Chapecoense´s flight

[mrzz]

As you all may know, yesterday a plane crash killed around 75 people, including most part of a Brazilian football team called Chapecoense. They were from a small town down south called Chapecó. I happen to have a good friend from there, almost a brother, I am godfather to his daughter. He wrote me a message, which I will translate. He would hate me now if he knew I posted it, but it is a beautiful message, it shows the (for me) completely incomprehensible way sports move people. As any good piece of writing, it belongs out in the open, not hidden in a drawer, or in a single mailbox. I translated it to English, I might have made a mistake here and there. My friend´s name is Daniel.

"To begin with, Chapecoense´s nickname was always "Furacão do Oeste" [Western Hurricane]. I was born in 74 [Chapecoense was founded in 73]. December the eleventh, at 18:00 hours, a Chapecoense home match ended in victory. I was born. Fireworks and fireworks. The doctor told my mother that they were for me. My mother said they signaled them end of hard living. Hard living took a little longer to end. My father also took his time to show up. He was Chapecoense´s masseur. Obviously he knew shit about massage. He was there because he was part of the mass who helped the bourgeoisie found the team. When the match ended he went out to get drunk. He showed up a day later, with the match´s ball, and gave it to me. I guess it was the only present he ever gave me. I grew up looking at that ball. Chapecoense was the only link I had with my father. Today I feel he died again."

 

[Kieran]

I wonder how things are there now. It was a terrible, unnecessary tragedy, one of the saddest moments of 2016...

 

[mrzz]

I kept delaying the answer to your post, but here it is: The team is being rebuilt, such a thing would always have an unifying effect on people´s spirit. The team and the city are now known to the whole country, it was (and is) a small club who found a way to the top divisions, not a completely unheard thing here, but they were being able to stay on the top for a bit more time. This will be their third straight year on the first division. People were already mentioning them as a good example for others to follow, organization-wise. A lot of help came from different places, let´s see what they make of it.

On the plus side it helped the relations between Brazil and Colombia -- Brazil, as strange as it may sound -- is almost a stranger within South America, most to our own fault (off course that being the only country which does not speaks Spanish has its effects too). Unfortunately, it shook a bit of the relations with Bolivia -- all this helped by the political tensions in both countries. I personally feel sad about this, as I have been to Bolivia, and it is a wonderful country (yes, it is poor).

In retrospect, you always find a bit curious to read your own reactions to things like that, some time after the fact. After all, me and most had no connection to the people who died. But a very close friend of mine had, and so it got me one way or another.

Anyway -- better late than never -- thanks for the reply, Kieran!

 

[Kieran]

Thanks for that, buddy, so happy a few positives coming out of it. Good also that it helps relations between Brazil and Colombia. Very interesting about Brazil - is that because they're "Portuguese", and not "Spanish?"

 

[mrzz]

Yes, I guess that´s the main reason, as a common language helps a lot in such cases. But there are other cultural differences. People around the world see Brazilians as friendly and inclusive people, but I do no think it translates to well to the relations with our neighbors. I always felt that they are more friendly towards us than the other way around.

There is also another big difference, at least in relation to the Pacific Coast countries of SA, and Mexico. Brazil is a country made up of several different ethnicities, mostly Portuguese, African, Italian and a few others, and the original Indigenous are just one more (even if there is a specific type of mixed race, made up of Portuguese and Indigenous people -- the "caboclos", that has a significant contribution to the population). The other Latin American countries also have a good mix, but in general they are mostly countries which have the original "native american" population as the predominant group (at least from Paraguay and Bolivia all the way up to Mexico). I guess that, because of that, Mexicans and Peruvians call the arrival of Europeans as "The Conquer", as we here call it "the discovery".

Argentina, Chile and Uruguay may be a bit more like Brazil in this sense, but they are more connected to rest of the continent at least because of the language. I could go a bit further here, but I could end up saying something unfair about countries which I do not know that deeply.

 

[Kieran]

Very interesting, thanks for that...