| Football War | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Map of Honduras, where most of the fighting took place |
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| El Salvador | Honduras | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 30,000 (Army) 1,000 (Air Force) |
23,000 (Army) 600 (Air Force) |
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 900 (including civilians) | 2,100 (including civilians) | ||||||
The Football War (La guerra del fútbol, in Spanish), also known as the Soccer War or 100 hour War, was a four-day war fought by El Salvador and Honduras in 1969. It was caused by political conflicts between Hondurans and Salvadorans, namely issues concerning immigration from El Salvador to Honduras. These existing tensions between the two countries coincided with the inflamed rioting during the second North American qualifying round of the 1970 FIFA World Cup. On 14 July 1969, the Salvadoran army launched an attack against Honduras. The Organization of American States negotiated a cease-fire which took effect on 20 July, with the Salvadoran troops withdrawn in early August.
Eleven years later the two nations signed a peace treaty on 30 October 1980[1] to put the border dispute over the Gulf of Fonseca and five sections of land boundary before the International Court of Justice. In 1992, the Court awarded most of the disputed territory to Honduras, and in 1998, Honduras and El Salvador signed a border demarcation treaty to implement the terms of the ICJ decree. The total land area given to Honduras from El Salvador after the court's ruling was around 374.5 km2. As of the beginning of 2006 demarcation had not yet been completed, but Honduras and El Salvador maintain normal diplomatic and trade relations.[2]
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Although the nickname "Football War" implies that the conflict was due to a football game, the causes of the war go deeper. The roots of the war were issues over land reform in Honduras and immigration and demographic problems in El Salvador. Honduras is more than five times the size of neighbouring El Salvador, but in 1969 El Salvador had a population that was more than double that of Honduras. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Salvadorans had begun migrating to Honduras in large numbers. By 1969, more than 300,000 Salvadorans were living in Honduras. These Salvadorans made up twenty percent of the peasant population of Honduras.[3] In Honduras, as in much of Central America, a large majority of the land was owned by large landowners or big corporations. The United Fruit Company owned ten percent of the land, making it hard for the average landowners to compete. In 1966, the United Fruit Company banded together with many other large companies to create la Federación Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos de Honduras (FENAGH; the National Federation of Farmers and Livestock-Farmers of Honduras). FENAGH was anti-campesino as well as anti-Salvadoran. This group put pressure on the Honduran president, General Lopez Arellano, to protect the property rights of wealthy landowners.[4]
In 1962, Honduras successfully enacted a new land reform law.[5] Fully enforced by 1967, this law gave the central government and municipalities much land occupied illegally by Salvadoran immigrants and redistributed this land to native-born Honduran peoples as specified by the Land Reform Law. The land was taken from both immigrant farmers and squatters regardless of their claims to ownership or immigration status. This also created problems for Salvadorans and Hondurans who were intermarried with each other. Thousands of Salvadorans were displaced by this law and were forced to emigrate once again. Salvadoran newspapers then heightened the already stressed relationship between the two countries by showing the many supposed atrocities being committed against Salvadorans in Honduras. This general rise in tensions ultimately led to a military conflict
Thousands of Salvadoran labourers were expelled from Honduras, including both temporary harvest workers and longer-term settlers. This general rise in tensions ultimately led to a military conflict.
Honduras and El Salvador met in the second North American qualifying round for the 1970 FIFA World Cup. There was fighting between fans at the first game in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa on 8 June 1969, which Honduras won 1–0. Immediately following the match an eighteen-year old Salvadoran girl Amelia Bolaños shot herself in the heart, and was subsequently regarded as a martyr in El Salvador, with her funeral being televised and the El Salvador president and national football team walking behind her coffin.[6][7] The second game, on 15 June 1969 in the Salvadoran capital of San Salvador, which was won 3–0 by El Salvador, was followed by even greater violence.[8] A play-off match took place in Mexico City on 26 June 1969. El Salvador won 3–2 after extra time.
On the same day, 26 June 1969, El Salvador dissolved all ties with Honduras, 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".[9] This led to border clashes between the two nations.
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 18 July; it took full effect only on 20 July. El Salvador continued until 29 July 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, finally withdrew its troops on 2 August 1969. On that date, Honduras guaranteed Salvadoran President Fidel Sanchez Hernandez that the Honduran government would provide adequate safety for the Salvadorans still living in Honduras. He had also asked that reparations be paid to the Salvadoran citizens as well, but was never accepted by Hondurans. There were also heavy pressures from the OAS and the debilitating repercussions that would take place if El Salvador continued to resist a withdraw of their troops from Honduras.
The war in the Central American skies over El Salvador and Honduras, is often cited as the last occasion on which piston-engined fighters fought each other, both sides deploying former World War II and Korean War American aircraft. Cavalier F-51D Mustangs, F4U-1, -4 and -5 Corsairs, T-28A Trojans, AT-6C Texans and even C-47 Skytrains converted into bombers saw action. At the outset of the Football War, El Salvador enlisted the assistance of several American pilots with P-51 and F4U experience. Bob Love, a Korean war ace, Chuck Lyford, Ben Hall and Lynn Garrison are believed to have flown combat missions but it has never been confirmed. Lynn Garrison had purchased F4U-7 133693 from the French MAAG office when retired from French naval service in 1964. It was registered N693M and was later destroyed in a 1987 crash in San Diego, California.[86]
In the end, both sides of the Football War suffered extensive casualties. Some 300,000 Salvadorans were displaced due to the battle. Many had been forcibly exiled or had fled from war-torn Honduras, only to enter an El Salvador in which the government was not welcoming. Most of these refugees were forced to provide for themselves with very little assistance. Over the next few years, more Salvadorans returned to their native land, where they were surrounded by overpopulation and extreme poverty.[10]
El Salvador suffered about 900 troops and civilians killed during the war. This wasn't the first time that the military of El Salvador saw combat, 1811 Independence Movement The First Shout of Independence was the first of a series of revolts in Central America in El Salvador against Spanish colonialism and dependency on the Captaincy General of Guatemala. Later El Salvador also fought against Guatemala three times once in 1822 and another in 1851 and again in 1885, they won three times.
Honduras lost 100 combat troops, and over 2,000 civilians were killed during the four days, since most of the war was fought on Honduran soil. Thousands more had been ultimately made homeless. Trade between Honduras and El Salvador had been greatly disrupted, and the international border had been officially closed. This damaged the economies of these nations tremendously and threatened the Central American Common Market (CACM).