IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 2 ENGLISH | Page 68

Chocolate found that and more in Pincho. Marco
asked himself: “Would success have been possible for Chocolate without the intelligent effort
and tenacity of his mentor, particularly in a country where greatness is often obscured by racial
prejudice?”7 Pincho made his mark (and it has
nothing to do with today’s celebrities). His boxing colleagues respected him, despite his differences with some of his detractors. Someone ought
to write a book about this good Cuban.
Days after Marco’s article was published, on February 24th, 1929, Chocolate beat Chick Suggs and
immediately left for the United States, for more
fights. This had been his fourth victory after his
tie with Scalfaro. This is how Chocolate started
his second series of consecutive wins, which rose
to 33, till Kid Berg crossed his path on his way to
summer 1930. Cuba’s important press constantly
wrote about its idol’s successes in northern boxing rings, where our boxer also earned laurels.
Handley Wright, from the Associated Press,
called Kid Chocolate “the most brilliant Cuban to
go to the United States at that time.”
Wright’s declaration inspired columnist Gustavo
Urrutia to write “Chocolate, the Brightest Cuban”
for the Diario de la Marina [September 2nd,
1929). For Urrutia, Chocolate “was a prototypical, young and beautiful black man, because his
beauty was both physical and moral.”
He confessed he “had not yet seen him in the ring,
but he could imagine his black and well-balanced,
nervous body with agile legs, light, choreographed movements, as if in him lived the innate
rhythm of his race. Just his presence in a tabloid,
with his intelligent and generous smile, was a delightful spectacle. Despite all that international
admiration, Chocolate thought about his country,
his humble origins, his mother, and Pincho, to
whom he owed everything. Chocolate was the

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pride of Cuba and all Cubans. This is why Urrutia
looked upon him “with admiration and gratitude,
because of his contribution to Cuba’s happiness.
Yet, one could ask what his example means for
those who preached about black inferiority? Will
they accept the defeat of their thesis, or will they,
in their delirium, consider him the reincarnation
of a white soul that came back to earth to be punished?”8
The El Camagüeyano newspaper expressed itself
similarly in its editorial “La lección que enseña
‘Chocolate’” [The Lesson Chocolate Teaches]
(September 15th, 1929). The editorialist defined
democracy as “a regime that establishes an equality of opportunities for all citizens and later rewards each one of them according to their merits
and the way they demonstrated these merits. It
thinks democracy should be blessed because it
was able to turn Eligio Sardiñas Montalvo, the
poor son of hard-working Encarnación, into his
country’s idol and the glory of international
sport.” His view of Chocolate presented “this
boxing star as an authentic product of true democracy who represented a very beautiful, edifying,
educating and impressive example for all Cubans,
particularly blacks. He wondered: “wasn’t the
lesson that black man from Cerro was offering
highly patriotic? Didn’t his eloquent and glorious
deeds demonstrate the advantage of believing in
one’s efforts, constancy and morality?”9
Nicolás Guillén entered the debate about the social connotations emanating from the Great Cuban Champion and wrote “La humildad, Kid
Chocolate y el Señor Lavié” [Humility, Kid
Chocolate and Mr. Lavié] (September 15th, 1929),
to respond to the article “Blanco y negro” (Black
and White) [Diario de Cuba (Santiago de Cuba),
September 4th, 1929) in which Nemesio Lavié
used Chocolate as a point of reference to express