When Joe Louis met Fidel Castro…
In December 1959, Joe Louis got off a plane in Havana and went straight to the country’s new revolutionary hero, Fidel Castro.
It was the beginning of a match made in heaven and quickly ended in hell. Poor Joe never got a chance.
Louis was there as Castro’s special guest at the New Year’s Eve celebration. Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista to end the regime in January 1959. The revolution was won and completed, and it was time to celebrate the overthrow of the corrupt government. This is also where Castro has to plan for an economic future, and that’s where the big guys come in. And Louis is a hero to Castro.
It was certainly a powerful mix, a show of strength for the country and the image of Louis and Castro that night was magical. In the United States, however, a very loud alarm has sounded. Damn, those troops are dangerous!
Louis is working with an advertising agency called Rowe-Louis-Fischer-Lockhart, Inc; Former champions have made personal appearances for them. Louis has been with the company for more than 20 years; he helped recruit clients. He is in Cuba on a tourist mission. Make no mistake, Louis is on a business trip to Cuba.
Joe Louis is also about to become a full-fledged member of the Cold War, an innocent in many ways overseas; Louis was knee-deep in a battle he had no chance of winning. Soviet advisers were already in the country and the Americans were scared.
Just over two years later, Castro introduced the Resolucion 83-A and banned professional boxing. The best Cuban experts at the time, including Jose Napoles, felt the way the wind was blowing and moved to bases in the US and Mexico. They have moved away permanently and often leave loved ones behind. They knew, those first defectors, that they would never come back. Castro dismissed boxing because it was “evil, exploitative and corrupt.” Well, unchanged for over 60 years.
Things might have been different if Louis’s trip hadn’t led to the involvement of the darkest forces operating at the heart of the American government’s paranoia. Like I said, poor Joe didn’t stand a chance. The CIA began adding one profile after another to his file. In the end there will be hundreds of people, and they have detailed the smallest things about anti-Americanism.
Louis helped assemble a prominent 71-member delegation of the black press, mostly newspapers, in 1959. There are owners, editors, and writers. It was called the Joe Louis Commission and Castro’s government officially recognized their work. Their job was to sell and promote Cuba and turn it into a tourist attraction for black Americans. The Commission has secured $282,000.00 from the Cuban government to promote tourism to Cuba. Castro, a kind man, is the President of the Institute of Tourism.
And then it got a little serious. The State Department in Washington DC moved and moved fast. Louis was seen as a communist sympathizer. He was targeted.
In the early 1960s, after a trip to Havana, Louis endorsed the travel plan, saying: “Cuba is the only resort where black people can come without favoritism.” That is a strong endorsement. And then Castro added his little bit: “What if the blacks of the American South, often out of hand, were given a rifle?” That is simply too much for America.
Poor Joe was stuffed. He was threatened with imprisonment, exile, reminded of his precarious tax position and shunned. You have to make a statement and release it quickly. His plan was a quick success.
“We have nothing to do with Castro or politics,” Louis said. It’s a bad footnote for what could be a glorious relationship.
Louis was under constant surveillance by the CIA and pressured to end the deal with Cuba’s Castro. In June 1960, the travel contract was terminated. It was a whirlwind romance.
A few months later, Jose Napoles had his 21st and final battle in Cuba and moved to Mexico City; he took a year off before continuing his career in exile. The Castro ban coincided with the 1962 rematch of Napoleon. The professional game in Cuba is over; The amateur game has begun. It was at some point in 1962 or 1963 that the great Soviet coach, Andrei Chernevenko, arrived to transform the system. The first Olympic medals arrived in Mexico City in 1968 and the rest, as it is said, is history.
And what is its history. Excelling in the world’s amateur ring and miserable away from the limelight. Cuban boxers become the most expensive goods in the world and men have speedboats and millions of dollars are exchanged for them. Pirates got involved, drug cartels got involved and it’s been an ugly history of abuse and brilliance. Some boxers ended their careers with millions of dollars and others ended their careers with nothing.
The great Napoles ended his life as a performer of dance and singing, picking up pesos to entertain diners in the restaurant. There are other sad stories of unsuccessful defections, careers that never begin and families falling into poverty in Cuba.
If Joe Louis and Fidel Castro had had a little luck and understanding in the early 1960s, things could have been a lot different. It would also have been helpful if Castro hadn’t come up with the idea of arming “blacks in the American South.” That is a great story.
