On Saturday afternoon Flamengo and River Plate, two of South America's most historic, illustrious and wealthiest football institutions, take the field to dispute the first-ever single-tie Copa Libertadores final in Lima, Peru.
The showpiece will be a lavish affair, with thousands of fans from both Argentina and Brazil pushing their credit cards to the limit to pay for elevated tickets and airfares or making their way thousands of kilometres overland to rub shoulders with a bloated corporate presence in the Estadio Monumental. CONMEBOL's model is the ever-glitzy and over-hyped Champions League final, a chance to implant what the governing body see as the ideal of European elegance and commercial opportunity among the famous passion of the South American game.
But the final itself, and the events which have shaken the continent over the last month, show that the equation is not so straightforward. While the local aristocrats prepare for the festivities, in Chile, Bolivia and beyond the game has been shaken by a springtime of protests, repression and bloodshed.
Saturday's final, of course, was planned with another venue in mind. Just over two weeks ago CONMEBOL were set on proceeding with Santiago's Estadio Nacional, despite the social upheaval prompted by a fare hike in the Chilean capital's metro system that continues amid curfews, military crackdowns, and a death toll that by most recent estimates has risen to a harrowing 24. Chile's national team players have stood in solidarity with those in the streets, cancelling November's friendly with Peru: “There is a more important match going on, for equality,” Gary Medel, one of the most outspoken supporters of the movement, explained on Twitter.
In an unprecedented show of unity, ultras of the nation's biggest clubs have also joined forces first to ensure the Copa final would be moved to Lima, to avoid authorities pushing football back onto the agenda in an effort to show business as usual. Just 100 people turned up at La Florida to witness a bizarre game on Friday between Union La Calera and Deportes Iquique, with the home team posing before the match with one hand over their left eyes in tribute to the dead and injured over the last month – almost 300 protesters are believed to date to have suffered partial or total loss of vision, largely due to the impact of wounds inflicted by rubber bullets.
After 36 days where the ball has stopped rolling they managed a mere 66 minutes of turgid play before a commando force of Colo Colo heavies invaded the pitch and forced the game's suspension. “Without justice, there is no football,” the Garra Blanca had promised, and they were true to their word, squaring up to police with stones and other missiles on their 5km march to La Florida. Colo Colo themselves take the pitch on Saturday morning, but the chance of completing that game or the rest of the Primera Division round without major incident looks very bleak indeed.
Chile is not the only nation to have seen everyday life, football included, paralysed in recent weeks. Presidential elections in Bolivia unleashed a wave of uprisings which prompted an army-led coup d'etat against Evo Morales, the first indigenous head of state in the history of South America's poorest nation and, while not without his detractors, the overseer of unprecedented economic growth and reductions in poverty and inequality since taking charge in 2005.
Since Morales was forced into exile in Mexico an immediate change has taken place: the protesters from relatively affluent areas such as Santa Cruz de la Sierra have gone home, while the president's supporters from the sprawling city of El Alto have come out to demand his return. The military has responded with vicious repression, causing at least 32 deaths.
“There is fear and anger among the protesters, but I'd say fear more than anything,” Argentine journalist Martin Schapiro, who covered the El Alto protests, told Goal. “But the anger and a certain determination was also present. Above all it seemed to me that they are trying to force new elections, but I am not sure whether the government wants that.”
Football in South America is in many ways a microcosm of wider society in one of the world's most unequal regions. At the top, a privileged caste of footballers who earn sums the rest can only dream of. Below, tens of thousands of honest professionals or semi-professionals barely making enough to put food on the table. Luis Copete belongs to that second group.
A Nicaragua international, Copete plays in the Bolivian Primera Division for Always Ready, with whatever money he has left over at the end of the month sent back home to his daughter. The El Alto resident, however, was forced to forego even that routine as the city was enveloped in chaos.
“Today I went out in the morning to try and send money to my daughter and I couldn't. Everything was closed,” he told La Prensa following the first wave of protests caused by Morales' removal. “No places are open to buy things, not even food. It's difficult... On Sunday I went out to buy food because I didn't have any and there was tear gas flying about, it was horrible, I started crying because of the gas and I had a problem in my throat.
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“The worst thing is seeing the wounded, someone whose hands or part of their body has been blown off by dynamite or a mine, that is the worst I have seen.”
As in Chile, the Bolivian Football Federation attempted to restart its Primera Division for the first time since October this weekend. “The concept the federation is working on is to try and contribute towards pacifying the country with football,” FBF president Cesar Salinas signalled in a statement released on Thursday. It will not be easy, however.
The case of Sport Boys is indicative of the upheaval caused by the events of November. The Warnes club's president Carlos Romero was also Morales' chief of staff and fled the country following his ousting. With nobody in charge or in a position to pay salaries Sport Boys' coach also resigned, while their playing staff have not received wages for four months and have stopped training.
“It cannot be that there is a club which only has one director on its board,” Bolivia's football union chief David Paniagua fired to reporters. “The president has gone missing and there isn't anybody left at the club. The players did not ask for their salaries at the time because they were scared of the president. The issue is crystal clear and there is no reason to hide it.”
Meanwhile, governments across South America await nervously to discover where the next flashpoint will arise. Ecuador president Lenin Moreno was forced to backtrack on the removal of fuel subsidies earlier in 2019 after weeks of protests, while in Argentina Mauricio Macri – a former president of River's arch-rivals, Boca Juniors – suffered a heavy defeat in elections amid a context of spiralling inflation and poverty rates which are estimated to reach almost 40 per cent by the end of the year.
On Thursday millions of Colombians took to the streets in a massive national strike, accompanied by the same recipes of curfew, repression and violence by authorities. Just as in Chile, sworn football enemies united to register their discontent, with ultras of Medellin powerhouses Atletico Nacional and Independiente leading a joint-march to the sound of a single chant: “the People have got balls.”
While the ball is rolling in Lima, in Chile, Bolivia, Colombia and beyond the real battle will continue, one that shows no sign of calming down as an entire continent calls for dignity and equality.
