Hispanics Hurrah

As a schoolboy rugby player, soccer has always been soccer for me, but I accept that the recent World Cup game is simply called football, as the players do indeed spend most time with the ball at their feet. The broadcast spectacle of the games was exciting, particularly when the smaller nations showed their mettle – I was backing Curaçao and Cabo Verde in the early rounds!

Putting aside dodgy FIFA governance, mega media deals, ridiculous player club contracts, what I find most appealing about the rightly-named World Game is the flagrant cosmopolitan character of the teams. From Manchester, Madrid & Munich to Paris & Milan and others, the legendary tribal loyalty of fans attaches seamlessly to whatever mix of player backgrounds that money can buy.   Dare I say, most of their players have not come through the junior clubs of their respective cities.

The World Cup match that exemplified the universal colour-blindness of soccer fans was the tussle for third place between two great ex-imperial powers, France and England, whose players were mostly the sons of immigrants from their ex colonies. What a wonderful celebration of ‘multiculturalism’, or whatever you want to label it these days.  

As it happened the final match was an all-Hispanic affair, with winning Spain’s line-up also a reflection of its colonial past. His Trumpness had to put aside his political anti-Spain antipathy, so he could try to hog the stage during the final cup ceremony.

Which leads me to another Hispanic/Latino object of his ire, and ongoing White House anti-Mexican actions on immigration and deportation. Renowned and outspoken writer Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez recently moved to Mexico from the US after feeling no longer welcome, and has demolished classic US racist tropes about Mexicans in ’If It’s So Great There, Why Are They All Coming Here?, which I highly recommend.

Meantime, here’s a paraphrased taste of her conclusions:

Mexicans mostly stopped coming to the US twenty years ago;

Mexico is a thriving (12th world’s largest) sophisticated economy;  

‘They’ were actively recruited as labour in the past like takeaway, then sent home;

NAFTA destroyed small-scale Mexican farming;

Two-thirds of US ‘Mexicans’ are born there; the term now used for 65m Latinos of Puerto Rican and other descents;  

Many ‘they’ did not historically cross a border, rather the border crossed them as the USA swallowed up Texas, etc;  

Hollywood and corporate interests have promoted negative tropes about Mexicans for many decades;  

Last year Mexican crossings were the lowest since 1970;

If it’s so bad, why have 1.6m Americans moved to Mexico, their biggest diaspora.  

(No tener pelos en la lengua – no hairs on her tongue, as the Spanish saying goes!)

No doubt Hispanic World Cup Fever will inflect National Hispanic Heritage Month in September in the USA, with celebrations guided by The Don again?

!Feliz Mes de la Herencia Hispana!