Playing for the Nation, Fighting for the Revolution: Documentaries on Cuban Sports

Sports have played a dual role in the Cuban Revolution. International sport competitions symbolize the revolution’s success and compose a strategy for creating social cohesion. This essay explores how Cuban sports documentaries (as well as documentaries on Cuban sports made by foreign filmmakers) represent and problematize these complementary roles. It argues that Cuban sport documentaries offer insights about the Cuban Revolution over time and provide occasions to explore the sociocultural, economic, and political challenges that Cubans have faced in the revolution’s socialist and post-Soviet stages.