Dominicans and Baseball

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Negro Leagues ◽  
Political Interference ◽  
Sugar Mills ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Industry Integration ◽  
The Military ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
The Sacrifice

Baseball reflects the sacrifice, commitment, and determination that Dominicans displayed during foreign occupation (1916–1924; 1965–1966), dictatorship (1930–1961; 1966–1978), and the struggle for sovereignty. Success in international tournaments and as the birthplace of a majority of foreign-born players in Major League Baseball (MLB) fosters national pride and generates revenue. But baseball has also been marred bycorruption political interference and exploitation. After its late-19th-century arrival, baseball helped knit Dominicans together, overcoming geographic, racial, and class divisions. It became the national pastime during the first US occupation, when games against US forces asserted Dominican nationalism while anti-imperialist guerrillas battled in the mountains. Baseball encouraged a national identity based on competition and achievement. During baseball’s “Romantic Epoch,” men or boys of similar social standing organized teams and tournaments, sometimes recruiting top players regardless of race or class. Rivalries led teams to import players from Cuba and across the hemisphere, integrating the country into a transnational circuit of leagues and barnstorming. Interaction with other baseball-playing countries furthered competition for talent and led to Dominicans playing in the Negro Leagues. In the 1950s, factories, sugar mills, and the military sponsored clubs which competed in an amateur system that produced players like Juan Marichal and Manuel Mota. During the 1940s and 1950s, after US baseball integrated, competition for players pushed Latin American leagues to affiliate with MLB. Dominican organizers resumed national professional tournaments in 1951 and founded the Dominican Professional Baseball League in 1955. Financial and institutional support from Trujillo helped establish what became a baseball industry. Integration also brought opportunities for Dominicans in MLB, beginning with Ozzie Virgil in 1956 and Felipe Alou in 1958. Cuba’s prohibition of professional sport in 1961 coupled with the prominence of players like Alou and Juan Marichal drew attention to Dominican players. Over time, Dominicans developed prototype academies that now lie at the center of MLB’s player development system. More than a thousand Dominican recruits as young as sixteen train in these academies and compete in the Dominican Summer League with the goal of becoming major leaguers; most are released without leaving the island. While Dominican baseball has been a point of pride and opportunity for many Dominicans, it has also reflected the inequities of global capitalism. Despite criticism of the academy system for exploiting youth, tens of thousands seek the chance to play in the major leagues.

Latin America and the Socio-Economic Impact of the Cuban Revolution

1962 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro C. M. Teichert
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Economic Impact ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Cuban Revolution ◽  
Good Neighbor Policy ◽  
Socio Economic Impact ◽  
Imminent Threat ◽  
Good Neighbor ◽  
The Military ◽  
Latin American Countries

The Cuban revolution has profoundly shaken the economic and political foundation traditional in most of the 20 Latin American republics. The demand by the rest of Latin America for Cuban type reforms has also required a reappraisal of U. S.-Latin American relations, which with the breaking off of diplomatic intercourse between Cuba and the U. S., January 4, 1961, have reached their lowest point since the initiation in the mid 1930's of the Good Neighbor Policy by President Roosevelt. Furthermore, the spread of the Cuban revolution, with its ideals and aspirations for the fulfilment of the age-old political, social, and economic aspirations of the downtrodden masses, is now an imminent threat for the remaining undemocratic Latin American governments. There is no denying the fact that most Latin American countries are still run by an oligarchy of landlords and the military.

Explaining Military Responses to Protests in Latin American Democracies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Pion-Berlin ◽  
Igor Acácio
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Selection Strategy ◽  
Full Compliance ◽  
Case Selection ◽  
Qualitative Evidence ◽  
Social Protests ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sources Of Variation ◽  
The Military

Social protests are a feature of democracy in Latin America. When the police cannot handle them, governments, facing threats to their tenure, are tempted to order the armed forces to step in. The military, when ordered to deploy in counter-protest operations, exhibits behaviors ranging from defiance to conditional and full compliance. The article investigates the sources of variation in military responses to mass protests, leveraging a small-n comparative analysis and a diverse case selection strategy. It draws on qualitative evidence from Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, democracies with a history of protests. It finds that a combination of the judicial risks soldiers assume if they repress, professional mission preferences, and social identity between the military and the protesters are the most compelling explanations for military responses.

Brazil at World Stage

2012 ◽  
pp. 59-67
Author(s):  
E. Dabagyan
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
American Continent ◽  
The North ◽  
Brazilian Government ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Short Period ◽  
International Reputation ◽  
The Military

The author puts forward and substantiates a thesis about the transformation of Brazil into an important actor of the international relations. This becomes possible because a number of factors, including the well-designed, multi-tasked and balanced foreign policy strategy. It was founded during the military regime. Then, it was maintained and developed by the civilian Brazilian governments, primarily by such an outstanding figure as the president L. da Silva. His successor D. Rousseff s in a short period of time managed to gain a solid international reputation. She successfully copes with the mission to lead Brazil into the club of world’s great powers. To perform this task Brazilian government constantly makes efforts to strengthen relations with the neighbors on the Latin American continent, to gradually smoothen tensions with the United States. Also, it closely works with the countries of BRICS, contributes to building bridges between the South and the North, as well as actively participates in the activities of international organizations and the settlement of contentious issues in the world.

True Crimes: Rodolfo Walsh and the Role of the Intellectual in Latin American Politics

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael McCaughan
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Open Letter ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Dirty War ◽  
Death Squad ◽  
The Us ◽  
Own Name ◽  
The Military

Rodolfo Walsh was a writer of crime novels, a tireless investigative journalist who uncovered real political crimes, an instant historian of a turbulent and violent era in Argentinian and Latin American politics. He was in Cuba in 1960, participating in setting up the first revolutionary press service in Latin America, "Prensa Latina", when a coded telex arrived in their offices by mistake. After sleepless nights and with one cryptography manual, Walsh deciphered the plans for the US invasion of Cuba being planned in Guatemala by the CIA. Walsh was active in the Montonero guerrilla in Argentina, co-ordinating information and intelligence work. In that capacity he made public the existence of ESMA, the Naval Mechanics School which was the main military torture centre. In his own name he wrote an Open Letter to the Military Junta, a year from the coup and a day before his death, denouncing the dirty war. He was gunned down in the streets of Buenos Aires by a military death squad. This is an account of Rudolfo Walsh's life. It includes extended excerpts from his varied writings.

normally only gradually, and this situation is not universally the case. There is growing understanding of the need for security arrangements which underpin the economic and political co-operation whose value is so clear to most decision-makers. Those who wish to see greater co-operation from the Latin American states in the non-proliferation and arms control fields should attempt to understand these phenomena and make a greater effort to bring the Latin Americans along. The North can help a great deal in educating key members of the civilian elites in these countries about defence matters. This would go a long way to easing some of the issues of civil-military relations mentioned. Showing more transparency ourselves in the working of arms control groupings can help to reduce concerns in these countries about their ability to resist excessive northern pressures if they accept the objectives sought by those countries in such groups. Working with nascent but interested elements of civil society, from universities and research centres for example can help to build the constituency for these objectives in key countries. And efforts to show the military that collaboration does not necessarily mean the end of a legitimate degree of armed forces influence in the security area and more widely in foreign policy, and that arms control does not necessarily imply ruin for them and their families, need to be made and indeed should be more closely studied in order to address these real concerns. There is thus a good deal which can be done. But culture remains formative and vital to states and individuals. These societies are the result of a lived historic experience and only an understanding of the very real security concerns they have will allow us to obtain more support from them in security fields which are, as in the past, still offering great challenges globally and regionally.

2012 ◽  
pp. 193-196
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
The North ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military ◽  
Research Centres

The Emerging New Politics of Liberalizing Paraguay: Sustained Civil-Military Control without Democracy

1992 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul C. Sondrol
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Press Freedom ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Democratic Development ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Major Subject ◽  
Military Control ◽  
The Military

The Process of the transition from authoritarianism to more representative forms of government has become a major subject of the scholarship on Latin American politics today (O'Donnell, et al, 1986; Malloy and Seligson, 1987; Stepan, 1989; Diamond et al, 1988-1990; Lowenthal, 1991). Given this interest, as expressed by the growing literature in this area, little attention has been paid to the transition process now going on in Paraguay, which is now emerging from one of Latin America's most long-standing authoritarian regimes.A number of studies testify to the authoritarian nature of Paraguay's government and society. Johnson indicates that Paraguay ranked either 18th or 19th—out of 20 Latin American nations ... in 9 successive surveys of democratic development, carried out at 5-year intervals from 1945 to 1985 (Jonnson> 1988). A longitudinal study of press freedom found that Paraguay was invariably placed in the category of “poor,” or even “none,” between 1945-1975 (Hill and Hurley, 1980). When Palmer applied his 5 indicators of authoritarianism (nonelective rule, coups, primacy of the military, military rule, executive predominance) to the countries of Latin America, Paraguay consistently ranked first in its degree of authoritarianism (Palmer, 1977).

Military Government in Latin America, 1959–1990

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian E. Loveman
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Military Government ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
The Government ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

Latin America’s armed forces have played a central role in the region’s political history. This selective annotated bibliography focuses on key sources, with varying theoretical, empirical, and normative treatments of the military governments in the region, from the Cuban Revolution (1959) until the end of the Cold War (1989–1990). The article is limited to those cases in which military governments or “civil-military” governments were in power. This excludes personalist dictatorships, party dictatorships, and civilian governments in which the armed forces exercised considerable influence but did not rule directly. No pretense is made of comprehensiveness or of treating the “causes” of military coups (a vast literature) and of civil-military relations under civilian governments. Likewise, the closely related topics of guerrilla movements during this period, human rights violations under the military governments, US policy and support for many of the military governments, and the transitions back to civilian government (including “transitional justice”) are not covered in depth, but some of the selections do treat these topics and direct the reader to a more extensive literature on these subjects. Long-term military governments, with changing leadership in most cases, controlled eleven Latin American nations for significant periods from 1964 to 1990: Ecuador, 1963–1966 and 1972–1978; Guatemala, 1963–1985 (with an interlude from 1966–1969); Brazil, 1964–1985; Bolivia, 1964–1970 and 1971–1982; Argentina, 1966–1973 and 1976–1983; Peru, 1968–1980; Panama, 1968–1989; Honduras, 1963–1966 and 1972–1982; Chile, 1973–1990; and Uruguay, 1973–1984. In El Salvador the military dominated the government from 1948 until 1984, but the last “episode” was from 1979 to 1984. Military governments, though inevitably authoritarian, implemented varying economic, social, and foreign policies. They had staunch supporters and intense opponents, and they were usually subject to internal factionalism and ideological as well as policy disagreements. The sources discussed in this article reflect that diversity.

Characterization, Strategies, and Objectives of the Latin American Right

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Cannon
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Transnational Governance ◽  
Governance Systems ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Military

Work on the Latin American right mainly assumes it is a political phenomenon, despite recognition that it emerges from, and can be supplanted by, groups of actors from within and across business, in the media, in the intellectual sphere, and indeed in the military. A broader approach is provided here to help integrate these (f)actors, using Michael Mann’s work on social power and Nancy Fraser’s concepts of progressive and reactionary neoliberalism. It is argued that elites from these sectors, espousing neoliberalism, and supported by powerful transnational elites with similar views, dominate the areas of ideology, economics, military, and politics in order to install, maintain, extend, and naturalize neoliberalism in the region. This dominance has been challenged from the left and indeed from the right, resulting in at minimum progressive and reactionary forms of neoliberalism centered on inequalities of recognition. Nevertheless, the range and depth of possible change, particularly in stalling and reversing distributive inequality, may be limited, due to the embeddedness of neoliberalism in national, regional, and transnational governance systems.

Folk Festivals, Community Development, and the Sugar Industry Crisis in Tucumán, Argentina, 1966–1973

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar Chamosa
Keyword(s):  
Community Development ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Sugar Industry ◽  
Small Cities ◽  
Music Festivals ◽  
Civic Organizations ◽  
Sugar Mills ◽  
Rural Exodus ◽  
The Military

In the late 1960s, the sugar-growing province of Tucumán, Argentina, was undergoing the deepest economic crisis of its history. In 1966, eleven large sugar mills closed by order of the national government, then ruled by military dictator Juan Carlos Onganía. The mills closure left a quarter of the province’s labor force unemployed, which, in turns, prompted a massive rural exodus and a permanent state of social unrest. Paradoxically, at the same time, the suddenly impoverished region was experiencing a boom of folk music festivals organized by small cities and rural towns, including those severely hit by the sugar industry crisis. This essay explores the context of the folk festival phenomenon, analyzing the role of town notables and local civic organizations in responding to the crisis brought about by the closure of the mills. The festivals were, in fact, part of a wider effort of local towns to develop their infrastructure and social services. By organizing festivals and fostering community development, local notables acted as a counterweight to the activism of the working class, generating spaces of consent that aided the military government’s plans to reorder the provincial economy.

The Chilean Socialist Party: Prolegomena to its Ideology and Organization

1978 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benny Pollack
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Latin American Country ◽  
Common Knowledge ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Military Coup ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Military ◽  
National Electorate

It is common knowledge that, prior to the military coup of 1973, Chile was the only Latin American country to have strong workers' political parties of the European type. Many reasons have been given for this phenomenon, but it is clear that Chile has been the only country in Latin-America to allow the development of Marxist parties with strong appeal and a strong following, within the framework of what could be called liberal, democratic processes. Up to 1970, the electoral force of the Socialist and Communist Parties in Chile oscillated between 20 and 30 per cent of the total national electorate. This rose to more than 40 per cent during 1975.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document