“Look, I can’t promise anything,” I said on the drive over, shifting uncomfortably in my seat.
The outside temperature was getting hotter and hotter as we kept driving. It was going to be a hot one. I felt like I needed to preempt how uncomfortable it could get. I kept apologizing all the way down.
“We are not very good,” I told everyone in the car. “We are so not good; the team has a faith-based strategy to winning: our slogan is Brother, I have faith!1”
I am, of course, talking about Venezuela’s soccer team. The maroon-wearing Vinotinto.
My husband, a friend, and I are driving down to Santa Clara, down the San Francisco peninsula, to the Venezuela vs. Ecuador soccer game. This is the first match my home country of Venezuela will play in the Copa America tournament in the group stages.
I feel like a bad Venezuelan. This game was not something I had looked forward to for weeks or months like a true Venezuelan would. I found out about it because someone asked me less than 24 hours ago if I was going.
When I read that message, I felt that familiar bad Venezuelan punch-to-the-gut of shame. I knew the Copa America was happening and that Venezuela would play, but I had not dedicated a single neuron to it. I didn’t know, and didn’t care, this match was happening this close to me. This message felt like I was being called out for my lack of, let’s not call it patriotism, but basic interest in my place of birth. It’s as if someone had told me a close relative was in town, and I hadn’t had any plans to see them. My mother would be ashamed.
Alas, when has a shame spiral been enough to provoke action?
“Why would I go?” I asked myself. “All we’ve ever really done is lose.”
I shifted uncomfortably on my couch as I admitted my lack of faith.
But in that silence, another feeling bubbled up.
You see, part of me wants to be something I’m not: someone spontaneous, someone fun, someone who does things like go to soccer games. Maybe I can be someone who does things like hope her home country will win.
I consciously let that feeling win. I buy tickets for the Venezuela vs Ecuador game in Santa Clara.
Look, we were not that good. Here’s a fact supporting my assertion: The Venezuelan men’s soccer team has never made it to any World Cup.
But it’s not for a lack of love for the sport. People in Venezuela love soccer. There was always a soccer match playing in the background of Sunday family lunches. The World Cup was basically a national holiday. They would roll out the TVs at my all-girls school during big World Cup games. I remember watching some big quarter-final matches of, I don’t know, Germany vs Spain?, huddled around a screen with about 30 other girls and our teacher.
Without a home team to lend our support to, we pledged ourselves to other nations. Some folks had very direct ancestral lineage to places like Italy and Spain. Some of us had to look a couple of generations back to find a country to support. And some of us chose based on other metrics: handsomeness of players, ability to win, national colors, vibes.
I would say I’d support Germany because it’s my great-grandmother’s place of origin. But it was not a passion play. I had the same passion for it as a randomly assigned team during a gym class. I would forget the players' names and the specifics of their winning or losing as soon as the TV was turned off. Go Germany I guess? Was the vibe.
People bought tiny flags to put on their cars to demonstrate their foreign alliances proudly. Some cars would even out their flag display with a Venezuelan flag.
That Venezuelan flag wasn’t flapping in the wind sending a message about sports.
Maybe someday, maybe someday; we chanted year after year. Not just about soccer.
But after so many maybe somedays, I started losing faith.
“How many Venezuelans do you think there’ll be when we get there?” my husband asks me before we get to Santa Clara.
“Not many,” I reply with my usual optimism.
After an hour of my lamentations and my requests for forgiveness for bringing people on this objectively spontaneous and fun outing, we get to Levi’s Stadium. The parking lot is alive with tailgating. Folks wearing the bright yellow Ecuador team shirts sing, play music, drink, and are merry. They seem unashamed in their pride and are ready to win.
I am none of those things.
I have made an attempt at national pride. I have brought with me my seven-star Venezuelan flag. But I almost hide it. Wearing it would be an expression of the ridiculous hope we would win—something silly and out of this realm of possibility. I hold it in a bundle in my hands, sweating into its unabsorbent polyester.
I have no national team paraphernalia, so I’m wearing a t-shirt I bought for the 2017 demonstration season. Another moment of ridiculous hope and tremendous heartbreak.
We need to walk a couple of minutes to the actual stadium. The Santa Clara heat is here, and it is punishing. There is not a single cloud in the brilliant blue sky. And both of the folks keeping me company are not built for this sun. I feel the need to continue to apologize to these people who have decided to come with me.
On our walk over, I start seeing more maroon, Vinotinto, the national team's color. I see more flags. I see more seven-star flags.
I remind myself I am here to feel something new. That feeling that bubbled up into my nose less than 24 hours ago when I made the choice we were coming, that is what I want to keep feeling. I have to act on it to keep that effervescence going.
I unfurl my sweaty flag and wear it as a cape. My seven stars flap in the building breeze as we make our way to our seats.
Look, you must know by now that I am a woman of little faith. While some of that is a result of my genetic makeup, some of it is a learned helplessness.
Chavez and his program for Venezuela came to power when I was about 7. An age where I had already experienced my first coup.
In my remaining ten years living there, the country changed—not just in a philosophical sense. The basic building blocks that define the term “country” changed. Constitutions, names, flags2, currency, time-zones, and coat of arms – all that has changed at least once since 1998.
Some of us didn’t like this. Demonstrations and protests were pretty regular occurrences growing up in Venezuela. Political school cancelations felt akin to American snow days: things that happen regularly because of the environment. I can’t go to school today; there’s a national strike, protest, coup.
The expressions and logistics of discontent were tied to swells of hope and need for change. This time things will be different; this time things will change. And then maybe something you didn’t want to change would change, like the flag.
That building faith would deflate like a balloon, either aggressively and suddenly or slowly and silently.
I learned that all hope and swell would lead to more of the same, so why expect a different outcome? That would be insanity. Maybe some better Venezuelans could keep the faith, but I couldn’t. My hope for change died slowly and silently.
The inevitable happens on this hot Santa Clara day — no, I’m not talking about paying $20 for a Bud Light.
Ecuador scores a goal in the first half.
When Ecuador scores, I am surrounded by a sea of confident yellow-jersey fans. Beer and other liquids rain down on us in celebration.
I admit I’m jealous. Look at these happy people experiencing so much joy that it just explodes out of them in liquid form. Good for them. Maybe I this tiny seed of a feeling of hope I’m nurturing will someday feel like that.
At halftime, I pay $20 for the world’s worst pretzel with the world’s worst nacho cheese. I met the gaze of the marroon-wearing few around me. It’s more folks than I expected, but we are still the minority.
These compatriots seem content. They seem happy to be here. Some of them are dancing and having fun. They all clearly have more faith than I, the bad Venezuelan, do.
Resigned to being bathed in beer at least one more time, I return to my seat. Maybe the beer would make this bone-dry pretzel better.
The game returns to its cadence in the second half. “This game might as well be poker; there are cards all over the place!” my mom jokes in our family chat.
I am looking at my phone and trying to masticate this powder-dry pretzel when my husband suddenly grabs my hand.
“Goal,” he whispers to me.
“Ours?” I ask incredulously.
Before he can answer, the marroon-wearing few get up and scream.
And that bubbled-up hope in me follows suit. I let it take over. That feeling explodes as I jump up and wave my hands in the air, screaming a guttural cry of hope. The sweat rolls down my back into my jeans. My seven-star flag flaps in the wind defiantly. Nacho cheese flies everywhere on this hot Santa Clara day.
“Ok, well, that was fun,” I say when I regain control of my body, “It happen won’t happen again.” It can’t. That would be too much.
Oh, woman of little faith. Barely ten minutes pass, and providence proves me wrong again. We score another goal. I spray more nacho cheese onto those around me.
And then the craziest thing happened, reader: We won. That statement hit me like a slap in the face. Unexpected and invigorating.
The Ecuadorians in our area shake our hands and congratulate us for a good game as if the sweat collecting came from running on the court.
As we take our sweaty, beer-soaked, nacho cheese-speckled selves back to the car, I can’t stop myself from exclaiming how strange it feels that we won. How new of a feeling this is for me. I’m not sure what to do with this feeling. Where do I put it? Do I wear it as jewelry? Can I use it in sentence? Can I let it feed and sustain me?
My carmates finally ask me straight up: “Why were you so sure you’d lose?”
“Look, this is surely a fluke, but an enjoyable one,” I answer as I take off my flag/cape. “This won’t happen again,” I say with smug the self-assurance of the self-defeated as I turn on the AC to arctic freeze.
But I was wrong; Venezuela did not lose the next match. Or the one after that.
As of this writing, the Venezuelan team is making history. It has moved beyond the group stage of the Copa America, undefeated. It hasn’t even tied: it has beaten everyone they have played against. Undefeated and Venezuela are two words I never expected to write in a sentence in a non-ironic, non-bad Venezuelan way.
It’s been such a joy to be proven wrong. I love to see the memes of Arca flying over Angel Falls pop up on my Instagram. It makes us, the diaspora and those living in Venezuela, united and excited over a team that is exclusively our own.
Of course, this soccer thing is about soccer. But it’s so much more than that. Of course it is. How could it not be?
These series of wins come at a time when our hopes for an improved future are once again surging. A new political/spiritual leader has emerged in Maria Corina Machado: a woman who is doing an unprecedented hearts-and-minds tour through Venezuela, amassing crowds we haven’t seen in years. Regardless of the government’s attempts to slow her and her campaign down, she persists. The people persist with her. Their hope persists.
Venezuela will face Canada in the Copa America quarter-finals. Maria Corina will face off against Maduro in presidential elections later this month.
I’m learning what it feels like to hold my country’s victory without the side comments and the snark. To let go of my bad Venezuelan self.
I’m melting away my cynicism, one soccer match at a time.
“Mano, tengo fe” in Venezuelan Spanish
In 2006, the government added an additional eighth star to the flag. They have their reasons. I have mine.
I loved reading this and seeing how sport ties in to faith beyond just faith in the game. I nearly lost it imagining you holding the world's worst pretzel with the world's worst nacho cheese. Thank you for sharing this!