Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Football War

Episode Date: March 5, 2023

In the summer of 1969, the nations of Honduras and El Salvador went to war.  Tragically, nations do go to war, so this in and of itself isn’t unusual. However, the spark which ignited this war was unlike any other in world history.  It had to do with a qualifying match for the 1970 FIFA World Cup. Learn more about the Football War, its causes, and its resolution on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EverythingEverywhere Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the summer of 1969, the nations of Honduras and El Salvador went to war. Tragically, nations do go to war sometimes, so this in and of itself isn't unusual. However, the spark which ignited this war was unlike any other in world history. It had to do with a qualifying match for the 1970 FIFA World Cup. Learn more about the football war, its causes, and its resolution on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past, wrong. ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world

now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The football war, also known as the soccer war for obvious reasons, may have been sparked by a football match, but there was a lot more to it. A football match wasn't so much the cause of the war as it was the straw that broke the camel's back. There were a host of problems between the two countries which had been festering well before their 1969 World Cup qualifier. The problem really started over two centuries ago when Honduras and El Salvador were still Spanish colonies. There were six pockets of land and two islands in the Gulf of Fonseca that were awarded to El Salvador that Honduras claimed. The Gulf of Fonseca is the only access that Honduras has to the Pacific Ocean and El Salvador was able to block their access.

The total amount of land in question was only 436 square kilometers, which wasn't inconsequential given the size of the two countries. However, if a land dispute was the only problem between the two countries, it probably wouldn't have been enough to go to war in 1969. The border had been an issue for ages, so it definitely was a contributing factor, but not the cause of the war. The other major problem between the two countries had to do with immigration and land reform. Despite being five times larger an area, Honduras had a much smaller population. In 1969, El Salvador had a population of 3.7 million, and Honduras had 2.6 million people. Starting in the early 20th century, the differences in population density resulted in Salvadorans

migrating to Honduras for land. By 1969, 300,000 Salvadorans were limited. living in Honduras, compromising a full 20% of the population. If you remember back to my episode on Banana Republics, most of the land in Honduras was owned by large landowners such as the United Fruit Company, and that meant there wasn't much land available in the country for the common folk. In 1962, Honduras introduced land reforms that allowed the Honduran government to seize land settled by Salvadoran immigrants and squatters and give it to native Honduran's. The land reformed led to a surge of nationalism in Honduras.

Even if Salvadoran immigrants had purchased their land legally and held title to it, they were still liable to have their land taken away from them. The land seizures resulted in thousands of Salvadorans being expelled from Honduras and forced to migrate back to El Salvador. The influx of returning Salvadorans caused huge headaches and problems for the Salvadoran government and for the entire populace. On top of all this, there was just general simmering social issues between the two countries. Despite the migration of Salvadorans to Honduras, the standard of living in El

Salvador was higher than that of Honduras, and this led to a sense of inferiority among Hondurans and resentment towards El Salvador. So this was the state of affairs between the two countries heading into June 1969. Both El Salvador and Honduras were first in their qualifying groups for the 1970 World Cup. Honduras beat Costa Rica and Jamaica, and El Salvador beat Suriname in the Netherlands and Tillies. The two countries had to play each other in a two-legged qualifier to determine which team would advance to the World Cup. This was a really big deal because neither country had ever played in the World Cup before, and the qualifier was between regional rivals. The first game took place in the capital of Honduras to Gousigalpa on June 8th. Tensions between

the two countries were running high. The Salvadoran team couldn't get any sleep the night before their match because Honduran fans camped outside their hotel all night and made noise. Honduras ended up barely winning the first game one to nothing, scoring the game's only goal with one minute remaining. The Salvadorans took this loss hard. An 18-year-old girl by the name of Amelia Bolanos took her father's pistol and shot herself in the heart immediately after the game. The president of El Salvador, Fidel Sanchez Hernandez, declared her a national martyr. Her funeral was shown on national television, and the president and his cabinet walked behind the coffin in a procession. The death of Emilia Bolanos and the subsequent funeral only fueled the passions

on the Salvadoran side before the second match. The second match took place a week later on June 15th in the capital city of San Salvadoran. The Salvadoran fans did the same thing to the Honduran team at their hotel that the Honduran fans had done to the Salvadoran team. Fans were so riotous that the Honduran team had to be transported to the stadium in armored. cars. In riots that took place before the game, three people were killed. Honduran flags were burned, and Honduran fans in the crowd were beaten by locals. El Salvador won the match three to nothing. The Honduran coach said that the team was lucky to lose, because if they had won, they might not have left with their lives. This set up a third game, which took place at a neutral

location, Aztec Stadium in Mexico City on June 27th. The Mexico City government put 1,700 police in the stands to prevent any violence from breaking out. However, earlier that day, things began to go beyond sports. Just hours before the match, the El Salvador government broke off diplomatic ties with Honduras. The Salvadorans claim that since the last game in San Salvador, almost 12,000 Salvadorans were forced out of Honduras and were the victims of theft, rape, and murder. The expulsions were believed to have been directly due to Honduras losing the previous match. In a statement, the Salvadoran government said, quote, the government of Honduras has not taken any effective measures to punish these crimes which constitute genocide, nor has it given assurances of indemnification or reparations

for the damages caused to Salvadorans, end quote. During the game, Salvadoran fans kept chanting, murderer, murderer. In the game itself, El Salvador won three to two, with a goal scored by Mauritio Pippo Rodriguez in the 11th minute of extra time. In the days following the game in Mexico City, tensions rose along the border of Honduras and El Salvador. The border was closed, and clashes increased between military forces on both sides. Finally, in the early morning of July 14th, El Salvador ordered its forces to invade Honduras. The Salvadoran attack was multi-pronged. The land invasion took place primarily along the main road connecting El Salvador and Tagusa Galpa. There was also another thrust north in the western part of the country. By sea, Salvadoran forces

attacked the Honduran islands in the Gulf of Fonseca. The small El Salvador Air Force attacked positions in Honduras. They even used civilian airplanes with explosives attached to the wings as bombers. The Salvadoran military was bigger than the Honduran military and overwhelmed them in the first day of the war. They actually made it to within several miles of Tagusa Galpa. However, the Salvadoran advance stalled out, and Honduras went on the counterattack. They hit Salvadoran oil facilities, which interrupted fuel supplies to the advancing forces. Both sides had piston-powered American-built aircraft which fought each other in dogfights. In the air, the Honduran's had the edge and destroyed most of the Salvadoran Air Force.

It was the last time in military history that propeller-driven aircraft fought each other. The international reaction to the war was swift. The Organization of American States held an emergency meeting on July 18th and called for an immediate ceasefire and for El Salvador to pull back their troops to its border. A ceasefire was agreed to on the evening of July 18th, ending the hostilities. The entire war lasted four days and also became known as the 100-hour war. The ceasefire was formalized on July 20th, and El Salvador began to remove its troops from Honduras on August 2nd, after threats of economic and trade sanctions and promises by Honduras that Salvadorans in

Honduras would be better treated. Despite the war being extremely short, it had significant implications. Over 300,000 Salvadorans were uprooted and displaced. El Salvador had 900 people killed, including civilians. Honduras had 250 soldiers killed and over 2,000 civilian deaths. While the conflict was over, the animosity between the two countries lingered. The border was closed and trade was cut off for years. The instability in El Salvador was a major contributing factor in its civil war a decade later, which took the lives of over 80,000 people.

It wasn't until 1980 that a formal peace treaty was signed between the two countries. And in 1992, the International Court of Justice arbitrated the border disputes between the two countries, awarding 80% of the disputed land to Honduras. The Gulf of Fonseca is still a contentious issue. In 2013, El Salvador once again threatened military action against Honduras. As for the Salvadoran football team, they did qualify for the World Cup in 1970, but they didn't win a single game, or even score a single goal.

Mauricio Rodriguez, the man who scored the winning goal against Honduras in the decisive third game, is often considered to be the man whose goal started a war. The truth is, while the war is called the football war, and while the matches did escalate the conflict, it probably would have happened even if the matches had never taken place. The only reason a football match sparked the war was because there was plenty of dry tinder to catch fire. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett.

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