by Paul Theroux
The Guatemalans, sullen at the best of times, display a scolded resignation—bordering at times on guiltiness—when the subject of earthquakes is raised. Charles Darwin is wonderful in describing the sense of dislocation and spiritual panic that earthquakes produce in people. He experienced an earthquake when the Beagle was anchored off the Chilean coast. “A bad earthquake,” he writes, “at once destroys our oldest associations: the earth, the very emblem of solidity, has moved beneath our feet like a thin crust over a fluid;—one second of time has created in the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would not have produced.”
The Pretty Town of Santa Ana
THE TOWN ONLY LOOKED GODFORSAKEN; IN FACT, IT WAS comfortable. It was a nice combination of attributes. In every respect, Santa Ana, the most Central American of Central American towns, was a perfect place—perfect in its pious attitudes and pretty girls, perfect in its slumber, its coffee-scented heat, its jungly plaza, and in the dusty elegance of its old buildings whose whitewash at nightfall gave them a vivid phosphorescence. Even its volcano was in working order. My hotel, the Florida, was a labyrinthine one-story affair, with potted palms and wicker chairs and good food—fresh fish, from nearby Lake Guija, was followed by the crushed velvet of Santa Ana coffee, and Santa Ana dessert, a delicate cake of mashed beans and banana served in cream. This pleasing hotel cost four dollars a night. It was a block from the Plaza. All Santa Ana’s buildings of distinction—there were three—were in the plaza: the Cathedral was neo-gothic, the town hall had the colonnaded opulence of a ducal palace, and the Santa Ana theater had once been an opera house.
In another climate, I don’t think the theater would have seemed so special, but in this sleepy tropical town in the western highlands of El Salvador—and there was nothing here for the luxury-minded or ruin-hunting tourist—the theater was magnificent and strange. Its style was banana republic Graeco-Roman; it was newly whitewashed, and classical in an agreeably vulgar way, with cherubs on its façade, and trumpeting angels, and masks of comedy and tragedy, a partial sorority of Muses: a pudgy Melpomene, a pouncing Thalia, Calliope with a lyre in her lap, and—her muscles showing through her tunic as fully developed as a gym teacher’s—Terpsichore. There were columns, too, and a Romanesque portico, and on a shield a fuming volcano as nicely proportioned as Izalco, the one just outside town, which was probably the model for this emblem. It was a beautiful turn-of-the-century theater and not entirely neglected; once, it had provided Santa Ana with concerts and operas, but culturally Santa Ana had contracted, and catering to this shrunken condition the theater had been reduced to showing movies. That week, the offering was New York, New York.
I liked Santa Ana immediately; its climate was mild, its people alert and responsive, and it was small enough so that a short walk took me to its outskirts, where the hills were deep green and glossy with coffee bushes. The hard-pressed Guatemalans I had found a divided people—and the Indians in the hinterland seemed hopelessly lost; but El Salvador, on the evidence in Santa Ana, was a country of half-breeds, energetic and full of talk, practicing a kind of Catholicism based on tactile liturgy. In the Cathedral, pious Salvadoreans pinched the feet of saints and rubbed at relics, and women with infants—always remembering to insert a coin in the slot and light a candle first—seized the loose end of Christ’s cincture and mopped the child’s head with its tassel.
Soccer in San Salvador
I HAD READ ABOUT LATIN AMERICAN SOCCER—THE CHAOS, the riots, the passionately partisan crowds, the way political frustrations were ventilated at the stadiums. I knew for a fact that if one wished to understand the British it helped to see a soccer game; then, the British did not seem so tight-lipped and proper. Indeed, a British soccer game was an occasion for a form of gang warfare for the younger spectators. The muscular ritual of sport was always a clear demonstration of the wilder impulses in national character. The Olympic Games are interesting largely because they are a kind of world war in pantomime. “Would you mind if I went to the game with you?” I asked Alfredo, a salesman I had met on the train from Santa Ana.
Alfredo looked worried. “It will be very crowded,” he said. “There may be trouble. It is better to go to the swimming pool tomorrow—for the girls.”
“Do you think I came to El Salvador to pick up girls at a public swimming pool?”
“Did you come to El Salvador to see the football game?”
“Yes,” I said.
Alfredo was late. He blamed the traffic. “There will be a million people at the stadium.” He had brought along some friends, two boys who, he boasted, were studying English.
“How are you doing?” I asked them in English.
“Please?” said one. The other laughed. The first one said in Spanish, “We are only on the second lesson.”
Because of the traffic, and the risk of car thieves at the stadium, Alfredo parked half a mile away, at a friend’s house. This house was worth some study; it was a number of cubicles nailed to trees, with the leafy branches descending into the rooms. Cloth was hung from sticks to provide walls, and a strong fence surrounded it. I asked the friend how long he had lived there. He said his family had lived in the house for many years. I did not ask what happened when it rained.
But poverty in a poor country had subtle gradations. We walked down a long hill toward the stadium, and crossing a bridge I looked into a gorge expecting to see a river and saw lean-tos and cooking fires and lanterns. Who lived there? I asked Alfredo.
“Poor people,” he said.
Others were walking to the stadium, too. We joined a large procession of quick-marching fans, and as we drew closer to the stadium they began yelling and shoving in anticipation. The procession swarmed over the foothills below the stadium, crashing through people’s gardens and thumping the fenders of stalled cars. Here the dust was deep and the trampling feet of the fans made it rise until it became a brown fog, like a sepia print of a mob scene, with the cones of headlights bobbing in it. The mob was running now, and Alfredo and his friends were obscured by the dust cloud. Every ten feet, boys rushed forward and shook tickets at me, screaming, “Suns! Suns! Suns!”
These were the touts. They bought the cheapest tickets and sold them at a profit to people who had neither the time nor the courage to stand in a long rowdy line at a ticket window. The seat designations were those usual at a bullfight: Suns were the cheapest, bleacher seats; Shades were the more expensive ones under the canopy.
I fought my way through the touts and, having lost Alfredo, made my way uphill to the kettle-shaped stadium. It was an unearthly sight, the crowd of people emerging from darkness into luminous brown fog, the yells, the dust rising, the mountainside smoldering under a sky which, because of the dust, was starless. At that point, I considered turning back; but the mob was propelling me forward toward the stadium where the roar of the spectators inside made a sound like flames howling in a chimney.
The mob took up this cry and surged past me, stirring up the dust. There were women frying bananas and meat cakes over fires on the walkway that ran around the outside perimeter of the stadium. The smoke from these fires and the dust made each searchlight seem to burn with a smoky flame. The touts reappeared nearer the stadium. They were hysterical now. The game was about to start; they had not sold their tickets. They grabbed my arms, they pushed tickets in my face, they shouted.
One look at the lines of people near the ticket window told me that I would have no chance at all of buying a ticket legally. I was pondering this question when, through the smoke and dust, Alfredo appeared.
“Take your watch off,” he said. “And your ring. Put them in your pocket. Be very careful. Most of these people are thieves. They will rob you.”
I did as I was told. “What about the tickets? Shall we buy some Suns from these boys?”
“No, I will buy Shades.”
“Are they expensive?”
“Of course, but this will be a great game. I could never see such a game in Santa Ana
. Anyway, the Shades will be quieter.” Alfredo looked around. “Hide over there by the wall. I will get the tickets.”
Alfredo vanished into the conga line at a ticket window. He appeared again at the middle of the line, jumped the queue, elbowed forward, and in a very short time he had fought his way to the window. Even his friends marveled at his speed. He came toward us smiling, waving the tickets in triumph.
We were frisked at the entrance; we passed through a tunnel and emerged at the end of the stadium. From the outside it had looked like a kettle; inside, its shape was more of a salver, a tureen filled with brown, screeching faces. In the center was a pristine rectangle of green grass.
It was, those 45,000 people, a model of Salvadorean society. Not only the half of the stadium where the Suns sat (and it was jammed: not an empty seat was visible); or the better-dressed and almost as crowded half of the Shades (at night, in the dry season, there was no difference in the quality of the seats: we sat on concrete steps, but ours, being more expensive than the Suns, were less crowded); there was a section that Alfredo had not mentioned: the Balconies. Above us, in five tiers of a gallery that ran around our half of the stadium, were the Balcony people. Balcony people had season tickets. Balcony people had small rooms, cupboard-sized, about as large as the average Salvadorean hut; I could see the wine bottles, the glasses, the plates of food. Balcony people had folding chairs and a good view of the field. There were not many Balcony people—two or three hundred—but at $2,000 for a season ticket in a country where the per capita income was $373 one could understand why. The Balcony people faced the screaming Suns and, beyond the stadium, a plateau. What I took to be lumpish multicolored vegetation covering the plateau was, I realized, a heap of Salvadoreans standing on top or clinging to the sides. There were thousands of them in this mass, and it was a sight more terrifying than the Suns. They were lighted by the stadium glare; there was a just-perceptible crawling movement among the bodies; it was an anthill.
National anthems were played, amplified songs from scratched records, and then the game began. It was apparent from the outset who would win. Mexico was bigger and faster, and seemed to follow a definite strategy; El Salvador had two ball hoggers, and the team was tiny and erratic. The crowd hissed the Mexicans and cheered El Salvador. One of the Salvadorean ball hoggers went jinking down the field, shot, and missed. The ball went to the Mexicans, who tormented the Salvadoreans by passing it from man to man and then, fifteen minutes into the game, the Mexicans scored. The stadium was silent as the Mexican players kissed one another.
Some minutes later the ball was kicked into the Shades section. It was thrown back into the field and the game was resumed. Then it was kicked into the Suns’ section. The Suns fought for it; one man gained possession, but he was pounced upon and the ball shot up and ten Suns went tumbling after it. A Sun tried to run down the steps with it. He was caught and the ball wrestled from him. A fight began, and now there were scores of Suns punching their way to the ball. The Suns higher up in the section threw bottles and cans and wadded paper on the Suns who were fighting, and the shower of objects—meat pies, bananas, hankies—continued to fall. The Shades, the Balconies, the Anthill watched this struggle.
And the players watched, too. The game had stopped. The Mexican players kicked the turf, the Salvadorean team shouted at the Suns.
Please return the ball. It was the announcer. He was hoarse. If the ball is not returned, the game will not continue.
This brought a greater shower of objects from the upper seats—cups, cushions, more bottles. The bottles broke with a splashing sound on the concrete seats. The Suns lower down began throwing things back at their persecutors, and it was impossible to say where the ball had gone.
The ball was not returned. The announcer repeated his threat.
The players sat down on the field and did limbering-up exercises until, ten minutes after the ball had disappeared from the field, a new ball was thrown in. The spectators cheered but, just as quickly, fell silent. Mexico had scored another goal.
Soon, a bad kick landed the ball into the Shades. This ball was fought for and not thrown back, and one could see the ball progressing through the section. The ball was seldom visible, but one could tell from the free-for-alls—now here, now there—where it was. The Balconies poured water on the Shades, but the ball was not surrendered. And now it was the Suns’ turn to see the slightly better-off Salvadoreans in the Shades section behaving like swine. The announcer made his threat: the game would not resume until the ball was thrown back. The threat was ignored, and after a long time the ref walked onto the field with a new ball.
In all, five balls were lost this way. The fourth landed not far from where I sat, and I could see that real punches were being thrown, real blood spurting from Salvadorean noses, and the broken bottles and the struggle for the ball made it a contest all its own, more savage than the one on the field, played out with the kind of mindless ferocity you read about in books on gory medieval sports. The announcer’s warning was merely ritual threat; the police did not intervene—they stayed on the field and let the spectators settle their own scores. The players grew bored: they ran in place, they did push-ups. When play resumed and Mexico gained possession of the ball it deftly moved down the field and invariably made a goal. But this play, these goals—they were no more than interludes in a much bloodier sport which, toward midnight (and the game was still not over!), was varied by Suns throwing firecrackers at one another and onto the field.
The last time play was abandoned and fights broke out among the Suns—the ball bobbing from one ragged Sun to another—balloons were released from the upper seats. But they were not balloons. They were white, blimpy, and had a nipple on the end; first one, then dozens. This caused great laughter, and they were batted from section to section. They were of course contraceptives, and they caused Alfredo no end of embarrassment. “That is very bad,” he said, gasping in shame. He had apologized for the interruptions; for the fights; the delayed play. Now this—dozens of airborne rubbers. The game was a shambles; it ended in confusion, fights, litter. But it shed light on the recreations of Salvadoreans, and as for the other thing—the inflated contraceptives—I later discovered that the Agency for International Development’s largest Central American family planning program is in El Salvador. I doubt whether the birth rate has been affected, but children’s birthday parties in rural El Salvador must be a great deal of fun, what with the free balloons.
Mexico won the game, six to one. Alfredo said that El Salvador’s goal was the best one of the game, a header from thirty yards. So he managed to rescue a shred of pride. But people had been leaving all through the second half, and the rest hardly seemed to notice or to care that the game had ended. Just before we left the stadium I looked up at the anthill. It was a hill once again; there were no people on it, and depopulated, it seemed very small.
Outside, on the stadium slopes, the scene was like one of those lurid murals of Hell you see in Latin American churches. The color was infernal, yellow dust sifted and whirled among crater-like pits, small cars with demonic headlights moved slowly from hole to hole like mechanical devils. And where, on the mural, you see the sins printed and dramatized, the gold lettering saying LUST, ANGER, AVARICE, DRUNKENNESS, GLUTTONY, THEFT, PRIDE, JEALOUSY, USURY, GAMBLING, and so on, here after midnight were groups of boys lewdly snatching at girls, and knots of people fighting, counting the money they had won, staggering and swigging from bottles, shrieking obscenities against Mexico, thumping the hoods of cars or dueling with the branches they had yanked from trees and the radio aerials they had twisted from cars. They trampled the dust and howled. The car horns were like harsh moos of pain—and one car was being overturned, by a gang of shirtless, sweating youths. Many people were running to get free of the mob, holding handkerchiefs over their faces. But there were tens of thousands of people here, and animals, too, maimed dogs snarling and cowering as in a classic vision of Hell. And it was hot: dark, grimy air that was
hard to breathe, and freighted with the stinks of sweat; it was so thick it muted the light. It tasted of stale fire and ashes. The mob did not disperse; it was too angry to go home, too insulted by defeat to ignore its hurt. It was loud and it moved as if thwarted and pushed; it danced madly in what seemed a deep hole.
Alfredo knew a shortcut to the road. He led the way through the parking lot and a ravaged grove of trees behind some huts. I saw people lying on the ground, but whether they were wounded or sleeping or dead I could not tell.
I asked him about the mob.
“What did I tell you?” he said. “You are sorry you came, right?”
“No,” I said, and I meant it. Now I was satisfied. Travel is pointless without certain risks. I had spent the whole evening scrutinizing what I saw, trying to memorize details, and I knew I would never go to another soccer game in Latin America.
