What I’m Reading: July 1, 2007

This is the slow season for soccer. With many leagues on vacation, the number of interesting stories has decreased. Thank God, then, for Hugo Chavez.

Hugo Chavez speaks at the opening ceremonies of the Copa America

The Venezuelan president has been basking in the worldwide attention that his country’s hosting of the Copa America has brought. There have been many reports on the Copa America, many of which have looked at the political context that surrounds the tournament.

In the lead-up to the tournament, several reports have looked at the massive spending the Chavez government has undertaken to prepare for the tournament. The BBC reports that 2 billion dollars was spent on stadiums and infrastructure. Despite this massive sum, the work wasn’t entirely finished by the beginning of the tournament. As James Ingham writes, “one [stadium] in the western city of Barquisimeto is not quite finished. ‘It’s perfectly acceptable. Only the chairs are missing,’ said the head of the inspection team, Felix Ducharne.” Fans with sore asses at the Estadio Metropolitano may disagree.

An architect’s mock-up of the stadium, which conveniently also lacks seats

The incredible sums of money Hugo Chavez spent on preparations were not merely to ensure a successful tournament; Chavez sees the Copa America as a way to improve his image around the world. (The Venezuelan leader could use such a boost, as he is largely unpopular in South America, according to a recent Pew Global Attitudes Survey.)

According to the AP, “[a]t each of the nine stadiums, pictures of Chavez are displayed prominently under giant banners like the one in Maracaibo reading ‘We’re building the motherland’.” A prominent sponsor of the tournament, seen on the adboards at every stadium and on the tournament website, is PDVSA, the state-run oil monopoly and Chavez’s main source of income.

Notice the PDVSA adboard behind Mexico’s Nery Castillo (in green) and Alex of Brazil

But many writers see this image-boosting through sport as a sham. They include Chris Kraul at the LA Times, who writes that “the stadiums probably won’t have a long-term economic effect; they probably will be more of a ‘bread and circuses’ offering to the masses and a way to impress out-of-towners attending the tournament.”Some have taken an even stronger tack. Ronaldo Assis de Moreira at the blog 101 Great Goals writes that “[j]ust as Hitler used the Olympic dream in 1936 to further his own goals, it seems Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, will use the upcoming South American football tournament to do the same. Chavez is a totalitarian demagogue who has consistently violated human rights and illegally silenced his opponents.”

Assis de Moreira offers the example of RCTV, the Venezuelan television station recently shut down by Chavez. (The government-run station which replaced RCTV is showing Copa America games, but according to Reuters,“[t]he picture is blurred, the graphics can show a striker as goalkeeper and first game’s commentator was not able to read out the Venezuelan team names — he could not find his glasses.”

RCTV was often critical of the Venezuelan government and is joined in these criticisms by a well-organization opposition movement. In the lead-up to the Copa America, opposition groups’ threats to protest were met by government claims that such actions would be “neutralized.” According to Al-Jazeera, “Chavez read a column published in the pro-government VEA newspaper, stating that radical groups ‘are looking for the transportation sector to call a national strike … and have the protests coincide with the Copa America to create national and international commotion’.”

Venezuelans protest the closure of RCTV

Threats of protests became reality on Thursday, although not in the transportation sector, but instead inside one of the stadiums itself. According to Joshua Goodman of the AP, nearly half of the crowd of 40,000 joined in “[t]he chants — which included ‘This government is going to fall!’ – [that] began shortly into the second half of Thursday’s match between the U.S. and Argentina in the western city of Maracaibo, a stronghold of opposition to Chavez.” I’m not shocked the promised protests occurred, but it is a bit surprising that protestors would choose a game involving the US to do so. Chavez will almost certainly have seen the connection and will use it to tar the protestors as American stooges.Hugo Chavez was on the receiving end of criticism this week from the newly-elected mayor of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, who said, “[Argentina] should have a foreign policy that involves more than a good friendship with Chavez.” Macri is a center-right politician in Argentina, but more interestingly to me, is also the president of Boca Juniors. Macri used this role to improve his stature in the country and likely would not have won the mayor’s job without it.

When Boca went out and signed former idol Juan Roman Riquelme before the new season, it was in large part because Macri knew that success for Boca would likely provide him the springboard he needed to be elected mayor. Riquelme just led Boca to the Copa Libertadores title and Macri just won himself a new job. Coincidence? I think not.

Riquelme: Key to the success of Boca Juniors and Mauricio Macri

Finally, the Guardian ran a piece on the Iraqi national team’s preparations for the upcoming Asian Cup. It focused on the team’s Brazilian coach Jorvan Vieira. He describes the struggles his players face just to play soccer. “Some of them, if they go to Iraq, they are going to be killed,” Vieira says. “I don’t have one person in this group who hasn’t lost someone from their family because of this war.”

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