Juarez

Cuidad Juarez is scary. It’s one of the Mexican cities that show up in the news when narco-traffickers assassinate police captains or issue death threats to priests. Sometimes apparently non-drug-related criminals shoot up banks, as if determined not to let the Cartels have all the fun. For Americans outside border-land Texas, Ciudad Juarez exists only in bloody news stories and movies about Mexican suffering. So, naturally, when I found out that Juarez had a soccer team, I wanted to live there. “What better way to study soccer in an interesting social context?” I said. “What better way to get your stupid, young, excitable self killed” said my mom. “Besides, weren’t you going to go to Guadalajara, I hear that’s much safer.” My response, of course, was to say “I’m all grown up, I can go where I want!” and then go to Guadalajara.

Nevertheless, Chivas, the biggest team from Guadalajara, was set to play Indios of Ciudad Juarez, in Juarez, in the last game of the season. Pig flu had caused the previous two matches to be played without fans. During the week, no one knew whether the stadiums would be open that Sunday. The fact was, I was secretly hoping the game would be cancelled. Then I wouldn’t have to travel, I could stay home in Guadalajara, go to my local gym, sleep well, eat well, watch the game on T.V. and not feel guilty or lazy about it. And I wouldn’t have to worry my mother. And perhaps I was a little scared. Just a little. A lot of people have died in Juarez. And lots of rich people have been robbed or kidnapped. And I am far too white to ever pass for poor. But then, I knew that if I went, I would be glad to have gone, back home safely the following week, telling everyone that “it really wasn’t that bad” and “no, I wasn’t scared” with a casual, too-cool-for-fear shrug of the shoulders.

On Tuesday, I got text messages from two friends, at exactly the same time, one saying definitively “no,” no fans at the game on Sunday, and one saying definitively “yes.” I was monitoring espn.com (the Mexican sports sights have lots of commentary and editorials but do a very poor job with logistics. I continue to believe that locals in Latin America are genetically predisposed to find out when and where and how much about soccer games, rendering it unnecessary that local media provide such information). As far as I knew, one state had banned spectators for the weekend, but there had been no declaration about the league in general. A few hours later, my friends’ text messages converged on “yes,” and then, a few hours after that, I saw the same “yes” for myself on espn.com, who, if you ask me, must have gotten the news from their own Mexican friends, also via text message.

Chucho, a friend and perhaps the most fanatic soccer supporter I have ever met, bought two tickets to fly to Juarez. I would pay him back for my ticket and his aunt financed half of his. Chucho has been to several countries and every part of Mexico following Chivas. Had it not been for the pig flu, he would have made it to 100 consecutive Chivas games attended during this past season. Before the flu, he had missed a total of two official games in the previous three years. Chucho has a job, with the electric utility, but as he puts it, “you know, I show up…most of the time.” He also has money but, as he puts it, “my family supports my passion.” So, with financial backing from his dad and aunts and a job that he can miss, without warning, several times a month, Chucho is the most consistent Chivas fan there is. Others get less help or have normal jobs and they miss games sometimes. Chucho no. They might as well just build him into the bleachers and bring him beer and tacos every couple of hours. The outside world would not miss the limited effort Chucho puts into it and Chivas would forever be guaranteed the support of their most-obsessed fan.

On Saturday I took a bus to Mexico City and made my way to Chucho’s apartment late that night. The weekend’s games had started, almost all of them with full stadiums. The last game of a soccer season, in most countries, means excitement both at the bottom and the top of the standings. For those at the top, championships or spots in the playoffs are up for grabs. Teams in the last positions, however, are fighting to avoid relegation to the next division down. Relegation means large monetary losses for the club, whose jerseys and tickets won’t sell as well in the second division. More-importantly, it means humiliation for the fans. Avoiding this fate is, in many ways, more important that winning a championship.

Chucho and I watched América beat Necaxa, while Tigres won at home. This sent Necaxa to the second division, while saving Tigres. Both games ended at the same time, and as we flipped channels back and forth, the contrast between the two stadiums was impressive. On channel 17, Tigres fans were jumping, climbing the fences, throwing themselves on the field, shooting fireworks, perching precariously on one-another’s shoulders while holding traffic flairs. An alien, or a baseball fan, would no doubt have thought they had just won a championship. Or perhaps an un-informed observer would have seen some sort of mass punishment consisting of grouping the culpable in a confined, sloped space full of sharp concrete edges, small fires, and lunatics. To me, in any case, it looked like Tigres had won a championship.

Back on channel 2, Necaxa’s fans were weeping. They were absolutely devastated. Their faces were painted. They wielded flags and banners and wore team-colored jerseys, jackets, shorts, socks, shoes. Usually, people like that yell and jump and sing. The sight of a war-painted face streaked and stained with tears is weird. It just looks wrong. They had far off looks. Maybe they were imagining moments during the season when things could have been different. Maybe they were looking back jealously on their previous selves, the men and women they were the day before, while Necaxa was still alive. Maybe they were imagining what it would be like to go to all the small stadiums the next year, against “little” teams who had never been in the top division, across the stadium from “little” hinchadas who don’t even know what it’s like to support a “big” team. Maybe they just couldn’t think right them. Maybe their grief was so great that it exterminated all capacity for functional thought. They were very sad.

We watched a few more highlights. The night’s results meant that Chivas held their destiny in their own hands: a win on Sunday would put them in the liguilla (playoffs), regardless of other results. With the following day’s task defined, we went across the street for dinner, accompanied by Chucho’s mom. She is an extremely sweet woman whose hospitality sometimes verges on being inconvenient for the guest. She will wake you up to ask if you want another blanket or let you know that there is juice in the fridge in case you get thirsty. She is also convinced that I don’t speak Spanish. During dinner, she spoke to me through Chucho: “ask him why he isn’t eating tortillas, does he want a coke?” Chucho does not speak English and I answered all of her questions directly, but they continued to go to Chucho, rather than to me.

Mrs. Chucho is also a big talker. Whenever I see her, I hear all about the parties and weddings and baptisms going on in her new home town, outside the city. I hear about her neighbor’s children and their love lives and studies. That night she told Chucho to invite me to “the mayor’s birthday party, or the barbeque next Sunday, make sure he knows he is welcome.” “Thank you very much, Mam, but I think I have too much work,” I answered. She replied, to Chucho, “well you tell him he is very welcome and I hope he can come some other time.”

Perhaps Mrs. Chucho’s most salient quality is that she is always, always, smiling. Chucho will snap at her on occasion, annoyed with her unrelenting helpfulness, and she will laugh, looking away, “sometimes my son gets annoyed with me.” Once, after she began to speak directly to me, she told me about her legal battles with Mr. Chucho, smiling ear to ear. “They have me a bit tired, you know, he has money and lots of lawyers and he’s going to beat me in this case because I just can’t afford to defend myself. I’m a bit tired. Are you sure you don’t drink soda? I feel very badly that you’re not drinking anything but water.” Mrs. Chucho is the type of person who can almost always cheer you up and when she doesn’t, when you don’t let her, you feel terrible about it.

The owners of the taco place we were eating in, Mrs. Chucho informed me (via her son), were “the little boys” from the neighborhood. The father must have been 50 and his full-grown sons at least in their 20’s, but they had been there long enough to still be “little boys” in Mrs. Chucho’s world. Chucho had grown up with “the little boys” and it had always been the best food on the block, you know. She went on, filling the meal with stories about the neighborhood and about her new town and its parties and baptisms and various other things “your American friend is very welcome to attend, any time he wants;” and about how she was still amazed that I didn’t want dessert. Chucho ignored her, reproached her, and talked to me about soccer.

When we got back home, Mrs. Chucho showed me the guest room where I have since stayed on several occasions. It is small but cozy. Like every room in Chucho’s apartment, it is absolutely covered, cluttered, flooded, populated… by Chivas memorabilia. Everything from stuffed goats with intimidating facial expressions to promotional beer cups handed out at uninteresting home matches in the 1990’s. Some of these items are neatly arranged on tables and chairs and on top of the made bed. Others are scattered on the floor or piled on top of the neatly arranged ones. It is as if the room was organized and ordered at some point in the distant past, but then Chucho went to more games, won more online auctions, met more players; and got more free Chivas stuff. I imagined that a careful excavation, matched with cross-checking of past eBay and Chivas Store offers, would reveal chronologically-patterned layers, a window onto 12 years of Chivas special product giveaways, official merchandise, and promotional campaigns.

“You might get some mosquitoes tonight, someone pulled the screen off trying to get in the window and rob us,” Mrs. Chucho explained, smiling broadly, “but don’t worry,” she put a hand on my shoulder, “we have repellent if you need it.” I assumed the repellent was for the mosquitoes, not the thieves, but decided not to worry about either. If anyone came in the window while I was sleeping, I would yell for Mrs. Chucho and she would cheerfully beat the intruders to death with a special edition umbrella from Chivas-Atlante in September 2003. Then she would call for Chucho to have him tell me not to worry and that there was yogurt in the fridge in case the attempted abduction had left me hungry.

No one came in the window and the mosquitoes were merciful. I slept well for a couple of hours before waking early to catch our 7am flight to Juarez. Chucho and I zombied our way through the airport, eating breakfast in a restaurant and napping in the waiting area outside our gate. Our flight stopped for a couple of hours in Monterrey and were told to wait on board, accompanied only by a few other Chivas fans who, though they were on the flight, must not have been regular travelers because they didn’t know Chucho. When we landed in Juarez, Chucho went to the bathroom and I called my house. I had decided not to tell my family about my trip until I got back. The last thing I wanted was to cause my mother’s death by cardiac arrest on Mothers’ Day. My call went to the answering machine, which, unlike my mother, did not ask where I was or what I was doing and allowed me to say sweet things and pretend to be a good son without actively lying.

From the airport, we went to the Hotel Camino Real, where the team was staying. We didn’t have tickets yet and our cab driver told us they had sold out in just a few minutes and were being scalped at five times their official price. Chucho did not seem worried. “See, I told you there were Chivas fans everywhere, they’re charging 500 pesos for tickets in Juarez!” he said, proudly nodding his head. Indios had only recently ascended to the first division, taking the place of the team condemned to relegation in 2008. For many, it would be their first chance to see the Chivas playing in an official league game. Moreover, Indios was finishing an improbable run to save themselves from falling back into the second division. Many had assumed that the powers that be would ensure Indios’ relegation in order to save the larger and wealthier Tigres and Necaxa. So the mood in soccer-following Juarez was one of optimism and can-do. No surprise that the small stadium would fill.

We arrived at the hotel about 5 hours before game time and joined another 10 or 15 fans in the parking lot. They were all local Chivas fans who had never seen their far-off favorite play live. None of them had tickets to the game and they were all quite impressed by our dedication to have come so far without any guarantee of actually going to the game. “We’ll get tickets,” said Chucho, vaguely confident.

“We met some more of you last night,” one woman said, her son nodding in agreement. The team had arrived the evening before and had been greeted by some 200 fans in the airport, some of whom, according to the woman, were fellow long distance travelers. “They came all the way from Guadalajara hitch hiking!” exclaimed the mother. “I bet I know them,” said Chucho, “did one have really big curly hair?” “Yes,” answered the mother, “and they were here with us last night, trying to talk to the players. A man staying in the hotel offered to pay for a hotel room for them, since they didn’t have anywhere to stay, and they said ‘no thanks, why don’t you buy us some beers instead?’ So they ended up sleeping here in the parking lot, I think, and the man brought them a case of beer.” “Yeah,” said Chucho, laughing, “I definitely know them.”

The other fans were hoping to meet players. Naturally, I assumed we were there for the same reason. “Chucho is a super fan, of course he wants a handshake or an autograph. That would probably make his year…” Unlike the other fans, however, he didn’t keep a constant eye on the hotel’s front door, nor did he jump ever time a reasonably-athletic person in sports clothing came into the first-floor lobby. Instead, he sent text messages. Chucho is a cell phone addict who can type an SMS with one hand, behind his back (though I been unsuccessful in convincing him to film himself messaging with his tongue, to the tune of “Purple Haze”). So Chucho messaged, and I didn’t know with whom, while I chatted with the local fans.

“When América came, this parking lot was full, how come only you guys came this time?” a kid asked me. “Well, the club pays América’s barra to travel. We have to come on our own means. That’s why we have more passion, don’t forget it…” I smiled and patted my chest as I said it, enjoying the chance to pretend to be a real fan, while no actual real fans were listening. “Are you from Guadalajara or Argentina?” the kid asked. I dropped my hand, embarrassed. “Oh, ah, I’m a gringo, but I was in Argentina for a while, that’s why my accent is weird…ah, yeah,” I answered sheepishly. “But you root for Chivas?” “Yeah, I mean, I live in Guadalajara now, I mean, for a while anyway…” I gave up. It doesn’t matter how much I learn, how much my Spanish improves, I, and my current life, never make sense.

I finally asked Chucho who he was text messaging. “I’m getting us tickets,” he answered. As it turned out, Chucho had phone numbers for dozens of members of Chivas’ support crew, from the team bus driver to various equipment managers, trainers, and doctors. Team employees started coming out every few minutes, carrying equipment to the Chivas bus, parked around the corner of the hotel. Almost all of them waved to Chucho. Several times, he walked over to talk to them, often bringing me along to be introduced. Whoever it was always greeted both of us warmly, shaking my hand, repeating my name, and saying that they were very pleased to meet me. I remember being impressed that these people with other things to do and with every reason to think themselves important, were still genuinely pleased to meet a friend of Chucho’s. My companion was clearly quite well-liked in the Chivas community.

Well-liked indeed. After about 45 minutes of text messaging and hand-shaking, we had four tickets to the game. Chucho had asked for two, but one of his contacts gave us four. They arrived in an enveloped labeled “Chucho,” carried by a team security guard. “I don’t get along very well with that guy,” Chucho complained, “but at least we got our ticks.” He wasn’t excited. He had a calm, satisfied, “I done good” look on his face. “This way I can give tickets to Sureño and Biónico,” he said. Two friends, also from Mexico City, were on their way by bus. They, too, had come without tickets and were counting on Chucho’s or their own contacts to get them into the stadium.

Sureño and Biónico (I never learned their real names) arrived a few minutes after the tickets. We shook hands and we all piled into a taxi to head to the stadium. We left behind a crowd of perhaps 20 fans, still waiting in hopes of seeing the players. Chucho explained that there was really no chance that they would come out and talk to anyone now. “After the game,” he explained to one fan, “come straight here after the game. The players usually leave the stadium about an hour after the game ends, then they’ll come here and relax for a little while and then they’ll go out to eat dinner. On their way out to dinner, they usually stop to talk to fans.” Chucho knew the drill.

Just as the top division was new for Juárez, Juárez was new for all of us. On the way to the stadium, Chucho asked our cabbie what food we should try and where we should visit while we were there. “Burritos and downtown during daylight,” was the answer. “After dark, don’t go down town, it gets ugly,” the driver didn’t elaborate and Chucho didn’t follow up. When we arrived at the stadium, we each took pictures with it in the background. Chucho was now showing off his Chivas-themed surgical mouth cover, a sarcastic reminder of the pig-flu outbreak which continued to alarm the government and bore the average Mexican. “Excuse me, where do the away fans enter?” Chucho asked a middle-aged fan in an Indios Jersey. “Around to the left, at the other end of the field,” he responded. “And are they going to beat me up?” Chucho asked, half laughing, but clearly interested in the answer. “No, not Chivas, there are lots of Chivas fans here. If you were Santos (a regional rival) or América, yes, but with Chivas there’re no problems.”

We followed his directions, circling the stadium to the left and arriving at Cabecera Norte. There we ran into Pual, Firus, and Gyz, the three hitch-hiking fans who had chosen booze over shelter at the hotel the night before. Chucho introduced me around. Everyone told stories about the trip up. The hitch-hikers had made “great time,” arriving in three days and only needing a dozen or so different rides to do it. Apparently, the hotel staff had also tried to throw them out of the parking lot the night before, repeatedly threatening to cancel the reservation they did not have. Chucho’s and my five-hour flight was not quite as interesting.

As it turned out, our tickets were for a different section but we decided to go in with everyone else anyway. On the way in, the guards searched our backpacks, seizing my health food and writing utensils. Chucho’s bag was empty, “in case we need to carry beer later,” so he didn’t have trouble getting in. Then he negotiated our way into the same section as the others, dropping names of contacts and telling sob stories about the long journey and not wanting to see the game alone.

We entered the section, which was, in fact, not an away fan section at all. We were surrounded by Indios fans, already singing and jeering. Thankfully, the roughest local fans were at the other end of the stadium, in Cabecera Sur. That section was moving; swaying back and forth, vibrating up and down, singing loud enough to be heard clearly on our side. A good crowd, viewed from afar, looks like one big thing. The individual heads and shoulders blend together, the mass of people moves and sings as one. It’s rough, if you think about it, but from afar it looks smooth, like liquid; as if surface tension were holding all the heads up together, then down together, then right together, left together. Soon, though, someone tires or falls and stops jumping. Then more stop with them. The surface breaks, like a sheet of ice hitting concrete in slow motion, spots of wrong-movement or non-movement popping up at random around the outside of the section. The center holds for longer. The center is the youngest and drunkest. But even they can’t last forever. Eventually the crowd is gone and you can see a few individuals, still energetic, still crazed, perhaps drunker than the rest who continue jumping oblivious to those around them. Now they are the spots, the breaks; they catch your eye as wrong. But the surface isn’t as clean when it has stopped moving. Some people sit, or bend over to pick up drinks or lean across friends to talk to other friends. Nothing is as clean and smooth as the jumping crowd.

We wouldn’t have lasted long in that section. Crowds jump and dance, but they also make us feel strong, our primitive brain deciding that nothing can stop us as long as we are in such a big group. The little angry boys in Cabecera Sur, armed with the impunity of crowd, would have torn us apart.

Still, our section was not entirely safe. Judging by jerseys, it was about 75% Indios and 25% Chivas fans. And not all the Chivas fans stood together, several were sprinkled throughout the crowd, with friends and family in Indios gear. Those of us who did stand together were making more of a statement and becoming more of a target. We eventually decided to group in the bottom left part of the bleachers, closest to the field and with a couple of rows between us and the closest Indios fans, who were mostly on the higher steps. To our left was a fence and beyond it an entrance ramp. It was still three hours before game time, and the pre-game festivities were getting started. The ramp was pouring a steady stream of scantily-clad “Home Depot Women,” mascots on stilts, and kids holding anti-violence banners onto the running track that circled the playing field. In the top row of the section, wearing Lucha Libre masks and bearing drums and flags, was a small barra brava consisting of maybe 20 young, over-weight Indios fans. Internal politics or rivalries or ticket access must have kept them from joining the larger group of toughs in the facing bleachers. Or maybe they just liked being the bad asses of the section, standing out among the families.

Firus and Paul hung a small flag and their Chivas jerseys over the fence in front of us, marking their territory. Four or five local Chivas fans had joined us. They seemed quite excited to be “with the band,” with the hard core supporters from Guadalajara and the capital. They apologized for not bringing drums or other noise-making devices: “if we’d only known you were coming…” Chucho just shook his head, admonishingly, and started singing to his own rhythm.

Then we settled in to a familiar ritual. Most people sing, but they each, in turn, tell the gringo a story. How they got tickets. How far they’ve gone to see the Chivas. Where their relatives in the U.S. live. Then they always ask me if I’m scared. “You don’t have this up there, do you?” they say, sweeping a hand or their eyes to indicate the crowd around us. “Here there’s much more disorder, but don’t worry, you’re with us.” I always assure them that it is not my first time in a crowd and there is, in fact, occasional “disorder” in America. They never buy it.

Finally, the game started. I don’t remember much of the beginning; compared to the rest of the afternoon and evening, it was quite boring. Neither team scored, both teams played fairly poorly, and we didn’t have drums. It’s not very much fun to sing without drums. That’s about all I remember of the first 25 minutes or so.

About 30 minutes in, I noticed some out-of-rhythm yelling behind me and to my right and turned to see two young boys, 12-14 years old, walking sideways towards us holding between them a Chivas banner turned to face up into the bleachers. The home fans were pouring verbal abuse, as well as beer, all over them but they didn’t seem to mind. Both were giggling and holding clenched fists in the air with their outside arms. They got to our group and joined our song. No one but me paid much attention to their arrival.

With just a couple of minutes left in the half, Chivas scored the opening goal. We ramped up our singing, jumping with arms around shoulders in what must have looked like a poorly-coordinated, inflexible, but extremely-animated, dance line. Both the goal and our zeal in celebrating it were unacceptable for the local fans, especially the fat, masked youth in the top row. They showered us with beer, chips, hot sauce, and sandwich bread, but, again, no one else really took notice. I committed to pretending I didn’t either. So as the first, second, and several more splashes of alcohol, snack food, and hot sauce splattered my back, shoulders, and hair, I was determined not to reveal that it mattered to me.

During half time, the Indios fans continued to treat their guests to free beers, though their delivery method was of questionable effectiveness. They weren’t throwing anything that would hurt but I was worried about the clothes inside my ripped back pack. I hang on to the old bag, not out of sentimental attachment, but because it makes me look less rich and, therefore, less-likely to be robbed.

Gyz, one of the hitch-hikers, who turned out to be only 17 and currently living on her own in Guadalajara, spent much of half time taunting a woman twice her size who had thrown a beer at her. “If you want to fight, come down here and fight,” she started, “if you want to throw your beer, put it in my cup, don’t waste it!” she screamed up at her rival, lifting her chest and stretching out her body to its full length of maybe 5 feet 2 inches.

Chucho had also turned provocative. He had started singing “we’ll knock the Indio would of the playoffs” while jumping up and down and spinning, his eyes half-closed and face turned upward, pretending (I think) not to mind the rain of projectiles now that had now focused itself on him alone. Fans in the top rows were launching full cups of beer at him, most turning over on their way down and dumping their contents on the Indios fans in no-man’s-land.

As the game re-started, everyone turned their backs fully to the opposing fans above us and focused on the field in front. This was not how I had learned to play dodge ball. At the very least, I wanted to know when something was going to hit me. But was already the American who “probably isn’t used to all this disorder.” Acting as if the projectiles mattered more to me than the game; in fact, acting as if I noticed them at all, would only make me stick out more. I had no desire to confirm that I could not handle this “third world disorder.” So I stood, tensely facing the field, singing and jumping while I waited for the next blow.

On the field, Indios was out-running Chivas and generally looked like they wanted to win. This is all I really remember of the game. Instead, I remember quite vividly all the things that hit me during second half. There were several pieces of bread to my back, a half-full bag of potato chips that glanced off my shoulder, lots of splashes of beer and sauce, and a full liter cup of beer that smacked my side around the 15th minute. I was impressed with this last one. Keeping a cup of beer upright through the arm motion and then its entire flight, so as to strike a target several yards away while still full, is quite a feat. I hoped this heavier object would leave a bruise that I could look at in the mirror later on while feeling tough.

Shortly after the beer-cup blow, something struck Daisy, a fan I had not met, who was standing below me and Chucho, under the eye. She doubled over, holding her face with both hands. I thought it was sauce that had struck her, stinging her eye and staining her cheek red. Chucho stepped down next to her and put his arm around her, whisking her over to the aisle and up toward the exit in search of medical attention.

The rest of us went on singing and watching the game, which Indios soon tied at 1. The stands erupted with the goal, singing, jumping, embracing, and, of course, throwing more things at us. Pieces of ice were now the object of choice. Either the fans had just recently made the choice to escalate, or it had taken them a while to realize that ice was the hardest object available to them, given the tight security and thorough searches at the entrance gates. I had been annoyed to lose my pens on the way in, having hoped to write notes about the experience on trips to the bathroom or other moments of privacy during the afternoon. Now I was glad that the hardest objects available to the local fans did not include writing utensils.

The objects kept falling and Indios kept out-playing Chivas. My shirt, back pack, and pants were covered in beer and sauce but I still hadn’t received a “badge of honor,” a little nick, scratch, or bruise that I could look at later in the mirror while (perhaps) flexing my back muscles and (definitely) feeling tough.

At the 88th minute, Indios scored, taking the lead. We sulked amid a shower of chile, bear, bear cups, beer cups filled with chile and beer, and quite a lot of ice. Chivas needed to win to advance and there was not enough time left for them to do it. And it was now clear that people above us really did want to hurt us and were not going to let us walk easily out of the stadium. Some twenty police officers had moved from guard positions outside into the bleachers, mixing themselves into the crowd behind us. There weren’t enough of them. They knew it and so did the crowd. I glanced back at them and saw that fans standing right next to or in front of police officers continued to throw, undeterred.

I had seen this situation before. When the police are short-handed, they get near the people who are being naughty, and just watch them. I suppose there is a psychological strategy behind it; “maybe if we are watching, the fans won’t be so bold.” And they can’t be more aggressive. If they intervene, physically, they risk starting a riot like the one I witnessed in Mendoza, Argentina. They detain one person, his friends retaliate, they detain some of them, but then, as more fans turn violent, trying to free their friends, the police run out of officers to continue making arrests. They have to retreat or fight to defend themselves, all while the situation escalates. I’m not sure how the police decide whether they have enough man-power to act or not, but the crowd always seems to know. Or maybe that’s the point. The police show up, as if they were going to intervene. If the crowd buys it, then enough people stop to make arresting the few who don’t possible. If the crowd doesn’t buy it, it’s obvious, and the police know to do nothing, ready to step in if someone is about to be killed but otherwise trying to avoid escalation.

So the exaggerated food fight continued, the police watching it, and me feeling it all over my back and shoulders. Everyone around me was still watching the game. Gyz, to my right, was yelling at all of us to keep singing, asking us if we had “balls” or not. I looked back at the field, determined to prove that I was not a eunuch and trying to feel the objects falling towards me, like Luke Skywalker using The Force, rather than his eyes, to block laser blasts.

As I continued to prove that I had balls but lacked any semblance of Jedi skill, a stadium official in a bright orange polo shirt came down the aisle to address us. “We need to get you all out of here now, please follow me.” “Why?!” asked several of my companions in unison, without removing their gaze from the field. “The police commander says he can’t guarantee your safety in here, he wants you out now.” There were still about 10 minutes left. No one moved to leave. Secretly, I wanted to go. Chivas were going to lose, I wreaked of beer I hadn’t even drunk, and the force was failing me. But I also knew the rest of the group was not going to go voluntarily. That kind of “abandonment” is hard to live down. Rivals put it in their songs, lest you forget the day that you and your fans were “ball-less fags.” I remember thinking that the police should come take us out by force. “If they force us out, nobody loses face, and there are enough of them to do it, but there is no way these people are going to walk out, heads bowed, because Orange-Shirt asked them nicely.”

The two young kids who had been with us moved down and to the left, at the urging of Orange-Shirt and a police officer now accompanying him. They would be OK, they explained, because they were children. Clearly, the home crowd was an honorable bunch from whom such class-less acts as harming children were not to be expected.

Gyz and Firus had taken advantage of Orange-Shirt’s captive attention to berate him: “why don’t we have any protection?! If you’re going to take us out, what about the people throwing shit at us? It’s just a question!!” said Gyz. It sounded more like a condemnation. In the middle of the “conversation,” something big hit Gyz in the back and almost knocked her down off the step she was standing on. “See?” said Orange-Shirt, “the only way to protect you all from this is to get you out,” he pleaded, dodging a beer that over-shot us and landed on the stairs next to him. A couple of people in our group started to move towards the aisles, evidently convinced by Orange-Shirt, or by the increased hard-object : soft-object ratio in the cascade of projectiles landing on us.

As more of our group seemed to follow suit, and move to leave, Firus announced loudly “I am not going to leave like this…I am going to see the whole game…you guys can go to hell.” He was obviously annoyed, but he didn’t say the words with anger. It was resigned determination in his voice. And distraction; through the whole argument he had not turned away from the game, focused as ever on the pitiful spectacle Chivas was giving its fans. Gyz also hadn’t moved. She didn’t say anything but she also didn’t look like she was going to leave.

I was mentally willing the police to remove us physically, apparently convinced that, while The Force was not helping me see what was about to hit my back, I would still be capable of pulling off a jedi mind trick. Then something hit my head. It wasn’t heavy, it didn’t knock me forward as it bounced solidly off the crown of my skull, but it did sting. Still in “don’t-let-them-know-you-care-about-your-physical-well-being mode,” I pretended not to notice, focusing on the game. When a young woman in the row in front of me looked back at me, a pained, empathetic expression on her face, I asked “what was that, did you see? It felt hard, maybe harder than ice.” She hadn’t seen and seemed more concerned with the current state of my head than with the chemical composition of what had hit it.

Gyz was now looking at me, too, also apparently worried. I decided I had better figure out what all the fuss was about, touching the top of my head with my right hand. When I brought it down, it was covered in blood. “Ha,” I laughed to myself, “this is one of those moments all the rough and tumble boys with shaved heads used to talk about in elementary school.” It had always seemed like I was the only reasonably active boy who didn’t have a good “cut my head open and didn’t even know it” story.

Gyz now had her arm around me and was pushing me towards the aisle, where Orange-Shirt awaited, now telling us how he had told us so and asking if we wouldn’t please come now before someone else got hurt. I realized I was still holding Chucho’s beer, which he had entrusted to me when he left with Daisy. I had had it in front of me, at waist height, protected by my back pack. I put it down on the step across the aisle and started up.

Before the ice, or rock or whatever it was that hit me, hit me, some chile sauce had hit the side of my face and a little had gotten in my eye. So, as I walked up the stairs, bleeding and soaked, Gyz’ arm around me as she repeated “it will be, OK, blondie, it will be OK,” I must have looked extremely pathetic. My head didn’t hurt and I wasn’t really scared and all I wanted was to look tough and not let anyone in the crowd think they had chased me out. I was thinking like a true Latin American soccer fan. Well, I was thinking like a guy. And I was very upset that my right eye was crying involuntarily and Gyz was insisting that I needed her to insist that everything was going to be alright. This was not what I had had in mind as I waited for my “badge of honor.”

I emerged from the stadium, Gyz still strung over my shoulders, leaning in every couple of seconds to remind me of the color of my hair and that everything would be OK. Chucho was sitting on the curb across the driveway that surrounded the stadium, writing a text message as always. He was upset, and when he saw me, he got up and started screaming at Orange-Shirt: “See?!! See what happened now! This is all your fault! You don’t give us security, then you throw me out and my friend gets hurt!” He turned back to hug me, tears flowing down his flushed face, a mixture of anger and despair in his eyes. I tried to reassure him. I told him it didn’t hurt and that it wasn’t his fault. “I know, it’s his fault!” he yelled, remembering Orange-Shirt and suddenly marching off towards him. Gyz and I held him back. He didn’t put up much of a fight. It was one of those look-very-dangerous-but-move-slowly-and-let-your-friends-hold-you-back attempts to start a fight. All manly but reasonably intelligent men understand how to use this technique. It confirms your manliness without getting you thrashed or arrested. You get to say that you would have, without ever having to.

After Chucho settled down, he and Gyz walked me over to an ambulance parked in the driveway. There were no actual medical personnel around, but the step on the back of the ambulance made a good place to sit down. Gyz gave me an extra shirt she had with her and told me to use it to press on the cut. Then she went off to find water, coming back a minute later with one of the local Chivas fans, who used a half-full 1.5 Liter bottle of Bonafont (“el Agua Ligera”) to rinse the blood out of my hair. (It was only later that I thought of deliberately bleeding on my Chivas jersey to make even-more-permanent badge of honor. Unfortunately, by then I was not producing enough blood for a worth-while stain).

When I looked up from the rinsing, I was surrounded by 15 or so Chivas fans, some looking at me, asking how I was, some complaining loudly to the coir about the lack of security, some lamenting the game’s result. We heard a roar from inside the stadium and the Indios fans began singing louder than ever. It sounded like another goal. One of the fans standing around, a young woman with a long, brown pony tail and a new Chivas jersey, looked at my head and told me she thought I would need stitches. I was more excited than disappointed. After all, all the shaved-headed-boys had gotten stitches after their head injuries.

The game ended a couple of minutes later. Three police officers approached, having exited early to get ready for the crowd outside. They urged us to leave the grounds and Chucho urged them to fuck themselves. He explained later that, after taking care of Daisy, he had gone to lodge a complaint with the stadium officials and had then been prevented from entering. Apparently, Orange-Shirt had first assured him that he would be allowed back in, and then failed to intervene when the police blocked his entry, roughly. His arms and sides hurt the rest of the trip and he was furious the rest of the night. We left, reluctantly, Chucho singing the “if you don’t study you’ll end up a police officer” song, bouncing in circles with his eyes looking up at nothing, just like in the stadium. We ducked through a hole in the fence and into the parking lot.

It seemed like things had calmed down, (though Bionico was trying to fight every Indios fan he saw, even threatening to throw rocks at a mother and her children in the back of a pickup, though his class and gentlemanliness stopped him in the end). Thinking about what the fan with the pony tail had said, I decided I should go back in and find the medics to make sure I didn’t need to do anything urgent to my head to keep it from turning into something worse than a good story. There were two police officers guarding the hole in the fence and when Chucho, Gyz, and I explained that I wanted to have my head looked at, they let us in.

The medics were now manning the ambulance I had sat on. (At least, I assumed they were some sort of medical personnel because they were wearing mouth covers and standing by the ambulance. In hind sight, I was still in pig-flu-ridden Mexico and mouth covers were not very good evidence of medical proficiency). One of whatever they were cleaned my head, again with bottled water and a dirty rag, telling me that the cut wasn’t deep and that I wouldn’t need stitches, just to keep it clean. As he finished, a female whatever-they-were next to him offered him a bottle of something that looked like it would hurt germs almost as much as it hurt me. “No thanks,” he smiled back, “I already cleaned him with this,” he held up his mineral water and dirty rag, a satisfied look on his face. “Ah,” she answered, and turned away.

When I looked up from my second head-washing, Sureño was lodging a formal complaint with the police in my name. The officers asked for my ID and copied down my name and drivers’ license number. Chucho, Gyz, and a couple of other fans now joined Sureño in berating the police. The officer in charge deflected all blame towards the club administration, saying that they should have requested more security and that the police had nothing to do with it. The berating continued, as did the deflection, for a couple of minutes, no one making any new points but everyone either drunk or stubborn or both.

We finally left, back through the hole in the fence and out through the parking lot to the street, restraining Biónico several times along the way. Before we left the grounds, we ran into the pony-tailed fan again. She and a blonde companion explained that her mother worked at a hospital and they would give me 50% off for the stitches. I thanked them, but explained that the “medic” in the stadium had told me I wouldn’t need stitches. When I turned back to Chucho, he leaned in and whispered, angrily, “I cried for you, I take care of you, and you didn’t even get me her number!!” I apologized.

We walked down the avenue, in a group of 8 or so, and found a convenience store. Everyone was thirsty, most for beer but a couple joined me in buying bottled water. Then we looked for a cab to get back to the hotel and look for the players. “We’ll need two taxies,” Chucho remarked as we flagged one down. Most drivers won’t take more than four, I assume because of legal or company regulations. “How many of us fit?” asked Chucho. “All of you!” said the cabbie, enthusiastically. He was too excited, almost like a Dad trying to be cool by doing something naughty with his adolescent’s friends. We piled in, three in front, four in back, and Sureño in the trunk, because he didn’t want to lie across our laps in the back seat.

On the way we argued the fair with the cabby, who wanted twice what we had paid on the way to the stadium, “because there’s a lot of you,” he explained, now with a semi-apologetic “I’m still cool but, come on, kids, there are rules here,” tone to his voice. We got him down to 150 pesos, but then we saw Chivas’ bus, on its way from the stadium, and Chucho started offering the cabbie more to keep up with it. We stayed even with the bus for a while, Chucho leaning out the window to yell and make faces, supposedly of support and love, at his passing idols.

Outside the hotel, we made an illegal turn to arrive just as the team did. A patrol car stopped beside the gate to the parking lot to wait for the cabbie after he let us out. Before the car was even fully stopped, Chucho opened the door yelling, “last one out pays!” running/stumbling toward the bus. Biónico and I, plus Sureño in the drunk, were soon the only ones left in the cab. Sureño started banging, afraid we would forget him. Biónico told the driver we would pay him in a minute, before taking off himself. The driver and I released Sureño and I promised we would be right back. I couldn’t see over the crowd, but I assumed that the ripples in it, as people closer to the bus moved left and piled on behind people closer to the hotel, indicated the passage of Chivas players. Apparently no one had stopped to sign autographs.

Once the team had been whisked in, we returned to the cab, paying the driver doubled fee to compensate for the fine (or bribe) he would no doubt have to pay the trooper waiting for him outside. Then we joined the more-patient members of the crowd staking out the front of the hotel in hopes of an autograph, a handshake, a conversation; the things that, for the common fan, can make the season even when it ends in bitter disappointment. For Chucho, waiting seemed more routine. A labor of love, no doubt, but something he had done many times. Many of his jerseys are autographed and he says he “gets along” quite well with several players. Meeting one tonight would be nice, but nice like when they give you a discount at your favorite bar; it doesn’t make your week, but it’s nice to get some appreciation once in a while. Nothing likely to happen that night was going to be particularly new or exciting for Chucho, or for anyone in our group.

I noticed Vivi, a French friend of ours living in Mexico City, had called me multiple times since the end of the game and I returned her call. She said she had heard that there was trouble in the stands and was worried about Chucho and me. I explained that, yes, they had thrown a lot of crap at us and, yes, security had asked us to leave early but that we were OK, just a few light injuries including my head. She said she was glad we were OK and I put her on with Chucho: “no, I’m fine, don’t worry, you’re not a widow yet.”

Over the next two hours, not much happened. We stood around, talking to each other and to the local Chivas and even a few Indios fans who had shown up hoping to meet the famous Chivas. The crowd thinned out gradually, losing people with families and plans for the night; people with lives and without Chucho-level passion.

Indios fans were passing every couple of minutes in their cars, taunting us. They sang, “where are they? where are they? those little Chivas that were going to beat us?” One car passed several times, slowing down outside the gate to the parking lot as it finished each lap to makes its singing all the more painful. A kid in the passenger seat, wearing a Lucha Libre mask, was singing lead vocals, his un-masked buddy accompanying him on the car horn from the driver’s seat. Gyz and a thin, very drunk local fan whom I had not seen yet started picking up stones from the gravel gardens lining the parking lot and launching them at the car as it pulled away from each pause at the gate. As they got angrier and drunker, they started throwing the rocks at any and all cars that jeered at us on their way by. Gyz wasn’t throwing very hard and would walk casually back into the middle of the group after each shot. The skinny local fan, however, couldn’t care less who saw him throwing rocks. He threw hard. He dented Lucha Libre’s car, as well as a couple of others. Several times, he charged through the first two lanes of traffic, throwing his rocks from the median as cars U-turned to pass the hotel a second time.

As it started to get dark, the team still hadn’t emerged and the police guarding the hotel seemed to be tired of us. They hadn’t done anything about our rock throwing, but they would occasionally come up to ask us to back away farther towards the street and away from the hotel. These requests were getting more and more brusque. There were only three of them and I guessed that they didn’t think themselves capable of controlling and moving all 25 or so of us on their own. So instead they were throwing us off the hotel grounds three feet at a time. The downside of this strategy was that it was moving all of us closer to the street, making the Indios’ fans’ taunts more infuriating and allowing more members of the group to throw things at cars without leaving the apparent safety of the group.

One of the police officers, a young guy with glasses who had a really tough time being intimidating but clearly wanted very much to be respected, came over and asked Chucho to put away his beer and stop drinking. He did, filling his back pack with the eight beers he had left. He claims he did not drink any more after that. I don’t remember seeing him drink. Meanwhile, the Skinny Local had wandered off to the right, now apparently too drunk even to fight with passing cars. When the hotel police asked us all to move back and put away our alcohol, he did not respond. When I looked up from Chucho’s beers, Skinny Local was in cuffs up against a van parked along the fence at the edge of the lot. He was asking for “Pedro.” The police relayed this request to the group but no one knew who he was. As it turned out, Pedro was another local fan who had been with us in the stadium and who, at the moment of his buddy’s detention for public intoxication, was making a beer run.

Pedro arrived and went to negotiate with the police. I recognized him now. He had a scruffy beard, a dirty Chivas jersey, and an old, green Che Guevara cap. He was also pretty drunk. He talked to the unintimidating officer for about five minutes. The officer listened with crossed arms, set jaw, and stiff shakes of the head “no,” apparently being stern and unforgiving, though the facial expression he manufactured was closer to boredom, mixed with indigestion.

Suddenly, I heard sirens from the street and turned to see multiple squad cars pull into the parking lot, followed by two pickup trucks carrying around ten uniformed military police. The soldiers hopped out of the pick up beds, the police stepped down from the cabs. As a couple of the police strode over to Skinny Local, Pedro, and Unintimidating Officer, the soldiers jogged to positions surrounding us pushed us back into a small area along the sidewalk at the street edge of the parking lot. Unintimidating Officer came over and picked out Biónico and Chucho from the crowd, pulling them back into the middle of the parking lot, next to patrol car. As they were searched I moved to the front of our crowd, with Sureño, trying to get a better look at what was going on.

“They’re just going to search them, don’t worry,” Sureño shrugged his shoulders and folded his arms, clearly more relaxed than me. After a couple of minutes, the police returned, looking for more people to search. Chucho, Biónico, and Skinny Local waited, hands on the patrol car. As most of the crowd slinked back, I stepped forward, doing my best to look curious but un-threatening. Unintimidating looked over the crowd, sweeping his eyes a little bit too quickly to be cool. When he got to me and Sureño, I looked dead into his eyes, still doing my best to be curious, not aggressive. He stared back for a second, confusion on his face. “This gringo doesn’t look like trouble, he hasn’t been aggressive with me and he doesn’t seem drunk.” I kept staring, curious, and took another step forward. That did it. The Unintimidating Officer’s “please fear me” face came back and he gave me what I wanted: “you, over by the car with the rest.”

Abandonment is a moral sin in the hincha world. Had I been a Mexican fan, I imagined, I would have been fully expected to argue and plead for my friends, just as Pedro had done for Skinny Local. When they first pulled Chucho away, words had failed me. How does one object to a friend’s possible detention in Spanish? How do you say, “we don’t want any trouble, sir,” politely in Spanish. I am not there yet. I felt like I needed to prove that I was loyal. And also, being picked out, even for something bad, makes me feel important. After a year of being an observer in the corner who few noticed and none would miss (or so it seemed), feeling wanted, even if it was to have Mexican soldiers check my crotch for weapons, seemed desirable. I also got to leave the “common” fans with families and lives behind, crossing the police line into the domain of the truly obsessed supporters. Once again, I was in the “we.” I would be able to say afterwards that “we” got searched and they wanted to arrest “us.”

We were surrounded by several police officers and soldiers, perhaps 10 in total, the rest still corralling the crowd by the street. Each officer and soldier, in turn, asked us to blow into their fist before raising it to their nose to sniff for alcohol. I laughed, to myself, at each officer’s insistence on testing us himself. “They’re trying to cancel out each other’s biases,” I thought, “using the bell curve to make up for their lack of technology.” “Or maybe they’re just bored.” “Or maybe they just wanted to feel important; kindof like me,” and I stopped feeling superior.

In any case, the results were unanimous that I had not drunk but that my companions had drunk enough for the four of us and then some. One soldier visibly and dramatically recoiled when he smelled Skinny Local’s breath. Chucho was arguing that he had not had anything to drink since the hotel staff asked him to stop, to which the officer in charge replied by pouring out the contents of an open can of Tecate beer, a pleased and conclusive look on his face. Chucho replied that it had already been open when he was asked to put it away. They went back and forth, trading accusation for explanation. When he got bored of accusing Chucho of drinking, the officer changed his claim to “you refused to leave the premises,” to which Chucho replied that he was waiting for a ride.

“Look I was just waiting for my friends,” Chucho said, taking out his phone and showing them a local number in his outgoing calls. “See, it’s a Juarez phone, I was about to leave and I have proof right here.” “Yes, some friends here offered to put us up in their house,” I added, really just wanting to get a word in and prove to Chucho that I was concerned, if still useless. A couple we had just met had, in fact, offered to put us up at their house and for all I knew, Chucho had called them. (He explained later that he had dialed the number by accident and hadn’t intended on leaving any time soon). At this point the rest of the officers had started a second, or perhaps third, round of breathalyzers. Some had thrown out the fist method and were having their drunk prisoners blow directly into their faces. Their thoroughness did not cease to impress. When they heard Chucho’s claim of possession of “proof,” however, several hopped over and gathered around the cell phone in question, each making his own assessment of the buzon de llamadas marcadas and its crucial evidence.

The officer we had originally been talking to seemed quite reasonable. After looking at the phone he, shrugged and said, sympathetically, that they had received a complaint against us and that they would have to do at least something about it. “All I know is that they told me to put my beers away and I did,” Chucho explained. “We don’t want any trouble,” I added, uselessly.

“Who are you?” the officer asked me. “He’s just here supporting me, he doesn’t have anything to do with this,” said Chucho. The next few minutes would, in-large-part, be a contest between me and Chucho, him drunkenly trying to keep me from getting myself in trouble and me, sober but useless, trying to help, or prove that I wanted to help, or some poorly-accented, half-conjugated combination of the two.

As the nice officer explained things to us, a less-nice officer, apparently his superior came over. The soldiers and officers parted, allowing him to enter their perimeter and then awaited his judgment. “You, you, and you, are coming with us, get in the trucks,” he declared, pointing to Skinny Local, Biónico, and Chucho. I was shocked. I wanted to blurt out “But, sir, you haven’t seen Chucho’s outgoing calls and you haven’t had your face or even your fist blown on!.”

The soldiers pushed the three roughly towards the trucks, the commanding officer yelling at them to hurry up. I asked two officers where they were taking them. They didn’t answer. I asked again and they told me that they would get their phone call once they were booked. “What if they want to call a lawyer, or their family, instead of calling me?” “Well that’s up to them.” As the three detainees climbed into the back of the pickup trucks, I asked, loudly, how I was going to find out where my friends were being taken if no one told me. The nice officer replied, smiling, “well, do you want to get in the truck?” I didn’t have long to decide. The rest of the crowd was standing around the trucks watching. All I could think of was how worried I would feel if I let them go and we couldn’t find them later, and how proud and noble I would feel if I went with them. “OK,” I said, jogging over to the truck and climbing on.

An officer came over and cuffed me to Chucho, and Skinny Local to Biónico. “But sir, if I’m not being arrested, if I’m going of my own will,” the commanding officer, the jerk with the mustache said “no, anyone who goes in the truck is being arrested,” smiling harshly and swinging himself into the cab of the truck. I wasn’t thrilled, but I figured there wasn’t much I could do at that point. As the trucks pulled away, I saw Sureño, Gyz and a couple of others get into a car with a local couple we had been talking to. They pulled out to follow us.

“Fucking Zack,” Chucho’s face was a mix of apologetic, admonishing, (and drunk), “you should have come in the car.” “No, I didn’t want to leave you alone.” We traded arguments. “But your writing!” said Chucho, stumbling onto the bright side, changing tone without warning. “You can write about this!” I can’t say I wasn’t excited about that.

Biónico was arguing with the soldiers guarding us. They were about our age. They looked very young. One’s helmet was clearly too big and it made him look like the skinny, funny, Jewish kid from a World War II movie. “They beat us up today in the stadium because you guys didn’t protect us,” Biónico was saying. “That wasn’t us,” the soldier with the big helmet answered, looking at his feet. I looked back behind us. We were at the head of the line with the other pickup behind us, both going very fast with their lights on. The road was relatively full of traffic but we were weaving in and out of it quickly. I doubted our friends in the car would be able to keep up. As we served around a corner, I jammed my foot into the side of the pickup to keep from sliding into Chucho’s lap. “I’m tired,” said Chucho, eyes narrowing, seemingly unaffected by the reckless driving. He laid his head down on his shoulder and started to doze off as we ran a red light.

Biónico was now pleading our case to the soldiers. “We drank at the stadium, where it’s allowed, and then they assaulted us, and then we got arrested,” the soldiers didn’t seem terribly interested.

After about 10 minutes speeding along a highway through increasingly-suburban neighborhoods, we swerved to the right onto a bumpy gravel road. As we drove down it, I saw the second pickup turn in behind us, followed by the car full of friends. I was astonished they had been able to keep up, surely breaking many traffic laws on the way. I was glad we would have support but was also beginning to feel stupid for having gotten my self detained when I could have come along in the car like everyone else. “Well, at least I can call the consulate if they beat us,” I said to myself, laughing nervously.

We rode past a group of police, apparently posing for a unit picture. One of them broke his cheesy smile long enough to taunt us: “Ha! Stupid Chivas, were you fighting or what?” Biónico turned as far around as his handcuffs would allow and began reciting his plea, “no, we were drinking in the studium, where it’s allowed, and we were assaulted because of insufficient police protection and…” He went on even as we pulled well out of ear shot of the posing cops, around the corner of the police station.

When the trucks stopped, the angry, mustached officer got out and came to the back to give us orders. “Get down!” he shouted. Chucho looked at me, both of us unsure of our ability to climb the back gate of the pickup and jump down while still handcuffed together. “I said get down,” Mustache was clearly impatient. Chucho and I awkwardly swung legs over the pickup’s gate, leaning back to avoid falling, and then did our best to jump at the same time. We landed awkwardly but safely and were immediately ordered up against the wall to be searched again. Nice officer was searching me and I turned my head and shoulders to ask “I’m not being detained right? I mean, I came of my own free will, this isn’t really necessary. I have a scholarship that I could lose...” Instead of answering, he slid his left hand up into my groin, pressing the other firmly into my shoulder. I’m not exactly an ace non-verbal communication, but I imagined that this one meant, more or less, “I may be Nice Cop, but I don’t particularly give a shit about your scholarship.”

Once the four of us were searched, the police took us inside, into a bright, noisy room. On the side closest to the door there was a counter-type desk, behind which sat a fat, bearded guy with gray hair. Next to the desk, there was a door with its window covered. On the other side of the room was a bench, on which we were told to sit. To our left, caddy-corner from the desk, there was a door-less entrance into a narrow hallway lined with cells. Alone, in the cell closest to us, was a guy in a Chivas jersey, quietly hanging on the bars, looking out. Just around the corner, but close enough to be seen from our bench, was a cell out of the movies. Five or six loud, drunk, dirty guys were gripping the bars and yelling abuse at everyone outside. One, in the right corner, was turned sideways, stretching out his left arm as far as it would go into the room outside and yelling repeatedly, “let me go, this is a mistake!”

The nice officer stood at the corner of the room, by the hallway to the outside, apparently ignoring all that was going on inside. Mustached Officer was talking to the fat man behind the desk. A couple of the younger officers, the ones who had been so excited to “test” our breath and analyze Chucho’s cell phone, asked us for identification and started searching our bags. I poured my clothes, toiletries, and notebooks out onto the floor so that they could be scrutinized. I handed over my passport, reluctantly, knowing that giving them my name was the first step to being officially arrested.

A few minutes later, the younger officers finished searching us and returned our passports. Then we waited, Chucho nodding off between text messages, Skinny Local burping and hiccupping, Biónico giving his plea of innocence to anyone who would listen. Inspired, I started demanding to hear the charges against me and to call the consulate, addressing any police officer who came within ten feet of me. At least once, I began my speech before realizing that the tall, confident man next to me was, in fact, just an experienced detainee. “I’m not a police officer,” he said, smiling. He was remarkably calm. The other people in the room were either in a drunken stupor or angrily declaring their innocence. This man looked almost bored.

The cops were definitely bored. To pass the time they started teasing us about the day’s game. As it turned out, they were fans of América, Chivas’ national rival. They asked me, somewhat skeptically, whether I was a Chivas fan, too. “Of course,” I said, looking down at my jersey. “Why?” asked one of the officers, a critical smirk on his face. “Because I know about soccer, why aren’t you a Chivas fan?” “Sshh,” Chucho elbowed me, “easy easy,” he whispered. I am not a very conflictive person, but on those rare occasions when I do get myself into trouble, I, for some reason, become a smart ass, especially with people who can make my life much more difficult. Chucho did not think this was a good idea.

After maybe 20 minutes of waiting, we were called to see the fat man behind the desk, who turned out to be the judge. We were instructed to stand along a line taped on the floor a couple of feet back. The judge wheeled his wheelie chair over and, with great ceremony, raised our police report up and out above his head, as if checking it’s water marks. Then, his eyes slid quickly around the paper and down his up-turned nose to shoot us a look of great contempt. Then he began reading. “The police were called to the Camino Real Hotel based on complaints of drunken disorder on the part of several young individuals. Upon arriving, they found four such individuals consuming alcohol, generally being disorderly, and refusing to listen to police instructions.” It went on like this for a few more lines, and then the judge read off each of my companion’s names before stumbling over mine. “Sashree William Deblim-Floats,” he claimed, had also been drunk, rowdy, and uncooperative in the hotel parking lot that evening.

I resisted the powerful urge to make fun of the judge’s English. “OK,” said the judge, “now, do you have anything to say?” Biónico started reciting his plea, “We did consume alcoholic beverages, but you must understand that that was only in the stadium…” “Wait, wait, wait, you started all wrong,” the judge cut him off. “Do you know who I am? Do you know how to address me?”

“Sorry, sir, how may we address you sir, please, sir?” asked Biónico. “Well, sir or Your Honor or…”

“OK, sir Your Honor,” Biónico started over, “Sir Your Honor will understand that we were, in fact, drinking, in the stadium, where it is permitted…” He finished and the judge, un-moved, asked for other pleas. Chucho spoke up as well, explaining that he had been told to put away his beers and had done so and had been arrested anyway. I raised my hand and the judge asked what I wanted. I had been over what I was going to say but had forgotten to confirm a word with my friends before starting. So, what I ended up saying was an obviously-rehearsed, but obviously-foreign: “Sir, I came here of my own free will because the officers would not tell me where my friends were being taken, I haven’t had anything to drink today and I don’t understand what I am being cargoed with. I want you to test me for alcohol if that is the cargo against me.” The judge stared at me, un-moved. “You’re American?” I nodded. “And I’m here on a scholarship; if I admit to having broken the law, I could lose my scholarship.”

“Sir Your Honor,” Biónico broke in, “he’s doing a study about socc…”

“I understand from this report that all of you were drinking and disobeying, it doesn’t matter what he is here doing.”

“But, Sir Your Honor, he’s doing a study, you should understand he’s doing a study about…”

The judge stopped him again, saying, “you all have heard the charges against you and will now be examined by the police doctor and then you,” he looked at me, “can call your consulate, if you would like, but they won’t be there now, it’s Sunday. Then you may each choose to pay a 500 peso fine or spend the night in jail.”

They sat us back down and we waited another couple of minutes. Then the door with the covered window opened and another fat man, this one beardless, emerged, ushering a handcuffed drunk in front of him. This, apparently, was the doctor. The young officers sent Skinny Local in first. I asked Chucho and Biónico if I could go next, explaining that I wanted them to test me for alcohol as soon as possible so I could prove that I hadn’t been drinking. They agreed. A few minutes later, Skinny Local emerged, the doctor behind him and I got up to take his place.

Once inside, the doctor asked me my name. “Zachary William Devlin-Foltz,” I responded. He looked at me blankly and then turned to the door. “Guard!” he yelled, “bring me the police report so I can copy down his damn name!” Looking back at me, he said, “so you’re American?” he looked at me over his paperwork. “Yes, sir, I’m a gringo.” “Wajoorname?” he asked, smiling broadly, obviously proud of his English. “Zachary William Devlin-Foltz, and we can speak Spanish, I understand some.” “I’s know, but I want practice!” “OK, let’s practice, then” I sighed.

He began asking me other questions. “So, ju was drunk?” “No sir,” I replied, “my friends were drinking earlier in the day but I have not had anything today. I would like you to give me a test to prove that I have not been drinking, because that is all I’m being charged with,” I answered in Spanish. “Relax, relax, nobody, em, nobody,” he asked me how to say “harm” in English. Nobody…harm…joo…here…relax” the doctor labored through his sentence, emphasizing the new vocabulary word.

“I know no one is going to hurt me, but I won’t admit to breaking the law when I haven’t.”

“Well if your friends broke the law, then you broke the law too, by being with them. That’s called accessory. Anyway, none of this is up to me, I am not the judge. Now, do you have any injuries?” He responded in Spanish. I told him about my head and he examined it. Then he took out a bottle of alcohol and a clean rag and started scrubbing. The wound began to bleed again and he handed me a cloth to catch the bloody alcohol as it ran down my face. When he finished he told me that he thought I should go to the hospital to be checked for internal damage. “It’s not urgent, but I’d rather you do it soon.”

“OK, but can you test me for alcohol first?”

“There is no alcohol testing equipment here,” the doctor responded, “if you want a test for alcohol you will have to go out and pay for it somewhere else, but you can’t go now.”

“But I want the record to show that I’m not drunk…” “Look, look, Mister William, I am writing in my report that I don’t think you are drunk, look. It won’t help you, because you are still an accomplice to your friends, but I am writing it here so that you will relax.”

I gave up. The doctor bandaged my head, wrapping several long strips of tape around my head to hold a piece of gauze over the wound. Then he sent me out. “Look, they even gave me a souvenir!” I joked as the other three stared at my new head gear. I sat back down on the bench to wait for Chucho and Biónico to have their examinations.

As Chucho finished his, Sureño came in down the hallway, escorted by a police officer. “This boy wants to make a statement on behalf of his friends,” the officer said. “Who is he here for?” the judge asked. Sureño pointed to me and said, “I’m here for him, the American.”

“He’s here for all of us,” I said loudly, “we’re all friends, he’s here for all of us.” I felt badly enough about only having argued on my own behalf up to that point. I thought that, somehow, telling the judge that Sureño was there for all of us would make me less selfish. Sureño made a clearly-rehearsed speech about only having drunk alcohol in the stadium (where it was permitted) and being beaten up (because the police didn’t protect us) and then being arrested at the hotel (where we were doing nothing wrong but the Indios fans were throwing things at us). Then he made a special plea for me, saying that I had come as a witness, of my own will, and, as far as any of them knew, I never drank.

The judge listened, patiently, and then said, “Do you want to be detained as well?…advocating won’t do any good…I’d like to invite you to leave here.” I spoke up, “thanks, Sureño, just wait outside, I’ll talk to the judge.” Sureño tried to say something else but the judge cut him off, “do you want to be detained as well? I’d like to invite you to leave, now.” Sureño left, hurried along by one of the young officers.

The judge had wheeled over to the front of the desk to listen to Sureño and I took advantage of this to continue advocating for myself. “Sir, I won’t admit to this nor pay any fine until I’ve spoken to my consulate. I will lose my scholarship if I admit to having broken the law of this country. I would like to call my consulate now.”

“He has a scholarship, sir!” yelled one of the drunks in the cell down the hall, sarcastically, before giggling and almost falling over backwards.

The judge ignored him. “I told you, the consulate won’t answer on Sunday. If you can’t pay the fine, you can spend the night in jail. Won’t it just be easier to pay and finish this now?”

“Your Honor, I can’t do that. I really will lose my scholarship. It’s worth it to me to wait until morning and then call the consulate. You have refused to prove that I have been drinking even though that is the charge against me.”

“The thing is sir, he has a schol…” this time the drunk couldn’t finish his sentence before being overwhelmed by laughter.

I continued to feel badly about only advocating for myself. But I was also getting increasingly worried. I imagined myself on the phone with the Watson Foundation, trying to convince them that I hadn’t been drinking or fighting or throwing rocks at people in Lucha Libre masks; that I had gotten in a police truck voluntarily after passing no fewer than 35 make-shift breathelizers; that, despite their insistence to the contrary, the police had not wanted to arrest me but I had effectively convinced them to…

Chucho turned to me and said, “how much money do you have on you,” his wallet was in his hand and he explained that he had 700 pesos and Biónico 200. With the 600 that I had, we could get three people out that night, paying the fine and avoiding any more time with fat judge, the bilingual doctor, or the movie-perfect drunks in the cell. “If they let you go, the rest of us pay our way out.

The judge, who had been reviewing out medical reports, sat up, sighed, and said, “Alright, you, come here,” motioning me up to the desk again, where Mustache instructed me to stand on the tape line. “The doctor tells me that you have an injury that should be seen at a hospital, correct?” I nodded. “Alright, well if I let you go, you will have to get it examined on your own dollar. If you stay here, I will send you to the General Hospital and we will pay.”

“I can pay, sir, that’s fine. But I want to be clear that the charges against me are being dropped and there will be no record that I have been arrested or have broken the law.”

“You are being released,” the judged responded.

“Right, sir, but the record…”

“A warneeng,” said Mustache, standing next to the desk. “He geeve ju warneeng.”

“Thank you,” I said. I hate translation. I hate when people assume I don’t understand them because I don’t speak enough Spanish, rather than because they are not being clear or because I didn’t hear very well. On this particular occasion, however, I was willing to let it go.

I handed Chucho the 600 pesos he needed to make three fines and I left to join our support squad outside the station. Some 20 people had come along to wait for us and see if they could help. I greeted everyone and explained that the other three should be out soon. Among the crowd were Gyz, Sureño, the guy who had driven everyone, speeding along behind the police caravan, and a family of 5 wearing matching Chivas jerseys. The little girl of the family was playing in the dirt by the side of the road. “Do you like my new hat?” I asked her. “The nice police doctor gave me a new hat,” she ran back to her mom.

An officer who evidently didn’t have anything better to do was arguing with the group about soccer. He, too, was an América fan. After a while he went into the station, emerging a few minutes later with a triumphant look on his face. “I have bad news,” he announced, importantly, “the judge is an América fan.” I wondered whether he had really gone in a checked on that. “Oh, but your friends are on their way out.”

The three marched out together, Chucho laughing to himself, Skinny Local skill quite drunk, and Biónico announcing, loudly, “my father is in Alcoholics Anonymous! They will regret this!” I was confused. He explained later that his father worked for the AA organization and was, “in fact,” the “big boss” for Mexico City and “will fuck that hotel good…You don’t mind if I keep the arrest reports do you guys, I mean, so I can fuck the hotel?”

We parted ways, thanking the group for coming along with us and Andres, who had driven the first group of supporters to the police station, daringly tailing the cop cars, offered to drive us to meet up with the couple with whom we were going to stay.

Geraldo and Isabel took us to Isabel’s mother’s house and put us up in the main bedroom. We offered to sleep on the couch instead but she replied, “it’s Mother’s Day, I don’t think my parents will be going to bed any time soon, they’ll just keep drinking with my aunts.”

Before we went to bed, Isabel, who was a nurse, cleaned my head again. “Does this hurt, tell me if it hurts because if it hurts you’ll just have to suck it up.” Chucho laughed. He hadn’t mentioned it before, but now he complained that his ribs hurt from where the police had hit him both in the stadium and in the parking lot of the hotel. With me re-bandaged, we went to sleep.

In the morning, we ate breakfast and then piled into Geraldo’s car to take Isabel to work. Geraldo, Chucho, and then went to Juarez’ big, new mall so I could eat more and Chucho could get started drinking again. The store fronts were labeled in English and there were lots of American chains. In the food court, three of four places advertised “authentic Mexican food.” Despite the violence, Geraldo explained to us, lots of gringos still come across the boarder to go shopping. Above one of the entrances was a large banner with a cross and angles printed across it. It’s title read, in Spanish, “there’s still hope for Juarez: come to God.” The mall was for American consumers. The banner was for Mexican gangsters who sold them drugs. We represented the rest of Mexico to Juarez residents by getting drunk at their nicest hotel and throwing rocks at their cars. And Geraldo, as local as they came, had put us up in his house and was driving us to the airport. On the other hand, it had also been locals who cut my head open and got us arrested. I decided not to take a moral away from the story.

Geraldo dropped us off at the airport. We thanked him repeatedly and promised to return the favor if ever he ended up in the Mexico City or Washington D.C. On the way in to the airport, we passed a van with its back window shattered out. “Ha, wasn’t us,” I said. “You never know…” Chucho replied, chuckling.

It was weird passing through security with a bandaged head and obviously-dirty clothes. I wondered whether it made us look more suspicious, but no one stopped us. In the waiting area, I called my mom and had one of those conversations that start with “first of all, I’m OK, now let me tell you what I just did.” Thankfully, she wasn’t that mad.

Before we got on the plane, we had to fill out a questionnaire to ensure that we didn’t have pig-flu symptoms. One of the items was “pain in muscles and bones” and another was “headache.” “I have muscular pain!” said Chucho. “Does police-induced count?” “Ha. And my head hurts?” “Yeah, what about headaches from ice chunks?” We laughed.

The next day, back in Guadalajara, I went to a free clinic in the neighborhood to ensure that I didn’t have any internal damage. I was fine. I didn’t get much of a badge of honor, not even one stitch. But I did get to cross “injured in stadium” and “arrested” off of my rapidly-shrinking list of “fan experiences I have not yet had.” And my mom got to say “I told you so,” even though I still hold that what happened had nothing to do with Ciudad Juarez or narco-trafficking or kidnapping and everything to do with Chivas and soccer and the things that happen to the passionate.

The experience, like many I have had with hinchas, was not fun. But like most of those un-enjoyable experiences, I enjoy very much having had it. There is a small club of fans, those who have “been there.” Normally, you find them together. They travel in buses together, they get into sections reserved especially for them, they drink themselves to oblivion in their own bars. I mix with the been there’s, I follow them, I will never really be one of them. But my list of experiences, my “yeah, it wasn’t that bad’s” and my “no I wasn’t scared’s,” is growing.

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.