Names

I was cooking fish with Arnaldo, my Club Guaraní contact, when Adolfo Trotte, famous boss of the Club Olimpia hinchada, finally returned my phone call. A couple of days before, I had gone to Club Olimpia looking for a friendly employee who had offered to introduce me to hinchas. “Julio’s on vacation,” said the man who works the refreshments counter. He couldn’t tell me when, exactly, Julio was expected back. “Maybe you can help me then,” I said, “Julio told me he knew members of the ‘barra’ and I want to interview them for my study.” “Maybe I can help you then, maybe I can help,” said ‘refreshments counter man’ (he and others have told me his name approximately 37 times but I still haven’t managed to learn it). “Come back on Friday at six and I’ll introduce you to one of the bosses of Olimpia’s barra.” I thanked ‘refreshments counter man’ and headed back home.

When I arrived on Friday, I ran into another friend (whose name I have also not been able to retain, but who I identify by his ‘floppy hair’) was sitting by the club entrance talking to a short, solidly built guy with earrings. I said hi and he asked if I was there to play soccer. “No, ah, I’m here to see the guy who works at the refreshments counter. He was going to introduce me to some friends of his from the barra.” The earringed guy looked away quickly, making me think that he was my promised contact but that he was going to make me go through the motions before he talked to me. “Floppy hair” seemed to agree that the Yankee should work for his priviledges, “Ah, well, there’s your friend,” he said, also neglecting to give me the actual name of ‘refreshment counter man.’ I walked up and said hi, and ‘refreshment counter man’ told me to wait while he went and got his friend. He walked behind me and talked to the earringed man for a few seconds. Then he whistled my attention and motioned for me to come over.

“This is Tony,” he told me, “he can help you.” I introduced myself and gave the elevator speech version of my study. Tony nodded, not meeting my eyes, and said “Ok, I think I can help you.” “I’m not a boss or anything, just a member. I’d talk to you, but I have to ask permission first. If I tell you yes, and then my boss doesn’t like the idea, I could have some trouble. I’ll check with my boss on Sunday at the game and I’ll call you.”

On Wednesday, not having heard anything from Tony, I called him and he said that his boss had agreed to talk to me. I had been hoping for permission to talk to the underlings, more than an invitation to meet the boss. But Paraguayans never cease to surprise me by offering more help that I even ask for, let alone expect. “He never answers his phone if he doesn’t recognize the number so you have to send him a message first saying that you’re my friend, the journalist, and you want to interview him,” Tony explained. “Oh, and his name is ‘Señor Adolfo Trotte,’ make sure you call him that.” Needless to say, I wrote it down.

That afternoon, I sent Mr. Trotte a message and he responded saying he would call me back later. I thanked him profusely, assuming he was used to receiving excessive gratitude. His response was not exactly a ‘you’re welcome’: “fine, but it has it’s price, BROTHER.” I laughed, showing the message to a friend. “I think he’s joking,” I said. “Maybe, we’ll see what he asks for,” came the less-than-reassuring reply.

A couple of days and a few reminder messages later, Mr. Trotte’s called. Wiping onion juice and fish skin off my hands, I answered the call politely: “hello, sir, how are you?” “I’m fine, and you, my Yankee friend?” We exchanged pleasantries before Mr. Trotte abruptly cut us off, “I have to go, hang up now, I’ll call you. Hang up now.” I complied and a few minutes later Mr. Trotte called again, “OK, what can I do for you, my friend, keeping in mind that I am a busy man.” We scheduled an interview for “exactly” 1:15 that afternoon, “don’t come early, please, I won’t be available, but don’t come late, I have things to do.”

Arnaldo and I put a rush on our fish and jogged out to the avenue to catch a bus to Sajonia to meet the boss.

I was running late and Arnaldo told me to be sure I messaged Mr. Trotte, and told me to drop his name while I was at it, saying that they were friends. “I thought Yankees were punctual, what happened? And I don’t know who your friend is, but I’m glad you ate lunch already,” the boss replied. His tone changed immediately after I arrived, apologizing and 5 minutes late. “Five minutes is nothing, come in and sit down.”

Mr. Trotte wore short-cropped, dark hair, accompanied by sunglasses, an open-necked shirt, and a gaudy, gold chain. He sent his wife and daughter to the back room, ordering his son to stay with us to serve Terere and “listen and try learn something.” Mr. Trotte had me explain myself and my project and asked me to list who I had talked to already and recount how I met Tony. Then he reclined in his chair and declared himself “ready to answer any question, anything.” He explained that many fan tactics and most of the songs and cheers come from Argentina but that “we have a few little sons of bitches with good heads for adapting lyrics.” He told me he considered the fans to be the “twelfth player,” their vocal support playing a key role in the game itself. Then he delivered the cliché “this game is played both on the field and off.” “In what sense?” I asked, expecting to hear more about fan backing. “In all senses,” he started, “you know many coaches have paid off the referee, bought opposing goal keepers and defenders. And our best coaches always remembered to bring their own water and food to away games, so that the other side can’t put anything in it.”

Having moved to the darker side of Paraguayan soccer, I decided to ask about fan violence. Trotte told me it was really just an expression of individual and societal problems “bigger than soccer.” He declared that he did not support violence, but, of course, “if someone throws a rock at me, I’m going to defend myself.” He also admitted that “youthful inexperience” may have caused him to think differently about violence earlier in his career. “Age lets you look back on past errors with a new perspective,” he said, solemnly.

Our conversation was interrupted by several phone calls, each of which Mr. Trotte took outside the room, leaving me with his son. Oscar, about 14 years old, was quiet and answered my questions in mono-syllables. He did, however, open his mouth fully to tell me that, “no!”, he had never thought about supporting another team, just to defy his father. I apologized for asking.

Our interview ended with yet another phone call. Mr. Trotte apologized but said that he had to go to a meeting. He offered to talk to me again if I had more questions and to put me in touch with the boss of the barra from Cerro Porteño’s (Olimpia’s biggest rival). “We’re friends,” he said, and was dialing his number before I could even thank him. “He’s not answering but, look, I’m going to meet him right now so why don’t you just come with me.”

We drove across town, to one of Asuncion’s nicer neighborhoods, and met Zoilo Ramírez on a street corner. Mr. Trotte sent me to wait in his car while he and Zoilo spoke for a few minutes. Then a large bald guy joined them and the meeting continued. Once, they were interrupted by a street vendor, who called Zoilo by his first name, shook his hand, and sold him a honey cake. When they finished, Mr. Trotte brought me out of the car and introduced me to Zoilo. The Cerro boss and I conversed but Mr. Trotte did most of the talking. “So you’re not busy are you, Zoilo? Why don’t you take this little son of a bitch with you to your shop so he can interview you? He’s free all day, he doesn’t have any plans” (thankfully, all of this was true for both of us). Almost without speaking to each other, Zoilo and I agreed to go to Mercado 4, where he owns a printing shop, so I could interview him. We bid farewell to the gran Olimpista, Zoilo by saying “good luck, Adolfo, see you next week,” making him the first I had heard address Mr. Trotte by his first name.

We drove to the market in Zoilo’s rickety, old car. On the way, he pointed out various places to me, many of which he named in Guaraní, first, before translating. When we arrived, he offered me Terere and we talked for 45 minutes. He told me about his childhood in the interior and how he was proud of his rural heritage. He is also proud of his club’s long-standing (though disputed) reputation as the most popular, “the people’s team.” He assured me that Cerro still enjoys the majority support of Paraguay’s poor, although he admitted that there were plenty of poor fans of other clubs as well. “We still call ourselves ‘popular,’ and I think we deserve it,” he concluded.

In general, he was quieter, more modest, and more polite than Mr. Trotte. He admitted that he had great respect for Mr. Trotte and that the Olimpia faithful often out-shouted the Cerristas at rivalry matches. Still, he stubbornly claimed that his passion was greater than any Olimpista’s and that Cerristas threw better parties after big wins.

Both Olimpia’s and Cerro’s hinchadas are organized into geographic units, with each local boss in charge of choosing his crew and bringing it to each match. Leaders are generally not assigned specific tasks, except at the very top level where Zoilo and Mr. Trotte are in charge of relations with the club, the press, the government, and each other. Both, Zoilo told me, have received plenty of criticism from those underneath them for being too friendly with each other. He confirmed that many on both sides actually believed that fans of their rival were bad people and not to be trusted. Unlike Mr. Trotte, he was willing to admit those beliefs could cause violence, along with the “broader social issues and violent personalities” at whom the Olimpia boss threw the blame. He confirmed that the “mere colors” of Olimpia could excite violent passions in many of his friends. “It’s irrational,” he said, “it doesn’t make sense, but it’s how the boys are.”

Ironically, Zoilo is both the only hincha I have met who truly embodies the identity of his club and the only one to recognize that that identity is not entirely realistic. His humble roots, quiet demeanor, and populist pride fit perfectly with Cerro’s identity; an identity that for many Cerristas, is perfectly imagined. And yet, he denied that his passion had anything to do with class or economics. “I’m against Olimpia, that’s all. They wear the wrong colors, but we’re not that different. I want to beat them on the field, but off it, I don’t have any problem.”

We finished and Zoilo headed out to a gym in the center of the market. I walked a few blocks toward downtown to buy my ticket for the Paraguayan team’s upcoming match against Peru. It turns out that Zoilo and Mr. Trotte were meeting to coordinate their support for the national side. Though both hinchadas will be present, they will sit at opposite ends of the stadium, with police instructed to separate them from each other, as well as from the Peruvians. And so, even with leaders who call each other by first names and a common national name to chant, Wednesday’s fans will still be called “Cerrista” and “Olimpista,” with all those names’ un-realistic, but very real, implications.