Inter Campus: football and fun in Mexico

MEXICO CITY – Inter Campus’s second visit to Mexico this year took place from 13 to 27 June 2011, with a delegation made up of chief coordinator Christian Valerio and two trainers, Juri Monzani and Silvio Guareschi.

The first part of the visit was dedicated to the Queretaro centre based at the institute run by the tireless Marcelline sisters, where a refresher course was attended by 20 local coaches. They worked on theory in the morning and put it into practice on the pitch in the afternoon, with the involvement of around 80 children from the poor quarters of Bolaños and Unidad Nacional on the outskirts of the city. As always, there was plenty of enthusiasm from trainers and kids alike – particularly amusing was the mini-tournament organised at the end of the course, when the sisters donned their football boots for a brief while to show off their sporting skills.

A new Inter Campus centre was set up in the Girasol institute, where children from the elementary school will be able to train twice a week with youth workers Vantroy and Jorge.

Another new project is taking shape in Bolaños thanks to Jose Luis, a local trainer who has worked with Inter Campus for a number of years. He will run two training sessions a week on the small pitch in the quarter.

The second stage of the visit took place in Mexico City, where there are currently two centres. The Inter Campus delegation and local representatives organised a day of events in the name of integration, on the dusty Deportivo Venustiano Carranca pitch: indigenous children from the Triqui tribe and kids from the Fundacion Renacimiento home trained and played together. After the football, both sets of children and their accompanying adults enjoyed visiting the other group’s community.

The final stage of the trip took our delegation to Chiapas. Following a brief visit there in February 2011, from 21 to 25 June the first Inter Campus course in Moises Gandhi was held – an indigenous community in the area of San Cristobal de las Casas. The 80 or so Mayan kids taking part in the project were each provided with an Inter Campus kit, bringing the Nerazzurri colours to this extremely difficult part of the world. There is a very particular political situation in this region: Chiapas is the area of Mexico with the richest resources but it is the poorest economically.

Over 10,000 indigenous communities who populate this region are without clean drinking water, sewer systems, electricity, roads, communications and housing. Chiapas has the highest infant mortality rate, mainly due to malnutrition and tuberculosis. The Indios who descended from the Mayans have spent years fighting to obtain some land for their survival. Land means somewhere to live, and owning land means being able to survive independently, instead of every day having to relinquish some of the little dignity they have left after 500 years of colonialism. The Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (EZLN) was set up with precisely that goal: to fight for full recognition of the civil and social rights of the indigenous peoples, and their right to citizenship and self-determination. Inter Campus proposes its usual method of using football as an aid to educate the children who live in these communities.

06.07.2011