For 27 years, the Honduran national soccer team played under the shadows of past glory, suffering heartbreaking defeats that have weighed on the nation’s psyche.

But on Oct. 14, a last minute flick of a head on the final day of World Cup qualifiers erased those nearly three decades of anguish—and triggered euphoria across a nation embroiled in political and economic distress.

Rodolfo F. Pastor, a visiting professor of history at Harvard, understands how the identity and culture of Honduras—a nation obsessed with soccer—has evolved alongside the country’s political and economic misfortunes. Until recently, Pastor served as the Honduran Minister of Culture under President Jose Manuel Zelaya. Pastor was forced to flee the country this past summer when a military coup ousted Zelaya’s administration.

“Sports have been always been a gateway of building identity, a collective identity,” Pastor says. “Hondurans have a very grievous problem derived from socioeconomic and political circumstances. It is a problem with their self-esteem; with the idea of who they are and what it means to be Honduran.”

Pastor says he believes that the recent success of the Honduran soccer team has helped to unify the nation and temporarily mitigate underlying social tensions. But he also worries that politicians may exploit and manipulate the team for their own ends.

“In all different and important positions, left and right, people will try to manipulate the image of this triumph and use it for their own very perverse purposes,” Pastor says. “You can see it in the way people project to take the ‘selecionados,’ the heroes of the story, into their photo op[s].”

He also expressed fears that the soccer team’s success will be used to obscure more pressing concerns in Honduras, such as the widespread poverty that persists in much of the nation.

“A country should not be built on the idea that we can produce athletes,” Pastor says. “We have to build a country where we have opportunities for people to stay [in the country], be productive, and lead happy lives.”

‘INFERIORITY COMPLEX’

For decades, Honduras has been marred by systemic economic underachievement and unexpected natural calamities. These issues have contributed to the development of what Pastor calls a national “inferiority complex”—a problem that he says has been reflected in the national team’s struggle to qualify for the World Cup.

In 2005, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) estimated that 22 percent of the Honduran population lived in extreme poverty, earning less than $1.25 a day. The World Bank, which ranked Honduras as the third poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, estimated in 2007 that over 59 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

These economic concerns have been exacerbated by natural disasters, including the category five Hurricane Mitch that devastated the Caribbean Sea in 1998. The United States Geological Survey said the hurricane caused upwards of $3 billion in damages and over 7,000 casualties, destroyed large portions of the nation’s transportation infrastructure, and wiped out 70 percent of the nation’s crops.

“The basic problem [of Honduras’ national inferiority complex] is rooted in the fact that so many people do not have opportunities to develop themselves or their skills and virtues for a particular vocation,” Pastor says. “They do not receive the education, the nutrition, the basic health care that one needs to develop as a person.”

‘FÚTBOL NATION’

For a nation of seven million conditioned to distress, soccer has often served as the only means to escape the severities of reality.

Jaime Villegas, captain of the 1982 Honduran soccer team that qualified for the World Cup, says he saw firsthand how his exploits on the field became a panacea for the country.

“Many kids at that time, especially those who liked football, looked on us as role models and continued their passion [in the sport],” said Villegas in a telephone interview conducted in Spanish with The Crimson. Villegas currently serves as the sporting director of a first division Honduran soccer club.

“[Honduras] is a ‘fútbol nation’...Political rivalries are forgotten, if only temporarily, and rivals will embrace when the national team does well,” he adds.

In 1981, Honduras, a minnow in international soccer, went undefeated in its home qualifying matches and eliminated Mexico—one of the dominant forces in the region—en route to securing its first-ever entry into the FIFA World Cup. On the sport’s grandest stage, Honduras tied Spain, the host of the tournament, helping to establish Honduras’ soccer credentials on an international level and sparking speculation that a new era of athletic success was in the offing.

But in the nearly three decades since, those expectations have been unfulfilled. In the summer of 2001, Honduras was invited at the last minute to participate in the Copa America, South America’s premier tournament. Arriving just a few hours before their first game, the team went on to upset defending champion Brazil.

Yet despite the hopes garnered from that tournament, Honduras went on to suffer a heartbreaking defeat later that winter, capitulating in its last World Cup qualifying game to last-placed Trinidad and Tobago.

Now, eight years later, Honduras has overcome that spectre of defeat.

TRIUMPH AT LAST

This past June, Honduran President Zelaya was arrested at his home by military officials and exiled from the country, sparking months of civil unrest.

Two weeks after Zelaya’s arrest, the Honduran national team defeated Costa Rica 4-0 in a qualifying match for the World Cup, seemingly positioning the nation for its second-ever appearance in the World Cup finals.

But by September, Honduras’ World Cup campaign had taken a turn for the worse. In the penultimate qualifying match, Honduras lost to the United States 3-2.

With political chaos at home serving as a backdrop for Honduras’ final qualifying match, it seemed that the nation’s history of soccer misfortune would repeat itself yet again.

In the final day of qualifiers, Honduras played against El Salvador and needed the United States to tie or defeat Costa Rica in order to advance to the World Cup. Honduras won its match 1-0, with 36-year-old Carlos Pavón providing the lone goal, but the United States quickly fell behind in its game.

Yet down one goal in stoppage time, the United States struck a last second header into the back of the net to tie Costa Rica, sending Honduras to its second World Cup finals appearance—and relieving the team of 27 years of burdensome expectations.

‘NEW HEROES’

Pavón, the qualifying region’s top scorer, served as a fulcrum for the nation’s renewed sense of unity. Pavón is of Garifuna descent, an ethnic mix of Carib, Arawak, and West African peoples that has been marginalized and discriminated against in Honduran society.

Pastor says Pavón’s ascension as a nationally iconic figure has highlighted soccer’s unique ability to transcend societal barriers in Honduras. He says he believes Pavón’s achievements show that “anyone from any social class, with minimal conditions and the right kind of effort, can achieve excellence in any field.”

“To see [Pavón] lead the team to victory and [for the country] to identify him as Honduran has served the positive function of getting the rest of Honduras to recognize the valuable aspect that is our Garifuna community,” Pastor says.

The national team itself also represents a diverse mix of players from cities around Honduras. The current pool of talent, Pastor says, is “a symbol of how the country has come together.”

Villegas, the 1982 team captain, said he believes this current generation of players rivals his own era in terms of talent.

“There are now new heroes in Honduras,” Villegas says. “In ’82 it was us, and now kids are looking to players like Pavón, [Wilson] Palacios, and [Amado] Guevara as role models.”

Guevara, captain of the current Honduran team, is one of the highest-paid players in United States Major League Soccer. Villegas said that he believes the Honduran team will continue to perform well internationally and that many players from the team will be selected to play in European soccer clubs after the World Cup.

Yet Pastor also warns that sporting success should not be the only measure of Honduran progress, and he notes that the international community will only respect the nation when it is able to surmount its broader difficulties.

—Staff writer Mauricio A. Cruz can be reached at cruz2@fas.harvard.edu.