The Soccer War Blog # 7

An Excuse

Excuses are used by most of the people to cover a lie, to comfort someone, to take advantage oaf a situation or to create conflict. This has been seen throughout history in several wars and events. A concrete example of this is narrated in The Song of Troy. In this narration, Paris, the prince of Troy falls in love with Helen, the wife of Menelaus, the heir of the throne of Sparta. Helen’s beauty leaves Paris astonished, this causes him to kidnap Helen and take her to troy. Meanwhile, all the Greek nations unite and create a plan to rescue Helen. They say they just seize Troy and gain power in that nation. But the real purpose of the seize, is to gain control of the trade in the Hellespont channel where plenty of money is gained. They use the excuse of Helen to fight against the Trojans.
In The Soccer War, Kapuscinski narrates a very similar story; Honduras and El Salvador use the excuse to fight. “These are the real reasons for the war: El Salvador, the smallest country in Central America, has the greatest population density in the western hemisphere (over 160 people per square kilometer)…Honduras (12,000 square kilometers) is almost six times as large as el Salvador, but has about half as many people (2,500,000)…Relations between the two countries were tense…There were pogroms. Shops were burned. In these circumstances the match between Honduras and El Salvador had taken place.” Pg. 182. The excuse of The Soccer War was a soccer match but actually both countries had other reasons to fight for.