Mexico begins Cup

Soccer-mania will reach a crescendo this week. Mexico’s team isn’t in the running for the World Cup any longer, but Mexico’s ancient cultures can take considerable credit for originating the game.

Before the conquest of Mexico, western Europe didn’t know team sports. They had one-on-one sports, such as jousting matches. And games where one person wins and everyone else loses, as in traditional Olympic events. And games where a person competed against an animal, such as bull fighting. But no team sports. The concept of a group of people competing against an equally sized opponent team is a Mesoamerican idea introduced to Europe in the early 16th century.

In the ancient Mesoamerican ball game, two teams competed on an I-shaped court, using their bodies to move a ball and scoring points along the way. Several Mesoamerican ball teams were taken to Spain shortly after the conquest. There they played exhibition matches for the king’s court thereby introducing the concept of teamwork to European sports.

Ancient cities all over Mexico, and indeed throughout Mesoamerica, have ball courts. Many even have multiple courts. Strangely Teotihuacan – the largest city of all – has none.

The most unusual ball court I’ve visited is in El Tajin in northern Veracruz. Seventeen ball courts have been discovered there so far and more will undoubtedly be found as archeologists continue to clear vegetation from the ruins.

The most famous of its ball courts has a pictorial description carved in stone of scenes of a game leading up to the sacrifice of one of the players. The scenes do not follow a progression of left to right or top to bottom. Instead they follow the path of the ball on the court as if being hit from one end of the court to the other. Viewing the vignettes in their proper order requires walking back and forth from one end to the other and from side to side of the court in an X-type pattern.

Not all ball games ended with the sacrifice of one of the players, but the fact that some did is evidence of the religious nature of the game. Spanish authorities considered anything associated with Mesoamerican religion to be cult of the devil and prohibited Mesoamerican ball games from being held. A few “descendent” games are played in northwestern Mexico and in Oaxaca but they don’t make use of the pre-Hispanic capital-I-shaped playing field.

While the rules of the ancient game have been lost, its effect on the world has not. World Cup soccer is proof.

The power of the Cup

I find the World Cup fascinating. Is there is any other event that can bring together different ages, cultures, ethnic groups,and religions from around the world? It’s an achievement writers and film producers strive for — producing a work that can interest both children and adults while riveting their attention. Fair-weather fans like me join hard-core sports fans in cheering on the teams.

At 2 o’clock Tuesday Mexico will face soccer powerhouse Brazil. It will be hard to find a place in urban Mexico where you are out of earshot of shouts and shrieks when a goal is scored—or missed. Short of being in the stadium in Fortaleza, Brazil, the grandest locations will be watching the game on a big screen in the Zócalo of most any Mexican city.

If a politician were in the crowd the Mexican press would say that he or she were getting a “baño de pueblo” – a peoples’ bath. That’s what it feels like. You’ll be saturated with people and their enthusiasm for the game and their country’s team. All ages and all social classes will be there.

We’ll watch interviews with Brazilian players by Mexican television reporters that go untranslated, leaving us to figure out what was said in Portuguese. We’ll see some advertising surrounding the playing field that is familiar but also advertising for brands that aren’t sold here and some in script that is unintelligible to the western eye.

For those of us perceived as foreigners in Mexico, watching the World Cup is a rare opportunity. We’ll be welcomed in, cheering for Mexico’s team, celebrating its victory or sharing the “we’re still in the running – it’s all based on points” consolation if it goes the other way.

With a few exceptions, World Cup soccer players represent the countries of their birth. Just watching a World Cup game involves an appreciation of history and geography. European colonial powers — and their former western hemisphere colonies — can easily be distinguished by the racial mix of their teams. Non-colonial countries stand out because of their homogeneity.

If Karl Marx were writing today, I think he’d say watching professional sports is the opiate of the masses. But the World Cup is different. In fact, in developing countries, hosting the World Cup awakens peoples’ demands of their government.

Every four years this spectacle is taken in by the pueblo, expanding its world-view while witnessing other peoples around the world sharing the same planet and enthusiasm for the same game.