and clarified that they only recognized the existence of the Cuban Baseball and Softball Federation, managed by the regime.
Faced with the first obstacle from the Colombian government, the positivism of these dreamers – some players or former Major League players – continued, regardless of the fact that they could not use the national symbols of the largest of the Antilles because they consider that “this is a team from the CUBAN EXILE “We don’t need a flag or a national anthem.”
But the team suffered a setback and the regime, with its allies, managed to have the tournament suspended by not having the endorsement of the authorities, according to Team Rentería USA, owned by former Major League player Édgar Rentería and his brother Edinson. and organizer of the event, in a statement.
“The despotism of the Colombian and Cuban governments breaks with the precepts of free sport and is a direct attack on democracy, which we will not stop denouncing. This is a decision that offends and mocks democracy and freedom, which also comes from a totalitarian regime that systematically represses its citizens,” FEPCUBE responded in an official statement. “There has been so much media, civic and political impact of the FEPCUBE team that it forced the dictatorship that ‘rules’ Cuba to move its tentacles outside its borders to prevent our participation in the Intercontinental Series.”
Republican congressman Mario Díaz-Balart also spoke out against the actions of Gustavo Petro’s government in Colombia.
“Once again, Colombia’s Petro proves to be a supporter of Cuban tyranny by blocking free Cuban baseball players from competing in an international tournament in Colombia. FEPCUBE will only get stronger after this, but it is condemnable that Petro is extending the oppression of the Cuban regime to free Cuban athletes in Colombia,” he wrote in his X Díaz-Balart accounts.
Although for now the Cuban dictatorship came out with its fiancé, “Team Rentería USA, as organizer of the tournament, will work hand in hand with the affiliated leagues to carry out the Series in another country.”
