COMMENTS
Sociology of Sport Journal, 1991, 8, 79-85
Sport and Culture as Contested Terrain:
Americanization in the Caribbean
Alan M. Klein
Northeastern University
In looking at the "Americanization" of sport in other societies, we are
essentially looking at a version of cultural colonialism. Sport, as a segment
of popular culture, is certainly an effective form of promoting cultural hegemony. However, this essay argues for the use of cultural resistance as an
opposing notion. Based on the author's study of Dominican baseball, the
picture of a tension between hegemonic and resistant cultural forces is summarized and offered as a model to other sports researchers. The Dominican
study examined the structural properties of major league baseball's domination of the sport in the Caribbean. Resistance to major league baseball was
not structurally apparent and required looking at more subtle indices. Fans'
preferences for symbols, content analysis of the sports pages in Santo
Domingo, and examples of concrete behavior were looked at. Other researchers may find different indices more appropriate, but the use of sport
related phenomena are felt to be valuable sources.
Studying the impact of one country's sport on another falls under the rubric
of intercultural relations and, as such, calls for a crosscultural perspective. The
cultural relations discussed here are those between industrial and developing
nations. These are, at their core, based on qualitative and quantitative power
differentials. Rooted in the political-economy of colonialism, the gap in production, distribution, and consumption between industrialized nations and those still
attempting to industrialize has in virtually all cases remained unbridged. For
sport sociologists, this means that the study of third-world sport may necessitate
the use of slightly different, albeit compatible, tools and concepts from those we
use to study Euro-North America or Europe. The issues of culture and political
power are critical here.
At the level of political-economic relations, Euro-North American dornination of developing countries reflects the latest expression of neocolonialism.
Collectively, the political economy of underdevelopment has been thoroughly
analyzed by a host of scholars including Frank (1978), Wallerstein (1974), Wolf
(1982), Mandel(1978), or de Jandry (1986). These experts may differ as to the
causes and machinations of third-world exploitation, but none denies its
occurrence.
Alan M. Klein is with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02 115.
However, the colonial domination that is manifested as exploitation is
never complete. The tension between hegemony and counterhegemonic forces
outlined by Williams (1977), and which has become a basic tenet of Gramcian
cultural studies, is quite evident in colonial relations. Cultural resistance to colonial powers and to forces such as Americanization may take a variety of forms,
and all aspects of culture may lend themselves to interpretation and reinterpretation as aspects of resistance. Thus, sport may easily be seen as contested cultural
terrain (cf., Donnelly , 1988; Gruneau, 1983).
Americanization is apparent in all aspects of the Caribbean, but particularly
in the Spanish-speaking islands and surrounding nations. In addition to colonialism, economic domination, and exploitation, the Monroe Doctrine has been used
to repeatedly justify American intervention (e.g., Nicaragua) and invasion (e.g.,
Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama). The prevalence of baseball
as a major sport in the Spanish-speaking nations is one of the more obvious
cultural manifestations of Americanization in the region. The case of baseball in
the Dominican Republic provides an interesting example of these forces at work.
Baseball and Hegemony in the Dominican Republic
North American baseball interests in Latin America operate very much like
other multinational corporations. They essentially locate-cheap resources for
manufacture and consumption elsewhere. While Latino players have been in the
major leagues since the turn of the century, it is with the removal of the racial
barriers in major league baseball in 1947 that large numbers of Latino players
(most of them racially characterized as black) began to find their way into North
America. This movement north was dominated first by the Cubans and then by
the Dominicans.
Beginning with Ozzie Virgil in 1955 as the first Dominican major leaguer,
their numbers grew to include the San Francisco Giants bonanza of the three
Alou brothers and Juan Marichal, among others. Prior to 1980 there were 49
Dominican major leaguers, but the numbers have grown astronomically since
then. In the 1990 winter meetings, 65 ~ominicanswere protected on major
league rosters; 325 are playing in the minor leagues; and almost as many Dominicans are playing in the major leagues in this year as appeared in the 25 years
prior to 1980.
The establishmentof free agency in 1976 was a major watershed in Dominican baseball. Prior to that time, and dating back to the formal establishment of
ties between professional Dominican teams and North American teams, the winter league was the backbone of Dominican baseball. From 1955, when major
league teams formally established working relations with Dominican teams, the
subordination of Dominican baseball to North American interests began in
earnest. At first it included a shift in play from summer (which competed directly
with North American play) to winter. In this format, major league teams would
provide staff (managers, coaches, and even players) to the Dominican professional teams, while the Dominican teams would help scout talent and protect
prospective players on their rosters. It seemed mutually beneficial, and itwas.
Through the late 1960s and the 1970s, increasing numbers of Dominicans
were found on major league rosters, and scouts and others focused more and
more attention on the Dominican Republic as a baseball center. On a structural
Americanization in the Caribbean
81
level, however, this boom facilitated increased dependency on major league baseball teams for the running of Dominican baseball. Prior to the second discovery
of Hispaniola in 1955 (the first had been 450 years earlier), Dominican baseball
(which dates back to 1890) exhibited an autonomy and self-determination.
Dominicans developed their own style, their own heroes, their own traditions.
With the coming ofmajor league teams into the area, this cultural autonomy was
eroded. No one seemed to mind that scouts regularly operated as brigands signing
13-year-olds, or failed to pay parents their due in signing bonuses, as the nation
began to bask in the attention and glory being focused on its sport contribution.
By 1980 free agency, fueled by lucrative television contracts, had begun
to affect all of the major league players' salaries. The meteoric rise in salaries
had a particularly pernicious effect in Dominican professional baseball (Klein
1989, 1991). When in 1970 the average salary for major leaguers was $29,300,
the money earned ($2,100) in the course of a winter in the Dominican leagues
was significant. By 1989 the average salary for major leaguers was approaching
$600,000, making the $10,500 offered by Dominican owners meaningless.
Multiyear contracts, often in excess of $1 million a year, had the effect of making
potential players in the Dominican leagues think twice about risking their career
to an injury.
The impact of this was to seriously impair the likelihood of Dominican
stars (in the major leagues) from playing in their homeland. Professional baseball
had reached a crisis point by 1989 when the fans began to stay away from stadia
throughout the country.
The second major development that had a negative impact on the Dominican baseball scene was the establishment of major league baseball academies
throughout the island. Prior to the academies, the best Dominican prospects were
traditionally scouted as they played on the many amateur teams in the country.
The refineries, the rnilitaq~andpolice, and the many company-sponsored teams
made up a layered structure of amateur baseball. From here a prospect would
try to attract the many visiting scouts from the United States and Canada or the
attention of the powerful owners of professional Dominican teams.
By the late 1970s two clubs had established academies in which they would
develop their own talent: The Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
There are now 13 academies where the rookies are trained from the age of 17
(now the minimum age for signing a rookie), fed, clothed, and paid by the
organization. To be signed, one needed to try out, and tryouts were regularly
held at the academy. A prospect
would come down on his own or at the invitation
-.
of one of the scouts associated with the club. Once signed, he was officially
professional, receiving a signing bonus and monthly salary during the two seasons that he played. The rookie academies developed their own league, playing
two seasons a year (summer and winter), and developed their own ties with
professional Dominican teams to which they would send players. During his time
at the academy, the rookie would be regularly evaluated and, if found to be
improving, would be placed in one of the minor league rosters in the U. S.
The growth of the academies had the effect ofweakening amateur baseball
on the island. Rather than play on amateur teams for a number of years, young
prospects would attempt to bypass the amateur leagues by trying out for the
academies. If rejected, they would simply move to one of the other academies
or even return a few months later. However it worked, the tendency to bypass
~
the amateur leagues was pronounced enough by the late 1980sto warrant periodic
editorials in the Santo Domingo dailies denouncing the academies as foreign
intruders (Klein, 1991).
More recently, new evidence of the further erosion of Dominican baseball
autonomy comes from the presence of Japanese academies. The Hiroshima Carp
have begun building a new academy that is even more sumptuous than that of
the Los Angeles Dodgers, with the goal of developing their own talent. This
would at some point set off a bidding war between heavily invested North American teams and the heavily capitalized Japanese, one byproduct of which would
be the further erosion of Dominican amateur baseball.
In a related development, the annual Caribbean World Series (newly renamed by the North Americans as "Winterball") played by the national champions of the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico has also
shown the effects of major league domination. Beginning in 1990 the annual
round-robin tournament was shifted from its rotating base between the competing
nations to Miami, Florida. The traditional source of national pride that resulted
from hosting andlor winning the tournament has been shattered by being bought
for the entertainment of American fans (no television coverage back to the represented countries). In return for allowing the series to be played in the U.S. from
1990 to 1992, the teams will be paid $60,000 (U.S.) each year. Last February
only a few thousand Latino fans (those able to afford the trip) witnessed the
series, while even fewer American fans paid to see it. All of the countries involved decried the conditions under which they played, and Mexico went so far
as to claim they would not forego their turn to host the series. The symbolic loss
of the series to North American interests only rankles those Latino nationalists
who see so many of their cultural sources of pride being bought by rich foreigners, particularly North Americans.
Baseball as Resistance
Despite the increasing structural domination of Dominican baseball,
~ o m i n i c a kare not without their forms of resistance. Resistance may be active
as in slave revolts or sabotage, or it may be more passive as in subtle forms of
protest. Scott (1983) has presented these as "everyday forms of resistance," as
have Genovese (1972) and Hebdige (1983) among others. Such forms of resistance work to keep alive alternative and/or forbidden traditions until such time
as they may come to the fore. It is also important to understand that in developing
nations the colonial heritage is strong enough to engender anger and resentment
in the face of pronounced feelings of sociocultural inferiority. For them, nationalism is a manifestation of cultural resistance (Klein, 1988, 1991). The more they
have to boast about, the better they feel, but the boasting never occurs in a
vacuum; rather it becomes a symbolic slap at the class or foreign presence that
may be in a position of superiority at the moment.
It was noteworthy that while the Dominican Republic has been undergoing
a steady economic decline for some time, there has been little outrage on the
streets or in the press directed against North Americans. Certainly, Dominicans
have not been without their heroes in the fight against foreign occupation. The
three founding fathers of the republic (Mello, Duarte, Rodriguez) were liberators
from hated ~ a i t i a noccupation; and many Dominicans are the descendents and
Americanization in the Caribbean
83
survivors of the guerilla fighting against U.S. Marines during the first occupation
in 1916-1924 and a second in 1965-1966. But now, in the midst of economic
stagnation and ineptitude, there is little overt resistance, few who publicly point
fingers.
This apparent absence of malice was betrayed in, of all places, the sports
pages. A content analysis of the sports print media was my first index of resistance (Klein, 1991). There are two forms of baseball reporting in the Dominican
daily newspapers: summer and winter. Both are revealing in that they fuel
Dominican nationalism and act as a medium for rarely directed anger against the
stifling North American presence.
During the summer, Dominican players are in North America among their
various teams. The press works to highlight their accomplishments during that
time. Lead stories and headlines boldly declare the achievements of Dominicans.
While this may not appear unusual, what makes it so is that the outcomes of the
games are secondary to the Dominican performance. During one 3-week stretch
in 1988, I counted only 3 out of 22 lead story headlines that had to do with
non-Dominican events (Baltimore Orioles losing streak). The other 19 all had to
do with Dominicans, not as representatives of their teams, but rather as stellar
performers of the day. April 20th is typical of this. The main headline read,
"Bell, Lee, and Pena All Strike Two Singles." In listing the accomplishments
of three Dominicans, there was no concern for where they played: two played
for the Toronto Blue Jays, the other for St. Louis. Clearly the emphasis is on
how well Dominicans are doing in North America, not with whom. By grouping
people along nationalistic lines there is an implicit comparison made against the
"Norteamericanos. "
Individual contests are subfeatures of all such reporting. Here too, the
preoccupation was with Dominican presence and performance. In the absence of
Dominicans, other Latino players would do, because the important point was
that Latinos are up there in the major leagues, not only doing well but outperforming North Americans. The following entry is illustrative of the rampant
nationalism of the sports press:
For Minnesota the Pananmian Juan Berenguer pitched one and twc-thirds
innings, permitted two hits, struck out four and walked one. For Toronto
the Dominican Tony Fernandez was 1 for 5, his countryman George Bell
was 2 for 4. The Puerto Rican Juan Beniquez added a run in two turns at
bat. The other Quisqueyena [colloquialism for Dominican] Manny . h ehit a
single in three trips and scored a run, while his compatriot Nelson Liriano
went 1 for 4. (emphasis added to indicate nationalism)
Other forms of nationalism are found in the special types of stories one
finds. Much is made of the salaries earned by Latinos or the honors bestowed
upon them by their teams and leagues. However, there is also the establishment
of a Latino notion of baseball excellence, which represents a universe of discourse free of North American influence but is judged as operating on a level
every bit as high as major league baseball. Here I refer to the establishment of
"All Latino" teams, or Latino All-Star teams regularly generated by Latino
press, whether it be Dominican or other south-of-the-border nations.
During the winter the reporting is quite different. It deals with the playing
of Dominican winter league baseball. Here the interference of North American
teams in league play and structure has angered many. Whether it has to do with
forcing Dominican or American players to leave the country before the end of
the season or coercing local stars into forgoing play altogether, the meddling of
major league teams has angered the fans, Dominican team owners, and the press.
Many of these issues are met head on by owners and journalists who regularly
call for the expulsion of major league teams from the country.
Yet another index of cultural resistance was found in a study of Dominican
baseball fans and their symbol preferences (Klein, 1988). The consumption of
North American culture by Dominicans is, given the Americanization of the
Caribbean, predictably heavy. North American fashions, films, and music are
often (although not always) uncritically consumed (Klein, 1991; Spitzer, 1972).
Given this level of cultural colonialism, one would predict that in the context of
baseball's dominance on the island, there would be further uncritical acceptance
of major league teams.
I devised a questionnaire that asked fans to name their favorite North
American team and the reasons for their choice, their favorite Dominican team,
and why. Then I posed a hypothetical question to them. I made them choose
between wearing a hat of their favorite North American team or their Dominican
team, and I asked the reason for their choice. Based on larger cultural preferences
for American products, I predicted that Dominicans would tend to choose American teams (especially those with many Dominican players) over local ones. The
results of the survey (n = 164) were surprising: 78% chose the Dominican hat.
When asked why, the answers were unambiguously nationalistic: for example,
"I am Dominican. " "This is my country, so I'll take Licey [local team]. "
When analyzed by class position (from the demographic data obtained),
we found that upper-class individuals (professionals/entrepreneurial)were twice
as likely to choose a North American hat as were the poorer members of the
sample. This is in keeping with notions of hegemony, since North American
culture tends to be more slavishly followed by those with status. Still, of the
upper class, 70% chose the Dominican hat. Clearly these symbol preferences
were in a direction opposite to other forms of cultural consumption by
Dominicans.
Finally, I looked at various forms of concrete behavior that might reflect
cultural resistance. In a baseball context these ranged from foot dragging to
confrontations between Dominicans and North Americans in which cultural issues were at the center. While such behavior is difficult to find, and motives are
difficult to determine, the rumors and mythology that builds up around these
events or behaviors are as important as the event itself. What people falsely or
accurately attribute to the event is as concrete and important as the event itself
when it comes to cultural resistance because it enables one to build nationalism
and express resentment.
Cultural resistance to the heavy presence of North American baseball interests is at odds with other cultural currents in the Dominican Republic. Whereas
there is little expression of resistance elsewhere in the cultural interaction with
North Americans, Dominicans have used baseball to express their resentment.
The reason is not difficult to find: baseball is the only area of cultural interaction
between the two countries in which the Dominicans exhibit an equality with or
superiority over North Americans. Moreover, they do this in North America.
Baseball enables Dominicans to see that their dominance in this arena is rewarded
by North Americans materially as well as with a different view of Dominicans
Americanization in the Caribbean
85
by those who in all other ways disregard them. Cultural resistance necessitates
a break with the overvaluation of foreigners and the undervaluation of the socialself by engendering pride and nationalism (Klein, 1991).
Conclusion
The tension between hegemony and resistance in this study mirrors
Donnelly's (1988) view of sport as contested terrain. Viewed in the context of
the struggle between first- and third-world nations, the role of sport is enlarged
and the contested terrain is more important than it would be in other cultural
contexts. In discussing the penetration of the sport of football into England
(Maguire, 1990), or comparable events in Canada, or the victory of any European
country in World Cup competition, we are discussing a slightly different cultural
phenomenon. There is less at stake in winning or losing in the latter; the cultural
symbols associated with these sport processes, while passionately felt, are less
powerful. As I pointed out in my study, "Americans may love the game of
baseball as much as Dominicans, but they don't need it as much as Dominicans
do" (Klein, 1991, p. 4).
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