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This paper analyzes news coverage of Major League Baseball agent Joe Cubas and his clients, defecting Cuban ballplayers. Based on the political, economic and social orientation of the media, we argue that the stories about Cubas are framed in a way which reifies the dominant ideology of the materialist mythos of the American Dream. This analysis of more than 30 news stories suggests that the "Cuban Narrative" presents anecdotal evidence justifying the American "rags-to-riches" Dream, framed against a vilified Communist Cuba. We suggest that the processes of selection, emphasis, and exclusion are employed in the Cuban Narrative to marginalize any aspects of the story which call that Dream into question. An alternative framing for the Cuban Narrative would illustrate a reality in which freedom and opportunity are accorded to those who can advance a multi-billion dollar business, while denied to those who cannot. We conclude that the Cuban Narrative provides a poignant example of how the news media's framing process can contribute to the reification of dominant ideology necessary to normalize and rationalize some inequitable aspects of capitalism.
Joe Cubas is an American sports agent who has "shepherded two dozen Cuban defectors to baseball contracts in the United States" (Anderson, 1999, p. 135). According to Fainaru (1998b), Cubas helped over half of the ballplayers and coaches that defected from Cuba between 1991 and 1998. His success has been described as stealing "some of Cuba's most precious resources" (Baxter, 1998, p. 22), and he has been personally denounced by Fidel Castro (Winegardner, 1998). His professional life is one "of international intrigue, covert activity and danger" (Cohn, 1999), played out on "one of the last battlefields of the cold war" (Baxter, 1998, p. 22). He is characterized as driven by "a love for baseball and a hatred for communism" (Ramirez, 1998), and labeled variously, the "anti-Castro" (Anderson, 1999, p. 135), and the "Don King" of Cuban baseball (Ramirez, 1998).
On March 17, 1998, Cubas held a press conference at Victor's Cafe, a popular Cuban restaurant near Little Havana in Miami. The press conference formally announced the arrival of Cuban pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez to the United States. Cubas had secured for Hernandez a four-year, $6.6 million contract with the New York Yankees. "When I was...