Soccer vs. Football: Hispanic Immigration's Impact on US Culture

Introduction: One People, One Pastime

One cannot separate a people from its pastimes. The Spaniards have their bullfights. The French have their bicycle races. And the Americans have their football. Culture and sport are inextricably linked. National identity determines cultural preferences, and the history and traditions of a people combine to create a set of preferences or predilections. One can only ponder the combination of religious and social factors that first caused the ancestors of the Spanish to pit one bull against another. The French fascination with the bicycle is perhaps more obvious, as the bicycle is a modern invention. A product of the industrial age, it brought mobility to the masses in a uniquely personal way. Though it attained its phenomenal popularity much later on, American football is also a type of mass entertainment and recreation — an outgrowth of industrial civilization. American football, like its international cousin, soccer, constitutes a sport with mass appeal. One can play it or watch it.

It is perfectly suited to a culture of television, the Internet, and instantaneous mass communication. Yet, as the dichotomy of football and soccer shows, neither sport necessarily precludes the other. To all appearances, one people, or group of peoples, simply chose one over the other, or expanded on its own version of the same idea. South of the border, soccer is one of the national passions. Mexicans and other Hispanic migrants bring their love of soccer wherever they go. As millions have come to the United States, so have their language and customs, their festivals and crafts — and their games.

The growing popularity of soccer in the United States is a direct reflection of the enormous Hispanic immigration of recent years. Culture is made by people, elite or ordinary. Popular culture is created by the masses. As the American population changes, so do its pastimes. The widespread presence of soccer in the United States is a sure sign that Hispanics have arrived and come to stay.

Peoples and Pastimes

Popular pastimes are a reflection of popular culture. Group sports are a form of communal recreation. How a society chooses to amuse itself, to unwind from its day-to-day responsibilities, reveals a great deal about that society. Soccer, or football as it is known in Britain, is a sport with a long history in the English-speaking world. The rough-and-tumble physical conflict of the game appealed to ordinary Englishmen. It gave them a way to let off steam and vent their frustrations. It also afforded players an opportunity to demonstrate their "manliness" through acts of physical prowess, and provided a forum for organized competitiveness.

But soccer, in its traditional English form, also presented certain features that were not considered desirable in a rapidly industrializing modern society. Once reckoned an innocent amusement, during the nineteenth century, English football came increasingly under attack as a wild game that took average Englishmen away from their real responsibilities. In the eyes of many nineteenth-century reformers, the game only interfered with real work. It took the lower classes away from their jobs, demanded additional "unnecessary" holidays for play, and in general contributed to a breakdown of the new industrial commercial order:

Football (soccer), too, attracted similar attempts to control it (at that time it was played through the streets or over open fields — confining it to specified and controlled places was part of the other middle-class strategy of appropriating and reforming rather than repressing popular pleasures). Kingston Town Council in 1860 heard that it should prohibit the annual Shrove Tuesday football game because it, "is an obstruction to the passengers, a great annoyance to the peaceable inhabitants, subversive of good order and prejudicial to the morality of the Town."

In America as well, sports were meant to demonstrate the very best in social values. Sports, reformers and moralists believed, should provide for relaxation within a socially approved framework — one that would be conducive to good order and moral development. Sports were seen as quintessentially masculine. Boys played sports because these games helped induct them into the commercial culture of the day, the strength necessary for success in sports being considered the equivalent of the kind of strength that would be necessary for future success in business.

Business, after all, was the driving force of the new American Republic. Its importance would only grow as the young nation expanded and gradually assumed a global role. Yankee merchants and traders would soon scour the globe, while American factories supplied markets on every continent. Industrialism was as much a competition between nations as it was between individuals within those nations. There would be both winners and losers. A youth spent at vigorous, competitive play was the best practice for a life spent amid the fierceness of the commercial and industrial world. By the end of the nineteenth century, sports and the priorities it represented had replaced other, older values for the majority of Americans. Old-fashioned ideas of a puritanical, godly society had given way to the virtues of a consumer age.

As America turned its attentions to the demands of the industrial age, other nations and peoples looked elsewhere, or continued along more traditional ways of life. Until quite recently, Mexico was not a particularly industrialized country. The bulk of its population resided in the countryside and practiced a traditional agrarian lifestyle, raising crops or livestock. Some worked at handicrafts, at mines, or in the occasional factory. Overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, Mexico did not share the strong commercial orientation of the majority United States. Priorities and concerns were different. Life moved at a slower pace. Sports and recreation reflected variant needs and aims. Mexican attitudes were typical of those of other Hispanic peoples. One sport that developed in Mexico — the rodeo — represented Mexican concerns with training boys to assume the tasks of adult men. The sport evolved directly out of the practical vocational concerns of cattle rearing.

In this case, competition was a matter of increasing the skills of the vaqueros, or cowboys. Competition for the sake of instilling a competitive spirit was something that would come to Mexico only later, when the nation endeavored to find its place on the international stage. The twentieth century, as elsewhere, brought great changes to Mexico and other Hispanic nations. Increasingly, they found themselves absorbed into the global economy, if only as producers of raw materials — especially in the early days. Athletic competition came more and more to be a way of demonstrating national pride and national worth. The Olympics were held in Mexico City in 1968. "Sports offered opportunity for ethnic athletes to boost national pride and to give their home country something to think about."

Developing nations, like Mexico, could point to the achievements of athletes who had proved themselves "the best of the best." Mexicans could take credit for organizing a major international event, thus showing themselves capable of competing with citizens of more developed nations. International sporting competitions could be a way of showcasing the talents of a people and the resources of a nation. It was a way of proving one's modernity. A specific game with international appeal, therefore, could boost a nation's standing among the community of nations. Success in soccer — ever more the world game — could prove that a nation's population had left behind the parochialism of the old, pre-industrialized world. By adopting soccer as a national pastime, its people would give clear evidence of their membership in the new, globalized society.

As far back as 1938, Mexico City's soccer stadium served as the setting for a celebration of a "Day of Democracy" — a day that happened to fall on the 14th of July. Under French influence, all Mexican schools were closed for this holiday, and the Mexican president addressed five thousand students in a visible sign of Mexico's entry into the modern world.

From 1937 to 1997, Mexican soccer teams outscored American soccer teams at every single game played in Mexico City — a great triumph for Mexico and a terrible blow to American pride, even for an America that was not particularly interested in the game.

Conclusion

A game could be much more than a game. The growing presence of soccer across the United States stands as compelling evidence of the cultural weight that Hispanic immigrants carry with them. Just as American football became a mirror of the nation's commercial ambitions and industrial self-image, soccer's rise reflects the arrival of millions of people whose traditions, loyalties, and sense of community are rooted in a different — yet equally vibrant — sporting culture. Popular culture is never static; it shifts as populations shift. The widespread popularity of soccer in the United States today is not merely a sports trend. It is a cultural statement: Hispanics have arrived, and they have come to stay.