Cuba: A Look at Sports Blogs · Global Voices
Eduardo Avila

Editor's Note: The following is a translation of the article written by Yudivián Almeida Cruz on the site  Bloggers Cuba and it is republished with permission.
Sports form a large part of the Cuban identity.  Passion can be seen for the sport of baseball all the way to the unexpected participation of a Cuban in another sport.  We all feel capable of questioning sporting decisions and we are comforted by those results that permit us to keep believing that this small Caribbean island is a world sporting power.  Anything short of this causes us to call for their heads. Despite all of this, information and appraisals of Cuban sports is still insufficient on the net. I believe that the alternate means of communication taking place on blogs is the ideal space for the diffusion and analysis of the present dynamics of daily Cuban sports. However, this has not been sufficiently exploited, neither by communication professionals, nor sports fans.
Despite this, there exists some spaces that have been providing the first steps towards this goal.  Despite the fact that Cubans enjoy the controversy related to politics or sports, these digital spaces lack the emotion of a Cuban street corner, since very few comments appear that can help enrich the posts. Of the sports blogs that I am familiar with, my favorite is Palco Deportivo [es] and is written by the Cuban journalist Abelardo Oviedo. Here the frequency of the posts are spread out and no one has commented, although the quality of his articles and interviews forces one to visit each time a new post appears.
Mi Columna Deportiva [es] is another site that I usually visit.  This sports blog is the work of journalist and professor of the Department of Communications [es] at the Havana University [es] Miguel Ernesto Gómez Masjuán. This blog is where I first read about the Cuban sporting blogosphere [es]. In this site, the posts appear regularly and it may be the only space that has broken the ice with comments, not as much as I would like, but it may be the point of entry for enriching debates.   Another sports blog is Cuba El Deporte [es].  The author is José Luis Basulto and his articles don't appear as regularly.  On this blog, as of the majority of sports blogs, readers do not leave a trace and do not comment.
In the case of Infodeportivas [es], RomoDeportes [es], and Siempre Con Ustedes [es], these blogs specialize in information about sports in Santiago de Cuba, Ciego de Ávila and Holguín, respectively.  These blogs are updated frequently and are one of the best examples of the usefulness of blogs. National online media do not provide in-depth coverage of sports in each one of our provinces and the blogs are one of the best solutions to spread local information.  Hopefully, I will discover more blogs that imitate these blogs and allows us to know the happenings, not only sporting events, of each possible corner of Cuba.
These are some of the Cuban sports blogs that one can find after invoking Saint Google and navigate among the links.  There is a lot to be done by those that attempt to create and maintain a Cuban sports blogosphere and by those who read the blogs, but don't dare to comment and contribute to the dynamics of those blogs.  I, who am always optimistic, believe that soon we can have many more digital spaces.