Teófilo Stevenson, Cuban Boxing, and the Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latinx Presence in the Olympic Games

Cold War tensions often played out on the Olympic stage in the 1970s and 1980s, and Cuban athletes, many of whom were black, became crucial to narratives that pitted the United States and capitalism against Cuba and socialism. The story of Afro-Cuban heavyweight boxer Teófilo Stevenson makes this case clear as his three Olympic gold medal victories (1972, 1976, 1980) afforded him the platform to become, in various ways and at particular historical moments, symbolic of socialism’s triumph over capitalism, Cuba’s battle against the United States, and black Cubans’ struggles for racial equality on the island. But, my aim is to tell Stevenson’s story without allowing the ideological filter that frames him as a hero for rejecting the lure of money and fame in the United States to dominate the narrative. That is not to say that the ideological filter is not meaningful (or, at times, inescapable), but that I also want to push beyond it to unpack what Stevenson’s perspectives and experiences can tell us about the overlapping intersections of race and ethnicity, gender and masculinity, and sports and politics from transnational and comparative perspectives. Cuban boxing is ready to come out of its corner and engage with broader historiographies and histories.