Soccer Politics / The Politics of Football

An interesting story is shaping up in the CONCACAF World Cup qualifying games with two consecutive victories by Haiti. They’ve now followed up a 6-0 trouncing of the Virgin Islands with a 2-0 defeat of Curacao, and are at the top of their qualifying group.

Haitian football has, of course, been through a lot during the past years, including the death of key personnel during the earthquake, a harsh post-earthquake 9-0 loss to the U.S. women’s team in early 2010, and the quarantining of the men’s youth team in Jamaica. They didn’t make it into the Gold Cup this year. But the dreams of Haitian football are still there, always kept alive by the shared memory of the nation’s one appearance in the World Cup, in 1974, and of a particular goal made by Manno Sannon against Italy in their first game.

Haiti lost that game 4-1 and didn’t get out of the group stage: but no matter, Sannon was and is a national hero: one mural portrayed him alongside Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro in a pantheon of Caribbean heroes. Might a new set of heroes emerge from the national team’s current roster? Already, fans have been delighted by the recent games, a needed respite and challenge to the discouraging news that surrounds them.

James Montague wrote a nice piece about Haiti’s recent trouncing of the Virgin Islands for CNN, alongside a second piece in The National.

Meanwhile Laura Wagner, our intrepid Haiti football correspondent, contributes this narrative of her attempt to see the game with her friends Claudine, G-Love, and a new friend named Jean:

Claudine, G-Love and I arrived at the stadium at about 1:30 pm for the 3 pm match, just as the rain began to pour.  We stood for some time under a street merchant’s tarp, where we bought a little bottle of cheap Roi de Coq rum and chatted as the rain poured down.  Fans wearing Haitian flags and red and blue jerseys streamed down the street, lined with tarp-and-sheet-metal homes, beauty salons, and businesses.  While G-Love ventured off to try to by some more tickets from scalpers, I went and checked out the line, and was stunned to find that it stretched all the way from the stadium entrance up past the Ministry of Public Health.

“We have to go stand in line,” I told Claudine.  She put a plastic bag over her hair, and off we went.

This was smart thinking, as it turned out.  After the rain let up, people moved en masse into the line.  It stretched from Rue de l’Enterrement all the way up Rue O. Durand, up to the Champ-de-Mars.

At least standing in line was not boring.  It was, rather, an active process requiring constant engagement and vigilance.  People wedged their way into any gap in the line, so everyone had to “kole” against the people next to them.  Claudine was pressed against me, while I was pressed against a chubby middle-aged guy in a red T-shirt.

“I’m all up against you and I don’t even know your name,” I told him.

He smiled, displaying a gold tooth.  “I’m Jean.”

“Pleased to meet you.  I’m Laura.”

The line moved incrementally.  Vendors hawked water, sodas, ice cream, conch in spicy sauce, fried plantain chips, Haitian flags (both on sticks and in bandanna form), red-and-blue banners with “Haiti Chérie” on them (five gourdes apiece), fresh coconuts, hot dogs, and so on.  “What do you want to eat when we get inside?” I asked Claudine.  Wet from the rain, I was thinking hopefully of a cold beer and a bag of salty plantain chips.  Claudine, G-Love and I bought Haiti flag bandannas, which we tied around our heads.

A smallish man appeared to our right.  “The back of the line is no good for me,” he said in a quiet reasonable voice.  “Let me in here.”  We all squished together again, immediately and instinctively, to firm up any gaps between people.

Claudine laughed.  “For whom exactly is the back of the line good, monchè?”

Soon after, we began to notice a lot of police cars, and people began to say that Martelly’s entourage would be arriving any moment.  Sure enough, within seconds the president appeared on foot, wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt and flanked by armed bodyguards.  People cheered and shouted “Martelly!”  He waved and headed toward the stadium.

A woman walked down the street, clad head-to-toe in the Haitian flag.  Her head was wrapped in a Haitian flag scarf.  Her dress consisted of two flags.  Her earring were flags.  Even her umbrella was red and blue.  I stopped her to pose for a photo.

A bunch of foreigners went straight to a metal gate alongside the main entrance and seemed to get in expeditiously and without hassle.  I was curious about these foreigners and their badges, and how one might get this VIP-blan access.

We moved closer to the stadium, glacially.  As we got closer, we saw men breaking the fence and sneaking through.  A bunch of people in line decided this seemed like a good idea, and hopped out of line to try this new tactic.  Claudine and I stayed in line.

In the end, we, and possibly thousands of others, never made it into the stadium.  As people on the streets said, “Our tickets died in our hands.”  There was so much upheaval and so much shoving that they locked all the entrances to the stadium and began beating people back with police batons.  We don’t know if too many tickets were printed, or if there were counterfeit tickets on the street, or if simply too many people pushed their way in ticketless, but in any case, an awful lot of people who paid for their tickets never made it into the game.  We stood outside as we heard the crowd erupt in cheers with each goal, and bitterly wondered what was going on.  Among that crowd were soccer fans who had gone without food so that they could buy those tickets — those ultimately useless tickets.

As the dezòd mounted and it looked like violence was likely, Claudine and I split.  We found a restaurant with a TV on Rue Capois and watched the second half of the game there.  “Pòdyab Îles Vièrges” we said, sipping our drinks and eating banann pese in peace.  “Poor things.”  6-0 is a pretty sad score.  We were happy not to be at the stadium.

Haiti’s changes of qualifying for the World Cup are, of course, pretty slim. They’re at the top of the group now, and might well hold their position there against Antigua, but the Round 3 of the qualifiers will pose a more serious challenge.

Still, these two victories are nevertheless something significant, and suggest something might be afoot worth following with the team. Last year at the World Cup I saw a few Haitian flags carried and displayed during the games in South Africa, and I know plenty of Haitian fans who would consider it about the highlight of a lifetime to go watch their team play in Brazil in 2014. There would be a nice symmetry to it if, forty years after Sannon’s goal, that happened. If there’s a bit of justice in this world, maybe it will.

The recent expulsion of the U-17 Haitian football team from Jamaica has generated controversy and protest in Haiti. The Haitian Football Federation has released an official report about the incident. You can read the original French report here.

Myrtha Désulmé has produced an Engish translation of the report, and kindly allowed me to post it as well: you can download it here.

The details are significant and help explain the strong reaction within the Haitian footballing community and the broader population to the incident.

While unjust events dominate recent Haitian soccer news on an international scale, there are happier local stories too. Yesterday evening at Stade Sylvio Cator, I watched the final championship game of the two top women’s soccer teams, Valentina and the Tigresses.

My friend Hayana Jean-Francois, formerly the captain of the national U17 team that traveled to Costa Rica in March, is #9 for Valentina. I sat with her teammates from the national team, Madeline Delice (originally from Léogane, plays for Anacaona) and Gerthrude Saint-Jacques (from Cité Soleil, plays for Amazons). Also sitting with us was Hayana’s mother, about whom Hayana has written a little here. Obviously, we were cheering for Valentina. They were only seating people in a portion of the stadium, but that portion was packed, with people even sitting in the aisles. Vendors went up and down the stands, selling beer and cold sodas, plantain chips, peanuts, and conch in spicy vinegar sauce. Photographers crowded the field, taking pictures of the women as they did their warm-ups and stood with their hands over their hearts for the national anthem. Cheerleaders in Digicel red-and-white danced and did some impressive gymnastics while a perplexing Digicel mascot (an anthropomorphized red dot? An overheated person in a foam suit?) bounced around alongside them.

Here are some observations:

1. You do not mess with Haitian soccer fans. The ignorant and gender-biased American onlooker might be inclined to presume that this would be a low-intensity match, since most of the players are teenaged women. The players, in fact, did seem to be very civil with one another – helping one another up after a fall, congratulating one another with sincerity and friendship. The fans, however, were hardcore. Shouting matches ensued between Valentina and Tigresse fans when people said even the most minimally disparaging remark about the opposing team’s players. While in some cultural contexts (I’m talking to you, Eastern Europe), lamentation and deprecation of one’s own team are signs of tough-love fandom (e.g., “We are the worst team ever! The only reason we won is that the other team played so badly!”), this would not fly in Haiti. This might get the daylights kicked out of you in Haiti, actually.

2. You really do not mess with Haitian soccer moms. This is a corollary of Observation #1. When a (somewhat drunk) woman in the row in front of us shouted “Hayana doesn’t know how to play!” Hayana’s mother (who until this point had seemed like nothing more than a pleasant woman in her forties, proudly wearing the badge that gets her into all the Federation games for free) responded with an admirable and seething fury.

3. Last-minute miracles do happen. In the first half, the Tigresses got a goal. “Don’t worry,” Gerthrude assured me. “Valentina will score in the second half.” But as the second half went on, this seemed less and less likely. Valentina appeared to have gotten a goal early on, but it was declared not good. “It seems like Valentina is going to lose…” Gerthrude despaired. As the clock ticked down, Madeline and I sipped a shared beer, resigning ourselves to the inevitable loss. But then – in the last few seconds! – Valentina’s captain, Manoucheka Pierre-Louis, from midfield, scored a goal. The stadium erupted in cheers, for, with the tie, Valentina had clinched their place as the championship winners. “I told you Valentina would win!” shouted Gerthrude. The field became a flurry of pink and white as the players screamed and danced in delight and glory, and hoisted Manoucheka onto their shoulders. As the music blasted, I took Madeline’s hand and made her dance with me. Valentina received a trophy and $10,000 US from Digicel (the Tigresses and the third-place team got smaller trophies and smaller sums). Champagne bottles were shaken and popped as the women were drenched under the stadium lights in the place that once saw Haitian soccer greats like Manno Sanon and Joe Gaetjens play. But last night, the cheers were all for Valentina. It was a happy moment in Port-au-Prince – and it wasn’t about the earthquake, or cholera, or an election, or camps, or violence against women, or any of the other things that make the news and that make Haiti seem like the most impossible, unthinkable place in the world. If there were particularly Haitian aspects of the setting, the snacks, or the fandom, they were all superseded in this moment by what seems, even to this cynical and relativistic anthropologist, to be something that could take place anywhere in the world: the universal glow of suspense, pay-off, and triumph.

Last Tuesday Haiti’s Under-17 National Football team was sent home from Jamaica after two players and a coach were diagnosed with malaria. The decision was presented as a public health measure — the Jamaican public health ministry described the sickness as “imported” — and resulted in an effective forfeit for the team from the CONCACAF competition. There are still many questions about the decision, for it seems a little unlikely — given the relatively regular movement between Haiti and Jamaica of travelers, including aid workers — that the presence of the footballers really represented a public health menace. And it has incited strong and impassioned response among some Haitians, who have decried the fact that the young player’s crucial moment of competition was taken away from them as a result of the diagnosis.

Today, Jacqueline Charles of the Miami Herald reporting on a protest march to the CARICOM building in protest of the decision, including young players and supporters wearing team jerseys. A few thousand people attended the march. Protestors attacked the decision as discriminatory, and some have called for a boycott on Jamaican products — and even on reggae music on the radio.

(You can read her full story at the Miami Herald here)

Although Haiti’s national teams have had difficulty in international competitions during the past decades, their is tremendous pride in the players and coaches who go overseas for such competitions. Last Fall, Laura Wagner described her discussions with members of Haiti’s under-17 women’s team, who suffered a humiliating loss at the hands of the U.S. — after having lost players and coaches in the earthquake — but remain committed to training and competing overseas. The international appearances of Haiti’s football teams are a rare chance for the country to represent itself overseas in a way that challenges stereotypes, and places them — at least in principle — on an equal footing with other richer and more powerful nations. So the incident in Jamaica is hurtful, particularly because it was directed at young players who have overcome tremendous odds to be on the team and compete internationally. And for many Haitians it obviously calls up many other previous cases in which they were discriminated against overseas based on accusations that they were carrying disease to other countries. (The most of famous of these, of course, was the period in the 1980s when Haitians were accused of bring AIDS to the United States, analyzed in Paul Farmer’s book AIDS and Accusation). Especially given that the country is suffering under the burdens of a cholera outbreak — it has afflicted at least 200,000, and left many thousands dead — that was most likely brought to the country from outside, this accusation about the danger of the spread of malaria hits particularly hard.

Jamaican and CONCACAF authorities presumably didn’t imagine their decision would ignite such controversy. But, given the history of discrimination against Haitians — and the intense passion with which many fans follow the sport — they easily could have predicted that they would be pricking the pride of Haitians and approached the whole matter more carefully and diplomatically. It’s hard to say whether today’s protests will continue or peter out. But part of the ethic of international competition must be respect for the dignity of the countries and players who participate in them. In this case, it wouldn’t have taken too much to understand that the actions would be taken by some as a deep insult, and a significant theft of hope, in a context where hope is in short supply.

In the midst of the brewing crisis over the election in Haiti, I’m taking solace in small, containable observations. Jude Celestin, the ruling party candidate who now stands accused by twelve other candidates of having carried out fraud at the polls today, made a shrewd choice in his campaign colors. As Emily Troutman noted in a pre-election article on the candidates, the green and white of his posters and shirts are the same as those of the Brazilian national team. Which means a huge swath of the Haitian population already had a shirt ready to wear if they wanted to go to a rally for Celestin. To top it off, his number — the one voters were to check if they chose him — was none other than #10.  You can see musician Gasman Couleur sporting his Brazil #10 shirt at a Celestin rally (photo from Haitianbeatz.com).

Basically, it was as if Celestin was trying to channel the spirit of Pelé. It doesn’t seem, for now, to have really worked. One of Celestin’s rivals, meanwhile, the singer Michel Martelly, has opted for a bright pink as his campaign color, as Emily Troutman also notes. (Her tweets from Haiti have been extremely informative today.) Which prompted one of the few humorous tweets to come out about Haiti today, which hoped that if Martelly wins he won’t change the red and blue of Haiti’s flag to pink and red. In a pre-election rally, meanwhile, Martelly taunted Celestin, suggesting maybe he was bad luck for Brazil. “You’ve seen Celestin’s posters, right? Green and yellow? That’s probably why Brazil keeps losing.”

There was, until this morning, cautious optimism that the election would go ahead relatively smoothly. Now, with candidates calling for an annulment of the election and demonstrations tomorrow and the electoral commission declaring the election is valid, it’s unclear what is going to transpire this week. But we are likely heading into a serious political crisis of accusation and counter-accusation, perhaps worse. I’ll offer one half-joking hope: maybe the fact that there is a Real Madrid-Barcelona match (El Clasico) is being played tomorrow will cool things down a bit? The game is always a major draw in Haiti, as Laura Wagner reported here last Spring.

Moments like this leave me wishing politics was a little more like football where — for all the drama, inscrutability, tragedy, and unfairness — there at are least some rules, and you know that at some point the game will end.

Just saw this interesting article about the Gaetjens family’s wishes for today’s U.S.-England game. Lots of us on the same page!

In an interview yesterday Altidore talked about the same thing.

You can see earlier posts on this here and here.

My first piece is up at Chimurenga’s Pilgrimages Blog:

“In Port-au-Prince there stands – or at least there stood, before the January 12^th earthquake devastated much of the city – a mural depicting four great nationalist heroes of the Caribbean: Toussaint L’ouverture, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Emmanuel Sannon. If you don’t recognize the last name, you are not alone, for Sannon’s presence among this group might at first seem a little odd. He’s not a legendary revolutionary hero, but rather a legendary football player, beloved by Haitians but little known outside the country. Although Sannon had a great professional career in Haiti as both  player and coach, he is best remembered for one illuminated moment on the football field. In 1974, Haiti reached the World Cup, for the first and so far only time in its history. In the group phase, Haiti faced Italy, a team against which no side had scored a goal for a long time. Yet, early in the game, Sannon burst forward, taking the Italians by surprise, and slid a beautiful goal into the net.”

Read the rest of this post at Pilgrimages…

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I just published this op-ed piece about Joe Gaetjens, Jozy Altidore, and my hopes for this Saturday’s U.S.-England game in the Pittsburgh Courrier.

The piece is also appearing in several other papers, including the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Seattle Times.

A French version of the piece is up at the World Cup blog of Mediapart.

Jozy Altidore said he was also looking back to Gaetjens example as he prepared to face England.

You can read this earlier post for links to a great article in Sports Illustrated about Gaetjens by Alexander Wolff.

He also did a nice segment on All Things Considered about Gaetjens.

People are getting ready for the World Cup in Port-au-Prince.  This is a country where taptaps are decorated to reflect the drivers’ allegiance (to Brazil or Argentina) or even to honor a particular player, and where cell phone companies put up billboards with the national team that proclaim “One People.  One Passion.  Football!  Together, we’ll go farther.”

Friends tell me that the government skimps on giving kouran (electricity) in the weeks leading up to the World Cup in order to guarantee that there will be enough fuel to run televisions during the matches.  And electricity comes on at funny times of the day, often later in the evening or earlier in the morning, according to when World Cup or important qualifying matches are being shown.

Last week, I went to what’s being called Site Bèbè — the City of the Deaf — a camp where many of Port-au-Prince’s deaf residents have come together in camps.  My friend Marlène speaks sign language and often works as an interpreter for the deaf, so I’d met many of these people before the earthquake.

Reunited with Dolores for the first time since the earthquake, we sign "Mwen kontan wè w!"

We went together to visit the camp, which is in a treeless area near the old Hasco abandoned sugar refinery, loomed over by the enormous flagless flagpole that Aristide erected before the 2004 coup, just down the road from Cité Soleil.

"Site Bèbè"

Tents targeted for the deaf

View of uninhabited tents and Hasco from Site Bèbè

The day was hot and cloudless, and the sun was high, so Marlène (a Brazil fan) lent me her new sunhat, which she’d been given by some Brazilian MINUSTAH.  The hat became a conversation piece.  “Are you Brazilian?” asked camp residents, either through Marlène or by speaking to the best of their abilities.  (Many of the deaf in Port-au-Prince were not born deaf, but lost their hearing as children, generally as a result of typhoid.  So many of them speak clearly, in spite not being able to hear.)  “Are you a fanatik Brezil?”

Twelve-year-old Nancy, the hearing child of two deaf parents, in her soccer T-shirt.

I have to confess that I am not any kind of fan.  I brush the thumb of my right hand forward under my chin to negate, and then slowly finger-spell “F-A-N-A-T-I-K.”  I am not sure how one goes about cultivating allegiance to the national team of a country that is not one’s own and to which one has no historical or experiential connection.  Eventually I decide that, because I have cousins who have lived in São Paulo for several generations, I can be a Brazil fan.  “Why?” signs one camp resident, disdainfully.  “Why don’t you like Argentina?”  Another volunteers, “I’m a Messian.”  I discover that there is a distinctive sign for “Kaka.”

Laura (in Brazil hat), Marlène (in yellow shirt), and residents of "Site Bèbè" sign "I love you" for the camera.

Given the extent of soccer fandom, the number of people who are “malad” (“ill”) for soccer and weep when their team loses, it should not surprise anyone that the World Cup is a big deal in Haiti.  But perhaps it is an even bigger deal this year.  “We didn’t have Kanaval this year,” a friend told me.  The earthquake took place just as Kanaval season began in January, disrupting and preventing one of the biggest cultural rituals of change, new beginnings, and community.  “So the World Cup has become even more important.  People need it, now.  They need something to think about.”

Since returning to Haiti in April, I’ve gotten to know several members of the Haitian national under-17 women’s soccer team.  They attempted to teach me a few moves (sternly coaching me on the basics of reception and transmission) and then told me, sweetly, “You’re really good!  You just need to learn to control the ball!” after I kicked the ball into their faces and nearly took out a clothesline.  One rainy afternoon, as we watched a movie and ate powdered milk with spoons, Hayana, their extraordinary team captain, took my notebook and wrote the story of the challenges and stigma she faced, and how she came to play soccer on the national team.

Hayana writes

Some accounts of the team’s loss to the US in the CONCACAF under-17 championships in March depict it as a tragedy, the end of a dream, the loss of a chance of escape.  Like many of her teammates, Hayana lost her home in the January 12 earthquake, and is now living with her family at an aunt’s house.  Her teammate, goalkeeper Madeline, whose mother, father, and sister died in Léogane on January 12, has moved in with her.  Madeline remains very damaged by what happened, but she still takes out and looks at the certificate they gave her in Costa Rica when the team traveled to compete against the U.S. in March, where she sat on the sidelines and watched, unable to play.  Their teammates Rosemonde and Gerthrude have gone back to their homes in Cité Soleil.

Rosemonde and Gerthrude

In the afternoons and evenings, all the girls still play soccer, at organized practice at the stadium, and barefoot in the streets with their friends (particularly young boys who come to admire these girls who can trounce them).

Hayana in motion

Hayana begins, in Creole:

Hi Laura, we’ve been talking about all kinds of things and we’ve talked a lot about soccer.  Now you’ve met a bunch of girls who know how to play soccer.  We would really like to teach you to play, but now it’s too late and it’s raining.  I think that all the girls like you, we like that you joke with us and you like to play.  I’m happy that God protected you [during the earthquake] so that we could become friends. I am happy to write this story for you.  Every time you read it you will think about your little friend Hayana.  I would like God to protect us so we can remain friends to the end, and I would like to thank God because after the earthquake he took care of me. He didn’t only save my life, He made me a decent person.  I will ask God for more strength in my studies, because I love school.  My goal is to finish school so I can learn something in my life, because school is the only means to get anywhere in life.

Here, she switches to French.

My soccer story:

I remember when I was thirteen, my mother didn’t want me to play soccer.  She would beat me.  But I didn’t get discouraged because I love soccer.  Everything she did to me meant nothing because le foot is my passion, the thing I love.   Apart from school, it is soccer that interests me most.

I have an older brother named Stanley who loves me very much, and when he would take me to school I would take my backpack with my two notebooks and my pen, and I would sneak my athletic clothes in, too.  But I never trained formally.  Then
one morning when I was playing soccer in the street with my brother, I noticed that someone had stopped to watch me play.  He was one of the supervisors of the national under-15 women’s selection.  He asked me a lot of questions about my family, saying that he wanted to talk to my mother about my going to the Ranch Croix de Bouquets for the national selection.   My mother didn’t want me to.  So I packed up all my things and left.  Only my brother knew I had gone to the Ranch.  Of the 40 players there, they chose 18.  I was one of the winners.  When my mother learned I was part of the under-15 selection, she was astonished. I got to travel to Trinidad.  When I called her on the phone, she was happy to hear the voice of her little girl who was in Trinidad.  In the beginning she didn’t want any of this, and now she’s the one who makes sure I go to practice.  Thanks, Laura, for having read my story, my friend. [In English now] I THINK WITH YOU.