At the Zocalo, the cobbled city-centre marketplace that ranks second only to Moscow's Red Square in sprawling urban gathering places, a group of tribal dancers were about to perform their ancient Aztec rituals for the benefit of the Turistas. As their leader stripped down to his bare chest and prepared to don his peacock-feathered head-dress, he removed his last 20th century garment - a maroon sweat-shirt emblazoned with the logo of the Washington Redskins.
With Commissioner Paul Tagliabue cast in the role of a latter-day Hernando Cortez, the National Football League continued its relentless conquest of the world's television markets last Monday night with a pre-season game at the Estadio Azteca, the site of the 1986 World Cup. The participants were identified in the game programme as the Vaqueros of Dallas and Los Patriotas de Nueva Inglaterra.
Since inaugurating its "American Bowl" series with a Bears-Cowboys game at Wembley a dozen years ago, the NFL has staged 33 of these contests in far-flung locales from Tokyo to Dublin, none of them in venues more generally inhospitable than the Mexican capital, where the primary pursuits of the natives tend toward soccer and bullfighting, and robbing Gringo visitors at gunpoint.
Players from both teams, as well as the members of the NFL travelling party and media, were advised not to leave their hotel without armed guards. As a safeguard against the malady commonly known as "Montezuma's Revenge," each player was warned about eating any dodgy Tacos and issued two litres of bottled French water upon arrival, with instructions to drink nothing else. Moreover, there were hundreds of pistol and shotgun-packing Federale security forces guarding the field at Azteca.
It was, in short, like playing an exhibition game in Beirut, but make no mistake about it, the NFL will be back. If you're looking for reasons, there were 106,424 pretty good ones in attendance on Monday night.
The NFL's motivation in this ongoing global exercise is threefold. First, most obviously, is the nurturing of fertile television markets. (The league already has contracts with two Mexican networks.) Second is the enhancement of marketing and merchandising opportunities - and despite the abject poverty in which most of Mexico City's 22 million populace lives, it was startling to see how many natives one found trotted out in the regalia of one NFL team or another.
The third, more subtle goal involves the exploration of eventual expansion sites for the inevitable day the league decides to extend its composition beyond the borders of the United States. If Dublin flunked this test (the 30,000-odd announced at Croke Park for the Steelers-Bears exhibition last July was the second-smallest crowd to watch any of these American Bowls), Mexico City appears to have passed it with flying colours.
Tagliabue himself has repeatedly pointed to the Mexican capital as a "priority market." Patriots owner Robert Kraft said this week that he would "enthusiastically support" Mexico City as a future NFL site, and Dallas owner Jerry Jones confidently predicted a Mexico City NFL franchise "within your lifetime."
Texas was once part of Mexico, and while the Cowboys' status as "America's Team" may have diminished somewhat over the past half-dozen years, their claim to being Mexico's team remained unchallenged. South of the border, Dallas gear outsells that of all the other 29 teams combined.
Given their penchant for tunnel-vision, NFL coaches generally detest participating in these games, simply because it disrupts routine, but New England's Pete Carroll managed to find a silver lining.
The game represented, claimed Carroll, a "perfect opportunity" to prepare his Patriots for their September 7th season opener in Denver, where the New England team will play a Monday Night game against before a hostile crowd at a 5,280-foot altitude.
The game, in short, was supposed to serve as a dress rehearsal, with Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith serving as stand-ins for John Elway and Terrell Davis, the Azteca for Mile High Stadium, and the Mexican aficionados playing the part of Denver's boisterous crowd.
By half-time the Patriots had scored three touchdowns, had three more called back by holding penalties, and missed two more opportunities when quarterback Drew Bledsoe overthrew wide-open receivers ("I'm going to blame it on the altitude," joked Bledsoe), and any notion that the Cowboys were Mexico's Team had been thoroughly disproven, as each Dallas miscue (and there were plenty of them) was greeted by tens of thousands of shrill whistles.
And actually, the Cowboys got off easy. A day before the Cowboys lost to the Patriots, the favoured Puebla Executives lost a 3-2 soccer game to Atlas in the Mexican First Division. As the losers filed out of Cuauhtemoc Stadium, displeased Puebla supporters were waiting for them with sticks and chains, and stoned the team bus as it departed the car park.
Indeed. No one threw rocks at the losers on Monday night, but while the game was in progress somebody broke into the Cowboys' locker room to steal wallets and jewellery belonging to 18 Dallas players.
