Soccer: Opiate of the People

...Excerpted from Soccer in Sun and Shadow (Verso 2003), reprinted with permission from the author and publisher...

...Cotton and wool armor covered their entire bodies so as not to offend the ladies in attendance, who unfurled silk parasols and waved lace handkerchiefs...

...The process was unstoppable...

...The Admiral had the habit of warning: "Later on, don't complain if somebody plants a bomb...

...The machinery of power, on the other hand, is indeed a cause of violence: as in all of Latin America, injustice and humiliation poison people's souls under a system with a tradition of impunity that rewards the unscrupulous, encourages crime and helps to perpetuate it as a national trait...

...Soccer had made a lovely voyage: first organized in the colleges and universities of England, it brought joy to the lives of South Americans who had never set foot in a school...

...NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 38REPORT ON SPORT AND SOCIETY noisemakers, firecrackers and drums, it rains streamers and confetti...

...Bread and circus, circus without the bread: hypnotized by the ball, which exercises a perverse fascination, workers' consciousness becomes atrophied and they let themselves be led about like sheep by their class enemies...

...Even the dictatorship's Treasury Secretary, Juan Alemann, took note of the squandering of public funds and asked a few inconvenient questions...

...In 1969, war broke out between Honduras and El Salvador, two small and very poor Central American countries that for over a century had been accumulating reasons to distrust each other...

...In 1902 in London, Rudyard Kipling made fun of soccer and those who contented their souls with "the muddied oafs at the goals...

...Balls no longer confounded customs officers, who at first hadn't known how to classify the species...

...The war lasted a week and killed four thousand people...

...Dancers drew filigrees on a single floor tile, and soccer players created their own language in that tiny space where they chose to retain and possess the ball rather than kick it, as if their feet were hands braiding the leather...

...HAPPINESS P ve thousand journalists from all over the world, a sumptuous media center, impeccable stadiums, new airports: a model of efficiency...

...The lords of land and war didn't lose a drop of blood, while two barefoot peoples avenged their identical misfortunes by killing each other with patriotic fervor...

...The technocracy of professional sport has managed to impose a soccer of lightning speed and brute strength, a soccer that negates joy, kills fantasy and outlaws daring...

...Old photographs show these pioneers in sepia tones...

...Hondurans don't have work...

...In those first years of the century, plenty of left-leaning intellectuals celebrated soccer instead of repudiating it as a sedative of consciousness...

...Each country believed their neighbor was the enemy, and the incesNACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 40REPORT ON SPORT AND SOCIETY Kids play soccer on a field in the predominately Mixtec community of Valle Verde in Tijuana, Mexico...

...Although the fan can contemplate the miracle more comfortably on TV, he prefers to make the pilgrimage to this spot where he can see his angels in the flesh doing battle with the demons of the day...

...The Argentine team stumbled a few times in the championship, but local commentators were obliged to do nothing but applaud...

...At Ezeiza airport in 1958, people threw coins at Argentina's players returning from a poor performance at the World Cup in Sweden...

...THE SIN OF LOSING Soccer elevates its divinities and exposes them to the vengeance of the believers...

...Each had always served as the magical explanation for the other's problems...

...As often occurs with religion, patriotism and politics, soccer can bring tensions to a boil, and many horrors are committed in its name...

...The trouble began during the playoffs for the '70 World Cup...

...But the club Argentinos Juniors was born with the name Chicago Martyrs, in homage to those anarchist workers, and May First was the day chosen to launch the club Chacarita in a Buenos Aires anarchist library...

...It is not by nature a violent sport, although at times it becomes a vehicle for letting off steam...

...Meanwhile, the top brass who organized the World Cup carried on with their plan of extermination, for reasons of war or just to be sure...

...Who are they...

...Rarely does the fan say: "My club plays today...

...The final solution," as they called it, murdered thousands of Argentines without leaving a trace--how many, it was never known: anyone who tried to find out was swallowed up by the earth...

...THE ENGLISH INVASIONS O utside the madhouse, in an empty lot in Buenos Aires, several blond boys were kicking a ball around...

...A few months before the '94 World Cup began, Amnesty International published a report according to which hundreds of Colombians "were executed without due process by the armed forces and their paramilitary allies in 1993...

...Their feet were shod with heavy Mansfield shoes...

...On the feet of the first Creole virtuosos el toque, the touch, was born: the ball was strummed as if it were a guitar, a source of music...

...A "foul" merited punishment by the "referee," but the aggrieved player could accept an apology from the guilty party "as long as his apology was sincere and was expressed in correct English," according to the first soccer rule book that circulated in the River Plate...

...When the Cup was over, out of gratitude for his hard work, Admiral Lacoste was named vice president of the international soccer association, FIFA...

...Curiosity was, like dissent, like any question, absolute proof of subversion...

...sant military dictatorships of each did all they could to perpetuate the error...

...While the pagan Mass lasts, the fan is many...

...In the River Plate, once the English and the rich lost possession of their sport, the first popular clubs were organized in railway workshops and shipyards...

...Large buildings, big airports, terrific cars, fancy candies...

...English citizens, diplomats and managers of railway and gas companies, formed the first local teams...

...Few things happen in Latin America that do not have some direct or indirect relation with soccer...

...He lives and breathes soccer in Montevideo, Uruguay...

...factory called the School of the Americas, fanned the fires of mutual hatred...

...It arrived on the feet of sailors who played by the dikes of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, while Her Majesty's ships unloaded blankets, boots and flour, and took on wool, hides and wheat to make more blankets, boots and flour on the other side of the world...

...Society calls them "disposables," human garbage that ought to die...

...In San Salvador: "Teach those barbarians a lesson...

...Without question, the national uniform has become the clearest symbol of collective identity, not only in poor or small countries whose place on the map depends on soccer...

...A bomb did explode in Alemann's house at the very moment when Argentines were celebrating their fourth goal against Peru...

...Each inspires devotion among believers and distrust among intellectuals...

...Along with thousands of other devotees he shares the certainty that we are the best, that all referees are crooked, that all the adversaries cheat...

...Thanks to the language of the game, which soon became universal, workers driven out of the countryside could communicate perfectly well with workers driven out of Europe...

...These days, soccer fanaticism has come to occupy the place formerly reserved for religious fervor, patriotic ardor and political passion...

...If we lose, we no longer exist...

...Crazy English...

...Like the tango, soccer blossomed in the slums...

...SOCCER AND THE GENERALS A t the victory carnival in 1970, General M6dici, dictator of Brazil, handed out cash to the players, posed for photographers with the trophy in his arms and even headed a ball for the cameras...

...influence, these countries learned to hit a ball with a rounded wooden bat...

...The city disappears, its routine forgotten, all that exists is the temple...

...When England lost out in the qualifiers for the '94 World Cup, the front page of the Daily Mirror featured a headline in a type-size fit for a catastrophe: "THE END OF THE WORLD...

...Should we blame soccer...

...Many millions of dollars were spent and lost-how many, it was never knownso that the smiles of a happy country under military tutelage would be broadcast to the four corners of the earth...

...Journalist Juan Jos6 de Soiza Reilly remembers this from his childhood...

...The animal instinct overtakes human reason, ignorance crushes culture and the riff-raff get what they want...

...But by the first years of the 20th century, soccer was becoming popular and nationalized on the shores of the River Plate...

...In 1915 the democratization of soccer drew complaints from the Rio de Janeiro magazine Sports: '"Those of us who have a certain position in society are obliged to play with workers, with drivers...

...In soccer, as in everything else, losing is not allowed...

...The Marines shouldered bats next to their rifles when they imposed imperial order on the region by blood and fire...

...Colombians suffer from violence like a disease, but they don't wear it like a birthmark on their foreheads...

...We are because we win...

...Meanwhile, other English words were being incorporated into the speech of Latin American countries in the Caribbean: pitcher, catcher, innings...

...On the concrete terracing, a few fleeting bonfires bum, while the lights and voices fade...

...Then "sudden death" is no longer just a dramatic way of deciding a tied match...

...And that spectacle has become one of the most profitable businesses in the world, organized not for play but rather to impede it...

...In this fin-de-sidcle world, professional soccer condemns all that is useless, and useless means not profitable...

...Lacoste managed immense sums of money without any oversight and it seems, because he wasn't paying close attention, he ended up keeping some of the change...

...TEARS DON'T FLOW FROM A HANDKERCHIEF occer, metaphor for war, at times turns into real war...

...asked a child...

...The English of Montevideo and Buenos Aires staged Uruguay's first international competition in 1889, under a gigantic portrait of Queen Victoria, her eyes lowered in a mask of disdain...

...In fields, in alleys and on beaches, native-born kids and young immigrants improvised games using balls made of old Vol XXXVII, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 2004 39REPORT ON SPORT AND SOCIETY socks filled with rags or paper, and a couple of stones for a goal...

...The cost was a state secret...

...Some believe men possessed by the demon of the ball foam at the mouth, and frankly that image presents a fairly accurate picture of the frenzied fan...

...Rather he says: "We play today...

...FERVOR n April 1997 the guerrillas occupying the Japanese embassy in the city of Lima were gunned down...

...As soccer became a popular passion and revealed its hidden beauty, it disqualified itself as a dignified pastime...

...Banners wave and the air resounds with 38 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Eduardo Galeano is the author of Open Veins of Latin America and numerous other books...

...And then the sun goes down and so does the fan...

...Baseball became for the people of the Caribbean what soccer is for us...

...This was called the Soccer War because the sparks that set off the conflagration were struck in the stadiums of Tegucigalpa and San Salvador...

...In Tegucigalpa the slogan was, "Honduran don't sit still, grab a stick and a Salvadoran kill...

...THE OPIATE OF THE PEOPLE...

...When the game is over, the fan, who has not moved from the stands, celebrates his victory: "What a goal we scored," "What a beating we gave them...

...Their leader, N6stor Cerpa Cartolini, died wearing the colors of Alianza, the club he loved...

...Possessed by soccer, the proles think with their feet, which is the only way they can think, and through such primitive ecstasy they fulfill their dreams...

...Luckily, on the field you can still see, even if only once in a long while, some insolent rascal who sets aside the script and commits the blunder of dribbling past the entire opposing side, the referee and the crowd in the stands, all for the carnal delight of embracing the forbidden adventure of freedom...

...A week later, the two countries broke off relations...

...At the same time, soccer was being tropicalized in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo by the poor who enriched it while they appropriated it...

...Play has become spectacle, with few protagonists and many spectators, soccer for watching...

...Or he cries over his defeat: "They swindled us again," "Thief of a referee...

...Another portrait of the queen of the seas watched over the first Brazilian soccer game in 1895, played between British subjects of the Gas Company and the Sio Paulo Railway...

...But even the most indignant of critics would concede that in most cases violence doesn't originate in soccer, any more than tears flow from a handkerchief...

...In this world that punishes failure, they are always the losers...

...The fan goes off, the crowd breaks up and melts away, and Sunday becomes as melancholy as Ash Wednesday after the death of carnival...

...THE FAN 0nce a week, the fan flees his house and goes to the stadium...

...On the fields of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, a style was born...

...Sooner rather than later, the native-born gentlemen of local society started playing that crazy English game...

...The two governments, dictatorships forged at a U.S...

...Having fallen under U.S...

...Soccer is the fatherland, soccer is power: "I am the fatherland," these military dictatorships were saying...

...Three-quarters of a century later in Buenos Aires, Jorge Luis Borges was more subtle: he gave a lecture on the subject of immortality on the same day and at the same hour that Argentina was playing its first game in the '78 World Cup...

...The Admiral, an illusionist skilled at making dollars evaporate and sudden fortunes appear, took the reins of the World Cup after the previous officer in charge was mysteriously assassinated...

...The stadium is left alone and the fan, too, returns to his solitude: to the I who had been we...

...Or should we blame the culture of success and the whole system of power that professional soccer reflects...

...Whether it's something we celebrate together, or a shipwreck that takes us all down, soccer counts in Latin America, sometimes more than anything else, even if it is ignored by ideologues who love humanity but can't stand people...

...Because Salvadorans come and take their jobs...

...Violence is not in the genes of these people who love to celebrate and are wild about the joys of music and soccer...

...In the '82 Cup, Caszely missed a penalty kick and back in Chile they made his life impossible...

...Escobar had had the bad luck of scoring an own goal, an unforgivable act of treason...

...You couldn't even criticize the players, not even the coach...

...The march composed for the team, "Forward Brazil," became the government's anthem, while the image of Pel6 soaring above the field was used in TV ads that proclaimed: "No one can stop Brazil...

...At first, soccer seemed like a crazy man's game in the River Plate...

...He knows it's "player number twelve" who stirs up the winds of fervor that propel the ball when she falls asleep, just as the other eleven players know that playing without their fans is like dancing without music...

...The playing of sports is becoming an agony, a sacrifice, never a diversion...

...In these times, failure is the only sin that cannot be redeemed...

...If he returns defeated, the warrior becomes a fallen angel...

...The scorn of many conservative intellectuals comes from their belief that soccer-worship is exactly the religion people deserve...

...Veteran German reporters confessed that the '78 World Cup in Argentina reminded them of the '36 Olympics in Berlin for which Hitler had pulled out all the stops...

...The report of Amnesty International also exposed the role of the Colombian police in "social clean-up" operations, a euphemism for the systematic extermination of homosexuals, prostitutes, drug addicts, beggars, the mentally ill and street children...

...This diversion, first imported to entertain the lazy offspring of the well-off, had escaped from its high window-box, came to earth and was setting down roots...

...CREOLE SOCCER The Argentine Soccer Association did not allow I Spanish to be spoken at the meetings of its directors, and the Uruguay Association Soccer League outlawed Sunday games because it was British custom to play on Saturday...

...Admiral Carlos Alberto Lacoste, the strongman of the World Cup, explained in an interview: "If I go to Europe or to the United States, what will impress me most...

...When Argentina won the World Cup in 1978, General Videla used the image of Kempes, unstoppable as a hurricane, for exactly the same purpose...

...The Esperanto of the ball connected poor Creoles with peons who had crossed the sea from Vigo, Lisbon, Naples, Beirut or Bessarabia with their dreams of "hacer la America"-making a new world by building, carrying, baking or sweeping...

...H ow is soccer like God...

...Ships also brought rule books to these far-off coasts of southern America, and with them came words that remained for many years to come: field, score, goal, goalkeeper, back, half, forward, out-ball, penalty, off-side...

...With the ball on his foot and the national colors on his chest, the player who embodies the nation marches off to win glory on far-off battlefields...

...It didn't take long to become contagious...

...When commandos burst in and carried out their spectacular lightning butchery, the guerrillas were playing soccer...

...Because Hondurans mistreat them...

...In this sacred place, the only religion without atheists puts its divinities on display...

...And thus was born the most beautiful soccer in the world, made of hip feints, undulations of the torso and legs in flight, all of which came from capoeira, the warrior dance of black slaves, and from the joyful dances of the big-city slums...

...The only flesh the players exposed were their serious faces peering out from behind wax-twirled mustaches below caps or hats...

...Ten years later, several Ethiopian players asked the United Nations for asylum after losing 6-1 to Egypt...

...Salvadorans are hungry...

...Soccer is the people, soccer is power: "I am the people," these military dictatorships were saying...

...The report from the PR experts at BursonMasteller was titled: "What is True for Products, is Also True for Countries...

...Shadows fall over the emptying stadium...

...Among them, the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci praised "this open-air kingdom of human loyalty...

...The president of the Argentine Rural Society, Celedonio Pereda, declared that thanks to soccer, "There will be no more of the defamation that Vol XXXVII, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 2004 41REPORT ON SPORT AND SOCIETY certain well-known Argentines have spread through the Western media with the profits from their robberies and kidnappings...

...Most of the victims of these extrajudicial executions were people without known political affiliation...

...But with the expansion of the Empire, soccer became an export as typically British as Manchester cloth, railways, loans from Barings or the doctrine of free trade...

...It required no money and could be played with nothing more than sheer desire...

...To make over its international image, the dictatorship paid a U.S...

...Nobody earns a thing from that crazy feeling that for a moment turns a man into a child playing with a balloon, like a cat with a ball of yarn, a ballet dancer who romps with a ball as light as a balloon or a ball of yam, playing without even knowing he's playing, with no purpose or clock or referee...

...Honduras expelled a hundred thousand Salvadoran peasants who had always worked in that country's plantings and harvests...

...There were tussles, a few injuries, several deaths...

...They imported from London the shirts, shoes, thick anklesocks and shorts that reached from the chest to below the knee...

...A homegrown way of playing soccer, like the homegrown way of dancing that was being invented in the milonga clubs...

...Crazy people" answered his father...

...Salvadoran tanks crossed the border...

...Here the fan shakes his handkerchief, gulps his saliva, swallows his bile, eats his cap, whispers prayers and curses, and suddenly breaks out in ovation, leaping like a flea to hug the stranger at his side cheering the goal...

...In contrast, many leftist intellectuals denigrate soccer because it castrates the masses and derails their revolutionary ardor...

...The spread of soccer throughout the world was an imperialist trick to keep oppressed peoples in an eternal childhood, unable to grow up...

...public relations firm half-a-million dollars...

...Several anarchist and socialist leaders soon denounced the clubs as a maneuver by the bourgeoisie to forestall strikes and disguise class divisions...

...No longer the possession of the few comfortable youths who played by copying, this foreign sport became Brazilian, fertilized by the creative energies of the people discovering it...

...Meanwhile, Chile's bigwig General Pinochet named himself president of Colo-Colo, the most popular club in the country, and General Garcia Meza, who had taken over Bolivia, named himself president of Wilstermann, a club with a multitude of fervent fans...

...During the '94 World Cup, a handful of fanatics burned down the home of Joseph Bell, the defeated Cameroonian goalkeeper, and Colombian player Andr6s Escobar was gunned down in Medellin...

...It was no coincidence that the murder of Escobar took place in one of the most violent countries on the planet...

...They were warriors trained for battle...