Chilean Sea Blog: Can I still be a Cruzada even though I'm Jewish?

This past Thursday I went to my first futbol (read: soccer) game and it was quite possibly one of the most fun nights I have had here! Like in every other country that is not the United States, futbol is obviously huge here. Sometimes when riding the metro or walking down the street I can hear people in jerseys singing team theme songs, waving flags, and hanging out of bus windows getting pumped up for the game later that day. When I heard that my friends were going to a game I immediately jumped on the opportunity. We went to a Universidad Catolica versus Bolivia game and it definitely lived up to the very high expectations I had for the evening! Universidad Catolica is a private university here in Santiago but the team is not made up of students from the school. The team is made up of professional futbol players, and while the University used to be affiliated with the team, it is not anymore. Likewise the fans (called cruzados/as meaning cross or crusaders as I learned from Google translate), are not necessarily students from the University. That being said, the game definitely felt like a rowdier South American version of a college football or basketball game.

When we arrived at the stadium we sat in what would be the equivalent of a student section, with bleachers and people who jump a lot. There was a guy selling peanuts, but no beer as futbol fans can get violent. When the coach for Bolivia came out the audience let ring a million catcall whistles and it was impressively loud! Now I know where they learn it from when they call out to my girlfriends and me!

While the announcer was listing the names of the Bolivian players, the crowd shouted out something similar to SUCKS after each one just like we do with such good sportsmanship at Maryland. My favorite chant though was when the fans would continuously sing “no tienen mar” which translates to “you don’t have a sea”. I was very proud of myself when I remembered the historical context for this cheer. Chile went to war with Bolivia and Peru in 1879 in a war called the War of the Pacific. To make a very long story a very short story, in this war Chile acquired all of Bolivia’s access to the sea and they are still very bitter about it. I just thought it was hilarious that over 100 years later this serious historical insult was being used at a futbol game!

At the start of the game there were fireworks that went off right above our heads, people were throwing streamers and also climbing up the fence that surrounded the field. I also learned a lot of very neat curse words that probably made me seem very Chilean shouting them when everyone else did! It was also very hard to see if the ball actually went into the goal or not so I will admit that there were definitely times when I was cheering very loudly in a crowd of dead silence thinking there was a goal scored when there definitely was not! I think then people realized I was American. Foiled again!

Sadly the game ended in a tie, but thankfully I am not too committed to the team so I was able to have a fabulous time regardless! I can’t wait to go to more games with my newly expanded vocabulary!

Ciao!