Football War

"Football" War
Map of Honduras, where most of the fighting took place
Date 14 July-18 July 1969 Location El Salvador-Honduras border Result Negotiated Cease-Fire by intervention of the OAS
Belligerents
El Salvador	Honduras
Strength
30,000 (Army) 1,000 (Air Force)	23,000 (Army) 600 (Air Force)
Casualties and losses
900 (including civilians)	1,200 (including civilians)

The "Football" War (La guerra del fútbol, in Spanish), also known as the Soccer War or 100-hours War, was a four-day war fought by El Salvador and Honduras in 1969. It was caused by political conflicts between Hondurans and Salvadorans, namely issues concerning immigration from El Salvador to Honduras. These existing tensions between the two countries coincided with the inflamed rioting during the second North American qualifying round for the 1970 FIFA World Cup. On 14 July 1969, the Salvadoran army launched an attack against Honduras. The Organization of American States negotiated a cease-fire which took effect on 20 July, with the Salvadoran troops withdrawn in early August.

Eleven years later the two nations signed a peace treaty on 30 October 1980 to put the border dispute before the International Court of Justice. In 1992, the Court awarded most of the disputed territory to Honduras, and in 1998, Honduras and El Salvador signed a border demarcation treaty to implement the terms of the ICJ decree. The total land area given to Honduras from El Salvador after the court's ruling was around 374.5 km2. As of the beginning of 2006 demarcation had not yet been completed, but Honduras and El Salvador maintain normal diplomatic and trade relations.[1]

Context

Although the nickname "Football War" implies that the conflict was due to a football game, the causes of the war go deeper. The roots of the war were issues over land reform in Honduras and immigration and demographic problems in El Salvador. Honduras is more than five times the size of neighbouring El Salvador, even though in 1969, El Salvador had a population that was more than double that of Honduras. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Salvadorans had begun migrating to Honduras in large numbers. By 1969, more than 300,000 Salvadorans were living in Honduras. These Salvadorans made up twenty percent of the peasant population of Honduras. Meanwhile, by the 1970s Hondurans began to cry out for land reform as well.

In Honduras, as in much of Central America, a large majority of the land was owned by large landowners or big corporations. The United Fruit Company owned ten percent of the land, making it hard for the average landowners to compete. In 1966, the United Fruit Company banded together with many other large companies to create la Federación Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos de Honduras (FENAGH; the National Federation of Farmers and Livestock-Farmers of Honduras). FENAGH was anti-campesino as well as anti-Salvadoran. This group put pressure on the Honduran President, General Lopez Arellano, to protect the property rights of wealthy landowners.

In 1962, Honduras successfully enacted a new land reform law. Fully enforced by 1967, this law gave central government and municipal land much occupied illegally by Salvadoran immigrants and redistributed this land to native-born Honduran peoples as specified by the Land Reform Law. The land was taken from both immigrant farmers and squatters regardless of their right to ownership and the status of their immigration. Thousands of Salvadorans were displaced by this law and were forced to emigrate once again. Salvadoran newspapers then heightened the already stressed relationship between the two countries by showing the many supposed atrocities being committed against Salvadorans in Honduras.

Thousands of Salvadoran labourers were expelled from Honduras, including both temporary harvest workers and longer-term settlers. This general rise in tensions ultimately led to a military conflict.

War

Buildup

World Cup 1970 poster

This war was fought at a time when tensions between the two countries were building due to competition in the infamous qualifying games for the 1970 FIFA World Cup tournament. The first game took place in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, with Honduras winning the game. The second game took place in the Salvadoran capital of San Salvador, with a home team win. The game was in a deadlock with each country gaining a revised sense of pride and legitimacy. The Honduran press exploited existing tensions reporting beatings, the burning of cars, and riots by Honduran citizens in El Salvador. In the meantime, Salvadoran press exploited alleged Honduran citizens and security forces attacks on Salvadoran immigrants.

El Salvador dissolved all ties with Honduras on 26 June 1969, stating that “the government of Honduras has not taken any effective measures to punish these crimes which constitute genocide, nor has it given assurances of indemnification or reparations for the damages caused to Salvadorans”. This led to regular border clashes occurring between the two nations.

First Shots

Late in the afternoon of 14 July 1969, concerted military action began in what came to be known as the Football War. The Salvadoran Air Force (El Salvador lacked sufficient military air equipment, resorting to the use of passenger airplanes with attached vessels strapped to their sides as bombers) attacked targets inside Honduras, including the inutilization of airport facility of Toncontin and other strategic places, leaving the honduran air force almost unable to react after dropping more than 22 bombs of 100pounds of explosive. The Salvadoran army launched major offensives along the two main roads connecting the two nations. At first, the Salvadorans made fairly rapid progress. By the evening of 15 July, the Salvadoran army, which was considerably larger and better equipped than its Honduran opponent, had advanced into Honduras and took the departmental capital of Nueva Ocotepeque and eight other cities. Thereafter, the attack bogged down, and the Salvadorans. The Honduran air force reaction, included bombing on the Ilopango military airport facility with four planes, but the salvadorean military was prepared for the attack and repeled the fire and of three bombs dropped only one exploded and not inside the airport facility. Those planes also bombed on an oil facility and that was the only incursion Honduras was able to make inside salvadorean soil. The Honduras bombing included Napalm, while salvadoreans did not used Napalm in bombings over Honduran soil.

During the war, the Third Military Zone of the Honduran Army was discovered to have only half of its allotted soldiers. The money for the missing troops had been collected by an allegedly corrupt Honduran Army officer. Nicarauguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle helped Honduras by providing weapons and ammunition.

Cease Fire

The day after the fighting had begun, the OAS met in an urgent session and called for an immediate cease-fire and a withdrawal of El Salvador's forces from Honduras. El Salvador resisted the pressures from the OAS for several days, demanding that Honduras first agree to pay reparations for the attacks on Salvadoran citizens and guarantee the safety of those Salvadorans remaining in Honduras. A cease-fire was arranged on the night of 18 July; it took full effect only on 20 July. El Salvador continued until 29 July to resist pressures to withdraw its troops. Then a combination of pressures led El Salvador to agree to a withdrawal in the first days of August. Those persuasive pressures included the possibility of OAS economic sanctions against El Salvador and the dispatch of OAS observers to Honduras to oversee the security of Salvadorans remaining in that country. The actual war had lasted just over four days, but it would take more than a decade to arrive at a final peace settlement.

Withdrawal

F4U Corsair, one of the piston types flown in the war

El Salvador, which had refused to withdraw its troops from the occupied territory in Honduras, withdrew its troops on 2 August 1969. On this date, Honduras also guaranteed Salvadoran President Fidel Sanchez Hernandez that the Honduran government would provide adequate safety for the Salvadorans still living in Honduras. He had also asked that reparations be paid to the Salvadoran citizens as well but was never accepted by Hondurans. There were also the heavy pressures from the OAS and their debilitating repercussions that would take place if El Salvador continued to resist to withdraw their troops from Honduras.

The war is often cited as the last occasion on which piston-engined fighters fought each other on both sides deploying former World War II and Korean War American types. Cavalier F-51D Mustangs, F4U-1, -4 and -5 Corsairs, T-28A Trojans, AT-6C Texans and even C-47 Skytrains converted into bombers saw action.

Consequences

In the end, both sides of the Football War suffered extensive casualties. Some 300,000 Salvadorans were displaced due to the battle. Many Salvadorans had been forcibly exiled or had fled from the war-torn Honduras, only to enter a Salvadoran country in which the government was not welcoming. Most of these fleeing people were forced to provide for themselves with very little assistance at all. Over the next few years, Salvadorans returned to their native land where they were surrounded by overpopulation and extreme poverty.

In Honduras, about 100 combat troops and over 2,000 civilians had been killed over a four day period due to the majority of the war being fought on Honduran soil. Thousands more had been ultimately made homeless as well. Trade between Honduras and El Salvador had also been greatly disrupted and the international border had been officially closed. This damaged the economies of these nations tremendously and threatened the Central American Common Market (CACM).

• Essentially, both sides 'lost' the war; neither gained a decisive military victory and the death toll of approximately 4,000 was burdened by Honduras.
• The war led to a 22-year suspension of the Central American Common Market, a regional integration project that had been set up by the United States largely as a means of counteracting the effects of the Cuban Revolution.
• The political power of the military in both countries was reinforced. In the Salvadoran legislative elections that followed, candidates of the governing National Conciliation Party (Partido de Conciliación Nacional, PCN), were largely drawn from the ranks of the military. Having apologised for their role in the conflict, they proved very successful in elections both at the national and local levels. However, these elections were considered fraudulent and part of the military dictatorship that in effect ruled El Salvador.
• The social situation worsened in El Salvador as the government proved unable to satisfy the economic needs of citizens deported from Honduras. The resulting social unrest was one of the causes of the civil war in El Salvador that followed.

1970 World Cup qualifying results

• 8 June 1969, Tegucigalpa: Honduras 1 - 0 El Salvador (0-0 at halftime)
• 15 June 1969, San Salvador: El Salvador 3 - 0 Honduras (HT: 3-0)
• A playoff match on 27 June 1969, Mexico: El Salvador 3 - 2 Honduras after extra time (HT: 1-2, FT: 2-2). El Salvador then ended up going to the 1970 FIFA World Cup, where they failed to advance from the Group Stage.

See also

• Sports and politics

Notes

• Armstrong, Robert and Janet Shenk. El Salvador: The Face of a Revolution. Boston: South End Press, 1982.
• Durham, William H. Scarcity and Survival in Central America: Ecological Origins of the Football War. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979.
• Kapuscinski, Ryszard. The Soccer War. Translated William Brand. London: Granta Books, 1990.
• Skidmore, T., and Smith, P. (2001) Modern Latin America (5th edition). New York: Oxford University Press, pg. 343.
• Walzer, Michael.Just and Unjust Wars. New York: Basic Books, 1977.

External links

• Salvador-Honduras War, 1969
• Soccer War 1969
• El Salvador vs Honduras, 1969: The 100-Hour War
• The 100 Hour War