También podés leer la versión en castellano.
A tough decision
It wouldn’t be fitting for WBT to miss the opportunity of publishing a piece that goes on a bit about football while the 2026 World Cup is happening. After all, football has been a Writer by Technicality leitmotiv. The silence on the topic is the result of the boycott of the tournament announced in The North/South Divide in Sports. The ongoing persecution of immigrants in the US, the war in Iran, the country’s role in the Palestinian genocide, and the intervention in Venezuela were all considered when deciding not to watch the tournament.
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But we’d have to boycott everything if we did so based on policy decisions from some government we didn’t agree with. The reasons to boycott this tournament in particular are also directly related to football. FIFA, an organization suspected of fraudulent practices for decades, decided to openly and unscrupulously rip off fans by charging exorbitant ticket prices. As a result, everyday supporters have been excluded from participation. On a more personal level, the football association of the team I follow is also mired in corruption scandals. Furthermore, members of my team are sponsored by betting websites, at the same time that the country they represent is navigating a child gambling crisis.
As the kickoff date approached, it felt as if all the fun had been sucked out of the most popular game in the world. We decided to boycott.
Real shockers
Although we’re not watching the games, we are following the results, and as usual, there’ve been some shockers. Until they were narrowly knocked out by Argentina, Cape Verde captured everyone’s hearts. The island nation, with a population of just over 500 thousand, had one of the most commendable performances in World Cup history, playing against three world champions and not losing to any of them within the game’s 90 minutes. Before they were cast as the villains because of their creative strategy against France, Paraguay gained admirers by defeating Germany in one of the greatest upsets in recent World Cup history.
However, the real shocker over the last week has nothing to do with football and is a humanitarian tragedy. Of course, we’re talking about the earthquake that hit Venezuela on the 24th of June. Although we don’t know the extent of the destruction caused by the powerful double shock that hit a few hundred kilometers from Caracas, we know it’s bad. Very bad.
Venezuela hasn’t had it easy lately. A divisive political regime, a lack of democratic representation, covert and overt foreign intervention, a battered economy, hyperinflation, and a trade blockade have left the country in a fragile state. The dire situation led a quarter of the population to flee the nation over the last couple of decades. And now this: geological devastation of a magnitude rarely seen before. Thousands of people have died, many thousands have disappeared, and countless many more have lost everything.
Staring disaster in the face, humanity did what humanity always does. Although it isn’t nearly enough, there’s been an outpouring of demonstrations of solidarity with the Venezuelan people. With financial aid, food, medical supplies, and donations, the people of the world have done the usual and let Venezuelans know they’re not alone. Of course, none of this support will bring loved ones back or restore anything approximating normalcy, but in the midst of tragedy, it does offer some relief: to the Venezuelan people, and to those of us who sometimes lose hope in humanity.
Wonders of the 21st century
While some of the best athletes in the world meet in North America to play some footie and the planet shakes in South America, there’s been another item in the news that rocked the world. The 21st century gave birth to some wondrous things: the sequencing of the human genome, the taming of HIV, the Webb telescope, ubiquitous mobile telecommunications, and of course, the ability to broadcast to the world that we’ve had a 20-dollar avocado toast for brunch. Our latest and greatest invention is the trillionaire.
Following the SpaceX IPO, Elon Musk became the world’s first-ever trillionaire. Some commentators and pundits decry this milestone as yet another symbol of an increasingly unequal world where wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few. That’s short-sighted. The advent of the first trillionaire means the financial system can finally do its thing, and all those poor billionaires will enjoy the benefits of trickle-down economics. It’s a breakthrough!
It’s depressing, that’s what it is. At least it depressed my partner and me while we were drinking a beer on the balcony to get some relief from the heat. With a quarter of the Venezuelan people living abroad, a lot of us have Venezuelan friends, colleagues, family, and acquaintances. Given the magnitude of the damage, all those people we know have friends, colleagues, family, and acquaintances who either passed away, are missing, or are destitute. It’s a tragedy we can relate to.
As we sat together enjoying our relaxing evening, we couldn’t help holding contradictory thoughts. First, we considered how lucky we are. We’re together, in our home, drinking a cold beer as we watch the sun set and feel the comfort of each other’s company. It was a moment of gratitude. However, it was also a moment of despair. How could it be that thousands of people were, from one moment to the next, through no fault of their own, left with nothing, while a single man became a trillionaire? According to the UN, the cost of the earthquake will be somewhere around 6.7 billion dollars. Elon Musk could finance that and barely make a dent in an annual Botox budget. And we call this “progress.”
The sliver lining
Although our current state of affairs is rather depressing, not all is lost. To regain some hope, we can return to football. For some reason, a video of an MLS game from back in 2024 reached my Substack feed this week. It showed heavy rain as the teams came onto the pitch. As is often the case, the players came out with a child walking next to them while holding hands. They then lined up at the center for the usual formalities: team presentation, anthem, pictures, and so on.
As the rain continued, one of the players noticed the child he had walked out with was getting soaked. Without giving it much thought, he unzipped his uniform jacket, took it off, and covered the kid. The player next to him in the formation saw the gesture and did the same with the child he had walked out with. Naturally, the rest of the players followed suit. It’s the video representation of human nature. If we see suffering, we try to help out. When others see the exemplary behavior, they follow, either by their own will or because of the power of peer pressure.
It says a lot about our ruling class that none of them have led by example in the aftermath of the Venezuelan seismic disaster. We’re not seeing the majority of the 0.1% selling their spare yacht, their sixth mansion in the Bahamas, or shares in the companies they own to help out people in need. We know this because the Forbes rankings aren’t changing. And because none of them are taking the lead and acting like a moral compass for good, their cohorts aren’t following. This is the leadership we have today.
If we understand this, there is only one conclusion we can reach. We must not look at the rich, successful, and powerful as exemplars of moral behavior. We should look at each other, for we help the family member in need. We’re the ones lending a hand to a neighbor in a pinch. We roll up our sleeves and build support networks for the survivors of an earthquake to help strangers thousands of miles away.
To those who have lost friends and family, this may be of little comfort, but considering the evening news, it might be the silver lining the rest of us need.
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