Word: futbol
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...other game interests Latin Americans so much. The continent's futbol madness began as a respectable British import. In the 1840s, the citizens of Argentina's port of Buenos Aires watched in fascination as the crews of British ships idled away dockside hours kicking a ball around. In Peru, where other British sailors spread the fever, the saying is that "the only good things we owe the British are soccer and Scotch." And of the two, soccer is by far the more intoxicating. It appeals to a Latin sense of rhythm, of masculine grace and strength...
...hard as they went in. Blue-cheeked children huddle inside the windowless, dirt-floored, one-room hut to escape the biting mountain wind. Within are a bed, two chairs, and a four-inch figure of the Infant Jesus on a homemade altar; magazine pictures of bathing beauties, futbol players and stern-faced priests are tacked indiscriminately around the walls. The house has no water or sanitary facilities; the nearest public bath is six miles away, but Sabino and his wife have not visited it this year. The only sign of civilization that the second biggest tin mine in Bolivia...
...General Confederation of Labor (C.G.T.), provincial workers were beginning to stream into the capital. Transportation by train, plane, ship or bus was free. When the great day came, free buses and taxis would be waiting at piers and railway stations. Also free to the visitors: food, drinks, futbol games, boxing matches, variety shows, movies...
...Futbol and politics are so tangled that sometimes it is hard to tell exactly where the kicking ends and the politicking begins. Each of the big sporting clubs that sponsor first-class teams has at least one prominent patron-politico to wangle favors, subsidies and stadiums from the government. So last week, when all football schedules were abruptly canceled, it was both a political and a sport scandal...
Football Czar Oscar Nicolini (who is also Argentina's director of Post & Telegraphs) was no man to suffer such a rebuke in silence. Promptly he called a meeting of the powerful governing body, AFA (Asociación de Futbol Argentina'). To teach the players a stern lesson, AFA voted to wash out the rest of the season...