Dispute Over Soccer Sparks a War
The soccer teams of neighbors Honduras and Salvador met in home-and-away matches in June, 1969, to qualify for the 1970 FIFA World Cup. The rivalry on the pitch became a proxy for real life tensions caused by Honduras’ mistreatment of immigrants who crossed the border from the more populous Salvador. The matches exacerbated the preexisting tensions. Instead of soccer acting as a proxy for war, real war ended up acting as a proxy for soccer. The first game, played in Honduras and won by the home team 1-0, was marred by fan fights. In Salvador, a girl killed herself in grief over the loss. She was transformed into a popular heroine, and her televised funeral that ramped up the emotions and exacerbated the dispute.
Salvador won the second leg, played at home, 3-0. Fans fought once again, and some Hondurans were killed. In retaliation, the locals in Honduras took it out on Salvadoran immigrants. Hondurans did so again, when Salvador won a final tiebreaker match played in Mexico on June 27th, 1969, 3-2. That supercharged the dispute into a crisis, and the Salvadoran government severed diplomatic ties in protest over the mistreatment of Salvadorans in Honduras. Two weeks later, on July 14th, Salvador’s military marched into Honduras. By the time a ceasefire was declared on the 18th, about 900 Salvadorans, mostly civilians, had been killed, while the Hondurans lost about 250 military dead, plus 2000 civilians. About 300,000 Salvadorans became refugees, after they were forced to flee Honduras.
