A boxer with a ‘sense of patriotism’

Havana / DPA

When Cuban boxer Julio Cesar de la Cruz bit into his gold medal as he celebrated his triumph at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics earlier this year, Namibia Flores watched enviously on television at home in Cuba.
Even though Cuba is a boxing powerhouse and has won more Olympic gold medals than any other country, competitive boxing is banned for women in Cuba. This talented boxer has never been allowed to show her skills in a ring in her own country.
“I am totally disappointed,” Flores, said. “I almost certainly could have got my country a medal.”
Flores, now 40, the age limit for competitive boxing, would have happily continued the tradition of the great female Cuban boxers of the 1950s, including Felicia Mesa Zama, known as “The Panther.”
But after Fidel Castro’s socialist revolution in 1959, boxing for women was prohibited on the island.
Namibia Flores first revealed her sparring talent at age 15 when she engaged in “bouts” to defend her brother from bullies when he used to come out of school. She realized that she enjoyed boxing, and the thrill she felt has stayed with her all of her life.
From street fights with the boys in the neighbourhood she turned to taekwondo, achieving a black belt. She worked as a taekwondo trainer in several schools, but boxing continued to draw her. Love of boxing “is like a little angel that I carry inside of me,” Flores said.
Her passion for boxing was so strong that she quit taekwondo and became a hired sparring partner at the legendary Rafael Trejo arena in Havana, one of the most popular boxing centres in Cuba.
Many male boxers have had their share of difficulties when faced with the gloves of Flores under orders from trainer Nardo Mestre, her trainer and mentor.
For years Flores trained with all her force to try to become the first female Cuban boxer to take part in the Olympic Games with the hope that the Cuban government would lift the ban on female boxing.
Boxing for women was banned in Cuba because it was thought to be “too dangerous for women.” Currently women in Cuba can compete in judo, karate, taekwondo and weightlifting, but not boxing.
Although there is no official law banning boxing, it is clearly understood on the island that women cannot take part in the sport.
“Cuban women are to show their beautiful faces, not to take punches,” the head trainer of the Cuban boxing team at the time, Pedro Roque, told the press in 2009.
A few years later, in 2012, Roque became the chief trainer of the US Olympic boxing teams, including the women’s boxing team.
For years, boxing for women was a taboo subject in Cuba, but the debate revived when female boxing was included in the Pan-American games in Guadalajara, in Mexico in 2011 and in the London Olympic Games in 2012.
Shortly before the Rio Olympic Games this year, Cuban authorities said they were studying the possibility of allowing women to box, but they never came to any decision.
“I am for (women engaging in boxing and competing), playing sports is a fundamental right of the people,” the Cuban team trainer, Raul Fernandez, told journalists at the Rio games.
Starting next season the World Series organized by the International Boxing Association will include divisions for women and will require all participating countries to comply with these regulations.
“We know that our government does not comply with what people say outside, but there might be surprises, let’s wait and see,” says Flores.
As the Cuban boxing world awaits a decision about female pugilism there are five women training at a high performance centre.
“The National Boxing Commission told us to teach girls who were interested in boxing, even though nothing has yet been approved,” Jesus Perez, a boxing trainer at the Hector Ruiz sporting initiation school, was quoted as saying to Vanguardia newspaper.
In June, the chairman of the National Boxing Federation, Alberto Puig, told local media outlets, “Cuba lacks an organized system to develop women’s boxing, although individuals exist with the potential to take part successfully in outside competitions.”
“I am certain that Namibia would be a champion,” said her trainer Nardo Mestre.
Flores has been featured in at least two documentaries.
The US documentary filmmaker Meg Smaker, a boxer in her own right, shared Flores’s story of frustrated Olympic boxing dreams in a 16-minute film called “Boxeadora” (Female Boxer). She also appeared in a short by Maceo Frost.
For a while Flores trained in Denmark. She also was granted a visa to travel to the United States, but she never took that opportunity because she felt too strongly about staying in Cuba. But now she is looking for opportunities to box outside Cuba.
“Without leaving my roots, without totally abandoning Cuba and keeping my sense of patriotism, but I am better known outside of my country than in it. I have more opportunities outside,” she says.