Even Castro played chess and promoted it along with his nationwide literacy programs. When the Cuban government promoted a campaign to educate the masses in Cuba after the revolution, the goal was to provide free education to every citizen. Around 1966 chess would be taught to all children; Castro borrowed this idea from Capablanca, who believed it was important for children to learn chess in school. Che Guevara also pushed for chess education in schools.
Things didn't quite work out as hoped though. It was obligatory to learn chess in primary school, but there were not enough teachers. As a result, the government pushed for more chess education, particularly when it strengthened relations with the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, the government created the Latin American Higher Institute of Chess that offered free chess lessons in the hopes of creating a new generation of Grandmasters. Castro and his right-hand-man Che Guevara organized the Chess Olympiads in 1966 and the world’s largest simultaneous game of chess in 2002.
Guevara's father took him to a tournament when he was a boy growing up in Buenos Aires and he saw Capablanca playing. That’s where he first got addicted to chess and also where he first learned about the country where Capablanca came from. Che and the Cuban government invested huge amounts of money to support chess.
In Cuba, chess is synonymous with Capablanca, but few know that Christopher Columbus brought chess to the island in the 15th century. However, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, the man who declared Cuban independence in 1868, is considered to be the father of chess in the country because he translated the rules.
Of course, Jose Raul Capablanca is considered one of the greatest players of all time and when he won the World Championship in Havana in 1921, he became a national hero and greatly contributed to the game’s popularity in Cuba.
Today the recognized Cuban organization is Federacion Cubana de Ajedrez, but at one time there was a rival organization. When Reuben Fine visited Havana on personal business in 1942 he was surprised to find there was an internal dispute in Cuban chess.
A few years prior to his visit the Federacion Cubana de Ajedrez was the sole organization in existence. To Fine's surprise they had begun a vitriolic campaign against Capablanca some years previously when it became apparent that Capa's failing health was preventing him from repeating his great success of the past.
Fine was shown newspaper clippings that made ridiculous claims about Capa which he described as silly and insulting. For example, at one time Capa was asked to play a match against one of the strongest Cuban players of the day and when he refused, it was claimed Capa was afraid he would lose.
After the 1938 AVRO tournament where Capa finished 7th out of 8 places, the organization made what Fine called pernicious and vituperative attacks on Alekhine and called Capa the professional champion of Cuba. At the same time, they withdrew his honorary title of president of the Cuban Chess Federation. Fine claimed that while the Federacion Cubana de Ajedrez paid lip service to Capa's influence on chess in the country, they did not appreciate his importance to it.
The result was that Capablanca formed his own organization, the Federacion Nacional de Ajedrez de Cuba, which continued even after his death. However, FIDE only recognized Federacion Cubana de Ajedrez whose behavior thoroughly annoyed Fine because they tried to exploit his visit which was made entirely for personal reasons and at his own expense. He was also annoyed that they tried to use the name of Capablanca to harm his own organization.
What really got Fine was upset was that when he gave a simultaneous exhibition, the official Cuban federation tried to make his score as bad as possibly by stacking the deck against him with strong players and encouraging another strong player to roam around giving advice to his opponents. And, they actually ordered players who were going to resign to play on in the hopes of tiring him out.
Fine also found it galling that the official federation (Federacion Cubana de Ajedrez) had printed on its stationery a line calling Francisco Planas, the 1927 and 1929 Cuban champion, the “simultaneous chess champion of the world” which Fine dubbed “material for good comedy.”
In 1941, Planas broke a simultaneous record by playing 618 opponents at 103 boards in Havana. Six players consulted at each table. He won 64, drew 26, and lost 13. It took him 16 hours to finish and he walked over 15 miles.
Back on March 5, 1933 Capa had given an 8 board clock simul in Havana with the stipulation that he had one minute per move and his opponents had 3 minutes. Additionally, his opponent's time could be rolled over if they moved before the three minutes were up.
On six of the boards there were teams of two or three players while two strong players, Francisco Planas and Alejandro Meylan, took on Capa single handed. Only Planas was able to put a dent in Capa's performance when he drew in 48 moves. Capa used 42 minutes and Planas used 92 minutes.
Shortly after that exhibition Capa was scheduled to head out for a tour of Panama and the United States, but that evening the police surrounded his house. They were looking for one Carlos Pelaez Cossio, husband of his wife's sister.
Back in 1924, Capa was world champion and he had been mentioned as the author of a proclamation against the president of Cuba. Capa denied the rumors but admitted that he was friends with the rebels. Pelaez had written letters to Capa stating that he was trying to send weapons and armed expeditions to Cuba. Pelaez was one of those people who was willing to be martyred for his beliefs and the government police reckoned him to be a dangerous revolutionary.
Years later a family member told one of Capa's biographers that Capa helped Pelaez escape through the back yard and he made it to the Mexican embassy where he asked for asylum along with Capa's brother Ramiro.
Ramiro Capablanca Graupera (died December 6, 1944) was governor of the Cuban province of Las Villas and president of the Municipal Institute of Pan American Sciences. He was part of the council that drafted the Cuban Constitution of 1940.
After helping the two escape, Capa rushed to a neighbor's house (a former minister of justice) where he explained the situation and was then taken to the port for his departure to Panama. It's not known if he returned to his house to pick up luggage, but when he arrived in Panama it is known that he went shopping for suits and ties.
Although the police did surround his house and there was a great deal of hubbub, they never actually raided the house by entering it.
After Capablanca died in 1942, chess aficionados organized the Capablanca Memorial tournament in his honor. The first tournament after the 1959 revolution that brought Castro to power was in 1962 at the Habana Libre Hotel, the finest hotel in Havana. It was funded by Che Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary and director of the National Bank.
This was not the last time the government promoted chess. In 1962 Castro banned professional sports, but huge amounts of money were devoted to baseball, boxing and chess. When Cuba sponsored the 1966 Chess Olympiad, they provided each of the 58 participating countries’ teams with a chauffeur, car and paid air travel and spent an estimated $5 million on the event. Castro himself even put in an appearance and played Bobby Fischer, who was barred by the U.S. government from attending the Capablanca Memorial the year before although he played by telex.
In December 2002, Castro led another chess exhibition in Jose Marti Square in Havana that made the Guinness World Book of Records for the largest chess simultaneous match, with 11,320 players. The success of the event led to the broadcasting chess lessons on TV.
In 2003, universities began offering chess degrees. A year later, 13,000 players took on 500 masters and Cuba broke the world record for the largest simultaneous chess exhibition in history. In 2008, Cuban GM Leinier Dominguez won the World Blitz Championship.
Chess by mail was once very popular and Cuba had 10,000 people in the ICCF, but now the number has fallen to less than 1,000. The reason is because these days most correspondence chess is conducted over the internet and online chess in Cuba is difficult because internet play is difficult. Internet access is limited to Wi-Fi hotspots and expensive for the average Cuban.
Officially the government claims that 4.5 million users accessed Cuba’s internet in 2016, representing about 40 percent of the country’s population, but home internet is only available in 5 percent of homes, typically belonging to doctors, professors and state media professionals. Until last year, most home internet connections were illegal until the government announced a pilot program to install internet in 2,000 homes across selected neighborhoods in Old Havana and provincial capitals. Still, many Cubans can't afford to pay for internet connection.
Mobile internet does not exist in Cuba, so Cubans must visit local Wi-Fi hotspots at parks to go online by purchasing one-hour user cards for about a dollar an hour. One dollar may not seem like much but when you consider the average Cuban makes $30 per month, it's expensive.
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