Category Archives: Humboldt Homepage Latin and Central American Athletes and Popular Culture and Politics

Radio Appearance: Humboldt Magazine, KHSU 90.5 FM Arcata, CA

 Sport in the Americas and Caribbean and their connection to popular culture and politics:  Basketball in Mexico and Guatemala

Friday, January 8,  2018 at 1:00  PM   

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Join Danielle and Doc today as they begin 2018 by first looking at two of our neighbors to the south, Mexico and Guatemala.  Mexico has a time-honored tradition of basketball, and its popularity continues to grow at the national and local level.  Basketball is also played in small communities in Guatemala including indigenous Mayan groups – notable for participation by women and young girls.  And finally, a fascinating brief look back at a Mexican-American high-school basketball team team in Texas that won an improbable city championship almost 80 years ago – and its cultural reverberations today.  
Further reading/podcasts:

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Radio Appearance: Humboldt Homepage, KHSU 90.5 FM Arcata, CA

 Friday, November 4,  2016 at 1:00  PM  –  Bolivia!

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Join Doc and host Danielle Orr for for their monthly feature on great athletes and sport from the Americas and Caribbean and their connection to popular culture and politics.

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In the United States NFL  football (American style) is still king but television ratings are slipping, pro and NCAA basketball begins once again anew – yet in in Latin America, soccer is the reigning passion of the people.

The land-locked country of Bolivia once again struggles to qualify for a World Cup spot in Russia for 2018 – catch up with Doc Stull as he gives his final report on his Bolivian adventures in the high-altitude wine country country in southern Bolivia near the Argentinian border in the soulful town of Tarija, his “game-changing” tour in the surreal oxygen-deprived bowels of the Cerro Rico silver mine at 12,300 feet in Potosi where two centuries ago it was written that the Spanish Empire mined enough silver to build a bridge from the heart of South America to Madrid, and many more adventures with Humboldt County’s own Anthony Bourdain before Doc’s return next week back to the Redwood Curtain.

 

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Radio Appearance: Humboldt Homepage, KHSU 90.5 FM Arcata, CA

 Friday, October 7,  2016 at 1:00  PM  –  Bolivia!

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Join Doc and host Danielle Orr for for their monthly feature on great athletes and sport from the Americas and Caribbean and their connection to popular culture and politics.

boliviansoccerdownload

Remember the movie classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with Robert Redford and Paul Newman?   The two real-life American adventurers and outlaws escaped to….Bolivia!  This month, join Danielle when she speaks with Doc live from Sucre, Bolivia!  They’ll talk about one of the biggest games of the year – Bolivia’s re-vitalized national team as they take on powerhouse Olympic Gold Medal winner, Brazil, in a qualifying match at the halfway point for the upcoming World Cup in Russia.   We’ll discuss the the world of ChiCha, the famous corn-based beer and the game of sapo (toad or frog) in the tiny town of Yotalla, Bolivia where the locals looked on as Doc and the players got animated with Bolivia’s own traditional home-brew!  And we’ll finish with one of Bolivia’s folk singing treasures – Zulma Yugar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cIdhgP_-ZQ

 Tune in and listen to the show or stream it at:

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Radio Appearance: Humboldt Homepage, KHSU 90.5 FM Arcata, CA

 Friday, February 6,  2014 at 1:00  PM  –  Ted Williams:  The Enigmatic Hispanic

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Join Doc and host Danielle Orr for for their monthly feature on great athletes and sport from the Americas and Caribbean and their connection to popular culture and politics.  This new feature is an outgrowth of Doc’s 12-part series on Latino athletes and sport for the El Sol Bilingue Newspaper in Ukiah, CA.

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This month, we’ll speak about  Hall of Fame baseball player Ted Williams – considered by baseball scholars to be one of the, if not  greatest, hitter of the twentieth century.  Williams, a California native born and raised in San Diego, played his entire 19-year career with the Boston Red Sox and retired in 1960.  He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966.   A complex, controversial, multi-talented and enigmatic individual, it was little known during his career that Williams mother was Mexican.  Williams consciously hid his Mexican heritage, fearing that prejudice would hinder his chances playing in the major leagues – a fascinating story that has great cultural significance today in the United States with its changing demographic.

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Radio Appearance

Humboldt Homepage – Friday, December 5,  2014 at 1:00  PM on KHSU 90.5 FM, Arcata, CA

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Join Doc and host Danielle Orr for for their monthly feature on Latin and Central American and Caribbean athletes, popular culture and politics.  This  feature is an outgrowth of Doc’s 14-part series for the El Sol Bilingue Newspaper in Ukiah, CA.

He was a political activist whose heroes included the Beatles’ John Lennon and Communist revolutionaries Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.     He drank and smoked but was a medical doctor.    He was a political and economic columnist, writer and actor.   And, he was one of the greatest midfielders to play the game of soccer (football)– and, in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s he became a living symbol and force for democratic justice for the nation of Brazil.   Muhammad Ali and Billie Jean King were perhaps the most famous athletes in the past who took principled political stands in the United States.  But Brazil had their philosopher-king of football – and his name, fittingly,  was Socrates.

Listen in for a fascinating picture of a true rebel who also played the game with unabated joy.   In an era today where the best athletes command high-priced endorsements it is uncommon to see them take political stands.  What effect would someone like Socrates have today in the age of social media?  Would he have simply been a Brazilian phenomenon?  Tune in!

 

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Radio Appearance

Humboldt Homepage – Friday, November 7,  2014 at 1:00  PM on KHSU 90.5 FM, Arcata, CA

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Join Doc and host Danielle Orr for for their monthly feature on great athletes from the Americas and Caribbean and their connection to popular culture and politics.  This new feature is an outgrowth of Doc’s 12-part series on Latino athletes for the El Sol Bilingue Newspaper in Ukiah, CA.

This month, we’ll speak about Nicaragua’s beloved boxing champion Alexis Arguello whose boxing and post-boxing career intersected with the Sandinista Revolution and its aftermath – and also provided a fascinating but tragic prism with which to view the complex historical political and economic relationship between the United States and Nicaragua.

 

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Nicaragua’s Alexis Arguello’s was one of boxing’s most popular and greatest warriors of the 1970’s and 1980’s. A champion in the featherweight, jr. lightweight and lightweight divisions, he never lost a championship title defense. But later in life, politics proved to be more treacherous and unpredictable than the fight game.

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Radio Appearance

Humboldt Homepage – Friday, Oct 3,  2014 at 1:00  PM on KHSU 90.5 FM, Arcata, CA

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Join Doc and host Danielle Orr for for their monthly feature on Latin and Central American athletes, popular culture and politics.  This new feature is an outgrowth of Doc’s 12-part series on Latino athletes for the El Sol Bilingue Newspaper in Ukiah, CA.

This month, a personal reminiscence about Hall of Fame baseball player Roberto Clemente.    As a young 12 year-old a half a century ago, Doc saw Clemente play in a double-header in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park against the San Francisco Giants and witnessed an unforgettable moment.

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Clemente was the first Latino elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame and only the 11th player in baseball history to amass 3000 hits in his career, His  tragic death at the age of only 38 in 1972 stunned the Americas. Clemente’s passion on the diamond and his humanitarian ethic set him apart as a man who personified, in the words of Puerto Rican poet Enrique Zorilla,  the “fire of dignity.”

Tune in and listen to the show or stream it at:

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Radio Appearance

Humboldt Homepage – Friday, Sept 5,  2014 at 1:00  PM on KHSU 90.5 FM, Arcata, CA

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Join Doc and host Danielle Orr for for their monthly feature on Latin and Central American athletes, popular culture and politics.  This new feature is an outgrowth of Doc’s 12-part series on Latino athletes for the El Sol Bilingue Newspaper.

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Argentinian Luis “Wild Bull of the Pampas” Firpo was the first Hispanic to fight for the heavyweight championship on September 14, 1923 at the Polo Grounds in New York City.  Firpo had a knack for self-promotion.   He marketed his fights in the United States via the fledgling medium of film and became a celebrity in his home country of Argentina as his countrymen flocked to see movies of his stateside bouts.   He then became the centerpiece of America’s most famous sports painting (Dempsey and Firpo, 1924) by American painter George Bellows.  The fight, one of the greatest  of the 20th century was also one of the first championship matches to be broadcast live on another burgeoning medium – radio.  Firpo lost the championship fight but ultimately returned to Argentina and became a millionaire, his legacy in American and Argentinian popular culture forever immortalized.

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Radio Appearance

Humboldt Homepage – Brazil, Soccer and the Magical Realism of Jorge Amado’s short story, The Soccer Ball and the Goalkeeper

Friday, August 1, 2014 at 1:00  PM on KHSU 90.5 FM, Arcata

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Join Doc and host Danielle Orr for for their new monthly feature on Latin and Central American athletes, popular culture and politics.  This new feature is a outgrowth of Doc’s 12-part series on Latino athletes for the El Sol Bilingue Newspaper.

Tune in and listen to the show or stream it at:

http://www.khsu.org/listen_live