Football War Vs Salvadoran War

“Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it is much more serious than that.” This was a quote by long serving Liverpool football manager Bill Shankly who coached and played from the 1930’s through the 1970’s. The Football War, or the 100 Hours War, was a short four-day war between the Central American countries of El Salvador and Honduras. Though the war itself only lasted four days, the build up to the war was ongoing for many years. The Football War got its name from the fact that the war was eventually started because of a series of football games between the two countries. Though there were many factors that played into the war, the FIFA World Cup qualifiers were important in raising nationalistic views
In fear the his party was going to lose the Presidential election, Air Force Colonel López Arellano staged a military coup in which he seized the position (Flora & Torres-Rivas, 1989). Arellano would go on to serve as President of Honduras through the entirety of the Football War conflict. During his term as president public sentiment against Salvadoran immigrants was reaching a tipping point. At the same time, people were starting to get upset with Arellano because the country was in such bad shape. “While Salvadorian immigrants may have had a beneficial effect in a macro-economic sense, providing cheap, hard-working laborers for the banana plantations, and a general infusion of skill, business acumen and manpower, their presence has aroused resentment amongst the Hondurans who have faced competition on their own labor market”(Cable, 1969). To divert the anger away from himself, Arellano then begin framing Salvadorans as the reason Honduras was having so many problems. Arellano claimed that the Salvadoran immigrants were taking the Honduran people’s jobs and land. This began the first instances of mass violence against Salvadoran immigrants in Honduras. In Bar-on’s (2014) book The World through Soccer: The Cultural Impact of a Global Sport, the history of Honduras’s land reform law is discussed. “A land reform law was passed in Honduras in 1962 and more forcefully enforced by 1967. It set the stage for class conflict and tensions between Honduras and El Salvador. The effect of the land reform law was that the Honduran government turned over land occupied legally or illegally by Salvadoran immigrants and redistributed this land to native-born Hondurans. Thousands of Salvadorans were left homeless” (Bar-On, 2014). With the enforcement of the law by President Arellano, Hondurans began evicting Salvadorans from their land and