BY ERNIE MAILHOT

ATLANTA, Georgia - "Cuba Yes, Blockade No!" and "Go Cuba" chanted the enthusiastic crowd of 125 people who welcomed a delegation from the Cuban Olympic team to the Atlanta area on July 27.

They gave a standing ovation to the featured speaker, Doctor Rodrigo Alvarez Cambra, who is the head of the medical team attending to Cuba's Olympic athletes. Alvarez is also a member of Cuba's National Assembly. Five other athletes and trainers represented the Cuban Olympic delegation at the welcome event.

Alvarez said only a few hours before the meeting, during the Olympic basketball game between Cuba and the Ukraine, "We saw a small Cuban flag among all those thousands in that great hall. We felt we were not alone," he said.

"For us it's very important to know that there are millions who will fight for the same ideals we fight for."

Bernardo Gómez, from the Atlanta Network on Cuba, chaired the meeting. He said that the event was an opportunity to show that many people in the United States understand that Cuba is an independent and sovereign country.

Reverend Timothy McDonald welcomed the Cubans to his church, the First Iconium Baptist Church. McDonald, who has visited Cuba twice, has been prominent in the news speaking out against the burning of Black churches in the South. Luis Miranda from Casa de las Américas in New York and Andrés Gómez, the head of the Antonio Maceo Brigade from Miami also spoke.

Others in the Cuban Olympic delegation in attendance were three members of the skeet shooting team; Pedro Cabrera, chief of the Press Office of the National Institute of Sports; and Tomás Herrera Martínez, National Commissioner of Basketball.

After the meeting, Herrera was asked if the difficult economic conditions facing the Caribbean nation in recent years has affected the sports program.

"This has affected everything in Cuba," he said, "but we have maintained our position in international events. Sports is part of our educational system and we're not giving that up."

Several young people attended the welcome event. Natalie Spring from Campbell High School in Smyrna, Georgia, said she heard about the meeting the day before at the Atlanta Pathfinder bookstore. She said the books she saw there and the Cuba event were exactly what she had been looking for. She decided to give her Saturday evening Olympic tickets to friends so she could attend the activity.

Media cameras and reporters were a feature of the meeting from beginning to end. Spanish language news stations Univisión and Telemundo; Cine Canal, a Spanish-language movie channel, and Mundo Hispanico, Spanish-language newspaper here, covered the activity.

Earlier in the week, Miranda, Bernardo Gómez and Andrés Gómez were interviewed by Radio Rebelde, the main radio station in Cuba, and Eco, a Mexican based television newstation that broadcasts throughout Latin America.

Salm Kolis, of the United Auto Workers in Atlanta, contributed to this article.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home