This paper analyzes Milcha Sanchez-Scott's 1984 play The Cuban Swimmer, focusing on the abusive dimensions of the trainer-athlete relationship between Margarita and her father, Eduardo. Drawing on the play's text, the paper argues that Eduardo's self-appointed coaching role is driven by personal ambition and desire for media exposure rather than genuine concern for his daughter's athletic success or safety. The paper also examines how the broader family dynamic — including Margarita's mother — and the news media collectively mythologize Margarita while remaining oblivious to the physical and emotional toll of her swim. Ultimately, Margarita's solitary triumph is read as a rejection of her family's corrupt investment in the American dream.
The proud young athlete mentored by a devoted coach is a common cliché in sports stories. As one critic has observed, "Hispanic Americans use athletic skills to propel themselves into the mainstream of middle-class life in this country. It's a traditional theme. The basic plot was advanced long ago in such plays as Clifford Odets's Golden Boy, and since then, in scores of films, books, and movies, members of ethnic groups have moved out of the slums" (Mitgang, 1984). However, in Milcha Sanchez-Scott's play The Cuban Swimmer (1984), this convention is turned on its head. The play highlights the potential abuses of the athlete-coach relationship by contrasting the young heroine's poetic and triumphant efforts with the crass desire of her trainer for media exposure. Her trainer is motivated by his own needs, not by his young charge's athletic glory.
The fact that the heroine's trainer is also her father further complicates the nature of the abuses Margarita suffers under his hard tutelage. Throughout the short play, her father brusquely directs her breathing and stroke technique, revealing his profound ignorance of the true nature of the water and of his daughter's increasingly weary body. Despite Eduardo's insistence that he has "everything under control" (Sanchez-Scott, 1984, p. 913), the play exposes how little control he truly has over his own emotions as he becomes caught up in the media frenzy surrounding his teenage daughter's determination and swimming prowess. The value of independence from a close-knit but corrupt family, in the narrative of the young ethnic athlete who "makes good," is the thematic contention of the play. Eduardo's training methods are ultimately condemned.
"Mother and family prioritize image over Margarita"
"Media amplifies family's exploitative framing"
"Margarita's victory as rejection of family ambition"
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