Politics
House GOP poised to vote on pesticide language
As the opening match of the World Cup kicked off yesterday between Mexico and South Africa in Mexico City, thousands took to the streets to protest the administration of President Claudia Sheinbaum.
They marched toward the historic Azteca Stadium, and began throwing cones, rocks and plant pots into the security perimeter that had been set up by Mexican authorities as the match kicked off at 3 p.m. Eastern time.
Riot police with shields and on horseback tried to contain the protestors who were there for a range of causes including a teachers union and the disappearances of tens of thousands of people in Mexico.
“There are more than 130,000 disappearances in Mexico and the president denies that they are forced,” one protestor told Forecast in Spanish. “There are no resources for mothers to search because they simply search without the support of the government or institutions. So they are alone, like the teachers.”
When Bosnian refugees started arriving in Utica, New York, in the mid-1990s, it was a down-on-its-heels Rust Belt city that had seen its population crater by roughly a third from a mid-century peak of just over 100,000 residents.
“I thought I came to another war zone when I came here,” said Hanka Grabovica, who arrived in the Mohawk Valley city in 2001 when she was 16-years old, citing the prevalence of boarded-up buildings and garbage on the streets. “Utica was pretty bad back then.”
Grabovica was part of a wave of Bosnian refugees who settled in Utica after fleeing the brutal war in their native country — and its messy aftermath — that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia. Exact figures are tough to pin down, but it’s believed that about 6,000 Bosnians now live in Utica — or nearly 10 percent of the total population.
The city’s unlikely emergence as an epicenter of Bosnian-American culture will probably never be more prominently on display than on Friday afternoon when Bosnia and Herzegovina faces Canada on the second day of the World Cup. It’s just the second time that Bosnia has qualified for the tournament since it became an independent country in 1992.
The dramatic and unlikely way that the country punched its ticket to North America — knocking off four-time World Cup champion Italy via penalty kicks in a one-match playoff — has heightened the delirium among Bosnians from Sarajevo to St. Louis (the largest enclave of Bosnians in the U.S.) to Utica ahead of Friday’s 3 p.m. kickoff.
“Seeing this national team progress to the World Cup is definitely something amazing,” said Sandro Sehic, secretary of the Bosnian American Community Association of Utica, noting that many ethnic Serbians and Croatians who live in the country still refuse to play for the national team owing to lingering tensions from the war. “Bosnia is still struggling politically, socially. There are still so many problems that are still affecting the country.”
The arrival of the Bosnians in Utica has been followed by waves of other immigrants — most notably a large influx of Karen refugees originally from Burma — that have helped revitalize the city. East Utica, once primarily an enclave of Italian Americans, has become a center of the Bosnian community. Last November, a traditional Bosnian fountain called a sebilj — modeled after a famous fountain in Sarajevo — was unveiled in the neighborhood as a symbol of their importance to the city.
“We were very, very fortunate that the Bosnians have claimed this as their home because they reconstructed some parts of our city,” said Rob Palmieri, who served as Utica’s mayor from 2012 to 2024. “It has been a wonderful blend bringing the city back to vibrancy.”
The current mayor, Mike Galime, points to Two Brothers Café & Pizzeria as emblematic of the entrepreneurial spirit Bosnians have brought to the city. The restaurant serves up pizza slices (of course), but also Bosnian specialties like burek (meat pies) and cevapi (grilled sausages).
“It’s like a perfect, perfect example of that melting pot,” Galime said.
The main viewing party in Utica for Friday’s match, sponsored by the Bosnian American Community Association, is taking place at the 72 Tavern & Grill, a 5,000-plus square foot restaurant that boasts 18 TVs. But there’s widespread agreement that the game will be ubiquitous in Utica on Friday afternoon.
“You’re not going to find too many of the Bosnians working that day,” said Palmieri, a Democrat. “They’re all going to be glued to TVs.”
“The buzz is insane,” added current Mayor Mike Galime, a Republican. “It’s like a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
Grabovica, who is president of the Bosnian American Community Association, pointed out that many residents – even adults — have become obsessed with collecting stickers commemorating World Cup countries and players.
“It’s crazy what these Bosnians are doing,” she said.
World Cup history is awash with politics — and politicians — intruding on the soccer.
For almost a century, leaders ranging from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to Argentine military junta boss Jorge Videla to French President Jacques Chirac have sought to score political points from the tournament.
This year’s competition is also not the first to be overshadowed by conflict. North Korea tried to upstage the event in 2002 with a bloody naval assault on South Korea, and the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina loomed over the 1982 World Cup.
In 1934, Mussolini viewed a World Cup victory as a way to symbolize Italian might. Brazilian dictator Emílio Médici said that the 1970 triumph was testament to his country’s greatness. Memories of the Falklands provided fraught context to England’s clash with Argentina in 1986, one of the most famous games in the tournament’s history.
In more recent times, Chirac cast himself as a big fan of the all-conquering, racially diverse French national team in 1998. Vladimir Putin exploited the 2018 tournament to project Russian soft power, while Gulf petromonarchy Qatar used the 2022 edition as part of a major nation-building project.
And this year, it’s the the politics of MAGA — an ongoing foreign war and domestic immigration crackdown — that are coming back to bite soccer’s governing body FIFA.
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