Greece's triumph—plus Mexican peasant kitsch

When I said goodbye to the Greeks who were heading for Rustenburg for Greece vs Nigeria, they assured me that humiliation and disaster awaited them. The best they were hoping for against Nigeria was a goal. It would be Greece’s first at the World Cup.

Meanwhile I joined up with a new and equally unlikely pair of companions: an Italian-American historian and a Mexican anthropologist. Our plan was to drive three hours north to Polokwane, in the Limpopo region, just over 200km south of the Zimbabwean border, to see Mexico play France.

After the harsh angular urbanism of Johannesburg, the landscape gently curved, small ranges of hills loomed up out of the now dry brown grasslands; commercial farms occupied most of the flat lands, watered by people from Lesotho, worked by Zimbabweans and owned, for the most part, by Afrikaner farmers.

It was clear from the flags and the taxis and the minibuses speeding alongside us that there were a lot of Mexicans going to the game: 50,000 went to Germany in 2006 and, although there are less this time around, they outnumbered the French at the service station we stopped at by ten to one. Our anthropologist mingled and listened closely to accents. Thinking about it later in the day, he estimated that at least half of the Mexicans were Mexican-Americans, the rest overwhelmingly from Mexico City, all of them upper-middle class or just plain wealthy.



We ran across a baker from a small town in the north who had not only made the journey, but had a costume specially made for the occasion featuring a South African flag made out of dyed bird feathers. We calculated his likely income and guessed that he must have some good connections to have got himself there. As if to underline the social composition of the bulk of the crowd, the Mexicans were holding a party after the game at Polokwane's Golf Club—not just any old golf club, but the home of South Africa's leading player, Ernie Els.

While they were carnivalesque and colourful, there was something curious about these Mexicans. Many were sporting joke sombreros, and the high-end blankets and ponchos that were the traditional dress of Mexican peasants in the 19th century. It’s hard to imagine quite what the English equivalent would be, as our own peasantry was so comprehensively wiped out in the 18th century, but perhaps it’s something like a horde of upper-middle class English families dressing in West Country yokel smocks and chewing synthetic carnival straw.

At the fan park we found Mexicans with rhinestone sombreros, leather sombreros, faked-up native Indian clothing, designer peasant fringed blankets, native American headdresses ready for the Rio carnival—and one man in a green and silver Aztec emperor outfit who danced with a sign announcing this year’s bicentennial of Mexican independence. Mexico's right-wing PAN government is taking the opportunity to engage in a bit of national reimagining. Somewhat like South Africa, they are pitching themselves as an ethnically diverse but equal and united Mexico, in which racial harmony trumps gigantic economic inequalities.

At the fan park and on the way to the stadium there were bursts of song. One old sentimental tune that is a standard element of the fans' repertoire goes: “Mexico you are so pretty and you’re wanted.” The anthropologist asked a portly man from LA kitted out with a glittered sombrero, multicoloured poncho, expensive camera and a BlackBerry, whether the song remind him of home. “The thing is,” he replied in exasperation, “Mexico is not pretty anymore and no one wants it. Look at the border, look at the drug wars, look at the grime and the dirt.” A Mexican camera crew, who were here in huge numbers, filming every one of the hundreds of wild kitsch costumes on display, asked him to talk to them. So why did he come to support Mexico? Because it's still home? Because it’s easier to be Mexican here than in Mexico? Because the crowd that is Mexico at the World Cup is Mexico shorn of its poor and its Indians?

Inside Polokwane, the Mexicans filled the concourses with their singing and chanting and the quaint clacking of wooden noise rattles. Although there were plenty of vuvuzelas, their drums and their chants kept up. Amazingly, and for the first time at any of the games I have been to, the announcer asked for quiet because “the match protocol is about to begin.” The local organisers have asked people to lay off the vuvuzelas during the anthems which is fair enough, but tonight they want us to be silent for the Fifa anthem they play and the emergence of their flag and then the players. I thought they were joking. The crowd was stunned into silence for a moment, but the first hint of the players emerging from the tunnel sends the noise levels right back up again.

The game was easily the best I’ve seen. The Mexicans attacked from the first minute, the French looked large and for the most part lethargic. In the battle of styles, the Mexicans came out on top and so too did their supporters. They were the first crowd who have risen above the white noise and really reacted to the game. They taunted the referee, they abused Franck Ribery, and they swooned and implored and pressed their team. It's good to feel that energy, that call and response between pitch and stand.

It was also good to be on the winning side for once. It was the second time that day. The Greeks called me earlier, when their first goal went in against Nigeria. They called me again, delirious, when the Nigerian got himself sent off. They called when their second goal was scored, but all I could hear was screaming and a babble of voices crying “Malacca.” They reported back later to say that they have hugged and kissed every Nigerian in Rustenburg, they have already plotted their route to the final and how they will get tickets and how this evening in Johannesburg they are going to stuff a vuvuzela full of Swazi weed and smoke it all before getting unconscionably drunk. I am meant to be rejoining them tomorrow at noon, but Little Athens may be closed for business.