Soccer Nationalism Ecuador and the World
Soccer Nationalism:
Ecuador and the World Cup
MAXIMILIAN VIATORI
Iowa State University
Figure 1. Caption: A motorcycle fan with his head shaved in a soccer ball pattern, Quito. Photo by
author.
S
occer is just soccer, right? Wrong, replied Spanish journalist
Enric González who covered the Italian soccer league for Spain’s
largest newspaper El Pais from 2003 to 2007. Soccer is more than
a public exhibition of athletic skill—it is an integral part of many
nations’ “collective memory” (González 2007:24). Anthropologists
have also noted the importance of soccer for symbolizing local identities and displaying national pride. For example, Alessandra
Miklavcic (2008) demonstrates that a recent soccer match between
Italy and Slovenia reignited nationalist passions and historical grudges
over the countries’ shared border. In Australia, Loring Danforth
(2001) shows that soccer has been an important vehicle for the expresCity & Society, Vol. 20, Issue 2, pp. 275–281, ISSN 0893-0465, eISSN 1548-744X.
© 2008 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-744X.2008.00020.x.
City & Society
sion of competing versions of nationalism. According to Danforth,
traditional elites have used soccer to further a narrative of Australia as
a racially homogenous nation by banning “ethnic” soccer clubs—those
associated with different immigrant populations—from playing in
the National League. In contrast, the owners of these clubs have
argued that their teams are vital symbols of Australia’s multicultural
nationalism.
In a similar vein, Ecuador’s qualification for the
2006 World Cup marked an
important moment for “narrating the nation” in this
small
South
American
country (Bhabha 1990).
Soccer has a long history in
Ecuador and represents an
important aspect of social life.
The Federation of Ecuadorian
Soccer was founded in 1925
and the country now has more
than twenty professional
clubs divided into two
Figure 2. Caption: A homeless boy plays soccer in front of an expensive Quito
leagues. No other sport comshopping center. Photo by author.
petes with soccer for dominance; the national team’s games are consistently the most-watched
television programs in Ecuador, sometimes drawing as much as 90
percent of the country’s viewers (Radcliffe and Westwood 1996:93).
Despite Ecuador’s love affair with soccer, the country has struggled
to compete against soccer giants like Argentina, Uruguay and the
perennially dominant Brazil. Ecuador’s best finish in the Copa America,
the longest running soccer tournament in South America, was fourth
place in 1993. Before 2006, Ecuador qualified only once for the World
Cup—losing two of its three games during the 2002 competition hosted
by South Korea and Japan. In contrast, Brazil has qualified for every
Soccer World Cup and won the tournament’s golden trophy a record
five times.1
Ecuador’s 2006 tournament berth sparked public celebrations
across the country as well as declarations by politicians and pundits
that the Ecuadorian team’s success represented the country’s future;
one in which renewed national unity would enable it to compete on
the global playing field (El Comercio 2006a; 2006d). This was an
appealing message after two decades of structural adjustment programs
led the country into an economic crisis, which reached an apex in
1999 when Ecuador’s largest banks collapsed.2
Coverage of the World Cup dominated the front pages of Ecuador’s most prominent newspaper, the conservative El Comercio, and
276
Soccer
Nationalism:
Ecuador and the
World Cup
Figure 3. Caption: Celebrating Ecuador’s win against Costa Rica, boys in a poor neighborhood in the
provincial city of Puyo play soccer in the street long after sunset. Photo by author.
editorials admonished the country’s citizens to put aside the race and
class differences that had “impeded” national unification. One article
reported that Indigenous communities in several northern provinces
had suspended their celebration of Inti Raymi—the solstice—to watch
the playoff game between Ecuador and England (El Comercio 2006f).
Another praised residents in the community of Juncal—the home
town of Ecuador’s star veteran player, Agustín Delgado—who “forgot
their poverty, [and] lack of basic services and got animated for the
team” (El Comercio 2006e). Then interim President Alfredo Palacio
even joined the party, showing off a jersey signed by the Ecuadorian
team. After Ecuador advanced to the playoffs, he granted an asueto
(little holiday) so that Ecuadorians could celebrate with a shortened
work day.
Proclamations of national unity during the World Cup were little
more than thinly-veiled political rhetoric, however. After declaring
his support for World Cup celebrations, the President quickly dispatched 20,000 police with helicopters to monitor the revelers, many
of whom gathered in the same places where protestors called for the
removal of Palacio’s predecessor the year before (El Comercio
2006b).3
The 2006 Soccer World Cup provided an important moment for
Ecuador’s elites to reassert a narrative of Ecuadorian nationalism rooted
in internal homogeneity, one that conveniently glossed over differences
in race and gender. In 1998, Ecuador revised its constitution to recognize the country’s multiethnic make-up. Nonetheless, some whitemestizo elites have continued to resist the idea of ethnic and racial
plurality as a basis for national identity, defending their privileged
position in Ecuadorian society. Yet the fact that most of Ecuador’s star
World Cup players were Afro-Ecuadorian undermined visions of
277
City & Society
Ecuador as a homogenous
nation. According to Jean
Muteba Rahier (2008:622),
white-mestizos dealt with this
visible contradiction by ignoring the race of Ecuador’s
players in published commentary on the World Cup. Journalists and bloggers focused
almost exclusively on aspects
of the sport that appeared to
index white-mestizo society,
thus perpetuating the official
invisibility of blackness in the
Ecuadorian nation. Likewise,
celebrations of soccer as a
symbol of Ecuadorian identity
quietly
naturalized
“the
national” as a decidedly male
space. Soccer is considered a
masculine sport in Ecuador
Figure 4. Caption: A recent college graduate displays his official team jersey at the
and throughout much of Latin
hotel where he works near downtown Quito. Photo by author.
America (e.g. Magazine
2007). The majority of players
and fans at all levels of the
game are men, as the photos
in this essay attest. As such,
declaring soccer a source of
national character largely
excluded women from active
participation in the nationas-a-game.
One reporter remarked
that after Ecuador’s win
against Costa Rica, fans took
to the streets, quickly melding
into rivers of yellow, red and
blue (the national colors)
Figure 5. Caption: Local news stations cover festivities on Amazonas Avenue, Quito, where the differences among
following Ecuador’s win against Costa Rica. Photo by author.
them vanished (El Comercio
2006b). Besides reproducing
race and gender inequalities, World Cup celebrations renewed class
inequalities in subtle but noticeable ways. The Ecuadorian national
jersey—according to the aforementioned reporter, a symbol of “country
and team” second only to the flag—acted as a token of difference as
much as an emblem of unity. The officially-sanctioned jersey, produced
278
by Marathon Sports (an Ecuadorian-based multinational), retailed for
US $29.90 in upscale malls in Ecuador’s largest cities. In a country
where 51 percent of the population lives below the poverty line (most
of whom are Indigenous), and the average monthly salary in 2006 was
US $237, this symbol of national identity was hardly accessible to most
(El Comercio 2006c).4 While a small number of upper and middle class
Ecuadorians engaged in acts of patriotic consumption, buying Marathon
shirts for themselves and relatives abroad, most settled for cheap knockoffs sold on street corners and open air markets for a few dollars (El
Comercio 2006c). In the end, rather than disappearing into a yellow
clad utopia, fans were distinguished in ways that echoed enduring disparities within the Ecuadorian nation state.
Soccer
Nationalism:
Ecuador and the
World Cup
Figure 6. Caption: World Cup soccer on TV, Quito. Photo by author.
Figure 7. Caption: The day after Ecuador lost to England and was knocked out of the playoffs an
Indigenous shoeshine boy watches as the flag is raised over a military exercise in front of the national
capitol, Quito. Photo by author.
279
City & Society
Notes
Acknowledgments. I owe special thanks to Travis Hartman for his help editing
and selecting the final photographs for this essay.
Argentina and Uruguay have each won the World Cup twice.
Forment (2007) provides an important look at the role that soccer has
played in Argentina’s local politics following that country’s financial crisis in
2001.
3
Ecuador’s previous president, Lucio Gutiérrez, was removed from office in
April 2005 by mass protests against his policies of neoliberal economic adjustment and heavy-handed clientelism in national politics. He completed less
than three years of his four year term and was replaced by his Vice President,
Palacio. Felipe Burbano de Lara (2005) provides a good overview of the April
protests.
4
See devdata.worldbank.org for statistics on Ecuador’s annual GNI.
1
2
References Cited
Bhabha, Homi K.
1990 Introduction: Narrating the Nation. In Nation and Narration. Homi K.
Bhabha, ed. Pp. 1–7. London and New York: Routledge.
Burbano de Lara, Felipe
2005 La caída de Gutiérrez y la rebelión de abril (The Fall of Gutiérrez and
the Abril Rebellion). Íconos 23:19–26.
Danforth, Loring M.
2001 Is the “World Game” an “Ethnic Game” or an “Aussie Game”? Narrating the Nation in Australian Soccer. American Ethnologist
28(2):363–387.
El Comercio
2006a Un Fervor que Convoca a la Nación (A Fervor that Summons the
Nation), June 15. Electronic document, www.elcomercio.com. Accessed
July 2, 2006.
2006b 20,000 Policias Vigilan Festejos por Triunfo Ecuador (20 Thousand
Police Watch Over Festivities for Ecuador’s Triumph), June 15. Electronic document, www.elcomercio.com. Accessed July 2, 2006.
2006c Los Migrantes tras las Camisetas de la Tri (Migrants in Search of Tri
Jerseys), June 20. Electronic document, www.elcomercio.com. Accessed
June 30, 2006.
2006d La Tri y el Libre Mercado (The Tri and the Free Market), June 20.
Electronic document, www.elcomercio.com. Accessed July 2, 2006.
2006e El Juncal Celebró la Actuación de la Tri (El Juncal Celebrated the
Tri’s Performance), June 26. Electronic document, www.elcomercio.com. Accessed July 2, 2006.
2006f El Juego contra Inglaterra Alteró la Programación de Inti Raymi (The
Game against England Altered Inti Raymi Festivities), June 26. Electronic document, www.elcomercio.com. Accessed July 2, 2006.
280
Forment, Carlos A.
2007 The Democratic Dribbler: Football Clubs, Neoliberal Globalization,
and Buenos Aires’ Municipal Election of 2003. Public Culture
19(1):85–116.
González, Enric
2007 Historias del Calcio: Una crónica de Italia a través del Fútbol (Soccer
Tales: A Chronicle of Italy through Football). Barcelona: RBA Libros,
S.A.
Magazine, Roger
2007 Golden and Blue like My Heart: Masculinity, Youth, and Power among
Soccer Fans in Mexico City. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Miklavcic, Alessandra
2008 Slogans and Graffiti: Postmemory among Youth in the Italo-Slovenian
Borderland. American Ethnologist 35(3):440–453.
Radcliffe, Sarah and Sallie Westwood
1996 Remaking the Nation: Place, Identity and Politics in Latin America.
London and New York: Routledge.
Rahier, Jean Muteba
2008 El Mundial del Fútbol 2006 y la Selección Ecuatoriana: Discurso de
Alteridad en la Internet y en la Prensa (The 2006 Soccer World Cup
and the Ecuadorian Team: Discourse of Alterity on the Internet and in
the Press). Discurso & Sociedad 2(3):609–641.
Soccer
Nationalism:
Ecuador and the
World Cup
281
Ecuador and the World Cup
MAXIMILIAN VIATORI
Iowa State University
Figure 1. Caption: A motorcycle fan with his head shaved in a soccer ball pattern, Quito. Photo by
author.
S
occer is just soccer, right? Wrong, replied Spanish journalist
Enric González who covered the Italian soccer league for Spain’s
largest newspaper El Pais from 2003 to 2007. Soccer is more than
a public exhibition of athletic skill—it is an integral part of many
nations’ “collective memory” (González 2007:24). Anthropologists
have also noted the importance of soccer for symbolizing local identities and displaying national pride. For example, Alessandra
Miklavcic (2008) demonstrates that a recent soccer match between
Italy and Slovenia reignited nationalist passions and historical grudges
over the countries’ shared border. In Australia, Loring Danforth
(2001) shows that soccer has been an important vehicle for the expresCity & Society, Vol. 20, Issue 2, pp. 275–281, ISSN 0893-0465, eISSN 1548-744X.
© 2008 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-744X.2008.00020.x.
City & Society
sion of competing versions of nationalism. According to Danforth,
traditional elites have used soccer to further a narrative of Australia as
a racially homogenous nation by banning “ethnic” soccer clubs—those
associated with different immigrant populations—from playing in
the National League. In contrast, the owners of these clubs have
argued that their teams are vital symbols of Australia’s multicultural
nationalism.
In a similar vein, Ecuador’s qualification for the
2006 World Cup marked an
important moment for “narrating the nation” in this
small
South
American
country (Bhabha 1990).
Soccer has a long history in
Ecuador and represents an
important aspect of social life.
The Federation of Ecuadorian
Soccer was founded in 1925
and the country now has more
than twenty professional
clubs divided into two
Figure 2. Caption: A homeless boy plays soccer in front of an expensive Quito
leagues. No other sport comshopping center. Photo by author.
petes with soccer for dominance; the national team’s games are consistently the most-watched
television programs in Ecuador, sometimes drawing as much as 90
percent of the country’s viewers (Radcliffe and Westwood 1996:93).
Despite Ecuador’s love affair with soccer, the country has struggled
to compete against soccer giants like Argentina, Uruguay and the
perennially dominant Brazil. Ecuador’s best finish in the Copa America,
the longest running soccer tournament in South America, was fourth
place in 1993. Before 2006, Ecuador qualified only once for the World
Cup—losing two of its three games during the 2002 competition hosted
by South Korea and Japan. In contrast, Brazil has qualified for every
Soccer World Cup and won the tournament’s golden trophy a record
five times.1
Ecuador’s 2006 tournament berth sparked public celebrations
across the country as well as declarations by politicians and pundits
that the Ecuadorian team’s success represented the country’s future;
one in which renewed national unity would enable it to compete on
the global playing field (El Comercio 2006a; 2006d). This was an
appealing message after two decades of structural adjustment programs
led the country into an economic crisis, which reached an apex in
1999 when Ecuador’s largest banks collapsed.2
Coverage of the World Cup dominated the front pages of Ecuador’s most prominent newspaper, the conservative El Comercio, and
276
Soccer
Nationalism:
Ecuador and the
World Cup
Figure 3. Caption: Celebrating Ecuador’s win against Costa Rica, boys in a poor neighborhood in the
provincial city of Puyo play soccer in the street long after sunset. Photo by author.
editorials admonished the country’s citizens to put aside the race and
class differences that had “impeded” national unification. One article
reported that Indigenous communities in several northern provinces
had suspended their celebration of Inti Raymi—the solstice—to watch
the playoff game between Ecuador and England (El Comercio 2006f).
Another praised residents in the community of Juncal—the home
town of Ecuador’s star veteran player, Agustín Delgado—who “forgot
their poverty, [and] lack of basic services and got animated for the
team” (El Comercio 2006e). Then interim President Alfredo Palacio
even joined the party, showing off a jersey signed by the Ecuadorian
team. After Ecuador advanced to the playoffs, he granted an asueto
(little holiday) so that Ecuadorians could celebrate with a shortened
work day.
Proclamations of national unity during the World Cup were little
more than thinly-veiled political rhetoric, however. After declaring
his support for World Cup celebrations, the President quickly dispatched 20,000 police with helicopters to monitor the revelers, many
of whom gathered in the same places where protestors called for the
removal of Palacio’s predecessor the year before (El Comercio
2006b).3
The 2006 Soccer World Cup provided an important moment for
Ecuador’s elites to reassert a narrative of Ecuadorian nationalism rooted
in internal homogeneity, one that conveniently glossed over differences
in race and gender. In 1998, Ecuador revised its constitution to recognize the country’s multiethnic make-up. Nonetheless, some whitemestizo elites have continued to resist the idea of ethnic and racial
plurality as a basis for national identity, defending their privileged
position in Ecuadorian society. Yet the fact that most of Ecuador’s star
World Cup players were Afro-Ecuadorian undermined visions of
277
City & Society
Ecuador as a homogenous
nation. According to Jean
Muteba Rahier (2008:622),
white-mestizos dealt with this
visible contradiction by ignoring the race of Ecuador’s
players in published commentary on the World Cup. Journalists and bloggers focused
almost exclusively on aspects
of the sport that appeared to
index white-mestizo society,
thus perpetuating the official
invisibility of blackness in the
Ecuadorian nation. Likewise,
celebrations of soccer as a
symbol of Ecuadorian identity
quietly
naturalized
“the
national” as a decidedly male
space. Soccer is considered a
masculine sport in Ecuador
Figure 4. Caption: A recent college graduate displays his official team jersey at the
and throughout much of Latin
hotel where he works near downtown Quito. Photo by author.
America (e.g. Magazine
2007). The majority of players
and fans at all levels of the
game are men, as the photos
in this essay attest. As such,
declaring soccer a source of
national character largely
excluded women from active
participation in the nationas-a-game.
One reporter remarked
that after Ecuador’s win
against Costa Rica, fans took
to the streets, quickly melding
into rivers of yellow, red and
blue (the national colors)
Figure 5. Caption: Local news stations cover festivities on Amazonas Avenue, Quito, where the differences among
following Ecuador’s win against Costa Rica. Photo by author.
them vanished (El Comercio
2006b). Besides reproducing
race and gender inequalities, World Cup celebrations renewed class
inequalities in subtle but noticeable ways. The Ecuadorian national
jersey—according to the aforementioned reporter, a symbol of “country
and team” second only to the flag—acted as a token of difference as
much as an emblem of unity. The officially-sanctioned jersey, produced
278
by Marathon Sports (an Ecuadorian-based multinational), retailed for
US $29.90 in upscale malls in Ecuador’s largest cities. In a country
where 51 percent of the population lives below the poverty line (most
of whom are Indigenous), and the average monthly salary in 2006 was
US $237, this symbol of national identity was hardly accessible to most
(El Comercio 2006c).4 While a small number of upper and middle class
Ecuadorians engaged in acts of patriotic consumption, buying Marathon
shirts for themselves and relatives abroad, most settled for cheap knockoffs sold on street corners and open air markets for a few dollars (El
Comercio 2006c). In the end, rather than disappearing into a yellow
clad utopia, fans were distinguished in ways that echoed enduring disparities within the Ecuadorian nation state.
Soccer
Nationalism:
Ecuador and the
World Cup
Figure 6. Caption: World Cup soccer on TV, Quito. Photo by author.
Figure 7. Caption: The day after Ecuador lost to England and was knocked out of the playoffs an
Indigenous shoeshine boy watches as the flag is raised over a military exercise in front of the national
capitol, Quito. Photo by author.
279
City & Society
Notes
Acknowledgments. I owe special thanks to Travis Hartman for his help editing
and selecting the final photographs for this essay.
Argentina and Uruguay have each won the World Cup twice.
Forment (2007) provides an important look at the role that soccer has
played in Argentina’s local politics following that country’s financial crisis in
2001.
3
Ecuador’s previous president, Lucio Gutiérrez, was removed from office in
April 2005 by mass protests against his policies of neoliberal economic adjustment and heavy-handed clientelism in national politics. He completed less
than three years of his four year term and was replaced by his Vice President,
Palacio. Felipe Burbano de Lara (2005) provides a good overview of the April
protests.
4
See devdata.worldbank.org for statistics on Ecuador’s annual GNI.
1
2
References Cited
Bhabha, Homi K.
1990 Introduction: Narrating the Nation. In Nation and Narration. Homi K.
Bhabha, ed. Pp. 1–7. London and New York: Routledge.
Burbano de Lara, Felipe
2005 La caída de Gutiérrez y la rebelión de abril (The Fall of Gutiérrez and
the Abril Rebellion). Íconos 23:19–26.
Danforth, Loring M.
2001 Is the “World Game” an “Ethnic Game” or an “Aussie Game”? Narrating the Nation in Australian Soccer. American Ethnologist
28(2):363–387.
El Comercio
2006a Un Fervor que Convoca a la Nación (A Fervor that Summons the
Nation), June 15. Electronic document, www.elcomercio.com. Accessed
July 2, 2006.
2006b 20,000 Policias Vigilan Festejos por Triunfo Ecuador (20 Thousand
Police Watch Over Festivities for Ecuador’s Triumph), June 15. Electronic document, www.elcomercio.com. Accessed July 2, 2006.
2006c Los Migrantes tras las Camisetas de la Tri (Migrants in Search of Tri
Jerseys), June 20. Electronic document, www.elcomercio.com. Accessed
June 30, 2006.
2006d La Tri y el Libre Mercado (The Tri and the Free Market), June 20.
Electronic document, www.elcomercio.com. Accessed July 2, 2006.
2006e El Juncal Celebró la Actuación de la Tri (El Juncal Celebrated the
Tri’s Performance), June 26. Electronic document, www.elcomercio.com. Accessed July 2, 2006.
2006f El Juego contra Inglaterra Alteró la Programación de Inti Raymi (The
Game against England Altered Inti Raymi Festivities), June 26. Electronic document, www.elcomercio.com. Accessed July 2, 2006.
280
Forment, Carlos A.
2007 The Democratic Dribbler: Football Clubs, Neoliberal Globalization,
and Buenos Aires’ Municipal Election of 2003. Public Culture
19(1):85–116.
González, Enric
2007 Historias del Calcio: Una crónica de Italia a través del Fútbol (Soccer
Tales: A Chronicle of Italy through Football). Barcelona: RBA Libros,
S.A.
Magazine, Roger
2007 Golden and Blue like My Heart: Masculinity, Youth, and Power among
Soccer Fans in Mexico City. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Miklavcic, Alessandra
2008 Slogans and Graffiti: Postmemory among Youth in the Italo-Slovenian
Borderland. American Ethnologist 35(3):440–453.
Radcliffe, Sarah and Sallie Westwood
1996 Remaking the Nation: Place, Identity and Politics in Latin America.
London and New York: Routledge.
Rahier, Jean Muteba
2008 El Mundial del Fútbol 2006 y la Selección Ecuatoriana: Discurso de
Alteridad en la Internet y en la Prensa (The 2006 Soccer World Cup
and the Ecuadorian Team: Discourse of Alterity on the Internet and in
the Press). Discurso & Sociedad 2(3):609–641.
Soccer
Nationalism:
Ecuador and the
World Cup
281