Football War
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 by creating allegedly false and certainly misleading reports of rapes, beatings, murders, the burning of cars, and riots by Honduran citizens in El Salvador. In the meantime Honduran citizens and security forces perpetuated attacks on Salvadoran immigrants.
El Salvador dissolved all ties with Honduras on June 26th, 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” (Anderson, 105). This led to regular border clashes occurring between the two nations.
Early on the morning of July 14, 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 and the Salvadoran army launched major offensives along the main road connecting the two nations and against the Honduran islands in the Golfo de Fonseca. At first, the Salvadorans made fairly rapid progress. By the evening of July 15, the Salvadoran army, which was considerably larger and better equipped than its Honduran opponent, pushed the Honduran army back over eight kilometers and captured the departmental capital of Nueva Ocotepeque. Thereafter, the attack bogged down, and the Salvadorans began to experience fuel and ammunition shortages. A major reason for the fuel shortage was the action of the Honduran air force, which--in addition to largely destroying the smaller Salvadoran air force--had severely damaged El Salvador's oil storage facilities.
During the war, several ostensible battalions of Honduran soldiers were discovered only to exist on paper. The money for these fake battalions had been collected by allegedly corrupt Honduran army officers. Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle helped Honduran President Oswaldo Lopez Arellano by providing weapons and ammunition.
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 July 18; it took full effect only on July 20. El Salvador continued until July 29 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.
El Salvador, which had refused to withdraw its troops from the occupied territory in Honduras, withdrew its troops on August 2nd, 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 also asked that reparations be paid for the attacks on the Salvadoran citizens as well. 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-both sides deploying former World War II American types. P-51 Mustangs, F4U Corsairs, T-28 Trojans and even C-47 Skytrains converted into bombers saw action.
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1970 World Cup results
- June 6, 1969, Tegucigalpa: Honduras 1 - 0 El Salvador (0-0 at halftime)
- June 15, 1969, San Salvador: El Salvador 3 - 0 Honduras (HT: 3-0)
- A playoff match on June 27, 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.
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Consequences
In the end, both sides of the Football War suffered extensive casualties. Some 20,000 Hondurans and another 80,000 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, approximately 130,000 Salvadorans tried to return to their native land where they were surrounded by overpopulation and extreme poverty (Anderson, 145-155).
In Honduras, about 250 combat troops and around 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 national 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 shared approximately equally between the two.
- 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 from 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.
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References
- Acker, Allison. Honduras: The Making of a Banana Republic. Toronto: Between the Lines, 1988.
- Anderson, Thomas P. The War of the Dispossessed: Honduras and El Salvador 1969. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981.
- 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.
- <http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1970/mar-apr/mallin.html> “Salvador-Honduras War, 1969”.
- <http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/sierra/soccer1969.htm> “Soccer War 1969”.
- <http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_156.shtml> "El Salvador vs Honduras, 1969: The 100-Hour War".
- <http://www.laahs.com/artman/publish/article_19.shtml> "The 100 Hour War".
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