Kickabouts in Cuba with Diego Maradona

“I’ve always chafed at the comparisons between the two countries.” After four years of friendship that has impacted our lives in ways we couldn’t have predicted, Andy Cawthorne is ready to talk to me on record about Venezuela and Cuba. If there is anyone outside the professional political—and, of course, football—sphere qualified to comment, it’s Andy. Four years living in Cuba. Nine years as Reuters’ Bureau Chief for the Andean Region. Ten years living in Venezuela. “The differences are so enormous…it’s a false comparison.”

It’s almost criminally easy to overlook how remarkable the life of a foreign correspondent can be, and almost criminally easy to persecute them for it. Cawthorne has dined with Fidel Castro, sat through record-breaking speeches from Hugo Chavez and then been invited to join him for more, and has passed Diego Maradona cigars over a barbeque. For a time, these colossal figures of modern Latin American history were their own ‘axis of evil’ in the eyes of many.

Some might wonder where an Argentine fits into a discussion on Cuba and Venezuela—or at least where a second one does. To others it is obvious. To Cawthorne it was obvious and it was personal.

He finally joined the Reuters staff on a permanent basis in 1994 after freelancing in Panama. The stringer from Stoke had first become a Caracas correspondent, renting a bedroom in a colleague’s apartment while his local currency salary gyrated with more fluidity than a reggaeton dancer, and then a Cuban one. Two years into his four-year stay in Havana, Cawthorne got news that 1986 World Cup winner Diego Maradona was en route to Havana to fight his drink and drug addiction head on and hand-in-hand with Cuba’s self-vaunted healthcare system.

“Maradona just dropped on us,” Cawthorne tells me, “in the most extraordinary way. In his multiple bouts of ill-health and addiction, I think he’d nearly killed himself and had ended up in a clinic in Uruguay or…

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Author : Jordan Florit

Publish date : 2024-05-16 13:30:00

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