SPORTS: Soccer--War and Peace

The title of Tolstoy's famous novel may be applied to soccer. While it has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, it can literally trigger a war. The news has just come in that some forty people were killed at a soccer game in South Africa. Yesterday, as usual, I was watching Chilean TV at 3 a.m. All Latin American countries are soccer fans, as is Chilean WAISer Carlos López. However, Chilean TV has got its priorities wrong. Instead of putting soccer at the end of the news, it devotes the first long part to it, especially if there is an important match, like Colo Colo versus University of Chile. (Is Colo-Colo the team which goes around with shirts emblazoned "Coca Cola"?). Yesterday this happened, so I switched to the History Channel, which was running a program on the causes of war. It referred to the "soccer war" of 1969 between Honduras and El Salvador. The first two matches in the series, held in the respective capitals, were so violent that the final match was switched to Paris. The passions ran so high that the Honduran airforce bombed El Salvador. The underlying reason for the tensions was that Salvadoreans were spilling over into Honduras from their overcrowded country, but soccer triggered the war. Admittedly even competitive gardening can cause strife among neighbors. The follwing segment of the program dealt with religion as a cause of war. Scotty McLennan, who is running the religion session of the WAIS conference, does not try to hide that fact. Carlos López is running the session on sports. Carlos, speak up!

Ronald Hilton - 4/12/01