30 October 2009

Vamos Vamos Cuencanos

This past Friday night Leslie and I went to a Deportivo Cuenca soccer game. They're currently in the playoffs, well they're in "cuadrangulares" but the simplest we to translate the into American is playoffs. Playoffs with group play, if you follow soccer at all you'll know what that means. The game was against Deportivo Olmedo, which is a team from a city called Riobamba. I think Cuenca was expected to win, but I didn't do any research before I went to the game. I just bought a fake Deportivo Cuenca jersey for five bucks. (I promise, that's the biggest sports jersey they make south of Texas.) The game was a lot of fun. We went with Jonatan, one of the cuencano teachers at the school, and we sat in Tribuna which means we couldn't get rained on and they people were all very calm and not too excitable. It was the exact opposite experience of sitting in General at the Ecuador-Uruguay game. Still, there was some chanting and some cheering and some noise makers and things like that. They took the national chant and cuencanized it: "Vamos, Vamos Cuencanos. Esta noche, tenemos que ganar." They crazy fans, "La Cronica Roja," take up a section on the General side and do all the crazy chanting and singing and have a little parade with flags and torches (flaming newspapers) around the stadium before the game starts. Hey, if you can't really have a student section, somebody else has to set the mood.

Deportivo Cuenca won 2-1 because they played better than Olmedo. Cuenca is on a hot streak right now, best possible time to start a hot streak considering they needed it just to get into the playoffs. And now they're playing like the best club team in Ecuador. After Cuenca went up 2-1 with around 20 minutes left in the game, Olmedo started playing dirty. And when I say dirty, I mean two direct red-card fouls and around six yellow cards in the last 20 minutes of the game. All the fans in the stadium were booing the team, calling Olmedo's players things like "matón" and "negro matón." I haven't mentioned this yet, but Cuenca is a very conservative place. Not conservative the way we think of conservative in the United States, more just closed off to the idea of new things. And the majority of cuencanos are racist. They openly hate black people. Not gringos so much, and I'm not sure why, but most cuencanos hate black people. They avoid them on the street and they'll point and snicker when the see them and do several other passively mean and stupid things as well. So of course there were lots of racial slurs flying around the stadium; at least they waited until Olmedo's players actually were playing like savages, just running into Cuenca's player when they had the ball and tackling for absolutely no reason. But Deportivo Cuenca's stadium is about to get sanctioned for all the racial slurs that were going on during the final several minutes of the game. This means they probably won't get to play their next couple home games at home.

After the game, Leslie and I met up with the Wisconsin-Whitewater student teachers to go out and drink a little bit, which was fun and definitely nothing over-the-top.

Cuenca, don't be stupid. And don't be racist. Racism is stupid and if you haven't figured it out yet, your racism will cost you your soccer team.




"It comes in pints? I'm getting one."




Pilsener is the official sponsor of Deportivo Cuenca.




An Olmedo player is trying to take a free kick out of the toilet paper the fans are throwing onto the field.




We're out at a bar called ONCE (eleven) with the Whitewater girls.




La Cronica Roja
Sorry it's such a short video but you still get a taste of what they're like and it takes forever to upload videos.

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