DATELINE: CUBA : THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, THEN AND NOW

Havana, Aug. 9, 1991: Cuba played host to the opening of its largest multination international sporting event, the Pan American Games. Despite fears to the contrary, the Games went on with relatively few problems.

Havana, Aug. 18, 1991: The legacy of the XI Pan American Games will not be defined in financial terms. An impoverished nation, politically isolated from most of its former allies because of the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, Cuba spent about $156 million to build sports facilities that, because of inferior construction materials and a hurried timetable for completion, were old before they were new.

In a country where people wait in line for hours to get bread, where such items as shampoo and perfume are luxuries, the wisdom of a government using invaluable hard currency to finance a sports carnival will be debated here for months, perhaps years, although not in a public forum or in the state-controlled media.

But there will be a legacy, and it will be the one that Fidel Castro’s government desired when it was awarded these games in 1986. With Cuban citizens contributing their time and sweat to construct the facilities, and with Cuban athletes winning far more medals than anyone dreamed possible, it is a reaffirmation for the old and a lesson for the young that, even in troubled times, the Cuban people will persevere.

Castro might claim this as a victory for socialism, and certainly for the revolution, but it is actually a victory for Cuba, a country with a seemingly indomitable spirit. As one Western European diplomat said earlier this year, “Not everyone in Cuba is a committed Communist, but everyone in Cuba is a committed Cuban.”