El Estadio Azteca

El Estadio Azteca, also known as “El Coloso de Santa Úrsula,” is between the third and fifth largest stadium in the world, depending who you ask and how you measure. The two stadiums it definitely trails are Rungado May Day, in Pyong Yang, and Salt Lake Stadium in Calcutta. Filling Salt Lake takes only eleven hundredths of a percent of India’s population and I suspect the North Koreans can only fill Rungado May Day because not going when it is your turn is enough to land you in a torture chamber. I am willing to be more impressed by the Mexicans.

Due to its size and age, the Azteca owns a ton of records and “fun facts.” It is the only stadium in the world to have hosted two World Cup finals (70 and 86). It is one of a handful to have hosted the World Cup final and the Olympic soccer final. It hosted Maradona’s “hand of god” and “goal of the century” against England in 1986. I holds all of the Mexican attendance records. It also holds the attendance record for the NFL and, for a separate game (in 1972!), the record for attendance at an American football game (yes, the Mexicans had a league back then and a rivalry match that year drew 120,000 fans. This was illegal; either someone faked several thousand tickets or the teams sold more than they were allowed to, or both).

I have now seen two games in this stadium, one the clásico between Pumas and América, perhaps the two biggest teams from Mexico City, and one a national team match. For both, the stadium was almost full. Both were Saturday afternoons, sunny days. But my experiences were very different.


América vs. Pumas

I went to the club match with Lorent, a French kid from my hostel. I couldn’t decide if Lorent was depressed or constantly bored. Before inviting him to the game, I had yet to see evidence that Lorent had any human emotion. His English was very functional, he communicated fine. But it seemed like it was always hard. He would stop, and plan his response before he answered questions, staring intently at my forehead the whole time, as if reading from a teleprompter affixed to my hairline. I was tempted to try a conversation with him, hands placed over my forehead, just to see if he would go into a fit or shut down or perhaps even produce steam from the ears. When I mentioned that I was going to a game, he stopped, read, and asked where it was. I told him it was at Estadio Azteca and, after another measured pause, he said, “So, I must go.” He explained, still reading, that it was a famous stadium, that he was obsessed with it, they he had bribed a guard to get in and take a picture of it the week before, and that, again, he had to go.

So I was taking someone to a game again. I still have mixed feelings about this. As soon as I invite someone, I begin to feel responsible for their experience. I go early, I am willing to pay a fortune for my ticket to a big game, and I actively seek out the most crowded, hottest, most dangerous, loudest, generally least comfortable place in which to stand throughout the entire 90 minutes. Now, I knew this about myself. I had done this before. But Lorent had a way of making me uncomfortable and making me feel like I didn’t know very much about anything at all. He would laugh when I told him where I had gone on a given do or what I had done. He would tell me that I went to the wrong supermarket, that I had woken up too late, etc.

He wasn’t mean. He didn’t even sound critical. He sounded like he was reading every sentence off of my damn forehead. But he was criticizing me. So, though I felt a responsibility to warn him about my way of going to games, to make sure dressed like he wasn’t from a rich European country and didn’t bring too much money (things I have forgotten to tell friends and family before taking them to games), I was a little afraid to tell him that I knew anything. And part of me wanted to withhold my knowledge and let something happen to him so that he would stop doubting me. But I didn’t want what happened to him to be that bad. So I told him no to bring his expensive and large digital camera. But he didn’t believe me. He wanted pictures of his beloved stadium and (my forehead told him to tell me) that he had never been to a soccer game where it would be dangerous to have a camera. He asked the girls working in the hostel and they told him that they had never been to a game but they understood that there were a lot of police there and that they thought he would be fine with his camera. I wasn’t sure he, or they, understood that I was going to go to the cheapest, most crowded, least comfortable, etc. section. I thought that might change the equation, but I still didn’t want to tell him what to do and cause more criticism to scroll across my forehead for him to read in his sharply-accented dead pan.

“Which section do you want to go to?” I asked. “Zee cheapest, I zink,” he responded. Aha! Now it will be his preference so he can’t criticize it. “And you still want to bring your camera? I mean, at least in Argentina, that can be dangerous. “Yes,” long pause. He paused for so long that I expected a long, drawn out, well-supported answer. But all he said was “I do not zink, zer will be problems.” I didn’t protest.

The club match was like an easier version of a game in Argentina (plus 20,000 more fans than I had ever seen in a stadium). I had convinced Lorent that we should go early, the only way to be sure of getting authentic tickets at a fair price, I explained, “at least in Argentina.” Several times over the next three hours he would ask, still not complaining, still emotionless, “why we come so early?” It was remarkably easy to get to the stadium and get tickets. We took the subway and the light rail, got dropped off 50 yards from the entrance, walked up to one of many open ticket windows, and bought our tickets. From the time we got off to train to the time we had our tickets in hand was no more than 10 minutes.

Police were everywhere, they herded us from one section to another, sending fans from long lines to short lines to keep things moving. They kept watch as the drums and fans from both teams entered. I saw some families, their kids’ divided allegiances obvious from their differing jerseys, walk in together and proceed to the same section. This, I thought, could be dangerous (“at least in Argentina”). As we made our way to the cheap seats, we passed through another security check point.

“Turn around please,” an officer asked me. I turned and put my arms out and he padded me down, stopping at my waste. “The belt can’t go through here,” he said. “Really? I didn’t know, they didn’t tell me anything downstairs or I would have left it in the clothing check.” “Yes, but this section is all porra.” I had read this word before. It is a Mexican term for fan groups. Traditionally they were men, often older, who followed the club around and cheered it on. Closer to a fan club in the U.S. than a barra brava. Nowadays, porra is used both to encompass all fan groups, including those modeled off of the more-violent, mafia-esque South Americans. However, it is also used to contrast the barra brava phenomenon, as it grows in this country, with the older, more-peaceful Mexican traditions. The police officer confirmed his meaning: “this section is pure barra brava, no weapons go through…the family porra is down and to the right, there you can take belts, cameras, pens, everything.” I didn’t want to go anywhere called “family.” But I really liked my belt. Lorent and I started back down the ramp. I hoped they would let me out, to the clothing check, to safely leave my belt. I also hoped this detour would not cause Lorent too much inconvenience, or annoyance, or whatever it was that provoked his criticism.

The girls at the gate explained that there was no re-entry, and recommended that I fix the belt around my shoulder or chest to hide it. “That’s your best chance,” one said, “sometimes that don’t notice.” I thanked her but the police had been pretty thorough the first time around. They had padded me all the way up into my armpits. I doubted I could sneak the belt in and I didn’t want them to get mad at me for trying.

I decided to give it up. I could get another one, I thought. I hate shopping but I already needed to buy a new back pack so I figured this wouldn’t condemn me to too much more time in a market. I approached the security line, belt in hand. They frisked me again and sent me through. When I looked back, though, the head officer was talking to Lorent outside the entrance. I got closer to hear and the police were explaining, again, that “this section is pure porra, pure barra.” “They’re going to rob him,” one of the cops explained motioning to Lorent’s camera, strapped around his shoulder, “this section is pure barra.” “Zey say it is too dangerous for zee camera,” Lorent explained, still reading. “Well, what do you want to do?” I asked. “I think I’m going to stay here, but if you want to move to another section, we can meet up afterwards.”

“I zink I will start here, wiz you, and zen I will see.” The police gave us “suit yourselves” looks and let us through. Lorent went immediately to the top of the bleachers to take pictures of the view over the city and surrounding hills. I stayed down by the entrance.

Big buildings usually disappoint me. I imagine them truly colossal and they are usually just very large. The Mall of America, the Pyramids at Giza, the Empire State building, all were bigger in my head than they looked in real life. (I think I like mountains so much because they more often meet my expectations for gargantuan-ness. So, though the Azteca is very large, I had trouble convincing myself that it was much larger than the other big stadiums I had been in. I tried to imagine the Bombonera or the Monumental or RFK fitting neatly inside the Azteca with room to spare. It was hard, mostly because they all seemed about the same height.

The Azteca did strike me as very wide though. And stadiums, to me, always seem wider, broader when they are empty. In a full stadium, the crowd fills all of your awareness: the noise fills your years, the game, the flags, the pushing, the fighting for balance, the tension of a close match, all fill your senses. You are overwhelmed by stimuli, most of which either do, or seem to, emanate from very close by. You know you are in a huge space but everything you experience seems to be right on top of you. In an empty stadium, by contrast, the main stimuli are far away. No one touches you. Your physical contact is only with the ground under your feet. The noises you hear echo from the pitch, hundreds of feet below. Your sightline stretches down for hundreds of yards and, if you are up high enough to see over the bleachers across from you, it stretches out for miles, leagues, over the city surrounding. Even your imagination goes far away, hours ahead, or days back, to envision the stadium full during the next or the last game. Everything is bigger and farther.

In the Azteca, this feeling of big and distant was the same, maybe a little bigger. When we entered, the pure porra section was completely devoid of porras. We were literally the third and fourth people to arrive in the North bleachers. I glanced around at the section, which wasn’t actually a section at all, but rather a piece of the section, cut out from the rest by police with riot gear. They lined the fence in front and framed us to the left and the right, from the bottom fence up to the top of the bleachers. At the moment, they were sitting, their shields propped next to them, overlapping in a plastic fence. It was odd being one of four people guarded by what must have been 200 riot police. Any riot we four might have started would have lasted about 7 seconds and required so little force to restrain they I wondered if they would even bother hitting us with anything (kind of like when the snotty-nosed kid finally tries to hit the bully and the bigger boy opts to put his hand on the geek’s forehead, holding him out of fist’s reach rather than hitting back).

Nor did we seem to worry our guards very much. Most were chatting, some were sleeping, some were eating packed lunches. Every few minutes, one would bump his shield and send a chunk of the plastic barrier tumbling and sliding down the bleachers. The others would half-heartedly jeer, whistling or clapping sarcastically, while the closest officers begrudgingly stood to repair the fallen defenses. As more fans trickled in, they began to pass, unquestioned, from the non-guarded sections into our section and back. I assumed that the police would ultimately stand up and close off the section, but for now, they were more interested in their sandwiches, naps, and conversations.

Lorent decided to stick around, in the end, but to spend the game up at the top of the bleachers, where things seemed calmer. I stayed front and center, looking for action. I sat in the lower middle of the cordoned-off section, where I assumed the toughs would locate. With the game still about two hours away, our section remained very empty. Small groups of teenage and twenty-year-old men had located themselves around the bleachers, mostly randomly. But there was no mass of fans, no young barras hanging flags, and no singing. Across the stadium, in the Pumas section, a few thousand fans had gathered. Without warning, they began a cheer, breaking the eerie silence. They weren’t that loud, but their cheer had no competing noise and it reached me with much more force than its mere decibels would have predicted. It was bringing the auditory experience closer to my senses. I felt my heart skip and my adrenaline begin to pick up. The game was getting closer; in time, in sound. It was coming.

These are the best moments of a match day, when my senses are shocked from empty stadium, waiting, to crowd, noise, action. I know what is coming. I am about to be absorbed by a mass of people that will oblige me to jump, to sing, to fight for my balance, to live and die with each shot, just as they do were. I am about to do things I never do. Nothing bad, but things that would normally draw attention to me. I rarely yell, I almost never dance, I never sing, and (ever since I realized it made people not like me) I don’t even get worked up about sports. But in a crowd you can do anything, and you can’t do nothing. If you follow the crowd, no one even looks at you. If you do something completely different from the rest, people look at you briefly and then go back to singing. If you do nothing, people hate you. If you do nothing while alone, they might even threaten to hurt you unless you do something. The crowd is and needs energy. Lethargy gives a crowd nothing and lethargic, or uncommitted people are only a waste valuable space that could have been filled with another voice and pair of moving arms and jumping feet. In crowds I jump, dance, sing, yell, care. And I enjoy it. No one looks, no one judges, no one thinks anything of me as long as I contribute my share of energy.

The police, too, sensed something in the Pumas’ cheer. From somewhere the order came to start working. The officers put their sandwiches away, stopped their conversations, woke up, and stood up. Shields were turned 90 degrees to stand upright in front of their bearers. The squad was ready for a riot. But it was still facing something less than 100 people. The section was still nearly empty.

I was curious now. It was now about an hour and a half to game time. The players would be out soon to warm up, and no one would be there to greet América. I decided to check the tunnels. “They must be organizing themselves outside to come in en masse, I thought.” Usually, in Argentina, it is only the barra that does this, with the rest of the fans filling the bleachers, minus the center section reserved for the toughs up to two hours before game time.

Turning into the entrance, I almost tripped over the people sitting on the stairs down to the tunnel. The entrance and the hallway beyond were packed with fans. A kid near the top of the stairs seemed to be directing traffic. “Wait here, wait here,” he yelled, “we’re going to go in with the team.” So the whole crowd, not just the barra, was strategizing. This was cool. I imagined what it would look like from the field or from the opposing bleachers as we rushed in, a mass of ants flooding out of its whole and engulfing the ground above. I hoped we would have a song to go along. In Argentina, River does entrances best, in my opinion. A big part of it is the songs, two in particular, that always announce the arrival of the barra.

But herding a crowd, I soon saw, is difficult. Barra’s can be herded because they are hierarchical, because they know each other and violators, stray cats, will be punished, if not in the moment, then later. People kept walking past the kid on the stairs, stepping over seated fans and entering the bleachers. They wanted seats, they wanted good spots. And it won’t make any difference, in the end, if “we three or four little people go in early” they must have been thinking. As each uncooperative fan passed him, the poor kid would plead, then shrug and resign himself to their disobedience. He was small, skinny and didn’t have anything resembling the aggressive posture of a barra. Hell, not even I would have been scared to blow him off.

The Pumas fans were chanting again. Their crowd was bigger every minute and their simple, two-note chant was powerful in the otherwise still quiet stadium. Some of the América fans looked anxious listening to it. I understood. If this was anything like Argentina, the pride of the porras and the barras was on the line here. They were being out-cheered in their home stadium. They should be responding, waving their arms dismissively and whistling to drown out their opponents, then starting their own, louder cheer. This is how penises are measured in the barra universe. But the América fans weren’t “showing it off” to their enemies, they were on the steps and in the tunnel, waiting. A sixteen-year-old with a baby face was holding them back out of sight, out of range, while their rivals displayed their fanatic attributes. The fans at the top of the steps turned and waved and whistled, but alone they were no match. Something had to be done.

Right on cue, a fat, bald, scowling 20-something, one who really did have the barra brava look about him, came around the corner at a jog, a concerned look of purpose on his face. “Get in there, get in there now!” he yelled. I looked at baby face, wondering if he would dare to counter the barra’s instructions. He didn’t. The crowd moved immediately, driven by the combination of its own anxiousness the obvious authority conveyed by a beer belly, shaved head, and bad temper. The barra stood in the middle of the doorway, directing traffic. “Fill both sides, fill both sides,” he motioned to the left and right with his hands as waves of fans split around him, U-turned, and began occupying the section above.

The area immediately above the entrance, marked on either side by stairways and bordered at the back by the scoreboard, was apparently reserved for the barra. Beer bellies, shaved heads, and bad tempers stood in the entrances, turning away strangers. In Argentina, many people told me not to enter the barras’ sections, “they’ll beat you up,” they would promise. But every time I went and entered those sections, I found myself accompanied by at least one mother and child, along with a large number of other women other characters obviously not part of the barra. It was as if fear of the barra was enough to ensure that most fans stayed out of its way. No need to enforce a ban on strangers because there was always enough room for the barras anyway. And when there wasn’t, they would make it by pushing, standing on safety rails, doing whatever necessary. Here, apparently, fear wasn’t enough. The barra’s zone had to be guarded.

I didn’t bother trying to get into the reserved area. I stood just below the barras, next to the exit, hoping to be as close to the toughs as possible but, as usual, not wanting to make anyone mad at me.

With the barra’s green light, the bleachers were filling quickly. He was still directing traffic, ensuring that fans filled all the available sections. The crowd was starting to do its job. We were singing, praising América, threatening Pumas, offering our lives in exchange for championships. With the exception of a few Mexicanisms, and slightly different rhythms, the songs were very much like the ones I had been singing for months in Argentina and Paraguay. There was even a Boca Juniors hat among the fans in front of me. América also wears blue and yellow/gold, so the tall, Dr. Seuss/Uncle Sam style murga hat fit right in, at least for its colors. Wearing another team’s jersey to the stadium is common in all three countries. As long as it isn’t a team from the same country (which can be enough to get you killed), any jersey even if it has the wrong colors, is usually OK.

The game itself looks a bit like a blur in my memory. It was boring. Three or four chances between both teams, one goal (incorrectly) disallowed, and a final score of 0-0 that didn’t help or hurt either team very much. Both bleachers were loud, standing and singing continuously, even during half time. The papers gave the victory to “the aficionados,” as they are called here, praising the fans of both sides while lambasting both teams for playing a “cowardly” match, avoiding defeat rather than looking for victory.

As part of the special security operation in place for the clásico, we had to wait an hour before we left the stadium. As in Argentina, home fans’ delayed exit allows time for the away fans to escape (or be dispatched by the police). As the Puma faithful were herded out, our section sang “wait a little while, we’ll be right there.” This wasn’t a threat. They chanted it with a tone of “say, would you fancy a walk to the club, ah, divine, well allow me 5 minutes to finish tea and off we go.” I know that rival fans everywhere in the world often schedule fights. I know they are always furious when the authorities prevent them from having their heads bashed in (and, of course, returning the favor). Still, it always surprises me to witness such amiable cooperation between rival bands as they arrange their play dates. I am not usually involved in social activities, which, if they go according to plan, will end with me in intensive care.

An hour is a long time to wait for a fight. The crowd was palpably bored and restless by 25 minutes and began fighting with itself. First the section above me and to my right started throwing plastic bottles down on us. We, of course, threw them back. A few harder things were thrown before the police intervened and calmed things down for a little while. Then a fight broke out, also above me and to the left. I stood up long enough to see that it was nothing special and then sat back down, robbing the ass space left by those more anxious to see the fisticuffs.

The doors finally opened and we began to trudge out. I wondered if any Pumas would have managed to evade the police and stick around for a fight. I wondered if there was any planned meeting point where the América toughs would show up for a scheduled fight. As it turned out, however, coordination was lacking, or maybe the police were too efficient, or maybe everyone was just too tired. The day ended “without incident,” according to official reports and the media. In the tunnel on the way out, there was a scuffle of some kind, ending with a police officer cracking a large man over the head with a night stick (the large man seemed not to notice) before receiving the help of four or five fellow officers to wrestle the man to the ground. I don’t know if they arrested him or not, the papers didn’t say and the police hustled us all on down the exit ramp very quickly. We marched out to a new chant, “you have to study, you have to study, those who don’t study end up policemen.” The officers did not seem offended. I suppose they are used to it.

I didn't see Lorent again until we were back at the hostel. He had hung on to his camera and said he had enjoyed "everything but the game." I was glad the experience hadn't been too terrible for him.


Selección

It was the second game of the final qualifying phase for the 2009 World Cup. Three of the remaining six teams will go to the World Cup and a fourth with have to beat the fifth team from South America in order to advance. It was early, but the Mexican team had not impressed its fans thus far. It had passed to the final round by finishing second to Honduras in the prior stage. Then, in game one of this segment, it had lost to the U.S. I read a few fan blogs and posts on forums after the loss and leading up to the Costa Rica match. Mexico has traditionally dominated the region, qualifying easily and maintaining a healthy level of contempt for the its Central American competition. Finishing second to Honduras and generally failing to dominate, disappointed Mexican fans. But the fans’ reactions focused on what had been “yet another loss to the U.S. Soccer has been the one athletic realm in which Mexico dominates its neighbors to the North. In fact, soccer is one of the few tangible, easily-compared, competitive activities in which Mexico has consistently bested the U.S. One blog listed a dozen points of comparison, starting with population and Human Development Index and moving down through Nobel Prizes and Olympic medals won. The list ended with soccer, and launched into several worried comments about the Mexican’s slipping advantage. “We have always lived on the fact that, in soccer, we beat them,” explained the blogger. “But recent history has been reversed.”

They were playing Costa Rica, the “Ticos” as they are called. This is also the only team that has ever beaten México in the Azteca. The 2-1 Costa Rican victory in the qualifiers for the 2002 World Cup even has its own nick name, the Aztecazo. As this most recent Costa Rica match approached, the papers recounted the Aztecazo with masochistic detail and even interviewed the author of the goal that sealed that infamous victory for Costa Rica. He called the Mexicans arrogant and overconfident and suggested that Central America was slowly but surely turning the CONCACAF hierarchy on its head.

So, though it was early and Mexico was hardly out of the running for the World Cup, pride was at stake and pride was being lost, little by little. The national anxiety was palpable. In the papers, in people’s voices as I talked to them. I was unfamiliar with the qualifying system when I first arrived. But from the way people were talking and writing about it, I thought the seleccion was on the verge of elimination. More than definitive defeat, however, Mexico was suffering a crisis of ego; just as the U.S. was extending its dominance into the realm of soccer, Mexico’s realm, Central America was staging an uprising from below. Few things are more humiliating than being bullied. But a mid-level bully/victim can always take solace in the fear and weakness of those even smaller. But if the little kids get uppity, where is the middling tormentor to turn?

So the game was much more important than statistics may have suggested. The fans were out to do their part. The stadium filled, as far as I could tell. I didn’t bother looking up the official attendance, but it must have been around 100,000. The first challenge, of course, was getting all of them there. The subway in Mexico City is excellent. It covers most of the city and the metro area and connects to light rails and buses that cover the rest. To the stadium, I took two trains and the light rail, pressed tight against people, walls, and poles the whole way. But I got there quickly, cheaply, and without confusion. I had arrived early, again; this time out of my own anal retentive stubbornness rather than ignorance of how long it would take to get in. But the stadium was filling quickly. I had purchased my ticket ahead of time but still had to wait in several lines to get in. The police directed traffic, again, but search us nearly as thoroughly. Several thousand Ticos had made the trip but apparently no one expected trouble.

I was in the same cheap section I had been in for América-Pumas. But the atmosphere was very different. I sat in what had been the reserved-for-barra section the week before, but no one made any fuss. No tough guys blocked the entrance. In fact, most of the XXL men I saw were too busy carrying their children to threaten anyone. There were far more women and children than I was accustomed to seeing in the bleachers. I sat, eating the almonds I had brought with me, and watched the bleachers fill. Groups of friends sat on the steps to my left, not having found space to sit together anywhere else. One guy, obviously the leader or at leas the “funny guy” in his group, used his cell phone and to record mock interviews with his friends. He asked for “keys to the game” and score predications. They all predicted large margins in favor of Mexico. He called someone who was not in the stadium and scolded her for not being at the T.V. yet. She apologized and predicted Mexico 3-1.

I was in the porra the section the police had warned me not to enter at the América game. But today there were hardly any police to be seen and no one seemed particularly concerned about fighting (neither avoiding nor causing it). As the stands filled, someone next to me exclaimed, “it’s going to be a party!” In Argentina, this would mean that we were going to be hot, sweaty, and uncomfortable for two and a half hours, pushing and shoving, getting elbowed, and probably unable to see much of the actual game. Don’t get me wrong, there is much to be said for this way of “watching” soccer. It proves how much you will put up with, how much discomfort you will actually learn to enjoy, for love of the jersey. Moreover, by squeezing in an impossibly large mass of people and then pushing and shaking it for two hours, you ensure that it makes an impressive sight and many impressive noises. If your grandstand is extremely, miserably uncomfortable, it is unlikely that the other guy’s grandstand is yet more uncomfortable. And, that, friends, is a victory. Again, this way of watching soccer is fun for the adrenaline junky and satisfying for the kind of person (including yours truly) who always used to win “mercy” competitions in elementary school.

But at this game, in the Azteca, the “party” was actually both fun and comfortable. No one pushed, it was not that hot or that crowded, we did the wave and we cheered but no one started a mosh pit or even threatened death to the opposing fans.

And, I soon learned, not everyone was out in defense of national honor. The girls next to me raved about the good looks of Mexico’s goal-keeper Guillermo Ochoa. He has long, curly lochs and a personality. They giggled and pointed when he came out on the field. They squealed and stamped their feet when he waved to our section. Throughout the match, the girls would cheer everything he did, good or bad. Their love was unconditional (until, I imagined, Guillermo got an unfortunate hair cut or allowed an off-season vacation to smooth out his six pack). “I hate girls,” I though, smiling to myself. They should be fickle, unforgiving, and above all, ungrateful like real (male, mercy-winning) fans.

When the rest of the Mexican side followed Ochoa out onto the field a few minutes later, they were met with the deafening wine many thousands of 10-peso plastic trumpets blown at once. It is not a pleasant noise. It sounds like the arrival of the locust plague (or so I imagine). Sometimes, back home, I would turn on Univision during the day and, if I was lucky, between telenovelas and talk shows hosted by enormous breasts (attached to women, of course, but the other body parts are clearly of lesser importance), I would catch a Mexican soccer game. And this noise is what most characterized them. I didn’t really understand the language (or the soccer, for that matter), but the wine was ever-present. It ebbs and flows, but never stops. It’s like the swarm of killer bees is swooping closer, then retreating, then swooping closer, then retreating. Until, when a goal is scored, and all the fans are distracted by their ecstasy, the bees make their strike, the wine reaching impossible decibel levels and being joined by the screams of tens of thousands, either overcome by joy or screaming in pain as the insects devour them (one can never be quite sure, the television usually only shows the players celebrating).

There was very little singing, something I had not experienced at a soccer game in a long time. There were no drums. The porras and barras had come (I recognized several from the América match), but they had come as regular fans, with no intentions of ordering anyone around. They were, “just one more fan,” exactly what an Argentine barra would claim to be when accused of being a mafioso, interested in much more than soccer. Without songs to sing, the crowds reactions were less specific, much less precise. Instead of clever lyrics with insults and nick-names and inside jokes; instead of an arsenal of specially-designed phrases to choose from, this crowd had only two options: loud and louder. It could get more intense or less, but it couldn’t aim. It could communicate bigger and smaller emotion, but not different emotions. So, when the referee pulled a yellow card against Mexico, the crowd blew its horns and yelled. And when Mexico scored, the crowd blew its horns and yelled.

But this one-dimensional picture belittles the crowd. Its noise may have been a blunt instrument, but it was a damn big one. 95,000 people doing anything will catch your attention. 95,000 people doing the wave, yelling, and blowing on plastic horns, all in unison, overwhelms your senses. And the fact is, it is hard to coordinate a song among 95,000 people. I have found that, in big stadiums, coordinated songs usually turn into messy rounds. The sound of the section that starts the song takes some time to get to the others and be picked up. So each successively farther-away section comes in on the song a bit later and the result is a bit rough. In many ways, when you have an enormous blunt instrument, it is best to just do really good blunt work.

Mexico scored twice, winning 2-0 and allowing a national sigh of relief. The best moment of the day, however, was when the crowd did sing together. It was the national anthem, it was before the ball left midfield for the first half, but I knew that, unless the Azteca produced another “goal of the century” or, perhaps an all out riot complete with Tico blood staining my Obama t-shirt, the anthem was going to be my favorite of the day.

We all stood, took off hats, and saluted with right hands against our chests. The music kicked in, loud, and the crowd began to sing, 95,000, all together. I can’t really remember what the song sounded like and I didn’t catch many of the words. I don’t have any idea what it was about. But it almost brought me to tears. I am subject to unpredictable and unnecessary bouts of romanticism. Patriotic songs (or songs that I don’t understand but assume to be patriotic) bring these on. 95,000 people, singing together. Singing together and, I assumed, feeling together as well. All feeling, at least today, at least for the 3 minutes that the song lasted, intense pride to be Mexican. You can hate a country and all it stands for. You can be ashamed of its backwardness, its corruption, its violence. But when you sing for it, with 95,000 people, it doesn’t even have to be your country to give you chills. For three minutes, I almost wished I was Mexican. And for those three minutes, I can only imagine, none of the thousands of Mexicans in the stands was thinking about Human Development Indexes, Nobel Prizes, or Olympic Medals.