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Teófilo Stevenson, heavyweight gold medalist at the 1972, 1976 and 1980 Olympics, turned down professional offers worth millions, including a proposed fight with Muhammad Ali. He is widely quoted as asking what a million dollars was worth against the love of eight million Cubans. He stayed an amateur on a state stipend, and he became the revolution's proof that some things could not be bought.
Guillermo Rigondeaux, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, tried to defect at the 2007 Pan American Games in Brazil. He was sent back and banned from boxing by the Cuban state. He escaped by boat in 2009 and won professional world titles, but American promoters and TV networks called his defensive style boring, so he struggled to get lucrative fights. He left the system that punished his disloyalty and entered one that underpaid his skill.
The revolution pays its athletes in belonging, status and symbolic meaning, and it gives them no exit. The market pays in cash, but only for what sells as spectacle. A master of the craft can therefore be trapped by one system and devalued by the other, because neither prices skill for its own sake.
When a nation treats its athletes as proof of its system, each athlete's choice to stay or leave becomes a public vote on that system. Both sides then claim the athlete's decision as evidence. This turns a personal career choice into propaganda for whichever side the athlete chose, and into betrayal for the side left behind.