Riot in the "Branch Office"

In the capital, soccer has become completely intertwined in the cultural at large. Some people disagree on the direction of causation, but everyone agrees that Argentine soccer is Argentine, through and through. “The game has been colored by our faults as a country,” my local news vendor explained, “this is a corrupt, disorganized society and we have corrupt, disorganized soccer.” The bar tender in my favorite corner café argues that soccer increases the corruption in the country, as barrabravas use money from scalped tickets to buy police and political protection. When I asked what could be done, making reference to a new plan to require every fan to enter the stadium with an electronic ID card, he laughed saying: “what stupidity. They’re going to waste their money trying to end something that is already part of our culture.”

Today, before finishing this entry, I read the sports papers’ descriptions of a bout of soccer violence yesterday. They recounted the events and speculated at their immediate causes. They detailed the gun fight, in an open market and a McDonalds, on a Sunday afternoon. They reminded their readers of the internal battle, within Boca’s barrabrava, for control of ticket-selling, parking lots, and probably gun and drug-running as well. They described as “miraculous” the fact that only one old lady and one barrabrava had ended up in the hospital. “Today, God is Argentine,” one columnist concluded. And when it came time to dig deeper, they asked why a known criminal, with warrants out for his arrest, is still able to enter Boca’s stadium. They asked why his chief rival, also a known and wanted criminal, was able to go on television afterwards to blame the violence on his opposite number. The easy answer is corruption; bought politicians, paid-off police, intimidated club administrators. But they didn’t bother to write it. Instead, the article concluded with one simple, sentence: “and…this is Argentine.”

All that is ugly about Argentine soccer is all that is ugly about Argentina. Whether they think it a reflection or a cause, residents of this city freely acknowledge the similarity between football mafiosos and a broader history plagued by corruption, violence, and instability. They only reluctantly acknowledge the possibility that it might get better. “This is Argentina.”

But Argentina is a big country. Porteños, residents of the city proper of Buenos Aires, are supposed to be vary different from their countrymen of the “interior” provinces. Porteños are, however, the face of the country and the source of its reputation, both at home and abroad. In Paraguay, friends told me that Porteños treated foreigners very badly. “You ask for directions, and a Porteño in the opposite direction”; “they call us ‘blackie,’ because we’re from poor countries, and they treat us like trash.”

Nor do Porteños seem very concerned with Latin America’s opinions of them. In fact, they do not really consider themselves a part of the continent that so often resents them. Many conversation in Buenos Aires’ taxis goes like this: “well, you know, we are really all Europeans. This is a European city. Do you speak Italian? German? No? Ah too bad, I could have spoken to you.” On the other side, I heard an author interviewed on the radio a couple of months ago who, despite having been born in this city, refused to call himself Porteño because he considered himself a “Latin American author.”

The good, humble folk from the Argentine interior are supposed to be very different. Paraguayans talked of the great people from Misiones (an Argentine province that borders Paraguay). Peruvians living in Buenos Aires say they are treated better the farther they are from the capital. Even Porteños themselves have admitted to me that the rest of the country often gets a bad reputation abroad “because of us Porteños…people should separate them from us.” So, as any wide-eyed kid (researcher?) would do, I decided I had better get myself to the interior. My main activity (medium for cultural study?) being soccer, I picked a game as the excuse (focal point?) for my trip to Mendoza, in western Argentina at the foot of the Andes. Godoy Cruz Antonio Tomba, the biggest Mendocino club, was set to play San Martin de Tucumán, the other western club in the first division and a bitter rival.

At first, the differences with the capital were obvious. Compared to the giants from Buenos Aires, Godoy Cruz is a little tiny club from a cute little city. Actually, it’s a gorgeous little city. One local described it as “a branch office of paradise.” It’s streets are leafy and clean. If you find a break in the leafiness, the view to the West is pure Andes, rolling foothills and layers of peaks, the tallest wearing their light, seasonal snow caps. If you (as a wide-eyed, mountained-deprived kid from the eastern seaboard) indulge your uncontrollable urge to get closer to the range, you do it by crossing several kilometers of pure vineyards. A branch office of paradise.

Godoy Cruz, the club, is nick-named “the winer,” as are its fans. It has a simple website that celebrates victories and consoles the faithful after defeats. The club gives away tickets to the cheap seats in a weekly lottery, a nice, family-friendly contrast to the big city clubs that give those same tickets to their barrabravas for re-sale. Still, not all prior signs pointed to a peaceful, picturesque “interior” experience. This week’s game was moved from the weekend to Thursday for reasons at once cute, in the style of Mendoza, and ominous a la Buenos Aires. The following weekend, Mendoza was putting on its annual Vendimia festival. Vendimia means wine harvest (I know there is probably a special, fancy word for this in English but, from my internet-less hotel room, “harvest” was the best I could come up with). The celebration basically consists of a feast and an original play. “Original” only in the strictest sense, as the story seems to consistently be that of a winery that, in the end and after much drama, gets rain.

Mendocino’s speak of Vendimia almost as if it were an obligation: “It is a total headache. The beginning is beautiful but getting to the end is work”; “I don’t even go anymore…SO many years of Vendimia…”). But we tourists love it. And where there are many tourists, there will be many thieves and many police officers to chase them. So many, in fact, that there would not have been enough left in the county to man the soccer match. It’s not a huge county, but that is still a lot of police. The authorities had decided that the game needed as many police as are usually allotted to matches between Boca and River. In fact, with the game moved to Thursday, they were able to repeat exactly the security arrangements they had used when those two Buenos Aires clubs played each other in a summer exhibition tournament in Mendoza a month before.

Godoy Cruz and San Martin have just recently become rivals. Both ascended to the premier division a year ago. Towards the end of that season, with both already assured of the promotion, they played in Tucuman, in San Martin’s stadium. The game meant nothing in terms of promotion, but the teams were competing for the extra laurel of 1st place in the Liga Nacional B. They tied, on the field, but San Martin was determined to, as they say, “win in the streets.” With the apparent complicity of stadium security, they ambushed the Tombino’s as they left the stadium, attacking women, children, and barrabravas alike. The police, also possibly complicit, had closed off an area around the exit, not allowing anyone in or out, and the beat down continued for several minutes before the Godoy Cruz faithful were able to drive out of town. Bloodied and humiliated, the Mendocino barrabravas rode their broken-windowed buses back to home and began talking of revenge. They talked in public. In the papers, on fan websites, etc. The day before the game in Mendoza, a group of Tucumano fans complained to the press that the Mendocinos were planning an ambush, complete with cooperation from police and security personnel. Where would the winers have gotten such a nefarious idea?

So, when I arrived Thursday night at Argentine Falklands Stadium, in front of the picturesque, sloping bleachers and more-picturesque sloping foothills behind, were lines after lines of police. Riot gear, horses, dogs, scowls. All the adornment of a Super Clasico from the capital. I felt right at home. As I entered the grounds, through a back door, I got the customary complete padding down, questions about my notepad, and assurance that “just this once, because I am a powerful, yet generous, man, can you go through this entrance.” They even took my pen away and tried to convince me that my mp3 recorder was a prohibited cigarette lighter. Just like back in Buenos Aires. These little touches of hospitality you just can’t teach in tourism school.

I had decided not to bring my camera after reading about the enhanced security, figuring they would probably take it from me at the gate arguing that it might double as a club. As soon as I got into the bleachers I regretted not being able to photograph them. The mountains towered over the north corner, which itself was a cliff, dropping sharply into the stadium’s bowl on one side and a practice field on the other. The stadium is supposedly built in a “natural bowl,” a small valley cut away from the slopes behind it and molding beautifully into its setting. The soccer desk at the branch office of paradise.

I had beaten almost the entire crowd. The reserve squads were in the middle of their first half, watched by more coaches than fans. The players’ yells and grunts echoed around the stadium’s bowl and, with the peaks in the background, I allowed myself to think of their voices as footballistic yodels. They came through so clearly that I began to learn the player’s nick-names for each other. Nothing creative, just the standards: “bald” and “fat” and “black” (Everywhere I have been on this continent, in virtually every group of friends I have had, there has been a “fat” and a “black,” a “bald” (depending on the group’s age) and a “crazy.”

An ice cream vendor emerged, adding his own song-full sale’s pitch: “there’s ice cream, there’s chocolate, nice and frozen, there’s ice cream…” Sitting virtually alone in the top row of the home bleachers, watching the reserves sprint and dribble with the sun setting over the mountains, I was back in Mendoza the tourist treat, the branch-office of paradise, the calm and welcoming Argentine interior.

After a few relaxing minutes, I walked down to the stadium bathroom. As I entered, a kid emerged, still zipping up his fly with one hand and, in the other, clutching a two liter Coke bottle with most of its original contents replaced with something clearer and, no doubt, more fun. The bathroom already looked “post-game:” urine on the floors, all but one light bulb out, and at least two toilets running. Graffiti crawled across all of the walls, most of it praising Godoy Cruz, but a large part of the newer literature promising swift death to Tucumanos. Malvinas is one of a few stadiums in Argentina that must have been quite fine looking in 1978, when they were opened for the World Cup, but that have not apparently been improved, repaired, or thoroughly cleaned, since.

When I returned to the bleachers, the crowd had reached several dozen. One man, sitting with what looked to be his wife and two 10 to 14-year-old sons, had taken it upon himself to yell for all those not yet present. It really was as if he was trying to fill as much space and time with his words as possible. He reeled off strings of insults, pausing briefly after each 5 or 6 to breathe and improvise the next batch. Using techniques common to baseball bench coaches everywhere in the U.S., he punctuated each sentence with a repeated phrase – in this case, “sons of bitches” – giving him extra time to refine the next burst of rhetorical brilliance. Much of his wit escaped me, due to a combination of my linguistic limitations, the stadium’s acoustics, and his lack of clear consonants, likely the first casualties in what would be an all-out, all-night, beverage-based assault on his own body. Still, I was able to understand the basics: the Tucumano’s were cowards, they were bitches, they were traitors, they were homosexuals, and, as if this was not enough, they were also Paraguayans, Bolivians, and border-dweller-pieces-of-shit.

The geographic insults turned out to be a theme of the weekend, not just for me but for the entire Argentine sports journalism establishment. Sunday night, during the second half of the Boca-Independiente clásico, the Rojo (Independiente) faithful marched out with Paraguayan and Bolivian flags, as well as a banner of the same colors indicating that Boca’s barrabrava, La 12, was of foreign origins. This was one of the main issues on Monday morning’s soccer talk shows and was roundly denounced as discriminatory and tasteless. I am not sure just how offensive the flags were to the average Paraguayan or Bolivian immigrant to this country. They have all likely experienced much worse, if lower-profile, treatment before.

What did strike me, however, was a particular irony in the fact that the Rojo fans would find the charge of Bolivian or Paraguayan-ness to be an effective insult. Common Porteño stereotypes of Bolivians and Paraguayans basically go like this: ignorant, uneducated, violent, dirty, lazy, free-loaders; all qualities that fall under the general heading of “negro,” the same term used to describe informal work, con artists, vulgarity, urban slums, and other peripheral people and activities. Heaven forbid a barrabrava, proud possessor of a “job” whose principal responsibilities include price-gouging, extortion, and staging political demonstrations for a modest hourly fee, be accused of being Paraguayan.

Back to Mendoza, now. The family man had switched refrains, just to mix things up, now ending each sentence with “cock-sucker,” a gem that reminded me even more of Bull Durham than his earlier version. He was receiving much positive feedback from the slowly growing home crowd: laughter, shouts of “that was good,” and the occasional attempted-imitation followed each of his poetic outbursts. A small group had now appeared in the far-side bleachers, those reserved for the visiting hinchas. When he saw them, our master orator nearly jumped with excitement in much the same way I imagine a jumpy, young sentry reacts when he first sees and enemy and gets to try out his weapon “for real this time, baby.” “You’re going to run!, cock suckers” he started “you rode a long way in buses, cock suckers, but you’re going to run home cock suckers, Paraguayan pieces of shit!!” He let the jingoistic insult hang in the air, un-punctuated; a poetic touch that I appreciated, at a literary level, though I made an effort to be appalled by his stupid discrimination. The fact was, prejudice aside, I kind-of liked family man. He was occasionally clever and he certainly did not lack “want-to.” It takes more “huevos” than I generally have to be the only one yelling in a stadium that, though far from full, always suggests its maximum capacity of 40,000.

The reserve match was going well for the home team. They had been down 1-0 at half time, but equalized early in the second half and continued creating chances as the game advanced toward its full 90 minutes. The crowd, as it grew, responded well to the backups’ efforts, praising each attack, shot, and tackle, often using the player’s name. It must be exciting for a kid, in his first year as a first-division professional, to hear his name yelled in a stadium that once hosted the world’s best, even if he knows that the yeller is merely warming up his voice for the game that really matters later on. Moreover, I actually got the impression that the Tomba fans cared about the reserves. Unlike the big clubs, Godoy Cruz feeds its top squad largely out of its lower levels and youth-development programs. It is simply too small to compete for proven players in the transfer market, which includes all the big teams from the capital as well as the Russian-oil-magnate-funded corporate dynasties of Europe. The club’s humility and the crowd’s understanding affection fit perfectly with the cuteness of my Mendoza experience. How else would the staff of the branch office behave?

Inspired by the crowd, the reserves pushed harder and harder, a wing back ran the length of the pitch and threw himself foot-long to collect a through ball before it crossed the end-line. The bald and appropriately-nicknamed center midfielder grappled for every loose ball. When an opponent shouldered him to the ground, he scrambled to his feet and continued scrapping instead of writhing in imaginary pain and pleading with the referee, as is customary. I liked that very much, and so did the crowd. When the Tomba youth finally found their go-ahead goal, it came with flash and first-team quality: a volley to the top corner, from a tough angle. No matter if the young striker had gotten lucky. No matter if he couldn’t have repeated the feat. No matter if it was a 5-in-100 shot that you can’t even practice. One of those five had been in a game, in front of the coaches and in front of a crowd that was certainly only warming itself up but also certainly cared. That crowd celebrated with a song that lasted a full minute and smiles and jokes that rippled until the final whistle, which the fans marked with an ovation and another song. I enjoyed the reserve’s triumph.

The first-team players emerged and began warming up shortly thereafter. The crowd was filling out and the advance members of the barra had arrived. These are low-ranking, often young members assigned the task of putting up flags and signs. Most important are the long, dirty banners that run up the bleachers from the bottom guardrail to the top guardrail and serve as handles for the leaders who will spend the match standing on other guardrails. The rails are there, in almost every large Argentine field, to prevent the downward stampedes that would otherwise mark every home goal as the impassioned crowd does all it can to get closer to the field. The bars are there to keep the fans safe, despite its best efforts to put itself in danger. And, in the end, the crowd has found a way to use these very bars to make itself just as un-safe. The banners make it possible for the barras to stand on top of the guardrails. Clutching the cloth, they can perch with just enough ease to ensure that they always do it but also with just enough difficulty to ensure that a few of them always fall. I have had the (mis?)fortune of seeing very little violence inside the stadiums thus far. And so, I have seen many more injuries, small and large, from tumbles from atop the security bars than I have from the fists, pipes, and knives that cause more-remarkable game-day wounds.

As the kids affixed the colors, the rest of the barra began to make itself heard, from a distance, as it marched to the field. First there was the far-off booming of the largest drums, the “bombos.” As they got closer the full percussion ensemble came into ear’s range and, a few minutes later, I could see the band and its entourage from my spot atop the bleachers, looking back at the security lines. The barra paused for 10 minutes or so as the police revised its cargo, ensuring that this was an armory only in the figurative sense.

With about 5 minutes left before the game’s scheduled start time, the barrabrava arrived and took up its places in the center of the bleachers, musicians on solid ground banging away at their drums and everyone else atop the bars, gripping banners with one hand and conducting song with the other. I had moved down to the bottom center of the bleachers to be closer to the barra and I was now engaged in my own pre-game ritual: looking for a spot close to the hooligans from which I can actually see the soccer field. This is a trick given the banners strung from the fence in-front, the barras standing on bars above the crowd, and the hand-held flags strategically-located to be visible by the players (thereby occupying the few remaining sightlines between the bleachers and the field). I am not always successful. On this night, I was lucky enough to find a spot between two walls of perched hooligans and behind only one flag. I could see about half of the action: either the kid with the flag was waving it, so that it obstructed my whole view half of the time, or, when he tired, he was holding it still in front of half of my view. A good spot.

Godoy Cruz outplayed their opponents for most of the first half. They ran harder, their passes, though not terribly sharp, were usually better-chosen than those of their more-reckless opponents. Nevertheless, they couldn’t find the net and, about 30 minutes in, the score still sat at 0-0. More-interesting to me, however, was the empty terrace at the other end of the field. Hardly 10 people were present on the Tucumano side. Had all the Mendocino’s talk of revenge actually scared them off? That truly would have marked a difference with the capital. I had been to a rivalry match there a few months before, also preceded by threats of violence and murder, and the stadium had filled, each side looking to prove its valor and, no doubt, hoping that the other would fail to show up, thereby proving its lack of huevos.

But the Tucumano’s were not going to reveal their lack of male reproductive organs, at least not that night. Suddenly, they appeared, dancing and singing their way down the bleachers, banners and flags in hand. They were not many, perhaps 500, compared to what must have been 15-20,000 for the home side. But they were animated, as always, and their team responded. Within minutes San Martin scored with a beautiful, long shot to the upper-left corner. As always happens with an away goal, I could see that the San Martin fans were making a lot of noise, but I could not hear any of it. This is because the home fans, in their anger and their efforts to prove that they will cheer, win or lose, get impossibly loud after their team’s setbacks. In fact, only the most surprising and important of goals for the home team induce a more enthusiastic crowd response than the average goal against. They amplify their songs and fans who a few minutes earlier seemed to not know the words suddenly join in at the top of their lungs. So I watched the Tucumano’s dance, jump, and embrace even as my ears were filled with the nearly deafening roar of “Borobobo, borobobo, Tucumano, we’re going to kill you,” our side’s present song.

I looked around. Two kids to my left were dancing, precariously and furiously on top of a bar, bulging neck veins revealing that they were near the top of their voices and the edge of their capacity to maintain consciousness. To my right, a mother, at the match with two young sons and a younger woman, was singing along “Tucumano, te vamos a matar…” Suddenly she stopped and, reaching out with her left hand, she pulled one of her sons back as he danced close to the edge of the step he was standing on: “careful, you’re going to fall...borobobo…I said, ‘come back here’…vamos a matar!” she moved seamlessly between over-protective parent and blood-thirsty hincha.

Godoy Cruz equalized just before the half and finished the first 45 minutes still noticeably out-playing its opponents. The bleachers were not full, by Argentine soccer standards, and their was room for me and those around me to sit down. (Feet take up less space than hind-quarters so, at a normal match in Buenos Aires, there is a rush to sit down as soon as the referee blows his whistle for half time. Only those who are most attentive or pushiest are able to grab enough space to sit, with the rest of the crowd struggling to balance in the very-limited foot space left between asses.). I sat comfortably, with space between me and the mother on my right measurable in full inches (branch office of paradise). I looked up at the barrabrava stretched behind and above me and most of its members were milling around, not looking likely to do much else before the half started. I zoned out looking down at the patches of field visible between the lowest level of banners on the field-side fence. I began composing the lines of this post, wondering if such an uneventful match would be any good to write about.

As half time reached its close, I heard pops outside the stadium and felt a push as the crowd turned and some moved to see what was going on. Instead of crushing together at the top guard rail to look out at the source of the noise, the fans in that sector either stayed still or moved slowly down away from the rail. I decided it probably wasn’t worth moving up to the top. I assumed it was just more firecrackers. Home fans had set off several before the match and it seemed logical that they would finish off their arsenal at half time. The pops continued, however, longer than I expected. Then I started to notice more people moving down away from the top rails, many with their shirts pulled up over their mouths and noses. There was some feint smoke in the air above the bleachers and I imagined it had irritated the eyes of those closest to the explosions. As more and more pops were followed by more and more fleeing fans, many now coughing, I began to get suspicious. By the time my own breaths began to catch in my throat, I realized the smoke was tear gas. “Things were looking better for my blog post,” I thought, with selfish disregard for the coughing fans and whoever else might have been in actual danger at the moment.

I moved upwards towards the exits to get a better look. Most people were headed in the opposite direction, fathers with kids forming the most desperate of those in flight. A ring of people pushed back towards me, heads turned down and away from the exit. I slipped through a gap in between two men and found myself, torso and neck exposed above the two steps in front of me, facing a line of police officers with dogs and shot guns. Two kids, shirtless and defiant, were standing on the top step taunting the police. But the officers were paying only passive attention to the inside of the stadium, while the two farthest to the right were turned in that direction, firing their weapons rhythmically at targets I could not see behind the western half of the bleachers. “Rubber bullets,” I thought, with a mix of fear, excitement, and curiosity.

One of the shirtless kids stepped closer to the police, arm extended behind him, his hand clutching a rock a bit larger than a baseball. “Dammit,” I thought, “don’t fucking do that.” The rest of the crowd had pulled back and down to keep heads below the top step and out of harm’s way. I had stepped up to the top to see better and, as the police officers turned to face the rock-thrower, I shuffled sideways towards the edge of the exit opening. Obviously running in that direction would have been better but my mentality was stuck somewhere between self-preserving Argentine fan and stupid, curious American writer: I wanted to move but I didn’t want to stop watching.

The police got off two or three shots before I was out of the way but I don’t think they hit anyone. I heard a ping, which I assumed was a rubber bullet hitting the guardrail next to me. The rock fell short of the police and both shirtless kids moved quickly out of harm’s way. As I peered around the edge of the opening, the police returned their attention, and their guns, to whatever was going on off to the right, leaving the dogs to intimidate those of us still in the bleachers.

I pushed upwards, hoping for a better view of the real action. Out of the way of the rubber bullets and with the gas apparently flowing down below them, most people in this section were watching the game. “Yes, the game!,” I thought, “I had forgotten about the soccer game.” Crowd violence usually catches my attention more than that of the average Argentine fan. They are used to it. I was still more interested in the violence, however. When I reached the top of the bleachers, the police by the entrance below had backed up to the stairs behind them and rocks were falling on them from the right. A lot of rocks. I still couldn’t see the throwers on the ground level but now there were more shirtless kids at the top of the bleachers to my right. They were all bare-chested because they had tied their shirts around their faces. This, I assumed, was because of the tear gas but it also made them look cool. Like Zapatistas or anti-globalization rioters or Palestinian youth facing down tanks. Only they were actually soccer fans. I didn’t know how this had all started but, being a tool of The Man, I couldn’t really think of a compelling reason for stoning the police at this point.

I also couldn’t think of a legitimate reason for the officers’ sticking around. When they retreated to the top of the steps, the rain of falling rocks had slowed to a drizzle. But a few kids were creeping up, measuring the distance and occasionally launching rocks at the riot squad. At first it was just a couple, but more were joining in. The ones on top of the bleachers had moved over to where I was to get a better angle. A photographer had moved around behind one of the groups of officers, snapping photos back towards the stadium, where ten or so kids had collected at the bottom of the steps, holding rocks and waiting. I still have no idea where the rocks came from. The floors were solid and the rocks they were throwing were large, bigger than gravel, and not the same color as anything in the stadium. I am watching CSI as I write this paragraph and my inability and the fact that I did not look around after the game to find the source of the projectiles is making me feel quite inferior to the studs on TV.

I feel less intellectually inferior to the Mendocino riot police. I suppose they were brave. They did get hit with a lot of rocks without running away. And they only shot at clear targets, never at the kids on the top of the bleachers, and they held their fire every few minutes when a group of fathers and kids would make a run for the parking lot. The rock throwers took advantage of these moments to rush the police, throwing rocks from behind the civilian cover and often coming close to hitting those fans who had already gotten past the police lines. Still, the police were not protecting anyone, except the camera man. The opposing fans were still in their bleachers on the other side of the stadium and the Godoy Cruz toughs had turned their attention entirely to attacking the cops. Had the police fallen back a few metes, out of sight, I think the shirtless folk would have forgotten about them. But they stood still and the causeless rebels re-grouped for attack after attack.

In the bleachers, I was joined by a bunch of families, mostly fathers and children, all trying to push their way through a hole someone had torn in the fence separating us from the more-expensive and calmer seats to our right. One father, on his way to the broken fence, walked up to the top of the bleachers and held his 4 or 5-year-old son up over the guard rail, apparently hoping to show the police who they were “attacking.” Many of the people in the section were still watching the game (“oh yes, the soccer game,” I thought, again). Some now turned around and began heaping abuse on the rock throwers: “you’re all Tucumano idiots! They’re going to suspend the game and take points away because of you!” “They did it to us!!” one of the shirtless rebels responded. I wondered whether they thought of themselves as romantic defenders of the people or whether they were just angry and drunk.

Or maybe it was just fun. Especially up in the bleachers, there was really no risk for the rock throwers. The police were not shooting at them, I assume because it would have been too hard to hit them without hitting rubber-neckers like me. Many of them were very young. In fact, there seemed to be an age cut-off: under 9 and you were in your father’s arms being whisked towards the expensive seats to escape danger; over 9 and your shirt was around your face and you were fighting for the people or having fun with rocks, or whatever. The people still watching the game were mostly middle-aged and up and without kids in-tow. There were still several thousand of them, more-or-less undisturbed by the riot going on outside. When they took notice, they would turn to yell insults at the rock-throwing 10-year-olds and then turn back to the game. There were clearly two worlds here. One was a struggle to escape the bottom of the table and remain in the first division, taking place on a soccer field, and the other was a struggle for something, though I didn’t really understand what, taking place outside the stadium on a patio now littered with rocks.

I was sure which of the two worlds was most interesting to me. So were the 10 year olds with rocks and the 9 year olds fleeing with their fathers. Occasionally, cheers would go up from one of the two worlds: deep, approving, adult voices for a well-timed pass, or high, excited, youthful voices for a well-aimed rock. The front two lines of police had backed slowly away from the bleacher’s entrance, around the patio towards the rest of the riot squad, crouched almost out of sight among a series of crowd barriers. The growing group of rock throwers had followed the police, up the stairs by the entrance and onto the open patio (perhaps I was wrong to think that they would have quickly given up if the police had retreated). They were spread out and unorganized, each shirtless rebel managing his own throw-and-hide strategy, most using large flower pots as cover between tosses. The kids in the bleachers had moved around to the left, trying to get close to their targets, but the stadium’s circular shape meant that moving left was also moving back. The police were now within reach of only the strongest arms. It was a shame, for the weaker kids, as the group of stationary police made quite an inviting target.

I had moved with the rioters, following the progress of the battle below us. I was now a few yards from the broken fence through which fathers and 9-and-unders continued to flee. Every so often a rock thrower would get in the way of the hole in the fence and be briskly shoved out of the way by a father. I chuckled to myself at the sight of fearless, anti-establishment rebels being tossed sideways, like dolls, often by the single free hand of a father carrying his child in the other. For the rioters, especially the ones still in the safety of the bleachers, throwing rocks at police must have been more entertainment, a rush of power, than any feat of bravery. Several were grinning and all had a self-important air about them. But the fathers were neither amused nor frightened. The fathers were being forced to miss a soccer game out of the parental responsibility to prevent their sons from breathing any more tear gas.

About 18 minutes into the half, the referee postponed the match. His whistle blew, a few notable Godoy Cruz players jogged over to the fence separating bleachers and field, waving their hands and pleading for calm. But the rioters weren’t watching them. The rioters were in the other world. A handful of spectators near me had radios with them and they confirmed to us all that the match was over, at least for the night, and we began to move towards the exits.

Getting out was surprisingly easy and calm. Just before the match had been called, the riot squad had left its crouched positions and charged the scattered rock throwers, sending them running back towards the bleachers. Then the police just left. And quickly. When I got out on to the patio, with the first wave of spectators, there was not an officer in sight. A few shirtless figures went sprinting through the parking lot ahead and I followed at a jog, not wanting to miss any further action. When I go to the parking lot, they had disappeared into the darkness of the park that surrounds the stadium. I heard shots off to the left and started out down a path in that direction. Then I heard shots back to the right and went off in pursuit. After several minutes of fruitless chase, I was alone, in the dark, with nothing to watch. The staff at my hostel had warned me not to be alone in the park at night, to always move with the crowd. So, with no clear idea of if or where the riot was now taking place, I decided to go back to the parking lot. There I continued moving forward with stream of annoyed fans, grumbling about the “stupid ‘Tucumano’s,’” by which they meant the rioting Godoy Cruz fans, whose thoughtlessness had been extreme enough to lower them to the same level as rival fans.

It was a 15 minute walk back to the main street where I could catch a bus to the hostel. Along the way I half-heartedly followed gun shots on a couple of occasions without finding anything interesting to watch. A helicopter was now circling overhead, rotating a spotlight around the park. Police motorcycles raced by every few minutes. Once, two slowed down enough for me to hear their conversation as they passed: “OK, who’s missing so we can leave?” Though there were still occasional pops off in the distance, it seemed like things were winding down and I decided to focus on getting a bus and not getting mugged, rather than chasing more riots. I got to the main street, left the park, and found a bus stop.

There were only two other people waiting for the Number 3 and the street was quiet and almost deserted. The crowds that had surrounded me for the last 3 hours, whether soccer-watching crowds, rock-throwing crowds, or son-carrying crowds, had disappeared. Sirens still went off in the distance, as well as occasional shots, but the night, for me, had become eerily tranquil. My two companions took no notice of the distant noise, nor did they lift their heads when, seemingly out of nowhere, a policeman appeared half dragging a shirtless, handcuffed youth behind him. A patrol car came around the corner, picked up cop and arrestee, and drove off, leaving the street quiet and empty again. After about 15 minutes I decided to hail a cab, remembering the 100 pesos I had shoved into my shoe before leaving the hostel, just in case.

Over the next couple days I read and watched everything I could about the riot. Apparently, the toughest of the Godoy Cruz hooligans had tried to rip down the fence separating the bleachers from the expensive seats. The idea was to cross, through the rich folk, to the visitor’s bleachers to make good on their promises of revenge. The police, having promised to prevent violence and being present in well-armed forced, intervened very quickly. Their rubber bullets deterred the toughs from continuing their unsolicited stadium improvement program. But the hooligans were not happy with The Law’s interference and, having promised themselves a fight, decided that it would be with the riot squad. I saw the rest of what happened at the stadium. I also found out that some of the action I had missed as I wandered aimless through the park chasing gun shots, was an attempt by barras to, in the words of one newspaper, “conquer” a local police station and rescue their detained comrades. The sports writers also noted that the heads of both barras were wanted for charges of murder and corruption and that the Tucumano boss was a known Mafioso in his home town.

In the end, though, I was surprised at how little media attention all of this got. After all, a first-division, professional, high-level sporting event, to which many thousands had paid for admission, had been halted by a riot. Fans had been tear-gassed, police and rioters had gone to the hospital, and a group of rioters had tried to conquer a police station. But the nightly sports news ran the story last, without pictures or details, after reports on practices run by major Italian clubs and players transferred by other Argentine teams. The morning’s sports daily’s did not run the story on the cover, and the Mendoza dailies ran it as a minor note, below the front page fold. It just wasn’t that big a deal, too normal to attract the shock it probably deserved.

Nor did any of this shock the average Mendocinos I talked to that night and the next day. My cab driver and his wife, as they took be home from the stadium, shook their heads when I described the scene at the stadium. But they did it with more shame than surprise. I waited for them to announce their opinions. They didn’t so I offered mine: that the fans who started the violence were stupid and the fans who continued it stupider still but that the police had been unnecessarily stubborn and had stayed around for far too long, provoking yet more violence. I guessed that they would agree. “Stupid” is the standard non-hooligan opinion of hooligan violence.

“Yes, it is very stupid,” said the woman, “but this is Argentina, after all, this is what soccer is like here.” Again, “this is Argentina.” I have heard it many, many times. And not just about soccer. Economic crises, coups, election fraud, chamuyo. Ask an Argentine about any of these unfortunate staples of their history and they are likely to say, basically, “this is Argentina.” This is just how we are. I had heard almost the same words the night before, talking to the receptionist in the hostel about the economic crisis of 2001. I had asked if things were calmer in Mendoza, picturing Mendocinos enduring the hard economic times with set jaws and level heads, avoiding violent protests, violent police responses, “sacking” of super markets, shameless price gouging, and the other shameful happenings that characterized the capital’s version. “No, it was the same here… sacking and violence,” she responded. “We Argentines know crises,” she added, “it makes me laugh when you call what’s happening to your country a crisis. You don’t know crises like our crises…”

“Our crises.” Crises a la Argentina. This is Argentina. That is about as deep as the explanation usually goes. It is not a cultural theory. They do not blame their Mediterranean ancestors (as I have heard some foreigners do in their analyses of Porteño corruption). Sometimes they blame the other political party. But more often they blame all the politicians, all the barrabravas; in the end, all of Argentina. They wrap the ills into their national identity and, “chau,” discussion over. They can talk for hours about specific triggers of specific soccer riots, specific types of corruption, specific coups. But ask them how it will change or where it comes from, at a deeper level, and the answer is often “from here, from us.” I had thought and hoped that this would be different outside the capital. Maybe it is. I was only in Mendoza for a week. Still, between the game and Mendocinos’ reaction to it, I was disappointed. Branch office of paradise it may be, but Mendoza is still, palpably and inescapably, Argentina.