USA v Mexico: Borders, Burritos & Budweiser.
By Peter Karl (originally published on Sabotage Times)
Welcome to ‘America’s Stadium’ The Rose Bowl: An imposing, star-spangled sports cathedral at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains in Pasadena, California. Home to the UCLA college football team, it’s as American as Uncle Sam and fried chicken. And on Saturday, it hosted an international ‘soccer’ derby of epic proportions: The CONCACAF Gold Cup Final between home team USA and neighboring Mexico. 93,420 soccer fanatics turned out, filling the stadium to the brim. Yet remarkably less than 10,000 of those fans were supporting America. And I was one of the outnumbered.
The USA and Mexico have met 57 times. “El Tricolor” as Mexico’s team is known, has never lost to the U.S. on Mexican soil. They’ve won 31 of all clashes, and drawn 11. Yet strangely, in the FIFA rankings, the United States are the 22nd best team in the world and Mexico just 28th (As of June 27). As my rusty Ford Explorer edges into the parking lot that stretches on for an eternity, I overhear an American supporter say casually, “If Mexico ever lost to the U.S. at Estadio Azteca, it would be the end of the world.” But as our own giant stadium creeps nearer, I notice that the Rose Bowl might as well be on Mexican soil. Today it’s absolutely overwhelmed by a sea of green flags and air thick with the smell of tacos.
“U.S. Soccer fans are a minority in their own country,” says Garrett Quinn, a 27-year-old Bostonian I meet in the sizzling parking lot. “That’s not normal anywhere else in the world.” Garrett has traveled 3,000 miles for the match, while for many of the Mexican fans, their journey to California has been altogether more difficult. For Mexicans migrating to the U.S., crossing the border is illegal, dangerous and deadly. In 2009, the U.S. Border Patrol reported 417 deaths at the border, citing heat stroke, dehydration, hyperthermia, and drowning as the leading causes of death. Just weeks ago on June 8th, the US Border Patrol opened fire on a group of suspected illegal immigrants, and an innocent bystander, a 15-year-old boy called Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereka, was shot dead. The Mexican public was outraged. On Huereka’s casket, was a picture of him in his green soccer uniform. Today, this clash would be about more than just football…
Read the rest of this feature at Sabotage Times.