Playing Tough: The World of Sports and Politics

4. The “Futbol War” of Central America

El Salvador and Honduras fought a bloody four-day war in 1969 that was triggered by soccer game violence among partisan spectators. With qualification for the World Cup at stake, a three-game playoff was scheduled. Although the two neighboring countries had longstanding differences about economic and migration issues, it was “futbol” that would spark the conflict. Sports and war could not be disentangled. AP Images Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I’m very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that. —Bill Shankly, English soccer manager Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words, it is war minus the shooting. —George Orwell [4] The “Futbol War” of Central America On July 15, 1 969, the New York Times reported that an armed conflict had broken out between Honduras and El Salvador, neighboring Central American countries. Salvadoran aircraft—the country had only fourteen propeller-driven planes—bombed southern Honduran cities. Honduras and El Salvador had broken diplomatic relations two weeks earlier “after a series of violent incidents that followed soccer games between the two countries’ national teams.” The Times offered long-standing and fundamental reasons for the outbreak of hostilities: “deep-rooted economic, social and territorial disputes [that] divide the two Central American countries.” By the following day, however, the Times began referring to the armed conflict as the “soccer war,” and so the world media applied the sports reference. Indeed, it was soccer game violence among the partisan spectators that had triggered attacks by Honduran nationals against thousands of Salvadorans who had squatted on Honduran lands. The Salvadorans responded with armed force in a wa r that would last only four days but would be costly in lives and property. The Central American region has a long history of warfare, politics, and sports. The Mayan or Mesoamerican ball game called tlatchtli was a team sport 102 Playing Tough played for centuries on stone courts in v illages of what is now Mexico and Central America. A combination of handball, jai-alai, and volleyball played with a hard rubber ball struck by racquets, bats, stones, hips, and forearms, this dangerous game took on religious and martial significance, not unlike the ancient Olympics. The ball game served as a way to defuse or resolve conflicts between clans, families, and regions without genuine warfare. Failure in the game, however, was particularly risky, sometimes penalized by the decapitation of the losing team’s captain. In this deeply ritualized activity, rivals would play the sport in lieu of battle. In the 1969 “soccer war,” Central American sport escalated into open transnational conflict. On War Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz, a n ineteenth-century Prussian military philosopher, described politics as war by other means. He would likely have found a similar relationship between sports and politics, in p articular the sport of soccer, the world’s most popular athletic pursuit and the source of abundant national and regional fervor. The Prussian theorist recognized in his dialectic masterwork OnWar that one cannot rely for analysis merely on “theoretical sophistries.” For Clausewitz, actual experience—in the case of Honduras and El Salvador, the congruency of sports and war—would tell the tale. While politics and social custom can unite a people in pursuit of the safety of the political state, at times ructious friction between nations can be the only rational response to circumstances. When combined with what Clausewitz would refer to as “violent emotion,” the result would be war, death, and destruction. There is a striking similarity between sports and war, and the actual experience on the soccer pitch and among the spectators of the sport that demonstrates the transferability of Clausewitz’s insight. At times, sports and war cannot be disentangled. When sports began in prehistory, they were closely aligned with warfare. Athletics constituted a preparation for the hunt and for the defense of the clan or tribe. The ancient Greek Olympics were recognized by contemporaries as war training. It would not be surprising, therefore, to find variations of this antediluvian experience replayed in modern times. Anyone who has attended an international soccer match, traditionally carrying the misnomer of “friendly,” ἀ e “Futbol War” of Central America 103 has witnessed a full measure of what Clausewitz termed “violent...