Nick Caistor goes to the Guatemalan town of Flores to meet a women's football team who are swapping the red light district for the red card. The football team get dressed for a training session The commentator for local radio is working himself up into a frenzy. It might not seem unusual or newsworthy that I'm watching a game of football in Latin America. Here in the small town of Flores in the tropical north of Guatemala, close to the border with Mexico, they are as crazy about the sport as anywhere else on the continent, especially now that their national team is doing well in the World Cup qualifying competition.
What makes this game particularly unusual is that it's between two women teams. And more unusually than that, it's between two teams of prostitutes. The game is part of a countrywide tour that the La Linea All-Stars have embarked upon. They are named after the railway line that runs through the centre of the city, which is where they normally ply their trade, in miserable wooden shacks lit by kerosene lamps. The prostitutes who work in these shacks, and the streets around the railway line, formed their football team earlier this year.
The first thing they did was enrol in one of the newly-formed women's soccer leagues in the capital. So far this year, as many as 50 women a month have been killed, and many of them have been prostitutes The All-Stars' first game was against a team from a high class private girl's school. The game had only been going for a few minutes when the horrified parents of these girls discovered exactly who their opponents were.
They immediately insisted on stopping the game and getting the All-Stars thrown out of the league. Vilma is the diminutive captain of the All-Stars team. She is wearing more make-up for the game than any Spanish millionaire footballer and tells me that the insult did not end there. According to her, the parents insisted on hosing down the benches where the team had been sitting, "in order not to catch Aids from our sweat". Brutal murders This attitude is part of the reason why the All-Stars are now touring Guatemala, playing against teams of other prostitutes.
They insist their aim is to gain more respect and acknowledgement that all of them are women, like anyone else. Most of them, they argue, have been forced into prostitution because they have no alternative, or need to work to support their families. Violent crime in Guatemala stems from four decades of civil war Above and beyond this, the All-Stars are also seeking to draw attention to a much more serious problem affecting Guatemala at the moment - the number of women who are brutally murdered.
