You’d think that witnessing a bite, however well disguised as a fall, would be an open and shut case. A man falls through a group and his face connects with a shoulder. The owner of the shoulder removes his shirt to show a bite mark. It’s captured on camera, seen by thousands in the crowd and millions on TV.
But no. There’s quite a few people who convince themselves they’ve seen no such thing. In fact it’s all a conspiracy, they say, by their rivals to make their hero (and by extension themselves and their country) look bad; to diminish them all on the biggest stage of all.
Luis Suarez of Uruguay and Liverpool: they don’t call him the dentist for nothing
The human capacity for denial of the obvious always surprises me. Never mind what you’ve seen with your own eyes, turn away from it and yell ‘can’t see it, it isn’t there’.
A recent Guardian article looking into Luis Suarez, his history of violence and his standing in Uruguay described an ESPN journalist meeting a wall of silence and denial in Uruguay itself. Legend has it that at age 15 Suarez head butted a referee in a juniors game. The journalist found nobody would speak to him, records were ‘lost’ and everyone defended Suarez.
The only reason I can think of for this is that in Uruguay peoples sense of self, of nationhood is small and weak.
Why would this be?
The colony that would later become Uruguay was founded a century or so after what is now Brazil and Argentina were colonized; the natives were too ferocious and there was no gold and silver in the area. Consequently, there was no motivation for either the Spanish or the Portuguese to roll in.
Since it’s foundation in the first half of the seventeenth century, the main city, Montevideo and (later) Uruguay have suffered from being a small territory wedged between two giant neighbours. In their turns the Spanish, Portuguese, Argentina, Brazil, Britain, France and the US have all fought over or sought to control Uruguay’s destiny; sometimes by manipulating the politics (Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, the United States) by sending in ground (Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Britain) and naval (France) forces or ‘just’ by using ‘diplomacy’, spying and economic leverage (the United States).
I really want to see this, it looks beautiful
Uruguay’s history is turbulent to say the least.
Then there is this article by Luis Roux, a Uruguayan journalist republished in English by the British ‘Observer’ newspaper and to be found on The Guardian’s site. It suggests Uruguayans totally lose themselves in football (I simplify of course).
I get the sense that Uruguay gets no sense of itself from its institutions, achievements, economy etc. The Olympics and cycling notwithstanding, the British have become used to being losers. Anyone who follows the soccer campaigns of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; England’s cricket or Wales’s rugby teams has to have become innured to the long years of ‘hurt’ our teams have been subject to over the decades. There have been moments of glory such as the male middle distance runners of the 80s, the triumphs of the Barcelona Olympics and Kelly Holmes at Athens – but these have been fleeting. Andy Murray’s success in the US Open and Wimbledon during 2013 was the exception that proved the rule. Britain (historically) punches below its weight at sport.
Consequently, whilst we love our sportsmen and women to succeed and we can’t shut up about them when they are, we do have other things to fall back on. Such as the NHS, the BBC, Parliament, our ‘Island History’ and ‘The Empire’. We even celebrate our emigration to the far flung corners of the world, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and cities such as Hong Kong and Singapore. We’re pround of having so many US Presidents having their ancestral home in England, Scotland or (less often) Wales.
Uruguay: Wedged between Brazil to the east and Argentina to the west. A veritable pearl, possibly
Then we like to remind ourselves that we may not be very good at sport, but we invented and / or developed so many of them…especially football.
What does Uruguay have? Football.
Take that away and the country has…what exactly?
That’s why conspiracy theories loom so large over the response to Luis Suarez and his biting.
By the way his punishment, four months out of the game, seems to me to be perfectly just.
Resident Alien 