Onward
Annie Carey, Beatriz Hatz, Femita Ayanbeku and Sydney Barta during the U.S. Paralympic Trials in the women’s 100m sprint on June 18, 2021. Hatz, Ayanbeku and Barta qualified for the Paralympics. Photo by Mark Reis/U.S. Paralympics Track & Field
From among the 61 million people with disabilities in the U.S., Paralympic athletes speak about how determination, family support and early access to adaptive sports paved their way toward equity
Beatriz Hatz recalls being a 10-year-old and wishing she was “normal.”
Her parents had heard about the Paralympic games and talked about competing on the world’s stage as an athlete with a disability. It seemed too distant at first. Hatz was born without a fibula — one of the bones that extends between the knee and ankle — in her right leg. When she was very young, it was amputated below the knee.
“As I grew older and came out of my shell, I looped back — ‘this is the Paralympics, let’s try it,’” Hatz, now 20, told palabra.
After those days of childhood doubt, the normal became a running blade and participating in adaptive sports. She became so good that, in 2018, she was named Track & Field High School Female Athlete of the Year by U.S. Paralympics, a part of the U.S. Olympic Committee. Now she is among 4,403 athletes gathered in Tokyo for the 2020 Summer Paralympics, a year late because of the coronavirus pandemic.
These are her first Paralympic games. She competed against the world and finished fifth in the long jump and placed sixth in the 100 and 200-meter sprints.
Hatz is one of a legion of athletes performing at an elite level. Her success moves her into the focus of a narrative receiving increasing public attention: Latinos with disabilities in the U.S., a number estimated at just under 12 million. This includes current and former Paralympians. Patty Cisneros Prevo, a Mexican-American who won two gold medals for Team USA in women’s wheelchair basketball, is now a member of the Congressionally-established Commission on the State of the U.S. Olympics and Paralympics. She participates on the commission while working as a student services coordinator at the University of Wisconsin School of Business. Cuban refugee Ileana Rodriguez, who lost the use of her legs as a teenager growing up near Havana, relocated to the U.S., where she became a Paralympic swimmer and set an American record in the 100-meter breaststroke. Now she heads the delegation for the second-ever Refugee Paralympic Team, drawing upon her own experience to bond with its six stateless athletes from the Middle East and Africa — including one from Afghanistan.
Hatz, Cisneros Prevo and Rodriguez are pushing the public's awareness of adaptive sports, and so is the National Coalition for Latinxs with Disabilities, an advocacy organization incorporated in 2017.
Beatriz Hatz. Photo by Mark Reis/U.S. Paralympics Track & Field
Historically, Paralympic athletes have received less media coverage and compensation than Olympic athletes — something that individuals interviewed for this article hope to change.
“One of the things I like to highlight is that when I competed, the gold medal prize (money) was significantly less than an Olympic gold medal,” Cisneros Prevo said.
This year is the first time that the Paralympic and Olympic gold medal prize of $37,500 will be the same for Team USA athletes.
“It’s a huge step. I think there’s a lot more to go — providing more sponsorships for Paralympic athletes; we need more TV coverage,” she said.
Navigating cultural barriers
Overall, there are around 61 million people with disabilities in the U.S. They face societal barriers in their everyday lives. For Latinos, inaccessibility also involves inadequate language services to help navigate the U.S. healthcare system, and unaffordable health care.
There are other Latino athletes — men and women — on Team USA this year. Yet Hatz told palabra. that she’s “not met anybody (on Team USA) who is Hispanic or Latinx.” She said she’s spoken with members of Team Mexico — “I think that’s as close as I’ve gotten to speak with other Hispanic, Latinx people.”
“There’s a level of equity involved. Being able to have access to adaptive sports early on is a big difference. Adaptive sports are very expensive.”
The U.S. Paralympic Committee did not respond to an inquiry about the number of Latino athletes on Team USA this year.
“I think the biggest challenge is equity,” Cisneros Prevo said. “Look at any Olympic roster, Paralympic teams in basketball, track and field, swimming. You will see predominantly white (teams) … Being able to have access to adaptive sports early on is a big difference. Adaptive sports are very expensive. There’s the piece of financing (it), being able to afford a basketball wheelchair, a racing wheelchair.”
Cisneros Prevo was born non-disabled and competed in multiple sports growing up, thanks to a supportive physical education teacher. During her first year at Indiana University, however, she was in a car accident and was paralyzed. A physical therapist noted her previous athletic involvement and suggested she try adaptive sports. Cisneros Prevo went on to compete in women’s wheelchair basketball in consecutive Summer Paralympics, starting in Sydney. In Athens and, in 2008 in Beijing, she led Team USA to consecutive gold medals in her last two Paralympics, concluding her career as team captain.
“I hope I inspire or empower other young brown girls who are disabled to do the same,” she said.
She was inspired by others too. “(There) were two very prominent” Latina athletes on the team with her — Alma Torres Rodriguez, who later competed for Team Mexico, and Ruth Nuñez. She said both were “role models and mentors for me.”
Cisneros Prevo is shown with Team USA in the 2004 Summer Paralympics in Athens (gold medal). Photo courtesy National Wheelchair Basketball Association
Cisneros Prevo also found common ground with the Mexican national women’s wheelchair basketball team.
“(They’re) disabled and brown too,” she said. “They are my people. I truly fit in and belonged. It was really an interesting sort of experience navigating these intersecting identities on a larger scale.”
Ileana Rodriguez has a complex relationship with her homeland of Cuba. It has a strong Paralympics tradition and Cubans tweeted actively as the games started. Yet at age 15, she left the island nation with her mother for a medical second opinion, two years after she had been diagnosed with a spinal cord malformation, suffered a stroke and could no longer walk. Today she finds common ground with fellow refugees. According to the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, there are over 82 million displaced people worldwide, including 12 million refugees with disabilities.
Although Rodriguez did not comment on Cuba’s history in the Paralympics, she said she received unequal treatment growing up as a student with a disability.
“I was barely able to go to school when I stopped walking,” Rodriguez recalled. Growing up in Cuba, she said, she could only go to one specific school accessible for students with mental and physical disabilities.
“It was a big challenge. You didn’t learn, you didn’t get very far in those environments.” In the U.S., by contrast, even though she was not a resident when she arrived, she got to attend a neighborhood school and take a school bus there. She went on to graduate from college and get the treatment she needed, including physical therapy, she said.
Ileana Rodriguez, the head of the delegation for the Refugee Paralympic Team, is shown with members of the delegation and this year's Paralympic mascot, Someity. Photo courtesy Refugee Paralympic Team
Competing in the Summer Paralympics in London in 2012, Rodriguez became friends with several athletes representing Latin American nations. She still keeps in touch with a few of them through another of her current roles — athletic representative for the Americas on the Paralympic Committee.
Now in Tokyo with the Refugee Paralympic Team, she said that while there are no Latino competitors on the current team, she encourages refugee Latino athletes “to keep on practicing sports and hope they continue to grow.”
The power of advocacy
Cisneros Prevo believes that advocacy groups can be the answer to help future generations of Latinos with disabilities connect to sports.
“Just being able to develop organizations or nonprofits doing specific outreach to Latinx communities, especially shortly after an injury, (or) at birth,” she said, “an organization whose sole purpose and mission is to provide resources and access to adaptive sports.”
The National Coalition for Latinxs with Disabilities — or CNLD after its name in Spanish, La Coalición Nacional para Latinxs con Discapacidades — has wider goals in mind.
The initial spark was a 2016 conference in Chicago that arose out of concerns that Latino disability studies were marginalized in academia. CNLD was incorporated at the state level in Illinois a year later, to serve as an advocacy organization for Latinos with disabilities in the U.S., including Puerto Rico, as well as internationally.
“I think there’s often a deficiency like, ‘you’re disabled, let me do it for you, poor thing, pobrecito, poor thing, let me help you.’ It comes, a lot of times, out of love, but at the same time you’re sending a message.”
Dr. Leonor Vanik, a co-founder and current president of CNLD, said “many academic journals” did not have “conversations about disability, or Latinx disability. Everyone kept touting Frida Kahlo, a (Latina) disability icon. There are so many others. How do we elevate those voices?”
Lisette Torres-Gerald, a fellow co-founder and the current secretary of CNLD, said Latinos with disabilities also face challenges from within their own community: “One of the things that I think are unique to the disabled Latino community is having that rough conversation about giving your disabled family members more agency and self-determination and confidence in themselves.”
Torres-Gerald, who identifies as having a disability and who has several family members with disabilities, explained, “I think there’s often a deficiency like, ‘you’re disabled, let me do it for you, poor thing, pobrecito, poor thing, let me help you.’ It comes, a lot of times, out of love, but at the same time you’re sending a message.”
Lisette Torres-Gerald. Courtesy of CNLD.
However, family can also play a positive role. That was the case in 1970, after Vanik’s newborn sister was diagnosed with Down syndrome. Medical authorities recommended institutionalization, which was common at the time, but her father wanted to raise her in an intergenerational Latino cultural family setting.
Vanik’s sister is now living on her own. She has excelled in art and sports, winning medals in the Special Olympics. Growing up with family had an additional benefit.
“For Latinxs, there’s a language difference when you try to get information,” Vanik said. “Not everything is translated into your native language. So understanding and comprehension is passed down through family and friends.”
Cisneros Prevo understands how big an obstacle the language barrier can be after working as a peer mentor with Latino patients at Craig Hospital in Colorado, which she describes as one of the largest rehab centers in the world.
“I think there’s a big issue on access,” she said, noting the importance of “someone speaking Spanish, an interpreter who knows the exact word for the injury, the nuances of the disability.”
Overall, having a disability is costly, Cisneros Prevo said.
“Navigating the insurance system is really difficult. I’m an educated person. I waste time trying to find out how I’m going to get medical support every month with insurance, or requesting a new wheelchair,” she added. “You need to be able to have somebody help you understand the nuance of all of it. If the language is not Spanish, it’s extremely difficult to navigate.”
Hatz said she also believes that, unfortunately, some people look at a person who doesn’t speak English fluently and has a disability through a reductionist lens.
“If you are a different race, or (speak) a different language, a lot of times people can discriminate against you. If you have a disability, you will be discriminated against, as well.” She has experienced this firsthand: “I’ve been to the store before, speaking Spanish with my mom, and people come up to me and say, ‘speak English, this is America, speak English.’ It’s unfortunate.”
Beatriz Hatz. Photo by Mark Reis/U.S. Paralympics Track & Field
However, both Hatz and Cisneros Prevo mention a welcoming atmosphere on Team USA, past and present.
“We all support each other, go to each other’s events,” Hatz said.
In Cisneros Prevo’s case, “Not only are these 11 other people your team, they become your sisters.” Winning Paralympic gold brought them even closer: “(You) reach a goal doing this together. The gold medal is placed around your neck with the closest people in your life. It’s super-special.”
As Hatz vied for a medal this year, she noted a source of support from back home — her family, which tuned in from Colorado despite the huge time difference.
“Anytime I start to doubt myself, even a little bit, everybody in my family tries to push me on,” Hatz said. “Not just my immediate family. My entire family, my extended family, my aunties and cousins. To see they believe in me, I think, ‘OK, I can do this.’”
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Rich Tenorio is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in international, national, regional and local media outlets. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a cartoonist.