Colombia Victory Provides Renewed Hope
BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombia defeated Mexico on Sunday to win the Copa America soccer title for the first time and ignite a spark of hope in this battered, bloodstained nation.
The 1-0 victory came after Colombia’s premier defender, Ivan Cordoba, headed a free kick past goalkeeper Oscar Perez in the second half.
The nation erupted in celebration as the game ended. Fireworks went off. Cars honked. Fans screamed. Streets overflowed with singing, fevered fans.
The tournament’s successful completion was far more important than the championship of the world’s oldest continuous soccer competition. It proved that Colombia could overcome, at least for a moment, the violence that plagues it almost daily.
“A victory like this is so important for people to have hope, to show the world that our country is not all about violence,” said Javier Zuniga, 34, minutes after the game ended, his eyes teary. “Maybe this is the beginning of something good.”
The match itself was seen as something of a disappointment, with both sides playing worse than they had earlier in the tournament.
Mexico, trying to break out of a yearlong slump, was weak on its attack. And Colombia, a young team with many players new to championship-level games, chugged along slower than normal, showing flashes of its quick pass style only in the second half.
In fact, many thought the third-place game, between underdog Honduras and perennial power Uruguay, was the better match. Honduras defeated Uruguay in penalty kicks, 5-4, after tying, 2-2.
The results reflected in part a weak field: Favored Argentina chose to stay home, some countries withheld their best players, and nearly every country sent B-level squads, all for safety reasons.
That didn’t seem to matter to the country’s fans. On most corners, knots of people gathered to dance, sing and celebrate. Some wrapped themselves in Colombia’s yellow, red and blue flag. Others painted themselves in those colors. They bought bags of white flour from street vendors, and threw them on cars, buildings, one another--a victory tradition. There was sporadic street violence; two children were killed in traffic accidents and 20 people were injured.
Sometimes a game is more than a game, and Colombians were well aware that Sunday’s match fit that description. Besides being the first time Colombia had won the Copa America, it was the first time since 1975 the country made the final, and this time, it held all its opponents scoreless.
Moreover, the country accommodated 12 Latin American teams and their fans over nearly three weeks with no major incidents of terrorism or violence. Threats of such incidents had nearly derailed the tournament and nearly removed the Copa America from Colombia several times.
“This is much more important than a game,” said Andrea Arias, 21. “It gives us hope.”
Indeed, the past six weeks have seen a sudden resurgence in national pride, often subsumed by bitter skepticism toward a government that, to many Colombians, seems remote, corrupt and weak.
Suddenly, the newspapers didn’t have bad news on their front pages every day. Colombian flags and shirts seemed to sprout on every building and street corner. With every victory, the Colombian team seemed to bear more and more of the hopes of the nation.
It seemed possible to set aside, if just for a while, the country’s grim reality: 35,000 dead in a decade. Peace talks stagnant. Unemployment at 20%. The national economy slowing by a third.
It was not, however, possible to forget the country’s troubles. The sea of yellow Colombian jerseys filling the stadium Sunday was broken by splotches of white, worn in memory of the thousands of kidnapped Colombians.
And throughout the match, as at every Colombian soccer match, fans waved white handkerchiefs symbolizing their desire for peace.
Soccer’s top officials hailed Colombia’s victory and the successful completion of the tournament without major violence.
“The victory is a signal of peace,” said Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, the president of FIFA, world soccer’s governing body.
The tournament became a test of Colombia’s ability to surmount its bloody internal conflict from the moment that President Andres Pastrana declared in January that the Copa America would be a “Cup of Peace” for Colombia.
The next six months became an extraordinary roller coaster of events that threatened not only Colombia’s status as host but its national pride and international reputation.
The first signs of trouble came in February, when a car bomb exploded in a parking lot in Medellin, one of the cities hosting tournament games. An apparently unconnected spasm of urban violence followed that incident, including a second bombing in Cali at a hotel where members of the national team were staying.
Pastrana was forced to make a hasty trip to Uruguay to calm growing fears that Colombia couldn’t guarantee the safety of visiting teams. In a dramatic speech delivered only nine minutes before the final vote, he urged the other countries not to accede to terrorism.
But then, just three weeks after the South American confederation (CONMEBOL) voted to support Colombia, Hernan Mejia Campuzano, vice president of the Colombia Football Assn. and head of the Copa America organizing committee, was kidnapped June 25 in western Colombia.
After another hasty meeting, the confederation voted to suspend the Cup for an undetermined length of time. Pastrana and Colombians reacted angrily, blaming the decision on unspecified “corporate pressures.”
But those same pressures apparently came to bear when the confederation decided, only a few days after the suspension, to hold the tournament as planned in Colombia.
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Times special correspondent Mauricio Hoyos contributed to this report.
