Entering Cuba's other playing field: Cuban baseball and the choice between race and nation

The development of Cuban professional baseball illuminates some of the contradictions between the discourse of a nonracial national identity and the lived experience of Afro Cubans. Unlike its amateur ranks, Cuban professional baseball had a long history as an integrated institution. On closer examination, it becomes clearer that race remained an issue. The formation of Afro Cuban baseball clubs in the late 1880s reflected the reality that Afro Cubans had to form their own social institutions to negotiate the time's racial thinking. Their actions, however, produced lingering complaints. At various junctures between 1887 and 1912, critics assailed Afro Cubans for putting race (and not nation) first, thereby allegedly breaking the social compact forged by Cuban baseball pioneers.