A weekend of ups and downs, August 23-24

Saturday night Arturo and I went to a karaoke bar with his employees. He runs a small shop that prints fake Dollars and Paraguayan Guaranies for kids games and piñatas. We went and collected the Saturday crew and walked down the street to an inconspicuous spot whose contents were three tables, a fridge full of beer, drunk soccer fans, and a large, new sound and video system which did not quite fit its surroundings. As it turned out, karaoke meant less singing along than it did singing over. The soccer fans, whose team had just won an important match nearby, sang stadium songs to drown out the Mexican classics and Beyonce concerts on the sound system.

Our group went home one by one: first Eusabio, the art student who said his throat hurt; then Raquel and Ruth, who had to get up early for church the next day; then Celeste, who was tired and pregnant; and finally Arturo and I, lest his señora worry. When we arrived home, not quite as lucid as we might have been, Arturo apologized and told his wife, Nanci, that it had all been my idea, that he had wanted to come home much earlier and soberer, and that we wanted to eat hot dogs. We ate, I accepted the blame, and I went to bed.

Sunday started with Arturo yelling, his still-slurred speech a reminder of the night before. “It’s 6 o-clock, Zacarias, time to get up.” I had to be on a bus at 6:30 to get across town for a soccer game at 7. The youth club with whom I had been practicing was scheduled to play the youth team from the biggest club in Paraguay, Club Olympia. They weren’t supposed to win but, if any of their players put on a good display, they might be invited to Olympia’s soccer school, where young Paraguayan stars are made. I arrived just in time to hear Profe Luis’ final instructions and encouragement. The basic message was, don’t look at their jerseys, forget that it’s Olympia, just play like you did last week.

They didn’t. They looked tight and tentative all game and only managed one real chance, losing something like 9-0 (I’m not sure even the referees kept count). Coach Luis scolded them for missing this great opportunity to be scouted, but told them that there would be others. Then he told me that he wanted me to play next week, to add speed to his line-up, and that I would have to shave and tell the referee I was 16.

We then collected Profe Luis’ family and rode a bus to another park for the embassy tournament. Defensores de Lima had already played, and tied, the Bolivian team currently in first place. They were a bit disappointed; a win would have made their road to promotion to first division much easier. But life goes on; and win or lose, everyone eats roast meat. Having the early game also meant that Defensores could minimize the hours of the day to be spent in playing form and maximize those spent drunk. I played soccer on the small field with younger kids while the men re-hydrated.

When I came over for a break, the Arturo told me I played well but that I missed a lot of chances. I responded that I was in good shape and ran well but had trouble putting the ball in the net. The word I used turns out to have the same double meaning for Peruvians as it does in English: the team got no end of amusement out of my self-proclaimed inability to “score,” providing suggestions, and even offering tutorials, if I was interested.

As things calmed down in the park, I walked back to the hotel where I stayed last week to meet up with Cristian. We had planned the day before to go to Sunday’s rivalry match between Olympia and Cerro Porteño, the second biggest club in Asunción. A few minutes after I arrived, Cristian emerged with an Olympia shirt for me to wear and we met a few of his friends on the street and walked down to the corner to catch a bus to the stadium. I had, of course, heard that these matches were crazy and I had to be careful not to be caught alone, wearing Olympias black and white in a crowd of Cerro’s red and blue, or vice versa. I wasn’t sure how seriously to take all the talk.

At the bus stop I got my first sign that they meant what they said. One of Cristian’s friends, Junior, wore an old Olympia jersey with large rips down the back and sides and the words “white mafia, pure insanity, no limits” written on the back. He bought beer for everyone and when I offered to collect and throw out the empty bottles he said “no, keep it, that’s a projectile.”

The 7 of us piled into the number 56, which was already mostly full of singing Olympia fans. Marcos, another of Cristian’s friends, sat next to me and was nice enough to speak to me in Spanish and help me learn the Olympia songs. A few general themes emerged from the lyrics: “Olympia is great, I’m for Olympia, and Cerro fans are bitches, as are their mothers, and we will kill them.”

The bus dropped us off about 5 blocks from the stadium and we walked with a crowd of Olympistas. In the U.S., the mood would have been of anticipation and excitement. Here it was already of anger. Once, a confused fan in a Cerro jersey somehow found his way onto our street and was immediately pounced on by a crowd of black and white. He escaped with scratches and bruises but only by running full speed down a side-street.

After a few minutes, we reached the stadium and, after arguing and complaining about the prices, finally relented and paid our 30,000 Guaranies to get in. We were searched and then searched again and then we finally moved into the corridor to walk to our area (the sections for rabid fans don’t have seats). Cristian and his friends stopped to buy inflatable noise-makers.

As I stood waiting for them a large guy approached me asking what I had in my pockets. I didn’t recognize him but our group had picked up a couple of new members on the way in and I thought he might be a friend. Then he started padding me down as if to search me. He wasn’t uniformed but I was confused and didn’t protest until he reached into my pocket and took out my cell phone. Cristian saw but was about as confused as I was and didn’t intervene. The man turned and walked with the crowd and I moved to follow him. I immediately came face-to-face with another guy, who had been standing behind me as if throwing a pick in basketball. He pushed me solidly in the chest and then stood blocking my way. I backed down, startled and confused. The rest of our group had since climbed the stairs into the stands and Cristian and I hurried to catch up. And so went my first encounter with stadium crime in Paraguay.

Inside, the crowd was busy jeering and singing and throwing bottles. The youth game was just ending and both sets of fans had a half an hour to warm up (or wear out) their lungs and promise to do all sorts of horrible things to each other before the soccer started. In reality, the game seemed almost of secondary importance.

Lucky for me, the songs, signs, and cheers were almost exclusively in Spanish. Banners hanging above the fan sections declared different neighborhoods’ loyalty to one team or the other. Many of the places listed had first division teams of their own, but none with the lure of the two biggest clubs in Paraguay. My favorite sign read: “your jersey, my second skin,” proclaiming the author’s superior dedication to his club. More-common, however, were signs emphasizing the inferior sexual performance or illegitimate parentage of opposing fans. The songs and cheers had similar themes. Both sides adopted each others’ characteristic melodies, cleverly replacing key words with “bitches” and “win” with “lose.”

When the match finally did start, it started fast and with violence. Within minutes, Olympia’s especially energetic left wing midfielder had retaliated for a hard tackle by knocking an opponent flat on his face after play had stopped. Though Cerro would also have a man sent off later in the match, the Olympia faithful were fully convinced that the referee was against them and, naturally, that he was born out of wedlock.

Tough and hard-fought, the game remained tied until late in the second half. Poor defense and timid goal-keeping then allowed Cerro to take the lead. Their half of the stadium did not stop shaking for the rest of match, while the Olympistas remained more or less quiet, even when a free kick came within inches of tying things up. The match ended 1-0.

Walking back to the bus stop, Cristian and friends all stopped to chunks of broken sidewalk. They devised strategies (“you throw high, I’ll throw low”), and made promises, but ultimately did not encounter any buses or cars full of Cerristas. I couldn’t help but wonder how Cristian, whose little brother was a Cerro fan, could so desperately wan to hit someone else’s little brother in the face with a brick.

On our way we witnessed another beating, this time the victim was not dressed in the wrong colors but perhaps had said the wrong thing or had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He escaped relatively un-harmed, stumbling down a side-street as riot police approached to calm things down.

A few minutes later, Marcos spotted a couple walking ahead of us, the boy wearing a Cerro hat. He pulled it off and shoved its owner as the rest of our group approaches. Juan Carlos, often the most level-headed of the group started yelling “hey, that’s enough, it’s done!” I assumed he was trying to calm Marcos down until he explained further “you should have taken your hat off, out of respect. We had to do it for you, out of respect.”

So we took home a souvenir. On the day we were down a cell phone, up a Cerro hat, down a goal, and down 30,000 Gs each for our tickets. And I, for one, couldn’t wait to go back.