The old and now less worn-out phrase that Football was the most important side job in the world is obviously the result of a logical inconsistency, but that football and its fans knew and know how to cause human casualties is unfortunately a reality. The tragedies of Hillsborough, Bradford, Ibrox, the stampede in Moscow, the massacre in Lima, the events of Heysel, Bastia, or Maksimir and even the mass brawl in Port Said are a clear indicator of the properties of the dynamics of the mass, of thousands of members of a certain collective who, in the onset of collective psychosis, are capable of dying and killing, ready to embark on a deadly campaign against the `enemy`, for the glory of their masters, which sometimes results in severe consequences that extend for decades.
But no incident in the world of football was as serious as the one in the qualifiers for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, when the Central American giants El Salvador and Honduras met in the play-off for the CONCACAF zone. Two Latin scumbags known for nothing more than the bright traditions of military juntas, dictatorships, landowning oligarchy and malaria had been on bad terms for years before the play-off matches. The original "banana state" - Honduras had a slightly higher standard of living than that of El Salvador, which was enough reason for about 300,000 citizens of El Salvador to go to temporary work "on the sly" in the neighboring countryside. Faced with growing unpopularity due to their inherent weakness, the authorities in Honduras had to urgently find an "internal enemy" who would, neither guilty nor obliged, take the sins of the local government upon themselves. And for that, there was no better option than illegal immigrants from the neighborhood. Propaganda began to blame Salvadorans for all the problems in Honduras, from the poor harvest to the cloudy weather - it was all the fault of the seasonal workers. They took your jobs. They're gonna impregnate your women. They're gonna destroy us!
Little by little, the basest passions began to flare up and the stage was set for a clash between...the stupid and the stupider. Honduras, a poor, run-down fascist state where presidents changed depending on the mood of the board of directors of the American corporation United Fruit Company, and El Salvador, a poor, fascist state with a penchant for genocide by the authorities as a desirable measure for maintaining the social status quo.
The first match on June 8, 1969, played in Tegucigalpa, ended with a narrow 1-0 victory for Honduras. The first beatings of Salvadoran migrants began. The return match in the Santo Salvador on June 15 ended with a convincing 3-0 win for El Salvador, and the local population, in a fit of revenge, beat and even killed Honduran fans...And as fate can sometimes be strange, FIFA rules were not like those of today, where goal difference or away goals are considered - but a master class had to be played, a third match that would decide the traveler to the World Cup. Under today's rules, El Salvador would have gone with a 3-1 aggregate score and no one would have been hurt, there would have been no war and thousands of people would not have ended up dead or maimed...The decisive match was played on neutral ground, on June 26 in Mexico City, where in a dramatic and uncertain match that went into overtime - El Salvador won 3-2 and qualified for the World Cup. Angry and disappointed by all this, Honduran fans vented their rage on the numerous Salvadoran workers across the country, began beatings, killings and dragging dead bodies through the dusty streets in cars and jeeps...
Such a thing could not be tolerated even in a sick country like El Salvador and the next day the El Salvadoran government severed diplomatic relations with Honduras. War was on the verge. The preparations of the Salvadoran forces lasted until July 14. They included the repair and equipping of ancient aircraft donated by the United States as war surplus from World War II, the legendary Navy F4U `Corsair` fighters with their distinctive winglets, the iconic P-51 `Mustang`, the timeless C-47 (DC-3) `Dakota`, the long-lived AT-6 `Texan` and their successors the AT-28 `Trojan`. A nice collection of well-known and recognized aircraft models, but a collection that would be more suitable for a fine museum display, at a time when the world's skies were dominated by twice-fast-than-sonic Mirages, MiG-21s and 23s, F4 Phantoms and similar beasts equipped with radars, advanced electronics and air-to-air missiles - the use of quarter-century-old veterans from the battles over Normandy or Tarawa was an improvisation caused by the lack of funds to buy fancy equipment.
The Honduran air force was like a mirror image of the Salvadoran one, with exactly the same types of aircraft and even the national markings on the wings causing confusion because they were almost the same...June 14 was the day when the Salvadoran armed forces began their attack against the "damned enemy". In the very first hours of the attack, the ground army managed to break through the weak border defenses and by the end of the day penetrated over 50km into Honduras. Transport DC-3s, posing as bombers by mounting special bomb ramps, protected by Corsairs - attacked several runways in order to destroy the Honduran air force with a sudden attack. Needles to say, they failed. Apart from the suffering of several dozen civilians in a wider radius around the runways - they managed to destroy only a pair of AT-6 `Texans` and one BT-13 `Valiant` ancient training aircraft.
The next morning, the Honduran Corsairs also entered action, whose pilots were in any case superior to the `neighbors`. As a result, in the following days, the Honduran aviation managed not only to stop the advance of the Salvadoran army, to destroy almost half of El Salvador's strategic oil reserves, but also to significantly improve the morale of their infantry colleagues who were prone to inaction...The last air battles exclusively between piston-engined aircraft in history - ended with a dozen downed Salvadoran aircraft and not a single Honduran one. The American mercenaries who were hired by the El Salvadoran government did not help either, as they had a suspicious habit of avoiding direct combat...In a bizarre turn of events, the old-timers in the air prevented the Salvadoran army from penetrating Tegucigalpa and changed the course of the war, each aircraft flying three to four combat sorties a day and testing the limits of the equipment and endurance of the pilots...
The fighting continued until June 19, when, under pressure from the Organization of American States and the international community, which imposed sanctions, the Salvadoran government called off the invasion and the Salvadoran army withdrew from Honduras. Although sporadic skirmishes continued until early September, that marked the end of active hostilities. The aftermath of the soccer match, which continued by other means outside the field, was at least 2,000 dead and 5,000 wounded on both sides, mostly Honduran civilians killed in bombings and shelling, and Salvadoran migrants killed as a result of the "If you can't kick the donkey, kick the donkey," phenomenon, apparently popular in Central America at the time.
The war left relations between the two backward "ethnic" groups strained, nationalism began to reign in the minds of the poor campesinos, the seventies were a time of arms race between the two sides, and by the end of the decade, civil wars began that would claim more than 300,000 victims. El Salvador's already weak economy was further affected by the expulsion of seasonal migrants, rapidly increasing military spending, sanctions, and the cessation of trade with its neighbor. The situation in Honduras, although slightly better, was still on the verge of despair, the majority of the population succumbing to the black plague of nationalism, leaving room for the authorities there to sink even further into a fierce kleptocracy at the expense of the stupid paradise.
As a sad footnote, it remains to be mentioned the achievement of the El Salvador national team at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, for which such a price was paid. Did the brave and dedicated Salvadoran players make it to the medal race? Did they at least make it past the group stage? Well, did they at least earn a point? None of that, they lost all three matches without scoring a goal - thus serving to correct the goal difference of the hosts Mexico, the USSR and Belgium, the competitors in their group...
In such an anticlimactic manner was put to an end a dark epic of the champions of the stripped collective belonging whose shallow graves adorned the damp forests in some irrelevant Neverland.
(Roger Mortis, 129)
No comments:
Post a Comment