El Salvador and Honduras waged a four-day war in 1969 that claimed hundreds of lives, and many people still refer to it as the "ball war."
On June 27, that year, in the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, the score was two goals each. In an unusual tournament, this was the third encounter between the two sides in as many weeks in order to qualify for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico.
Honduras had won the first match in Tegucigalpa by a goal to nil, but El Salvador had won the second match in San Salvador by three goals to nil.
There were violent situations in both matches.
Mauricio "Bebo" Rodriguez of El Salvador advanced to the Honduras penalty area during the third and decisive match, the 11th minute of extra time, and received a ball with his head to turn it into goalkeeper Jimmy Varela's net.
"When I scored, I didn't think there was more time for them to draw, I was convinced we won and it was over," Rodriguez says on the 50th anniversary of the war's start.
El Salvador won the match with a score of 3-2. The players exchanged hugs and handshakes before leaving the field, but war broke out between the two countries three weeks later.
So, what's the storey here?
In 1969, El Salvador had a population of 3 million people, roughly the same size as Wales. The majority of the country was owned by a landlord class, leaving relatively little for poor farmers.
Hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans fled Honduras.
In 1969, Honduras, which was likewise ruled by a small feudal class at the time, was five times the area of El Salvador and had a population of 2.3 million.
As a result, El Salvadorans fled to Honduras in pursuit of agricultural employment and jobs with American fruit corporations. In 1969, over 300,000 Salvadorans were employed in Honduras.
The feudal elite in El Salvador supported the mass migration because it relieved pressure on their land, but the farmers in Honduras were resentful because they were trying to get more land from the feudal elite at the time, so the Honduran government passed a reformed agricultural law to alleviate the tension.
The authorities were interested in territory that had been occupied by immigrant farmers from El Salvador, rather than acreage controlled by US fruit businesses. Several islands in the Gulf of Fonseca between the two countries were among such areas.
Oswaldo López Arelando, the president of Honduras at the time, began deporting thousands of Salvadorans back to their homeland.
El Salvadorian immigrants were harassed in Honduras.
The government of Salvadoran President Fidel Sanchez Hernandez was straining to deal with the influx of returning farmers, while landowners called for military intervention and media reported on rape and murder claims against Salvadoran farmers in Honduras.
On June 27, 1969, El Salvador's Minister of the Interior, Francisco José Guerrero, stated that approximately 12,000 Salvadorans had fled Honduras following the second match. He blamed the persecution they faced in Honduras, according to the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom.
According to a UBI article the day after the match titled "El Salvador Wins the Football War," roughly 1,700 Mexican security forces attended the stadium to keep the situation under control as Salvadoran fans screamed "Killers, killers."
Border conflicts erupted in the days that followed. El Salvador's government ordered its soldiers to invade Honduras and commence air strikes on the country on July 14.
On July 18, the Organization of American States reached an agreement to stop a war that claimed the lives of 3,000 people, the majority of whom were Honduran civilians, and displaced many others. Under international pressure, El Salvador withdrew its forces in August of that year.
But the agony didn't stop there. For decades, there was no trade between the two countries, and the borders were closed.
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