Perhaps no phrase best describes the banal Americanization of futbol, the aptly described “beautiful game,” than “soccer mom”. The world’s most popular sport – played in the slums of Rio, on the muddy pitches of Northern Ireland, and on the rock-strewn fields of Iran – transforms stateside to an after-school suburban pastime, just one more errand for a harried mom or dad to cross off their list of well-meaning activities for the all-around development of their above-average kid.
Not to say that the level of play in the suburbs suffers. In fact, soccer among the soft, upper middle class can actually be quite good. It’s just hard to imagine, say, Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona achieving his stupendous, gritty, and do-or-die skills on a well-manicured field next to a parking lot full of late model SUVs adorned with “George Bush in ’04” stickers.
So it’s not a total surprise, then, that one of the country’s top ranked high school soccer team hails from Coppell, Texas, a suburb just north of Dallas. Rich, privileged, (and did I mention rich?), the Coppell team in 2006 had been ranked second in the nation and well on their way to an expected Texas state championship.
Enter the Gladys Porter High School Cowboys of Brownsville, from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, a soccer team 100% Brown (y que?), with kids named Briones, Martinez, and Garcia -- from a school district with a per capita income closer to Third World countries than posh North Dallas suburbs.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Rio Grande Valley of Texas (which is probably most people living outside of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas), the RGV is a place that best embodies the saying “we didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.” And I mean that in the best, and not so best, ways. Imagine Northern Mexico but with Wal Marts, a Whataburger every half mile, and a city next door to Starr County, one of the poorest areas in the United States. But like with most things narrowly assessed by crass capitalistic values, peel away the so-called failed economic standards and you’ll reveal a rich and dynamic cultura.
The RGV, thank you very much, is also the home, of Narciso Martinez, the famed accordion player, the region of corridos and armed resistance against the pinche Texas Rangers, and the home one of the best contemporary fiction writers in the country, Oscar Casares.
Last year Casares wrote an article about the state championship soccer game between Coppell High and Porter High (his alma mater) for Texas Monthly. The piece was recently chosen as one of the Best American Sport stories of the year. I’ll let Casares tell the story of what happened when the two teams met:
Speedy Gonzales, the famous cartoon star of the fifties and sixties, has been in the news again lately. It seems the image of the “fastest mouse in all Mexico” was evoked recently at the boys’ 5A state soccer championship, pitting the nationally ranked Coppell Cowboys, from North Texas, against the Porter Cowboys, from Brownsville, the southernmost city on the U.S.-Mexico border. In an effort to belittle their opponents, the Coppell fans held up a poster showing Speedy Gonzales about to be squashed by a large shoe. The sign read “Stomp on Brownville!” (And no, that’s not a typo.) When officials forced Coppell to remove the sign, the Porter fans continued cheering for their underdog team with the chant “¡Sí se puede!” (“Yes, we can!”), a call to action recovered from the era of Cesar Chavez’s marches with the United Farm Workers of America. The Coppell fans answered this with their own chant of “USA! USA!” implying that the Porter players and their fans were not citizens of the United States. And when that didn’t work, one of the fans called out, “You suck, you beaner!” In the end, though, their taunts were as effective as Sylvester the Cat’s were on Speedy Gonzales. Porter won 2—1 in overtime.
Read the rest of the excellent piece and for details about the struggle of the Porter team as they make their way to the state championship, deal with drug sniffing border patrol dogs on they drive to Austin, and the regular and humbling demands to prove citizenship to various officials along the way.
And be sure and read Oscar’s collection of short stories, Brownsville, for a deeper and fuller understanding of the amazing Rio Grande Valley and the complexity of contemporary Mexican American life than I can ever hope to convey.
I wish the story could end here, at Porter’s triumphant, Bad New Bears moment, but it doesn’t. Earlier this week, a year after the defeat of Coppell, another north Dallas suburb, made the national news. Last Saturday, the citizens of Farmers Branch approved a proposal that would ban landlords from renting apartments to illegal immigrants. It passed with 68% of the vote. As the New York Times reports:
Farmers Branch is one of 88 municipalities in 27 states that have tried to pass rental bans or English-only provisions aimed at illegal immigrants since 2006, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. After months of emotional debate over the issue and accusations of racism from both sides, the Farmers Branch mayor, Bob Phelps, publicly expressed his opposition for the first time last week. Mr. Phelps said it was a waste of city tax dollars on what should be a federal issue.
Afterward, his house was vandalized.
