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.

Tears of a thug

A couple of weeks ago, as I waited for a Racing Club a game to start, I stood next to two large men. I was bored and they were conspicuous, so I stared. One of them had short, neat hair and a standard build. He would have been completely unremarkable had he not been juxtaposed with his companion, whose incredibly crooked teeth, long ratty hair, and apparently-permanent snarl were truly a foil for normalcy. One of his eyes was higher and significantly larger than the other. He hunched, arms hanging forward and lower back bent. I felt terrible about it, but I couldn’t help thinking of him as a cave man.

On my other side, was a skinny, fragile-looking kid who would have been a perfect Buddy Holly look alike if it weren’t for his Racing-themed getup: a two-foot-tall Uncle Sam-style hat, a pair of very large parachute pans, a multi-colored wind-breaker, and an enormous flag; all streaked with teal, sky blue, and white and littered with the teams nick-names and slogans. This kid, I thought, would be great to talk to. He was obviously a fanatic but also looked dorky enough that I couldn’t imagine him being mean, much less dangerous. I needed an ice breaker, something unthreatening, but hard not to ignore. I waited briefly for inspiration and then, afraid to miss the opportunity, asked spontaneity to produce the rhetorical gem I needed: “Cold, huh?”

I think he looked at me. There was a slight head turn in my direction and a perceptible shift of the eyes. Rather than answering my question, however, Buddy Holly yelled something I didn’t understand to someone I couldn’t see (because he was employing the age-old hincha tactic of looking over the journalist, tourist, or other stranger’s shoulder and pretending to have a sudden need to go somewhere behind them very quickly). He was gone.

When I looked back from the fleeing Buddy Holly, the large men were fighting. The unremarkable guy had gripped a knotty fistful of the cave man’s hair, employing the other fist in a devoted effort to straighten his companion’s teeth. “You’ll regret this!” he was yelling. As much as he looked like someone who regularly slew woolly mammoths, the poor cave man made hardly any effort to defend himself. Blow after blow landed uninhibited and un-returned. The only response he managed was to twist his head back and forth, distributing the unremarkable man’s punches all around his face. The crowd let them go; everyone’s first reaction was to back out of harm’s way. After an eternal ten seconds, other fans finally stepped in. Friends of both men pulled them apart, asking them to calm down by name. As always, the angrier of the two fighters, in this case Mr. Unremarkable, broke free a couple of times, landing three more blows to his Paleolithic victim before his friends restrained him more securely. Four or five of them escorted him to another part of the terrace. The caveman leaned on the guard rail at the top of the bleachers and wept.

He literally cried. Friends came and comforted him and he motioned them away. He buried his face in his forearms, staining his sleeves with sweat, blood, and tears. His face, due to his adept neck-swiveling, was bruised and swollen evenly throughout, growing redder and larger by the minute. He looked completely dejected and I felt genuinely sorry for him. I tried to ask if he was alright but he turned away, burying his face still deeper in his arms. I turned to the man next to me, a strong-looking guy wearing a baseball cap, and asked why the men had been fighting. “Neighborhood banners,” he answered motioning to the flags piled and rolled up behind us. Apparently, the scraggly hincha had made the mistake of hanging his neighborhood’s banner in the spot the unremarkable guy had picked out for his neighborhood banner. Even as he was pulled away, Mr. Unremarkable had continued to shout “you’ll regret this” to the cave man. Apparently, the poor bastard didn’t regret it already, at least not enough. I wondered exactly how much regret was required to avenge such an offence to barrio honor.

After a few minutes, the defeated Neanderthal regained his composure and followed a friend farther down into the bleachers to watch the game. I felt bad for him but I certainly wasn’t surprised by the fight itself. This was not the first fight I had seen at a stadium, nor would it be the last. Nor did the reason, some combination of honor, machismo, and neighborhood pride, surprise me. What did get to me was just how pitiful the loser had been. It was a one-sided fight. But most of the fights I have seen are one-sided unless they get broken up right away. Usually, however, the loser postures at least as much as the winner, after the fight. After all, he is the one in danger of losing face. In this case, the poor cave man had given up altogether. He let his opponent beat on him and then he let himself appear entirely pathetic in defeat. He made no excuses and it was his conqueror, not he, who pledged more violence in the future.

I toyed with the idea that the man was actually disabled. It would explain how little he spoke and perhaps also his disinterest in whether or not he appeared weak. Maybe it was all just too much for his mind to handle. But that seems to easy and too condescending. Perhaps he’s just honest, preferring to look sad as long as he was sad. That would be refreshingly un-macho. In any case, I liked the man much more after seeing him cry. Such a human response, such naked vulnerability filled me with warmth, whether it was pity for a victim or gratitude for a man honest enough to show un-manly emotions at a soccer game. Maybe, just maybe, these people feel, I remember thinking. I’ll try to remember that.

Nobody gives me balls

“Nobody gives me balls.” This is the literal translation of a somewhat vulgar Argentine expression that means “no one pays attention to me.” And it about sums up my last two weeks. I spent my afternoons chasing barra-bosses around Buenos Aires only to be ignored or rudely rejected by all of them. This has become more common than I like to admit. I have been stood up for scheduled interviews three times now by the same person. He is a neighbor, a friend of friends, and whenever I see him he makes lots of promises. “We’ll talk, then I’ll introduce you to all the people I knew when I was in the barra. I was high up, I can get you to the important people.” And that, in local slang, is called chamuyo. Chamuyo is a rough combination of talking trash, making promises, and bragging that is basically designed to make the speaker look really good. As a man, you do it to make women want you and men want to be you. As a man from Buenos Aires you do it instinctively and incessantly.

Chamuyo, for me, means that no one ever says “no” to when I ask for help with my study. They never say no. Regardless of how impossible it may be for someone to help me, or how little intention they have of actually trying, they always make promises. One Friday, I corralled a barra after the Murga rehearsal to follow up on his promises. He has always said the right thing. He has promised to give me an interview and to get me interviews with his bosses. Still, he never seems very happy to talk to me. He has what I think is a very nasty habit of looking over my head when I try to get his attention. I wish he wouldn’t flaunt his height so. And I wish he would give me balls. This time, like always, I had to catch him alone, after the rehearsal and basically block his path before he would even lower his eyes to my level:

“Hey, Yankee, are you travelling with us tomorrow?” Well this was good. I had given up on actually going to Mar del Plata for Boca vs. San Lorenzo, hoping instead that he would use the game to talk to his fellow barras about me. Now was he inviting me to go with them?! Riding in the bus with the barra is the kind of thing Dutch tourists pay hundreds of Euros to do. And they have escorts (guards) and certainly don’t get to ask many questions.

“Can I go, really?” I was embarrassed by my own jumpiness but I couldn’t really help it. “I don’t want to take anyone’s place but I’d love to ride with you all if I can!”

“I see,” he replied blandly, starting to look reluctant.

“I mean, it would be really awesome if I could come along!” At this point, I was beyond excited. A yippy dog comes to mind. It was like I was trying to produce enough enthusiasm for the two of us, enough to drown out his reluctance before he could act on it.

“Come tomorrow, and we’ll see.” Now I was worried.

“Great! Where do you leave from?!” I said, manufacturing yet more excitement as my fear of being let down grew.

“You know, around.” He was no longer looking at me, his eyes, instead, focused over my shoulder, flicking back and forth among the others leaving the park. He had the disturbing look of someone searching for an excuse to run off without saying goodbye. I half expected him to jog over to a stranger and start asking him, incessantly, about “you know, the thing that we talked about,” just so he wouldn’t have to see my over-excited, pleading, Yanki mug anymore.

“Could I have your number, then, so I can find you all tomorrow?” I asked, my excitement lingering even as my hope slipped away.

“The thing is, I don’t have a phone…with me, I mean…I don’t have a phone with me. Why don’t you get Pablo’s number?” He motioned to a young drummer who I knew was not a member of the barra and would probably not be travelling.

“So he will be able to get in touch with you for me tomorrow?” now I was basically sure it wasn’t going to be my weekend to travel with the thugs. I asked Pablo, anyway, and he reeled of a few excuses. He told me to call a couple of other people, though it wasn’t clear exactly why. Finally, he told me that it would be too dangerous to go to the game because the barra was in the midst of an internal power struggle. I knew this. I had been to a game two days after unidentified assailants had assaulted the mother of the barra’s current leader. Most in-fighting takes place outside the stadium and during the week. I have yet to witness any life-threatening violence within one team’s bleachers. But I got the point. Pablo and the tall barra did not want me to go to Mar del Plata. Or maybe they didn’t mind if I went. But they certainly didn’t want to have anything to do with my going.

I thought I would try one last attempt with the tall guy. At the very least, he might agree to talk to his comrades for me and float the idea of my talking to them. Hope springs eternal. As I approached a second time he pulled out a cell phone (which he did not have on him) and turned his back, talking. His girlfriend, who had now joined him, stood by his side with her arms crossed, scowling. I thought I must have looked very stupid, trying to address a man’s back as he tried just as hard to make me go away. Again, I began to see myself as a yippy dog; this time a yippy dog begging desperately for a biscuit from someone he thinks is his owner but who is, decidedly, not, and who, decidedly, does not have any biscuits nor any intention of giving anything to a yippy dog. I said hi to the scowling girlfriend, apparently hoping she might think that was what I had walked over to do. She, however, had not walked over to be said hi to by me. She ignored just as fully as her boyfriend, but she did so without a fake cell phone conversation. She just scowled and stared. I admired her commitment.

When the tall barra got tired of pretending to be on a phone call, I thought I would at least be able to save face by saying goodbye. Mamma raised me to be polite, after all. If I was too polite for tall barra’s customs, well he would just have to deal with that. And he did. Before he even closed his phone, he was flagged down a passing car. I hope, for my ego’s sake, that he knew the driver and did not resort to begging a stranger for rescue. He and his girlfriend got in, very quickly, and the car pulled away. I decided not to make the extra, pathetic-enough-for-Hollywood gesture of yipping a goodbye to the car as it sped off.

I had tried patience. I went to the Murga and for almost two months before I even asked anyone there a question about the barra. Then I tried being bothersome (I suppose if it had worked I would have called it “persistent”). That didn’t work either. It seems the barra is very protective of its balls. In fact, by any objective measure, I left the park Friday night with fewer balls than I had shown up with.

All lewd metaphors and Argentine slang aside, I did not feel very good about myself. I got on the bus ready to go home and write a self-pitying blog post. Distracted, composing weepy one-liners in my head, I got off at the wrong stop. And this too seemed like a great, deliberate injustice done to me by the cosmos. I would have done well to remember the many times that fortune has favored me. But I don’t remember the good days on the bad days. And even if I did, I would no doubt conclude that they had been well-deserved, earned in blood and sweat. Fortune, I would declare, could not have played any role in my good days because “fortune hates me.” Nor do I remember, on the bad days, that they don’t happen to me any more often than they happen to anyone else. “Why does this always happen to me?” I asked as I started to walk towards home.

Two blocks from the bus stop I passed two beggars, people whose trade, if it can be called that, is bothering people. Nearly all of their human interaction consists of pleading and being ignored. When one of them approached me, I almost turned my back, thinking “you got the wrong day to ask me for a favor, buddy.” Then things started to slide back into perspective. I almost cursed myself out loud. I gave the bearded, tired-looking man the coins in my pocket. Another block on, I ran into a friend from the neighborhood. “Zack, how are you man?” he asked. “You look tired, are things OK?”

We chatted for a few minutes, agreed to meet for dinner the next week, and parted. I was legitimately disappointed when the conversation ended, so nice was the contrast it made with the night’s other experiences. I wanted to talk to more people who wanted to talk to me. I went to a local pizzeria, whose owner is a friend of mine and where I have become a regular. The employees never fail to cheer me up. We talked, I helped wash dishes and close up for the night. It was nice to do something productive. I left happy again, cured of my self pity, but with much less motivation to write. I no longer needed to shout from a virtual mountain top. A few minutes with friends had done wonders. They can’t help me with my study, but they don’t promise to either. And, most of all, they always give me balls.

Murga

Murga is a kind of music and dance. I could try to impress with my extensive knowledge of its roots (a combination of Spanish and West African styles) and its meaning (originally a form of artistic protest used by slaves to mock and/or escape from their miserable reality). But the fact is that I don’t know very much about Murga. All that I know comes from one less-than-professional-looking website I found and hurriedly skimmed. I could also take the lack of Murga information on the internet as a mark of its authenticity. “After all, a true folk tradition is not even written down, much less broadcast across the globe,” I might say, congratulating myself for penetrating an insular, pure world protected from the corruptions of information culture and its ravenous consumers of exoticism. But that would be B.S. The fact is, I didn’t search very hard. Besides, this is a blog about soccer hooligans. So instead of starting a very Macalester-esque debate about authenticity and cultural consumption and imperialism, I think I will just right about the Murga that Bruno and Adrian brought me to in La Boca. There is the talented band leader and the boys with huge drumsticks and the tattooed, fat, drumming men and the effeminate, thin, dancing men. There are plenty of characters. I am not sure whether or not they are aware of the historical and political meaning of Murga but they dance and play it every Wednesday and Friday outside the Bombonera.

On Friday, November 28th Adrian, an ex barrabrava and long-time Boca resident, invited me to an “ensayo de Murga.” I had no idea what “Murga” meant and was only almost sure that “ensayo” meant “rehearsal,” but Adrian assured me that current members of the barra would be there. Actually, it was in response to an offer of volunteer labor that Adrian suggested I come see the Murgueros. He told me that one of the reasons he left the barra was to spend more time on his and Club Atletico Boca Juniors’ social work. Looking for a way to intertwine volunteer work with my research, I told him I would be happy to help out with any of the club’s programs. Instead, I got invited to the Murga. Murga is certainly un-paid, but it would be a stretch to call it work and, in any case, my contribution to it cannot be in anyway construed as a “service.” If it escapes the realm of a “disservice” it is only because I provide comic relief. In any case, there were, supposedly, barras there.

So I met Adrian, his friend Bruno, and their families at another friend’s mechanic shop in the Boca. We then drove the four blocks to the other sides of the stadium to a long park that parallels a nearby avenue. The distance was short, but my companions were not big walkers and, besides, “why have a car if you’re going to walk.” We parked next to a van being emptied of enormous drums and we escorted laden percussionists to a concrete patio in the middle of the park.

Then we waited. It seems like the ensayo is destined to start later every week. Everyone greets and catches up while they wait for the key characters to arrive. The first week, we started about 10 minutes after the official 8 pm rehearsal time. Each subsequent week, the band leader, or half the drummers, or the head dancer came about 5 minutes later than the week before. Matias, the head male dancer now usually arrived last. The band has drawn the line and generally starts playing, dancer-less, at 8:45 pm. Before this, however, while their parents catch up with each other and the week’s neighborhood gossip, the little kids warm up the instruments. Small boys try to strap on enormous drums and ultimately resign themselves to beating them as they sit on the ground, using both hands to swing drum mallets as big as their arms. The young girls divide into tom-boy types, who join in abusing the drums, and girlier girls, who hang on to their mothers’ legs while they gossip. Eventually, the band leader blows his whistle, the drummers congregate, and the music starts with another sharp tweet. The band consists of the same basic drums played in U.S. marching bands. The majority of the 10-12 drummers plays bombos, large drums beaten on both sides while hung vertically in front of the chest. These also carry a symbol, attached to the top, that is played on the off-beats. There is also usually one tall drum that stands on the ground, its horizontal surface beaten with two large mallets. Finally, there are one or two small drums, hung with their playing surface horizontal at waste level and rapped with normal-sized drum sticks. The band leader plays one of these, while also keeping a separate rhythm and giving directions with his whistle.

The band leader always wears a baseball cap and bright yellow Boca Juniors shorts. He is able to stomp one rhythm, drum another, and whistle a third. He is an impressive musician and he leads his drummers with the same firmness with which I have seen him direct fellow barras in pre-game preparations at the Bombonera. His band, however, sticks out for less-flattering qualities.

All of the men who play drums in the Murga are large, wear Boca Juniors shorts, have (many) Boca Juniors tattoos, and talk a lot about Boca Juniors, pausing only occasionally to mention beer and asses; women’s asses. The men who dance, on the other hand, are effeminate and thin (I am not sure whether their fitness qualifies them to dance or disqualifies them from drumming due to their lack of a beer belly on which to rest the instrument). My first ensayo, I stayed on the sidelines and observed. I talked to the wives whose turn was up to watch everyone’s kids while the others danced. I talked to the men who were too cool (or too fat, or both) to dance. They asked about the U.S: “do they like dark-haired women there?” “what kind of work is there for Argentines?” “Do you have anything like Murga?” “How do you say ‘hijo de puta’ in English?” I did my best to satisfy their curiosity, though the sheer volume of crude expressions they wanted translated into English was a bit daunting. They were forgiving, however, and generally very welcoming. They hoped the Yanki would dance. Eventually, I promised I would the next week.

Now dancing is never easy for me. I am bad at it and bad for it, in almost every sense. I am not flexible, I don’t have rhythm, I am aware of these faults, and I am too proud and self-conscious to often do things that I will never be good at. So it took a little self-encouragement to get me out the door for my second ensayo. On the bus on the way, I started to feel nervous. For all that they seemed nice and welcoming, my new friends Adrian, Bruno, and other guys from the neighborhood, all had terrible reputations, if not as individuals then as members of a not-so-well-regarded social movement from a rough neighborhood. I couldn’t quite bring myself to trust them, at least not yet. So here I was, arriving at night in a neighborhood I didn’t really know, to do something I didn’t really want to do, with people I didn’t really trust. I wanted to get off, cross the street, and take the bus back in the other direction. But I didn’t. I stayed on the bus, I got off at Aristóbulo del Valle street, and I walked to the park.

Once there, I began to do what I always do when I am expected to dance: convince myself that I have something more important to do. Absent any actually obligations and lacking even a large number of friends to catch up with, I pretended that I had important thinking to do. I pretended that I, alone, was charged with worrying about something crucial, something that dancing people wouldn’t understand and couldn’t do as long as they were busy dancing and making merry. “One day, when I’m important and successful,” I imagined, “they will look back and understand why I didn’t dance. In fact, they will be very glad that I stood at the sidelines thinking important thoughts and preparing myself for the important work I would be doing in a few years.” But, of course, I wasn’t actually thinking important thoughts. I was thinking about the important thoughts they might think that I would be thinking. And about how, no matter how silly I felt at the side of the patio, alone, I really was doing the only right thing to do, given the gravity of the circumstances.

Of course, I wasn’t alone. I was with the wives watching children (an actual, important responsibility) and the men who couldn’t or wouldn’t dance but, rather than pretending to have compelling reasons, stood in small groups and talked about Boca Juniors and women’s asses. As always happens, I gradually began to feel bored and very stupid, and it became easier to convince me to dance. Eventually two of the unrelentingly welcoming women of the Murga pushed me out to the middle of the patio and introduced me to Matias, the leader of the male dancers.

Effeminate as they may be, the bailadores still separate themselves from the bailadoras. The women dance in lines and circles, with coordinated steps. The men, at least so far, dance individually and much less-formally. One of the non-dancers told me that the secret is to “move your arms and legs as much as you possibly can, but to the rhythm.” Matias informed me that there were, in-fact, steps to follow but that the most important thing to do was to keep my arms as high as possible in the air, and shake them continuously. “You see, when you do this for Carnaval, we give you a suit with lots of ribbons on the sleeves and it looks good if you shake them.” He kept using the word “you.” I assumed (and prayed) that the “you” he was using was the impersonal “you” and that he did not expect me to dance in carnaval. I am still not sure, and am a bit afraid to ask.

I did my best to imitate Matias’ steps. They didn’t go very well. Thankfully, though, there was enough truth to the non-dancer’s words that I could get away with just walking in place and shaking my shoulders (usually) to the beat. No one laughed (much) and I almost enjoyed myself.

I came back a week later, a bit less apprehensive. I was now relatively certain that the women and the effeminate men didn’t mind having me there. The fat men, both drummers and non-drummers, were harder to read and at least a few seemed annoyed that another foreign “journalist” had arrived to write about their soccer-watching habits. No matter what I do, I am always a “journalist.” The closest I have come to communicating my actual role is to convince a few people that I am student. A “journalism student,” of course.

Barras hate journalists because journalists tell people what barras do. To be fair, I do believe that they exaggerate. They predict violence at almost all rivalry matches, even though the majority are peaceful. They run complete and deep coverage of fights but almost never mention the songs, the parties, or the occasional social work that the barras organize. Many barras are nevertheless perfectly willing to treat a journalist well if it will get their name in the paper or, better yet, their picture on T.V. But ask them about violence at the stadium and the journalist inevitably comes high up on the blame list, though he usually trails the police. A fight is never the fault of the barra himself. Each side of every soccer fight in South American history was defending itself, just ask it. Neither side started it; “it started.” “It started” because the police hit the hooligans first, or because the papers wrote so much about the violence that it became “inevitable.”

So my status as a “journalist” makes me a bit nervous. It makes it hard for me to approach the fat men. I don’t think I am in any danger but I do think they will lie to me, withhold things from me and, worst, be bothered by me. I really do not want to bother anyone. Given that this is a very individual project that really only benefits me, it is hard to justify its bothering anyone else. I think if my friends from La Boca knew just now how much I would hate to be a bother, they would admit that I am not a journalist.

Still, even if I cannot claim any in-the-service-of-others “need” to talk to the hooligans, I really want talk to the hooligans. I am full of questions. Why do they sing and swear the way they do? What made them fans of their club? Did Dad teach them, or did they choose and why? And, what, exactly, is it that makes these men with families and good jobs, murgueros who love their neighbors, go out every Sunday ready to beat and maim? I know their children. I see them kiss their wives. They invite me to play soccer and eat asado with them Friday nights. They are, if vulgar and not always nice, still hospitable in their way and, in my personal experience, not bad people. But they are also, in the eyes of many Argentine outsiders “the worst this country has to offer,” “basically a mafia,” “drug dealers,” “the dark side of the nation.”

My curiosity, my appetite for the adrenaline-filled, fascinating, and, yes, exotic experiences I have with the barras keeps me going to the stadiums and the bars and even the Murga rehearsals. Sometimes it even gets me to bother them. My timidity is great, but my curiosity is great as well. For the time being, it is at least great enough to keep me dancing, Wednesdays and Fridays, in a rough neighborhood, with “dangerous” people, and without even a hint of talent.

"Guys"

I was never the mover and shaker in high school or college. I was never the one who knew people, who could tell you “where the party was at.” In fact, I usually missed the party because I was in the library. In Argentina, however, a large part of the “work” I have come to do, involves going to soccer games. For which you must get tickets. And you don’t get tickets unless you have “a guy,” or two. And curiously enough, once you have a guy, and people find that out, you start to become other people’s guy. So it was that I received a small wave of phone calls mid week last week as other foreign students, hoping to catch a Boca game before the end of their semester abroad, called asking (and in one case, begging) me to help them get tickets. This game was especially difficult, being the last of the season for Argentina’s most popular team, which sat in a three-way tie for first place. I made calls, and bargained, and waited, and made more calls. I relayed semi-dubious promises from my guys to my friends. Ultimately, after prices did their filtering, I took two French kids and an Italian to the Bombonera. All three are huge soccer fans and know much more than I do about the game. But I have guys.

It was an odd experience for me. I very very rarely lead any sort of social activity. And it is not necessarily an experience I enjoy. I don’t like being responsible for others’ enjoying themselves. Basically, I’m not sure how “good” I am at “fun.” I suppose I knew that my friends would enjoy the game and that, if Boca and Colon failed to produce goals that could hardly be my fault. But I was afraid we wouldn’t arrive on time, or that one of them would get robbed. As we walked from the bus to the stadium, scalpers offered us tickets at about half the price we had paid. I had received several warnings not to buy on the street as the Boca houses a healthy ticket-counterfeiting industry. Still, I had my doubts, and assumed my friends would, too. They didn’t complain, however, and Benjamin, the Frenchman, mentioned that he, too, had been warned not to buy scalped tickets. I was relieved, but now that it was on my mind, I worried that our tickets might be fakes.

After almost an hour in line, we approached the stadium gates and were asked to have our tickets in hand. Anais, the other French friend, took out her ticket and let out a worried “ooo.” Perspiration from a water bottle jammed into the same pocket had stained and blurred the writing on the front of her ticket. Alessandro, the Italian, reasoned that the electronic bar on the back was the only part that really needed to be in good shape and we all hoped he was right. I had Anais go ahead of the rest of us in line, offering to give her my ticket if hers didn’t work. But it did, as did ours. We giggled, relieved, and the kid manning the scanner smirked with contempt at our apparent glee on entering a stadium in which he had grown up.

Once inside the stadium, we parted ways. I headed off to the liveliest section, to intrude on the hooligans, some of whom I know but none of whom can even be considered guys of mine. We cheered and jumped and, of course, sang. Boca scored three times in the first half, bringing as much relief as happiness to the home crowd. A few fans had brought radios to track the other games, and word of mouth brought the news that San Lorenzo and Tigre were both winning, obliging Boca to win or go home empty handed. Boca and Tigre had weak opponents, and no excuse not to win. San Lorenzo’s rival, Argentinos Juniors, was strong, coming off an impressive performance in the South American Cup. But Argentinos’ barra had offered the team cash to throw the game, and thereby cast an obstacle in Boca’s path. Such is the hatred felt for Boca by fans of all other Argentine clubs. It makes my feelings toward rivals of my favorite American teams look like mild bitterness, at worst. I will certainly chant “Yankees suck” in the 7th inning of a boring Orioles-Devil Rays game. But I doubt I would ever try to pay Baltimore to lose to Boston, just to keep the Yankees out of the playoffs. Another level indeed.

So Banfield was falling to Tigre and Argentinos (even having refused the bribe offers) was not standing up to San Lorenzo. The Bombonera grew tense in the second half as Colon scored two and brought Boca dangerously close to falling from the top. Tiago, the kid next to me whom I had met during half time, wrapped his arm around my waist and gripped the security rail behind me, leaning the rest of his body as far as it would reach over the row in front of us. He shrieked his encouragement, veins bulging and sweat dripping on the heads below. He knew as well as the rest of the grandstanders that the true fan must take his share of responsibility. As my interviewees regularly tell me, “in the cheap seats, you aren’t a spectator, you play every game.” In moments like these, we fans wish we were on the field. We know we aren’t good enough, but we also know that this championship, this game 7, this final, is too important to leave in the hands of others, no matter how talented. They can’t possibly want it as much as we do. But the best we can do is scream. So scream we did, me and my new brother in angst.

Our words asked the players for effort, and begged them to show that they felt what we felt. I always feel a bit fake singing these words, but I belt them out anyway, lest I be revealed as a tourist. A tourist taking a spot that would otherwise be filled by another voice; a voice trying to lose itself; a man offering to “give my heart for the cup.” Though I planned on leaving the stadium with all my bodily organs (metaphorical and actual), the least I could do was be loud. Thankfully, I knew the words.

In the final two minutes, the cheap seats at the other, calmer end of the stadium started to shoot off fireworks. Our end remained tense, but Tiago’s arm relaxed a bit. Smiles began to tug at lips and, as the final whistle blew, thousands of mouths let out sighs of relief, inhaled, and started to sing songs of victory.

But there is work left to do. The three leaders will play each other this coming week, one game with each opponent. I called my guys and reserved my place in the stadium. I will be there, and I will be loud, and maybe I will be able to hold Tiago up again. I pay, I sing, I try to earn my keep in the bleachers. But no number of connections, no amount of money, and no quantity of burst blood vessels will make me feel fully legitimate among the soccer faithful. I enjoy it more, but the role of hincha does not fit me much better than that of “guy.”

Advice, Luck, and Random Help

“You just need to make powerful friends,” said Diego, a Red Cross volunteer in San Martin square. “If you have friends high up, and they introduce you around, the rest can’t touch you.” I had explained that I was doing a study on soccer hooligans and he had readily offered his advice. Like most Argentines, he started with a warning: “you know, things are pretty f**ked up here, you should be careful.” He listed a few incidents, each ending with someone beaten (or worse) for being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, wearing the wrong jersey. Or for having money. But “you’ll be fine if you make friends with the bosses,” he assured me. “You know what you could do? You could go to jail,” Diego went on.

“You mean…” I knew I would have to prove myself, to some extent and in some way, to get access to the barrabravas. But Diego’s advice had running through my head images from a whole other level of manhood-demonstration. Images of me meticulously sharpening the back end of a toothbrush, before finally jamming it into the tattooed lower back of someone named Bruno. And then the more realistic images of Bruno and a gang of guys named Tony and Gordo stomping me relentlessly, my broken toothbrush kicked hopelessly far from my outstretched hand.

“I mean you could write a letter asking for permission to enter the jail where they’re holding Rafa Di Zeo.” Diego brought me back to a slightly more believable reality. “Seriously, you think they’d let me into the prison to interview him.”

“Well if he wants you to get in, you’ll get in.” Rafael Di Zeo, head of “La 12,” Boca Juniors’ barra, turned himself in a year and a half ago, after a couple of months in hiding. He is serving a 4+ year sentence for something called “aggravated coercion,” related to his role in an especially bad bout of football violence in 1999.

So my first plan for accessing “La 12” involved sending letters “up the river,” asking politely for permission to speak to a jailed head hooligan. Other thoughts have involved randomly introducing myself at game time, visiting a body shop in La Boca where some barras hang out, and buying a “tourist pass” to ride the bus and watch a game with the boys from “La 12.”

Still unsure what route to take, I spent my first week focused on finding an apartment and getting settled in. A few days later, I was sitting in a friend’s café trying, futilely, to convince him that 9-11 was not an inside job. He is Ukrainian, an avid internet reader, and much more-, if not better-, informed than I am about 9-11 theories. His Spanish is also much better than mine. So it was a welcome interruption to my frustration when two older locals walked in to start an afternoon of drinking. They greeted us coldly and Dmitri gave them their beers and went to the back to help his mother with something, leaving me alone with the less-than-friendly drinkers. A few minutes later one of them, apparently bored of his companion’s company, turned and asked me where I was from. “From the U.S.,” I said, “near the capital.” He immediately walked over and extended his hand to shake mine. “Let me congratulate you and your countrymen on your new president. We’re all expecting good things from him.”

The conversation was much warmer from then on. “What are you doing in Argentina? Anything I can help you with?”

“Working on my Spanish and, if you can believe it, studying football fans.”

“Wow,” he replied, “very interesting. You know, I have a friend who is part of ‘La 12.’ Actually, I’m his lawyer, he’s in jail. His name’s Rafael Di Zeo, you might have heard it before.”

I have learned never to lie or be vague about what I am doing. Dependent as I am on contacts in order to enter the relatively closed world of barrabravas, I make as many friends as I can, hoping that one or two will have friends with friends who can help me. In Paraguay it was “refreshments counter guy” and Julio from Club Olimpia, who gave me my most important contacts. Here, in my first week in Argentina, I had met the man in charge of getting Rafa out of prison and back running the streets of La Boca and the cheap seats of Boca’s stadium, “La Bombonera.” He promised to leave his number with Dmitri, and to ask Di Zeo if he would talk to me.

I took the subway back to my hostel marveling at my good fortune. My best project lead yet had come as I debated conspiracy politics with a Ukrainian, a friend of a friend’s boyfriend, in his small café on an out-of-the-way corner of one of Buenos Aires’ many middle class neighborhoods. And my good luck started with the lawyer’s high hopes for our President elect. I have no idea whether he would have offered to help me under other circumstances. But I like to think that I was one of the first Americans to benefit directly from the election of Barack Obama.

Oh, I Get It, You're Brazilian!

I have good and bad language days. There are days when I come bouncing back home, after a string of functional conversations, compliments on my accent, and questions about where I learned. Other days I come home quietly, hoping that my hosts won’t come out to greet me and reveal my truly dysfunctional Spanish; days when little kids have tricked me into saying dumb things, friends have laughed at my mistakes, or, at the very worst, someone has given up on speech all together, resorting to mute gestures in order to communicate with the dumb Yankee.

The most welcome and shocking of compliments is when someone mistakes me for a local. It never happens with anyone who has spoken to me very long (save once, with a Japanese volunteer, his own Spanish still in fledgling stages, who exclaimed, fully in earnest and with an adorably stereotypical accent, “You’re NOT Paraguayan!!??”). I am always flattered and thrilled by these mix-ups, rare as they are. They let me know that one day, maybe, I might actually speak this language well.

And then there is the other side to appearing local, the appearance part. A Peruvian friend, himself conspicuously dark by Paraguayan standards, once told me “you’re accent is OK but no local will ever think you’re Paraguayan because of your, ah, complexion.” Still, last weekend, watching the Paraguay-Colombia World Cup Qualifier in a hotel lobby, an Ecuadorian guest told me “you seem like a local.” “It’s true,” an Argentinean agreed, “how long have you been in Spanish-speaking countries?” Ironically, I misunderstood the question. But the Ecuadorian wasn’t talking about my Spanish, I had barely spoken to him before his comment. Maybe it was the red and white shirt I was wearing, sporting my support for the national team. Or maybe it was that fact that I had hardly moved from beside the grill, helping to prepare Paraguay-style meat to celebrate the game.

At a game on Sunday, several people rattled off paragraphs of Guaraní to me, obviously assuming I was Paraguayan. Later, as opposing hinchadas waged a rock-throwing battle for control of the main exit to the stadium, I chatted with an older guy who had chosen to hide behind the same wall. “I hope they arrest them all,” he said, “I have to drive out through that door, I can’t go the back way, and I’m afraid their going to break my windows.” Then he said a few things in Guaraní, at which I smiled (apparently inappropriately). “Oh, you must not be Paraguayan,” he realized. The police came and arrested some members of the smaller hinchada, escorting the rest out of the stadium. The officer in command explained that the fans of the opposing fans were too numerous to arrest but that they were waiting for buses and would go home soon.

I waited 20 minutes and walked out to catch a bus with the last of the trouble-making fans, now more tired, less drunk, and significantly calmer. I took three buses to get home, finally getting off a few blocks too late in my still unfamiliar neighborhood. Walking home I stopped at a gas station store to buy a hot dog. Actually, I bought two, my gluttony revealing to all the Paraguayans in the room that I come from the country of great portions. I sat down to eat, watching the Paraguayan soccer wrap-up on the store’s T.V.

Two bites into my second hot dog, a little kid, probably about 8, sat down next to me, eyes fixated on the highlight reel in front of us. We watched in silence for a few minutes before, my he looked up and said “Cerro has 18 points now, right? That means we might have a chance.” “Ah you’re a Cerrista,” I said, “and do you know how the Luque game came out today?” “1-0, Luque won,” he responded. “Oh, must have been a good game.” He misunderstood, “Oh so you’re Luqueño, where do you live?” “Well I live just across the street,” I replied, “but I’m neutral.”
“You’re what?”
“I’m neutral, I don’t have a club.”
“Oh, I get it, you’re Brazilian!” he explained, his face lighting up with understanding.
“Well, I’m not Paraguayan, but I’m not from Brazil either.”
“Where are you from?”
“Guess”
“Argentina,” I shook my head, “Uruguay…Chile…Bolivia,” and he seemed to have run out of ideas.
“I’m from the U.S.” I gave in.
“So that’s why,” he said. And he looked at me with wonder. Too young to be judging by my language abilities, he had probably just never met anyone from so far away.
“Do they eat meat there?” he asked, wide-eyed. “What about yucca?”
“Not really.”
“Seriously, they don’t? That’s so odd”
Brazilians are weird, which explains their lack of Paraguayan club preference. They are, however, at least sensible enough to eat normal food. North Americans are downright alien. My new friend could pardon my accent, in fact he may not even have noticed it. He could pardon my club soccer neutrality, if it was because I was a Brazileiro. But to not eat yucca, well…“don’t you get hungry?” An exotic bunch we are.