Soccer Nationalism Ecuador

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Soccer Nationalism:Ecuador and the World Cup

MAXIMILIAN VIATORIIowa State University

Soccer is just soccer, right? Wrong, replied Spanish journalistEnric González who covered the Italian soccer league for Spain’slargest newspaper El Pais from 2003 to 2007. Soccer is more than

a public exhibition of athletic skill—it is an integral part of manynations’ “collective memory” (González 2007:24). Anthropologistshave also noted the importance of soccer for symbolizing local iden-tities and displaying national pride. For example, AlessandraMiklavcic (2008) demonstrates that a recent soccer match betweenItaly and Slovenia reignited nationalist passions and historical grudgesover the countries’ shared border. In Australia, Loring Danforth(2001) shows that soccer has been an important vehicle for the expres-

Figure 1. Caption: A motorcycle fan with his head shaved in a soccer ball pattern, Quito. Photo byauthor.

City & 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.





editorials admonished the country’s citizens to put aside the race andclass differences that had “impeded” national unification. One articlereported that Indigenous communities in several northern provinceshad suspended their celebration of Inti Raymi—the solstice—to watchthe playoff game between Ecuador and England (El Comercio 2006f).Another praised residents in the community of Juncal—the hometown of Ecuador’s star veteran player, Agustín Delgado—who “forgottheir poverty, [and] lack of basic services and got animated for theteam” (El Comercio 2006e). Then interim President Alfredo Palacioeven joined the party, showing off a jersey signed by the Ecuadorianteam. After Ecuador advanced to the playoffs, he granted an asueto(little holiday) so that Ecuadorians could celebrate with a shortenedwork day.

Proclamations of national unity during the World Cup were littlemore than thinly-veiled political rhetoric, however. After declaring

his support for World Cup celebrations, the President quickly dis-patched 20,000 police with helicopters to monitor the revelers, manyof whom gathered in the same places where protestors called for theremoval of Palacio’s predecessor the year before (El Comercio2006b).3

The 2006 Soccer World Cup provided an important moment forEcuador’s elites to reassert a narrative of Ecuadorian nationalism rootedin internal homogeneity, one that conveniently glossed over differencesin race and gender. In 1998, Ecuador revised its constitution to recog-nize the country’s multiethnic make-up. Nonetheless, some white-mestizo elites have continued to resist the idea of ethnic and racialplurality as a basis for national identity, defending their privilegedposition in Ecuadorian society. Yet the fact that most of Ecuador’s starWorld Cup players were Afro-Ecuadorian undermined visions of

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.

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Ecuador as a homogenousnation. According to JeanMuteba Rahier (2008:622),white-mestizos dealt with thisvisible contradiction by ignor-ing the race of Ecuador’splayers in published commen-tary on the World Cup. Jour-nalists and bloggers focusedalmost exclusively on aspectsof the sport that appeared toindex white-mestizo society,thus perpetuating the official

invisibility of blackness in theEcuadorian nation. Likewise,celebrations of soccer as asymbol of Ecuadorian identityquietly naturalized “thenational” as a decidedly malespace. Soccer is considered amasculine sport in Ecuadorand throughout much of LatinAmerica (e.g. Magazine2007). The majority of playersand fans at all levels of thegame are men, as the photosin this essay attest. As such,declaring soccer a source of national character largelyexcluded women from activeparticipation in the nation-as-a-game.

One reporter remarkedthat after Ecuador’s winagainst Costa Rica, fans tookto the streets, quickly meldinginto rivers of yellow, red andblue (the national colors)where the differences amongthem vanished (El Comercio2006b). Besides reproducing

race and gender inequalities, World Cup celebrations renewed classinequalities in subtle but noticeable ways. The Ecuadorian nationaljersey—according to the aforementioned reporter, a symbol of “countryand team” second only to the flag—acted as a token of difference asmuch as an emblem of unity. The officially-sanctioned jersey, produced

Figure 5. Caption: Local news stations cover festivities on Amazonas Avenue, Quito, following Ecuador’s win against Costa Rica. Photo by author.

Figure 4. Caption: A recent college graduate displays his official team jersey at thehotel where he works near downtown Quito. Photo by author.

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by Marathon Sports (an Ecuadorian-based multinational), retailed forUS $29.90 in upscale malls in Ecuador’s largest cities. In a countrywhere 51 percent of the population lives below the poverty line (mostof whom are Indigenous), and the average monthly salary in 2006 wasUS $237, this symbol of national identity was hardly accessible to most(El Comercio 2006c).4 While a small number of upper and middle classEcuadorians engaged in acts of patriotic consumption, buying Marathonshirts for themselves and relatives abroad, most settled for cheap knock-offs sold on street corners and open air markets for a few dollars (ElComercio 2006c). In the end, rather than disappearing into a yellowclad utopia, fans were distinguished in ways that echoed enduring dis-parities within the Ecuadorian nation state.

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 anIndigenous shoeshine boy watches as the flag is raised over a military exercise in front of the nationalcapitol, Quito. Photo by author.

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Notes

Acknowledgments. I owe special thanks to Travis Hartman for his help editing

and selecting the final photographs for this essay.1Argentina and Uruguay have each won the World Cup twice.2Forment (2007) provides an important look at the role that soccer has

played in Argentina’s local politics following that country’s financial crisis in2001.

3Ecuador’s previous president, Lucio Gutiérrez, was removed from office inApril 2005 by mass protests against his policies of neoliberal economic adjust-ment and heavy-handed clientelism in national politics. He completed lessthan 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.4See devdata.worldbank.org for statistics on Ecuador’s annual GNI.

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Soccer Nationalism Ecuador