The Soccer War: Conflicts in Central America

Starting the chapter "The Soccer War", we see that Kapuscinski is in Mexico and is starting to learn about Central America. With the help of Luis Suarez he starts to understand how conflicts start in Central America and honestly, I did too, and never imagined that people all over America are so brutal and stupid to begin wars for little problems.

The war between El Salvador and Honduras started over a soccer game. "In Latin America, he said, the border between soccer and politics is vague. There is a long list of governments that have fallen or been overthrown after the defeat of the national team" (pg. 159). Just because the two soccer temas of these two nations have had conflicts, This two countries started a war. It´s hard to imagine that a war could have started because of that because know a days we are used to wars being fought over scarce products and power. The author is trapped in this war becasue he wanted to visit many places in Central America and just as he got to Tegucigalpa the war took place. As he experienced this event, he thought he should right about it and inform it to Warsaw, and he did. Here is were he really shows us that his passion of repoting news is so big, that he would risk his life for it. "Excited by the patriotic ambition, I decided, as the only Pole on the scene, to attach myself to the group that intended to make the desperate march" (pg. 168). He continues with the rest of the group just to report to the world what atrocious war Central America was going through.

As they continue, we see several acts that happen at wars from know a days. One thing that Colombians might be aware of is the child abuse that guerrillas perform in war. They poison childrens minds for them to fight and send them as bate. In the book we see when they get a Salvadoran boy as hostage. "A wounded boy arrived in a truck. A Salvadoran. He had taken a bullet in the knee. He was ordered to lie down on the grass. The boy was barefoot, pale, spattered with blood" (pg. 172-173). We see how also in the Salvadoran army they use children to fight for their country. Kapuscinski needs to get to get to Santa Rosa de Copan and in a moment he finds someone to lead his way after being in a heavily fired attack were he almost lost his life. With guts, he decides to continue and send the dispatch to Warsaw.