{"id":267012,"date":"2023-03-21T16:14:39","date_gmt":"2023-03-21T20:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=267012"},"modified":"2023-03-21T16:14:39","modified_gmt":"2023-03-21T20:14:39","slug":"the-ball-is-round-baseball-politics-and-the-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/opinion\/columns\/our-life\/the-ball-is-round-baseball-politics-and-the-nation\/","title":{"rendered":"The ball is round\u2026 Baseball, politics and the nation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe passion begins,\u201d I always heard at the beginning of the broadcasts of ball games in Cuba. \u201cBall\u201d was synonymous with passion on the island for a long time, although it alluded more to sexuality. \u201cWhat a ball Carlota has,\u201d said a rumba by Alberto Villal\u00f3n.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cuba played at the World Baseball Classic semifinal this Sunday<\/b><\/a>, with a team made up of players from its national league and professional leagues, which has relaunched baseball as a national passion.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the best tradition, everything is discussed. Among others, the debates on the name of Team Asere for the team members, the claims not to politicize the sport, and the type of makeup that the Cuban team supposes, topics that run through this text, perhaps have a greater scope.<\/span><\/p>\n

The asere<\/b><\/p>\n

The name of Team Asere was born from a meme and caught on until it stayed. Some have pointed out \u201cvulgarity\u201d in the phrase. It is an old problem of Cuban culture and its \u201canxiety,\u201d as the U.S. academy likes to say, to acknowledge the difficulty of accepting \u2014 and above all of including \u2014 popular and racialized expressions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Asere is a Cuban term \u201cloosely translatable in its use as \u2018brother,\u2019 which means a good or trusted friend.\u201d<\/span>1<\/b><\/sup> For the Abaku\u00e1 culture of Cuba, according to Pedro P\u00e9rez Sarduy, as in the old Carabal\u00ed religion, it is a form of greeting. For Sergio Vald\u00e9s Bernal, its use is part of the sub-Saharan linguistic legacy in Cuban Spanish, \u201canother identity nuance of our variant of the Spanish language.\u201d<\/span>2<\/b><\/sup><\/p>\n

Due to its origin, the expression has historically been marked with \u201cvulgarity.\u201d Juan Formell questioned many times the vision of public dances as spaces where only \u201cthe aseres,\u201d \u201cthe toughies\u201d went, when, according to the founder of the Van Van, it was a cultural event of great importance for the Cuban nationality.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, Formell\u2019s phrase has an echo throughout national history.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dances in meeting places for the poor and blacks have always been accused of \u201cdegenerating into a scandal.\u201d A party held in 1936 in Llin\u00e1s and Subirana (Havana) was dissolved by a police captain who arrested the \u201cmen and women who scandalously danced sones and rumba\u201d for \u201cmoral offenses.\u201d<\/span>3<\/b><\/sup><\/p>\n

Cuban popular culture learned to deal with it. Ignacio Pi\u00f1eiro composed \u201cLos cantares del abacu\u00e1\u201d (1923), with terms typical of that culture: \u201cThe bong\u00f3 goes out of tune \/ If we don\u2019t sing Asere, asere, asere.\u201d Arsenio Rodr\u00edguez sang \u201cLos Sitios asere \/ is called a happy barrio.\u201d<\/span>4<\/b><\/sup> Both of them, together with Mar\u00eda Teresa Vera, were the first to incorporate expressions of Afro origin in Cuban popular music, in a context in which their liturgical celebration was literally a crime, accused of \u201cwitchcraft.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n