Brief
history
of the Games
The games were born thanks to the initiative of the Mexican Olympic Society who, after Mexico’s poor performance in the Paris 1924 Olympic Games, decided to organize a multi-sport event among Central American countries so that sports in these nations would increase their competitive level.
Cuba and Guatemala supported the project and Mexicans Alfredo Cuellar and Enrique Aguirre negotiated with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to obtain international endorsement.
The act of creation of the Games was signed in Paris on July 4, 1924, making it the oldest regional competition endorsed by the IOC.
Mexico, although most of its territory is in North America, was the organizer of the first version of the Games. It is considered to participate because the portion of its territory south of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec has coasts in the western Caribbean and because of its cultural ties, much closer to the Latin American population of the rest of Central America than to English-speaking North America.
TAKING PLACE EVERY 4 YEARS IN CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
They are organized by Centro Caribe Sports (formerly ODECABE), with sports such as athletics, swimming, water polo, basketball, baseball, soccer, volleyball, handball, cycling, horseback riding, triathlon, Basque pelota, among others.
The fourth version was held in Panama in 1938 and the fifth version, which was to be held in 1942, was postponed due to World War II, in solidarity with the principles of Olympism and the International Olympic Committee. That fifth version would be held in 1946, in Barranquilla, a city on the Colombian Caribbean coast.
Until 2011, the Netherlands Antilles Olympic Committee was part of the entity; the committee ceased to exist with the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles in 2010. Guadeloupe, Martinique, Curaçao, French Guiana, Sint Maarten and Turks and Caicos have been accepted as new participants.
The Central American and Caribbean Games are a multi-sport event, held every 4 years since 1926 in different cities of countries within the region comprising Central America and the Caribbean Sea basin. It is the oldest regional multidisciplinary event in the world. The Central American and Caribbean Games are organized by Centro Caribe Sports.
