Why Brazil x Haiti is the perfect World Cup game to celebrate Juneteenth


A few days before the World Cup, I made my predictions for the tournament, together with my colleagues. One of my answers generated a much bigger reaction than any other. Questions included which country we thought would lift the trophy, which teams would disappoint and who would be the featured star. But my answer to the last question — Which game are you most looking forward to? — stirred the waters more than my theory that Mexico would be the more successful host nation. "Brazil and Haiti will play on Juneteenth", I wrote. "If you know, you know." I didn't expect the hundreds of thousands of people who read the article to understand what I meant. I assumed many would understand, but the comments section showed that many were wondering why these two countries facing off on June 19th mattered to me. It's about black history. Brazil is home to the largest population of people of African descent outside of Africa, while Haiti became the world's first sovereign black nation, and only the second in the Americas, after fighting France for independence in 1804. The Group C game takes place on June 19, a date celebrated in the US as Juneteenth. The holiday, signed into federal law by President Joe Biden in 2021, commemorates when the last enslaved Black Americans were informed of their freedom through the Emancipation Proclamation. "Juneteenth" is a portmanteau of the month and date that Union General Gordon Granger traveled to Galveston Bay, Texas, in 1865 to deliver the message. It has been celebrated by some African Americans since the late 1800s. My decision not to explain my statement in that initial text was to honor those who did not need explanation; who, like me, are constantly seeking the gatherings within the glittering World Cup soiree that create space to celebrate blackness in all its broad cultural and geographic representation. For those of us who celebrate Juneteenth, we will still savor the football from that game, whether from inside Lincoln Financial Field or at parties watching; in living rooms in Salvador (a city in the state of Bahia, the first port for enslaved Africans) or in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. As soon as I walked into Kizin Creole, a Haitian restaurant in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood, I knew I'd found the right place to witness Haiti's first World Cup appearance since 1974. The tables near the screen showing their game against Scotland were filled with groups of friends and families, and a DJ was warming up near the bar while Haiti's players were warming up on the screen. Kizin Creole is a welcoming place where a smiling hostess consults your guest list and is happy to bend the rules to let as many guests in as possible. Historically, Black survival in the Americas and beyond has meant adapting to the circumstances forced upon us, from colonialism (and neocolonialism), to slavery, to state-sanctioned violence, to redlining and gentrification, and how all these forces, and others, intersect. Haiti reached the World Cup without having played any of their qualifying games at home. Gangs took control of the national stadium in Port-au-Prince in March 2024, making it unusable forcompetition. While Haiti will always be honored as the first independent black nation, it has also suffered from institutionalized and naturally occurring setbacks, from France demanding it pay 150 million francs in reparations two decades after gaining independence, to a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in 2010 that resulted in more than 300,000 deaths, according to the Haitian government. Organized gangs filled the void left by the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, and the resulting violence displaced a record 1.5 million Haitians, according to the United Nations Office for Immigration. All of this makes it even more important to play konpa music (a musical genre and dance style that draws inspiration from West African, European, and indigenous rhythms) during hydration breaks, and for patrons to shout in Haitian Creole with every near goal. Haiti lost to Scotland 1-0, but you'd hardly know it from the energy inside the restaurant. It seems futile to place the events of Haiti's history and present in the context of football, but how else can it be demonstrated that resilience, innovation and finesse are its birthright? In some ways, this fluidity shapes the playing styles of many African and Afro-descendant football teams. Brazil knows this better than anyone. It doesn't matter how many players on the Brazilian World Cup team are or identify as black; a quick look at the titans of Brazilian football reveals their roots: Pelé, Ronaldo, Formiga, Ronaldinho, Sissi, Cafu. Gabriel, Neymar, Endrick, Kerolin and Vinicius Júnior. And, of course, Marta, who still plays for club and country at age 40. The history of Brazil is very different from that of Haiti. Colonized by Portugal, which forced the removal of Africans from their homes longer than any other European country, Brazil did not abolish slavery until 1888, the last nation in the Americas to do so. (Portugal abolished slavery in the 1760s, but only on its mainland.) The Brazilian government implemented a policy of whitening, or racial whitening, after abolition, which encouraged white European migration and interracial marriage. This was lawmakers' attempt to dilute the country's African roots, not just to ease race relations, but to heal them completely. Policies are one thing, but resistance is another. Brazilian culture was built on Afro-Brazilian resistance, and much of it is rooted in the movements that enslaved Africans preserved and reimagined in their new environments. Capoeira and samba are founded on West African musicality, communication and dance. The Brazilian Penal Code of 1890 sought to suppress Afro-Brazilian political and creative expression, and when the government fell under military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985, samba was once again criminalized. Vinicius Júnior did not dance as he normally does to celebrate his equalizer against Morocco on Saturday. Perhaps he, along with his teammates, is feeling the weight of the expectation of restoring Brazil's place in global memory as the best in the world, a title it has not held for 24 years. Or maybe he doesn't want to provoke spectators who criticize his dancing when he and the entire team can't afford distractions. His critics either don't know or don't care to appreciate the significance of an Afro-Brazilian man scoring a goal while dancing samba. But this, like thislike the comment I made that led me to write this text, it is just another example of the never-ending mystique of blackness living in that which does not need to be explained. Because it makes sense.