In Greater Buenos Aires, from the first decades of the twentieth century to the present, football clubs have played a critical role in both politics and the creation of barrio identity. Football clubs became important just as the electoral system was reformed and as barrio identity in many cases became manifest. Football, politics and neighbourhoods became intertwined and remain so. Mauricio Macri, the current mayor of Buenos Aires, brought himself to voters' attention through his successful presidency of a football club, Boca Juniors. In late 2012 the legislature of the city of Buenos Aires, under tremendous pressure from the fans of another football club, San Lorenzo de Almagro, voted to allow the expropriation of land so that the team could build a stadium in the exact location of its former one in the neighbourhood of Boedo, with which the club had long been identified but which it had been forced to abandon.Footnote 1 This article will focus on why football clubs became integral parts of politics and neighbourhood identity in the period prior to 1943.
Recent studies have looked at football's role in the development of masculine identities and of nationalism,Footnote 2 but this work examines the role of football clubs prior to 1943 in the emerging electoral politics and their role in helping to create a sense of neighbourhood. Football could be both barrio-based and nationalistic: my team is better than your team but our football is better than other countries’. After 1943 the nature of politics shifted dramatically and the sense of barrio identity began a long, slow decline. As John Bale has pointed out: ‘Sport has become perhaps the main medium of collective identification in an era when bonding is more frequently a result of achievement.’Footnote 3
Football clubs developed in the first decades of the twentieth century as part of a burgeoning civic culture that existed in greater Buenos Aires, just as it did in much of the western world. The inhabitants of Buenos Aires displayed an ability to create organisations with popular participation by forming hundreds of membership associations, from neighbourhood development groups (sociedades de fomento) to libraries, mutual aid associations and unions.Footnote 4
The growth of membership organisations has received a good deal of attention. However, football clubs have largely been ignored in this context, despite having arguably the most impact, with the exception of unions. They certainly were much larger than most unions. Successful football clubs, despite being created to permit the playing of the game and controlled by the members, rapidly became complex organisations dominated by influential men and intimately connected to the political and social world of the barrios. Football clubs helped create a sense of neighbourhood identity which is crucial to understanding the culture of Buenos Aires. In contrast to the situation in most other countries, football was based primarily in that one city, and for decades much of the fan support for almost all teams came from particular barrios of Buenos Aires. In the twenty-first century, Buenos Aires has 79 stadiums where professional football is played.Footnote 5
Serious examinations of civic organisations in Buenos Aires began in the 1980s, as Argentine historians grappled with the question of what parts of their political traditions seemed worth saving in the wake of the horrific military regime that was in power between 1976 and 1983.Footnote 6 A historic and vigorous civic culture seemed to prove that there existed a real democratic (or proto-democratic) tradition. As Hilda Sabato has shown, a relatively dense net of civic associations existed in Buenos Aires, which gave inhabitants a voice despite the lack of fair voting.Footnote 7 Leandro Gutiérrez and Luis Alberto Romero and many of their students have pointed out that during the first opening towards democracy – the so-called Radical period, 1916–30 – and the subsequent period of neo-conservative domination between 1930 and 1943, dense networks of membership organisations existed in Buenos Aires. They continued to flourish in the capital after the 1930 coup because from 1932 politics within the city was democratic. Despite the extensive use of fraud in most elections in the province of Buenos Aires in the 1930s, in Avellaneda, just south of the Federal District boundary, conservatives remained capable of winning elections honestly because of the elaborate and popular political machine that they created.Footnote 8 Unions, people's libraries (bibliotecas populares), neighbourhood development groups, mutual aid associations and political organisations were extraordinarily common. As the years have passed, however, historians have become less optimistic about the positive impacts of civic associations. This article supports some of that pessimism. Although young males created their own institutions in order to play football, they turned to outsiders in order to have their clubs flourish.
The development of clubs coincided with the reform of the voting system in 1912, which made voting fairer and obligatory for male citizens, at both the municipal and national levels. Football clubs were the focus of interest of thousands of young men, many of whom were eligible to vote. Politicians, who were exploring how to attract voters, saw the clubs as a way of building bastions of support, particularly in their neighbourhoods. Politicians were creating personal capital, coteries of friends and sympathisers who could provide political support. At times, internal elections within the clubs came to reflect the political tensions that existed at both local and national levels. However, both clubs and politicians usually benefited from the politicians’ interest in football.
The Beginnings
Football first came to Argentina with British citizens, and by the last decades of the nineteenth century Britons and their Argentine descendants had established a number of clubs that played the sport. Almost all the players of the first dominant team, Alumni, had British surnames. However, by 1913 Alumni had withdrawn from competition and teams with British ties had been surpassed by those whose players were predominantly native-born Argentines or came from other immigrant communities.Footnote 9
In the first decades of the twentieth century, the population of the city was predominately male, foreign and young, though more of the age group that played football was likely to have been born in the country.Footnote 10 In addition, an increasing number of inhabitants had the time, income and inclination to engage in leisure activities. Football clubs were founded in order to play the game, although with time it became a spectator sport. The growing demand for places to play, stadiums and other expenses forced successful clubs to turn for support to those who could provide ties to the state or to other sources of power or wealth. In many ways this parallels the path followed by trade unions after 1916 where the unions, despite their ideological scorn for bourgeois politics, found that they needed ties to the government if they were going to be able to deal with employers.Footnote 11
In Argentina, and indeed much of South America, football teams were and are fielded by clubs governed by boards elected by the membership, making the ties to politics relatively simple. A characteristic of Argentine football leagues, which they share with soccer in much of the rest of the world, is that teams are not permanently in the first division. Teams ascend to a higher level by winning or get relegated after doing badly.
The situation for football clubs in the early twentieth century was extraordinarily fluid. Most existed for a brief time and then disappeared for a myriad of reasons. Boys or young men who wanted to play football founded a club in their barrio. Their club's success depended upon prowess on the field and an ability to lure good players to join them. Other factors were crucial. Clubs needed to achieve some type of organisational stability. Successful clubs also needed to attract powerful patronage. To be successful as a club, it was not enough to win games. Expenses had to be met; a ground on which to play had to be acquired and, as teams climbed the ladder of success, stadiums had to be built. Membership dues and ticket sales could not by themselves cover expenses. Most clubs founded in the first decades of the twentieth century have long ago disappeared and we can learn little about them. Those that we do know something about were successful both on the field and organisationally.Footnote 12
The barrio basis of the clubs and their creation prior to 1912 helped shape the nature of football in Argentina compared to other Latin American countries. Unlike Vasco da Gama in Rio de Janeiro, Palestra Itália (today Palmeiras) in São Paulo, Alianza Lima, or Audax Italiano and Palestino of Santiago, the Buenos Aires clubs reflected the mixed ethnicity of the city's neighbourhoods.Footnote 13 As Julio Frydenberg has shown, the names of Buenos Aires clubs do not reference foreign nations, indicating the mixed nature of their founders or at least their desire not to be identified with a foreign community. In contrast to Santiago, trade unions played an insignificant role because the teams were founded before the formation of solid unions, while, in contrast to Brazil, Peru and to a lesser extent Chile, Argentine clubs grew important under a relatively open political system in which politicians needed to look for support. The nature of clubs in the inland city of Córdoba was similar to that in Buenos Aires, but elites and institutions played a larger role there.Footnote 14
Many Buenos Aires clubs were formed slightly earlier than the reform of the political system that opened up politics. In other words, the development of football clubs occurred prior to, or parallel to, the creation of other types of popular structure. Even when the clubs were controlled by politicians or wealthy men, they were rarely members of the elite, probably because elites embraced rugby, field hockey, golf and equestrian sports. It is difficult to identify the class basis of clubs because neighbourhoods tended to contain residents of both the working and the middle classes and social mobility between generations was relatively common.Footnote 15
Almost all of the ‘important’ clubs and many of the minor ones in greater Buenos Aires were formed in the first decades of the twentieth century. The playing of football was the primary reason for the formation of almost all of them.Footnote 16 As early as 1907, there were around 350 clubs in greater Buenos Aires. By 1912 there were 482.Footnote 17 Early record-keeping was vague and therefore we know little about their formation beyond club mythology. Almost all have tales of a group of boys or young men getting together in a public place, someone's house or a café to start a football club. In 1976, one of the founders of the Club Atlético Atlanta, Emilio Bolinches, told a newspaper this about Atlanta's founding: ‘One day I got together with some friends and we founded a club.’ They met in the house of a local businessman and when there were not enough chairs adjourned to a nearby plaza. They wanted to play football.Footnote 18 Although there are tales about difficulties in raising even piddling sums, many of the founders were middle-class. For example, many original members of Boca Juniors and River Plate, both started in the predominantly working-class district of La Boca, were middle-class since they were attending or had attended secondary school, where some had been exposed to football.Footnote 19
By the 1920s, football had become part of urban life and stoked the imagination of much of the population. Membership in clubs climbed sharply, as the clubs became places to watch rather than just play football. River Plate had 1,087 members in 1917, 3,358 in 1925, 7,521 in 1928, 15,686 in 1930, 20,687 in 1932 and 33,282 in 1938. Even a small club like Temperley had 354 members in 1923, 997 in 1930 and 1,860 in 1939.Footnote 20 In the wake of professionalisation in 1931, attendance at games soared.Footnote 21
Football had become a mass spectacle. In part this reflected the legal establishment of a longer weekend with the addition of Saturday afternoon, in 1932 in the capital and 1938 in the province. The use of lighting permitted night games, and radio stations broadcast matches and information on major clubs. Newspapers and sports magazines such as El Gráfico intensified their coverage of football.
By the 1920s, however, fluidity had lessened. Newer clubs found it harder to meet the increasingly stringent requirements for grounds and stadiums, and independent leagues that were not part of the formal football structures had begun to disappear. Football as a spectator sport meant that some clubs drew large paying crowds and thus ensured their future success. In 1928 the team in the first division that received the largest sum from the gate took in 23.5 times more money than the team that received the least. This was a time of sham amateurism. Although the players were technically amateurs, good footballers received compensation in various ways, making the more successful clubs the popular ones, since they had the resources to draw players from poorer teams. In 1931 openly professional football was introduced. Some previously important teams tried to remain amateur but lost any wide base of support. The so-called ‘big five’ (Boca Juniors, River Plate, San Lorenzo de Almagro, Racing and Independiente) dominated the first division because their greater popularity gave them sizeable revenue and thus enabled them to acquire the best players.Footnote 22
Embedded in the Population
The population of the city of Buenos Aires almost doubled between 1909 and 1936.Footnote 23 It spread across the city's landscape and away from the historic centre at an even faster rate because of the growth of public transportation. As the city grew, a sense of neighbourhood developed around the scattered shopping areas and locations of dense employment and residence. People became strongly attached to these barrios.Footnote 24 The barrios had no fixed boundaries. (See Figure 1 for a schematic map of barrios mentioned in the text.)
Figure 1. Map of the City of Buenos Aires with the Barrios and Suburbs Mentioned
Football clubs became crucial to the identity of many barrios. The importance of football clubs for barrio identification is a trait shared with at least Santiago and Lima but appears more intense in Buenos Aires.Footnote 25 In Buenos Aires, as a sense of neighbourhood was in many cases just forming, one can hypothesise that at times football clubs helped to form that identification. As a website comments, ‘Atlanta is not Villa Crespo [a barrio], but Villa Crespo would not be Villa Crespo without Atlanta.’Footnote 26 Historically only two teams, Boca Juniors and River Plate, developed citywide and national popularity. After its move out of the barrio of La Boca into the wealthier northern sector of Buenos Aires, River Plate became identified with the more comfortable sectors and their arch-rivals with the poorer ones.
The identification of a neighbourhood with a club does not mean, however, that that was where the club was founded. Because of difficulties in locating places to play, many clubs spent at least some time playing away from where their founders lived or worked. Some came to be identified with different neighbourhoods from that of their founding, but the tie between a team and a barrio was often extraordinarily strong.Footnote 27 Clubs helped to create a sense of community; they came to be more than just a place to play or watch football. They provided a ‘respectable’ location for entertainment. Important tango groups performed there and people danced to the music. Clubs held carnival celebrations and tango dance contests.Footnote 28 Football clubs became important places for people of a barrio to gather. Although football remained a largely masculine domain, other activities included women.
The sense of community that clubs helped to generate can be seen in part through tango. As early as 1916 a tango dedicated to Boca Juniors was recorded. In the next decades, other clubs received similar songs. For example, after San Lorenzo de Almagro's 1927 championship season a tango was written honouring its victory and dedicated to Eduardo Larrandart and Pedro Bidegain, the club's president and vice-president and active politicians. This tango, entitled San Lorenzo, makes clear the ties between a barrio and its club. A segment went: ‘The boys of Boedo [the barrio] celebrated the victory / that the ‘tin’ [team] of San Lorenzo won this year, / arriving with its triumph at the pedestal of glory: / and [that] was the only strong desire that the barrio coveted.’Footnote 29 Ernesto Ziperstein lists 25 tangos connected to San Lorenzo. Other large clubs also had numerous songs dedicated to them.Footnote 30
As clubs got larger they served more functions and bound the community to them. An example is Atlanta, which was founded in 1904. As early as 1910, it had a library which received a large donation of books from the newspaper La Nación. In 1936 it built a basketball court, and it also had one for tennis. In 1942, when it opened its new headquarters, it had a roller-skating rink which was also used for dances. Before 1943 boxing, basketball, tennis, track events, bocce (the Italian form of lawn bowls), handball, chess and table tennis were all practised there.Footnote 31 Even a small club like Chacarita Juniors by the early 1940s provided free legal consultations and low-cost medical services for its members.Footnote 32
Successful clubs had deep neighbourhood ties but also attracted membership from outside the barrio. According to El Gráfico, in 1927 the presidential election of Boca Juniors was between two factions, one composed of older members from the neighbourhood and the other representing newer members and those from outside the barrio. By the mid-1930s, different factions of Boca Juniors’ membership had opened offices for the club's elections in neighbourhoods far from La Boca, and these were important in the election outcome. Still, small areas within the barrio also mattered. In 1937 Boca's president, Camilo Cichero, was interviewed about why he had decided to run for office. He said that he had been asked by the opposition group known as ‘Los de Ayalos’ or ‘those of the Café Torre’, because many of them lived on the street of that name or went regularly to that café. These were his childhood friends and according to him were the same as ever, despite having jobs ranging from masons to merchants and professionals of various kinds. He had grown up there and regularly went to the café until 1927, when he moved away after receiving his medical degree. From 1927 until the previous year, he had been a doctor for the team and had served on the governing board. Only his successor, Eduardo Sánchez Terrero, the son-in-law of Argentina's ex-president, Agustín Justo, was not of the barrio, and he was chosen for his connections.Footnote 33
The Role of Notable Individuals
Politicians and wealthy individuals played a large role in football clubs. That politicians would want to become identified with football clubs or provide them with favours is not surprising. Leaving aside interest in football, politicians desired to create a clientele or, where that was not practical, at least to build links to voters. After the passage of the Sáenz Peña law in 1912, which assured cleaner elections, grassroots politics necessitated the mobilisation of voters and campaign workers.Footnote 34 Football clubs provided bases to cultivate that support. A former leader of Racing Club, Carlos Boloque, said in 1965: ‘A football club has a tremendous social importance. If we measure only from the point of view of politics, the members and sympathisers used to mean hundreds of thousands of votes that no party is in a position to disdain.’Footnote 35 This was also true in the 1920s and 1930s, though the number of voters who could be swayed was smaller. Clubs provided a way for politicians to be visible in their communities and build personal ties that would hopefully translate into votes.
The desire to be identified with a particular team started early. In 1914, eight years after its founding, Defensores de Belgrano reached the first division and a triumphal march took place. Among the participants was José P. Tamborini, who became an important Radical politician. Tamborini was born and built his political base in Belgrano; elected to congress in 1918, he later became minister of the interior, a senator and, in 1946, a presidential candidate.Footnote 36
An example of the influence of important men is Reinaldo Elena. His father owned a marine hardware store in La Boca and in 1919, at the age of 20, Reinaldo helped found a pro-Radical newspaper, La Pluma, which covered La Boca and the adjacent barrio of Barracas. In the 1920s Elena dispensed patronage as a boss of the Anti-Personalist Radicals (the faction that opposed Hipólito Yrigoyen and supported President Marcelo T. de Alvear) in La Boca. He was elected to the city council twice in the 1930s and to congress three times after the overthrow of Juan Perón. In 1938 two newspapers, La Razón and La República, claimed that the Anti-Personalists’ good showing in elections in La Boca was due to Elena.
What did he do to attract support? Elena positioned himself so as to be close to the inhabitants of his barrio and obtained concrete benefits for them. He belonged to several local development associations. He was active in a football club, Boca Alumni, most of whose supporters lived in a particularly poor part of the barrio. It remained small, having 252 members in 1926. Elena, representing the club, played an important role on the council of the Asociación Argentina de Football, one of two competing organisations of football clubs. He also belonged to Boca Juniors and when, in 1927, the club was split into two factions, both offered him the presidency, which he refused. When Elena served on the city council and Boca Juniors needed something, he always helped. In 1938, when representatives of Boca went to see the intendente (mayor) of Buenos Aires to invite him to the laying of the cornerstone of their new stadium, they brought Elena along. Earlier, the club had made him an honorary member simultaneously with president-elect Roberto M. Ortiz. River Plate also named him an honorary member. In 1965 Elena's political right-hand man was Boca Juniors’ vice-president.Footnote 37 Although Elena had special political talents, he shared his strategy of embedding himself in the organisations of his barrio with many.
For businessmen, football clubs were a way of expanding their influence within the political system. Involvement with the clubs enabled them to widen their contacts and gave them publicity and prestige. In describing a similar situation in Brazil, Janet Lever hypothesises that the holding of club posts is part of a career pattern of holding more than one job. The additional jobs serve as a springboard to more lucrative opportunities, and alliance-building is crucial. James Brennan and Marcelo Rougier make a similar observation about Argentine business associations.Footnote 38 The importance of the identification between barrios and their clubs cannot be discounted. A local business owner might feel a great love for his club and his barrio, but a club leadership role would engender barrio loyalty to his business.
The Need for a Place to Play
Buenos Aires had few public parks and these could not be used to set up stands without political permission. In peripheral barrios that were built up, such as La Boca, the only vacant land was in the port area, which was controlled by the state or large companies. Groups of young men could obtain the use of that land only through influential intermediaries. Obtaining a pitch, and hopefully later a stadium, was not a one-time event. River Plate played in six sites before moving to its current stadium in 1938. Boca played in five locations before securing its present home. In central areas of the city, finding a place to play was close to impossible. For example, Independiente had been formed by young men who worked in a downtown department store called Ciudad de Londres and were joined by employees from other downtown stores. In its first three years, Independiente moved three times inside the city of Buenos Aires before relocating to the industrial suburb of Avellaneda in the province. Teams often had to travel long distances from their home district. In their early years, Boca, River and San Lorenzo de Almagro all played briefly outside the city proper. When Boca played in suburban Wilde between 1912 and 1914, it lost 1,200 of its 1,500 members (see Table 1).Footnote 39
Table 1. The Neighbourhoods of the Pitches of Key Football Clubs Mentioned
Note: The barrio names used are the modern names; which barrio a pitch was in is debatable since boundaries were not clearly defined.
Sources: Asociación Amateurs Argentina de Football, Memoria y balance general correspondiente al ejercicio de 1926; Julio David Frydenberg, ‘Espacio urbano y práctica del fútbol, Buenos Aires 1900–1915’, Revista Digital, www.efdeportes.com/efd13/juliof.htm; Alejandro Fabbri, El nacimiento de una pasión: historia de los clubes de fútbol (Buenos Aires: Capital Intelectual, 2006).
Even clubs created in not fully developed neighbourhoods, where land might be available, needed the help of politicians or influential individuals to obtain places to play. When clubs became successful and wanted to advance to the first division, the football authorities forced them to build stands and other facilities. Frequently clubs needed monetary or political help. As clubs increased in scope and became more complex to administer, obtaining good leaders became difficult because club directors were not paid.Footnote 40 Only wealthy individuals or others such as politicians whose efforts were compensated in other areas had the time to preside over large clubs.
From early on, politics and influence mattered. For example, in 1911, three years after its founding, Huracán faced a dilemma. It needed a ground, and one that was properly equipped, if it was to be admitted to the official football league. Through the good offices of Jorge Newbery, a well-known ‘sportsman’ who had adopted the team after the club started using a picture of his hot-air balloon as the team's symbol, the club received the loan of a ground from the Buenos Aires city government. It still needed to build the required facilities, for which it lacked funds. According to legend, the club was approached by a conservative politician, Eliseo Cantón, who gave it the money to buy timber for the facilities in return for 200 voting documents, many more than the 80 members possessed. These would allow Cantón to control 200 votes. Huracán successfully collected the documents and completed the facilities.Footnote 41
The role of wealthy individuals is well illustrated by Vélez Sársfield. In 1941 when the club owed over 39,000 pesos, had lost its ground, had barely over 2,400 members and had dropped to the second division, José Amalfitani took over as president. He paid the debt himself; the club returned to the first division in the 1944 season, and he remained its president until his death in 1969. Amalfitani's actions were not unique in the history of Vélez, although the amount of money was.Footnote 42
Despite the amateur status of football before 1931, the Socialist Party paper was lamenting the payment or the giving of employment to players as early as 1916. In 1928, according to El Gráfico, River paid its players 15 pesos for a defeat, 30 for a draw and 50 for a victory. Ludovico Bidoglio, an outstanding defender for Boca, transferred to that team instead of San Lorenzo because Boca promised to get him a job as an electrician, obtaining one for him at the Ministry of Public Works. In 1930 El Gráfico made sarcastic comments about a player for Chacarita Juniors, Juan Gil, who, the magazine said, went regularly to his job – unlike most footballers. He worked, as did six of his teammates, for the Department of National Hygiene, whose secretary general was Tiburcio Padilla, president of the club and a Radical politician. Contacts with politicians or businessmen who could provide jobs were a necessity.Footnote 43
Nueva Chicago and a Web of Community
The formation of a well-established civic culture, including football clubs, in the first years of the twentieth century can be seen in the barrio of Mataderos (often called Nueva Chicago).Footnote 44 In 1901 it was a new neighbourhood. In that year, the municipal slaughterhouse opened there, along with the city's cattle market. Already developers had begun to sell lots for housing. The first real social organisation, Centro Social Nueva Chicago, was founded in 1902 with the help of the second director of the national stockyards (1904–25) and conservative politician, Alejandro Mohr. Mohr was elected to the city council in the first open contest in 1918 and re-elected in 1920. He also served on the local school board.
In a recent study of the neighbourhood, María Teresa Sirvent located 25 extant neighbourhood organisations founded before 1940. Many other development societies, people's libraries and athletic clubs had existed. The most important athletic club was the Club Atlético Nueva Chicago, which a group of young men founded in 1911 to play football. Nueva Chicago rapidly became a key local institution and remains so, though it has largely been confined to the second division. Mohr played a crucial role in its establishment. One of its first grounds was obtained with his help, as was the timber for the first goalposts. The club's second president, Roberto Grillo, came to the organisation at Mohr's suggestion. In 1913, when an honorary commission was established to aid the directors, its president was Mohr. Honorary commissions had some influence, for at least three future club presidents served on them. In 1932 Mohr's son, José Luis, served a term as the club's president.Footnote 45
The other crucial political connection was to the Socialist Party through Fernando Ghío. His family emigrated to La Boca in 1885 from Italy when he was five. Shortly thereafter they moved to Mataderos, where they were among the early inhabitants. Ghío became active in the Centro Social Nueva Chicago and in other social clubs. Besides editing two local newspapers, he helped found the local section of the Socialist Party. He was active in several development societies and in 1917 presided over a national congress of such associations. After 1910 Ghío owned a bar, which was famous for its traditional gaucho singers, as well as for cultural discussions attended by intellectuals close to the Socialist Party. Ghío reputedly taught people to read and lent books from his large private library. He assisted the founding of Nueva Chicago and was elected president three times in the 1920s but was active in the organisation for a longer time. Ghío won election to the Buenos Aires city council in 1932 on the Socialist Party list.Footnote 46
The coexistence of different political tendencies was possible because of the club's importance to the community and Mataderos’ sense of identity. The team's first shirts were donated by Carlos Peretti, an owner of a large store in the barrio. Also, as Luis Alberto Romero has noted, in civic associations in the 1920s and 1930s people with different ideologies could and frequently did coexist.Footnote 47
Many presidents of Nueva Chicago were influential local citizens. Fernando Gacio Mastache owned a food store, published a local newspaper intended to ‘defend the interests, moral and material, of Nueva Chicago [the barrio]’, had served on the honorary commission for the club and had been active in the Centro Social Nueva Chicago. Amadeo Cozza, prior to his time as president, had served pro bono as the team's doctor.Footnote 48
The barrio's loyalty to the club explains some of the local elites’ participation. When a store owner from Nueva Chicago went to a match against Huracán and rooted for the latter, he faced a boycott that forced him to leave the neighbourhood. Simón Bruchstein, who opened the barrio's second pharmacy around 1930, donated the club's first bocce court.Footnote 49 Although his motivations are unknowable, such a move would build ties to his potential customer base.
A crisis in the late 1930s illustrates the need for connections. The pitch where matches had been played since 1920 was requisitioned for a hospital. After the long-time director of the national stockyards, Edmundo Kelly, intervened, Nueva Chicago received a new site from the intendente. This action was then approved by the city council. When Kelly took the ceremonial kick-off at the inauguration of the ground, 5,000 spectators were in attendance, and the club had 800 members, a tempting target for a politician.Footnote 50
Community and Politics
The leaders of San Lorenzo de Almagro during the 1920s were tightly linked with the UCR, and the club's internal conflicts partially reflected problems in the party. The barrio where the club was based was dominated by political caudillos, and their dominance arose in part because of the party leaders’ ties to the community.
The San Lorenzo club was founded by boys who, according to legend, were playing football in the street when one was almost hit by a tram. A Salesian priest, Father Lorenzo Massa, offered them a place to play and became their adviser and supporter. Massa helped pick their name and bought their first shirts. Sponsorship by a priest makes San Lorenzo unique, at least among the clubs that became successful.
The club's early history was difficult. For two years it ceased to exist, and when it was reconstituted it wandered far from its home barrio, Almagro. For a short time it played in the distant northern suburb of Martínez, with players and spectators walking 18 blocks from the railway station. When they rented a pitch closer to Almagro, the league said it was inadequate, but the club needed to pay what it owed and a sizeable contribution came from Massa. He found a long-term solution as well, a property which could be rented and developed as a football ground. Massa and several others contributed relatively large sums to make the pitch playable. After this period, Massa was transferred elsewhere in the country.Footnote 51
As it became a mass-based party, the Radical Party developed political machines in the electoral wards of Buenos Aires. Pedro Bidegain became the dominant Radical politician in the sixth ward, the home of San Lorenzo. Bidegain was born, married and lived in the ward. As early as 1906 he held a position in the ward's party structure. By 1920 he headed it and in 1923 Crítica used him as an example of the local party barons. In 1921 he was elected to the city council and in 1926 to congress. He had a good deal of charisma. When a female fan was asked in 1935 why she rooted for San Lorenzo, she replied that she was religious and the club had been founded by Father Massa, adding as another reason ‘the sympathy that was inspired in me by Don Pedro Bidegain, whom I always remember.’
In 1918 Bidegain became vice-president of San Lorenzo. In addition, his brother, José, was on the board of directors, while his nephew, Eduardo Larrandart, was secretary. Both José and Larrandart were Radical activists. Between 1920 and 1928 the latter was president of the club, with Pedro Bidegain as vice-president.
San Lorenzo was very much part of the community. Bidegain and Larrandart spent much time in the Café Dante talking with the club's players, members of the community and the many literary figures who identified with that section of the city, Boedo. Followers of Huracán, a club based in a contiguous barrio, were reputedly not permitted to enter the Dante; similarly followers of San Lorenzo were not permitted in ‘the café’ of Huracán. A tango written in 1933 after San Lorenzo won a championship said: ‘Because San Lorenzo won on Sunday, / The habitués of the Dante put on their party clothes’. The first four decades of the century saw associations of all types created in the barrio. Bidegain helped found the Universidad Popular de Boedo and a social club that survived until 2003. Larrandart served as president of that club in the 1930s.
When the Radical Party splintered over the role of Hipólito Yrigoyen during the presidency of Marcelo T. de Alvear, the split led to conflict within San Lorenzo in 1924. This occurred despite the family connections between the key leaders of the two factions that emerged. Larrandart was an Anti-Personalist, while Bidegain supported Yrigoyen. Larrandart's ability to hold on to the presidency of the club may not reflect voters’ approval of his political beliefs, but rather that San Lorenzo won league titles in 1923, 1924 and 1927.
Despite his faction's failure to dominate, in March 1926 Bidegain used San Lorenzo's membership rolls to ask for support for his candidacy for congress. The flier that was distributed read in part: ‘If until now San Lorenzo de Almagro had in Mr Bidegain one of its best collaborators, what cannot be hoped for if the porteño electorate sends him to occupy a seat in the Chamber of Deputies?’ According to the Socialist paper, some were displeased that members’ addresses were taken from club records, but Bidegain claimed that it was not a big issue and that he had done a lot for the club, including obtaining a subsidy. In later accounts, he did do a lot for San Lorenzo. According to one story, his political influence helped force Huracán from a stadium just blocks away from San Lorenzo's, thus aiding his club in consolidating its neighbourhood base.
Any modus vivendi between San Lorenzo's factions broke down in 1928, purportedly over who should have represented the football federation on a trip to Europe. However, 1928 also saw a heated national presidential election with the two Radical factions as prime contenders, and this was likely the real reason for the conflict. Friction led to Bidegain's resignation from the club's vice-presidency.
After Yrigoyen's victory in the presidential election, in early 1929 Bidegain faced his nephew in a club election. According to La Vanguardia, Bidegain threatened the government employment of players and board members. The players openly supported Bidegain. His opponents charged that it was all politics and that players were intentionally losing games to discredit Larrandart. Rumours circulated that San Lorenzo was to receive a subsidy from Congress (Bidegain was a congressman) and that several important players wanted to play for San Lorenzo if Bidegain was elected club president. Two bus companies had posters in their vehicles’ windows supporting Bidegain. The newspaper, Ultima Hora, backed him, printing, for example, a headline that read: ‘San Lorenzo without Bidegain is not San Lorenzo – Never will the club San Lorenzo de Almagro be in better hands than those of señor Pedro Bidegain.’ The assembly of club members was marred by several fights, despite the presence of police and government officials, and Bidegain won by 597 votes to 482.Footnote 52
Bidegain's presidency was extremely active. The playing of basketball and tennis began. Membership grew from 3,612 to 13,638. This is a large increase, but not totally out of line with other big clubs at the time. Bidegain recruited established players and frequently persuaded them to play for San Lorenzo. The stadium was expanded to become the largest in the capital, seating 73,400. According to one account, municipal workers were used. Bidegain had political help. The club's vice-president in 1930 was Pedro Villemur, an Almagro resident who was also president of the city council.
After Yrigoyen's overthrow in September 1930, Bidegain went into exile and was jailed on his return. Other prominent Radicals were forced from the club's leadership and an interim president took charge. In early 1931, elections took place, with the factions from 1929 competing. Larrandart's supporters proclaimed that they would remove politics from the club and restore good administration to an organisation that was in bad financial shape. With many more voters than two years before, Larrandart won by 2,052 votes to 1,411. His success was not surprising given the Anti-Personalist support for the coup. The players were upset and for a time threatened to leave the club. Bidegain's followers were to remain out of power.Footnote 53
The Radicals still retained influence within the club. When in the late 1930s it wanted help from the city to build a social centre with a gym and a library, among other features, two Radical city councillors, Villemur and Luis Boffi, who had been on the governing council of San Lorenzo, presented the project. It was never approved.Footnote 54
A Suburb and the Role of Its Key Football Clubs
Avellaneda, an industrial suburb, lies directly south of the city of Buenos Aires, across the boundary between the federal district and the province, and had over 160,000 inhabitants in 1920.Footnote 55 Two clubs – Racing and Independiente – rapidly embedded themselves there, becoming two of the largest and most popular clubs in Buenos Aires. Not only were they fierce opponents on the pitch, but they came to represent opposing political positions. The focus here will be on Racing because there is more information available about it, but the two clubs should be examined together to see the impact of politics on the world of the clubs.
Racing had close links with Alberto Barceló, a conservative political boss, who controlled Avellaneda during almost the entire interwar period; it was therefore usually dominated by men connected to the local political elite. Barceló encouraged the establishment of large industrial plants in Avellaneda and favoured public works. He regularly received friends, followers and favour-seekers in his large house. He permitted – to say the least – prostitution and gambling, which undoubtedly paid the costs of his political machine. Barceló had close relations with the legendary tango singer and composer, Carlos Gardel, who was a fan of Racing. The club was identified with Barceló and its rapid success undoubtedly enhanced his popularity.Footnote 56 Barceló's initial support for Racing came when football was still unimportant and before the voting reform of 1912. He was not, therefore, looking for popular support through his initial aid for Racing, but was helping his friends and supporters in something they wanted to do.
The club's support lay among the middle class of Avellaneda. A direct predecessor of Racing had been created by Argentine employees of the Ferrocarril Sud. Another predecessor was formed after a meeting at the home of two of Barceló's brothers. A member of that club, Leandro Boloque, who was to go on to lead Racing for three years, was Alberto's brother-in-law.Footnote 57 After a number of twists and turns, Racing was formed in 1903; its founders were mostly under 20 and were all Argentine-born. By January 1909, Racing had 251 members and received economic assistance from the Barceló family. This caused some founding members to leave Racing and play for Independiente, a club which had just moved to Avellaneda and became the eternal rival of Racing.Footnote 58 Independiente became identified with Barceló's opponents.
Racing dominated Argentine football from 1913 to 1919, ending British hegemony, and for some this marked the start of a distinctive Argentine style of play. In 1920 Racing was the largest club, with 1,413 members. At the beginning of the 1920s it had facilities for basketball, swimming, track events and Basque paddleball. In 1926 Racing had 2,624 members, making it the third-largest club, just ahead of Independiente. By 1931 it claimed slightly over 7,000 members, while Independiente had over 5,000. In 1935 Racing had 21,500 members. As the club grew, it added more sports. By the end of 1935, members played football, tennis, bocce, basketball, paddleball, roller-skating, field hockey, track events, gymnastics, swimming, table tennis, fencing and Greco-Roman wrestling. Some sports were played by both men and women.Footnote 59
In addition Racing held carnival celebrations. It established a beach for its members along the coast. For its young members it had a summer camp and excursions. During the summer, Racing showed free movies which non-members could attend. The club held conferences and classes, including cookery lessons by the famous Doña Petrona. Racing also organised a football tournament in 1933 in which 28 schools participated. It gave milk to 500 children three times a week, many coming from local schools. In other words, it was part of the community.Footnote 60
In a study of the 28 most influential followers of Barceló, ten belonged to Racing and one to Independiente.Footnote 61 The leaders of Racing, according to Juan Corradi, discussed the affairs of the club with Barceló at his home. The club's political connections are made obvious by an incident in 1916 when Barceló and a number of his followers were indicted for using their official positions to influence elections. Three of those indicted, Leopoldo Siri, Luis Carbone and Pedro Groppo, had been or were to be presidents of Racing and were together to hold that office for 13 years. All were absolved. Other Racing presidents, such as Arturo Giro and Leandro Boloque, were among the regular visitors to the house of Barceló. In 1908, Pedro Werner served briefly as secretary of the city council, just three years after serving as the club's third president. However, club elections were frequently contested and the dominant group not always victorious.Footnote 62
Many club leaders were people of substance. The president of Racing in 1922–3 and 1925, Pedro Groppo, was a doctor who became director of the Hospital Fiorito, built by Barceló. He served as president of Avellaneda's city council in 1919 and 1920 and from 1922 until 1927. In 1930 the military government appointed him to run the city. Groppo also served in both houses of the Buenos Aires provincial legislature and in the national chamber of deputies. He was the national finance minister between 1938 and 1940. When he married in 1934, Barceló was a witness at the civil ceremony.Footnote 63 Luis Carbone served as president of Racing for nine years and was a municipal official.Footnote 64 The ties to the political elite were deep and when Racing opened a new headquarters in 1934, it celebrated with a banquet in honour of the nation's president, the governor of the province of Buenos Aires and Barceló.Footnote 65
Like other large clubs, Racing attracted members from outside the barrio even though they found it difficult to use the club's facilities. This produced tensions and permitted members who were not close to Barceló to control the club for a number of years. By 1932, pressure existed to create a branch in the capital and there was unhappiness with the management of the club, especially with the football team. That year two electoral lists presented themselves; one represented traditional leaders, and the other apparently newer members, especially those from the capital. The latter's presidential candidate, and the easy victor, was Ernesto Malbec, a former player for Racing and a distinguished plastic surgeon. Shortly after Malbec took office, a branch of the club was opened in the capital, and not very long afterwards, one was created south of Avellaneda in Bernal. Although Malbec and his successor, Antonio Salustio, may not have been as close to Barceló as many others, they were not necessarily political opponents, since Salustio, when he was president of Racing, joined the presidents of Boca, River, San Lorenzo and Vélez Sársfield in a banquet in honour of presidential candidate Roberto M. Ortiz, whom Barceló supported.Footnote 66 This did not prevent the governor of Buenos Aires province from taking over Racing in 1938 and handing it to Barceló's brother-in-law, alleging misuse of power by those in charge.Footnote 67
Independiente gave to its members and the community many of the same opportunities that Racing offered, though probably on a lesser scale.Footnote 68 This is not surprising in a city dominated by Barceló's conservatives. In a sense Independiente became the club for Barceló's critics. From 1911 until at least 1933 the key figures in Independiente also had political ties, but to those who opposed Barceló. Juan R. Mignaburu, a lawyer, had been intendente of what became Avellaneda in 1899 and served on the city council as late as 1902. In 1894 he founded a newspaper that defended the political positions of Bartolomé Mitre. His successor as the dominant figure was Pedro Canaveri, a Radical politician who served two years on the city council while president of the club.Footnote 69
Both Racing and Independiente stirred deep passions in Avellaneda. There were two funeral homes in the city, one owned by the Peruihl family, who were fans of Independiente, the other by the Corradi family, who supported Racing and not incidentally Barceló. When the two teams played, the victor's followers would go to ‘their’ funeral home, borrow coffins and parade them past their opponents.Footnote 70
Escaping the Barrio
River Plate has the reputation of being the team of the wealthy. However, its origins lay in the largely working-class waterfront neighbourhood of La Boca, which had been heavily populated by Genoese immigrants but by the time of River's founding had become much less so. The club resulted from the merger of two clubs. One, La Rosales, was considered middle-class, since its direct predecessor was formed by high-school students. The other, Santa Rosa, was founded by young men who met at the house of a Mr Jacobs, a deputy manager of the Wilson Coal Yards, in order to have tea, dance and practise English. One attendee, Isodoro Kitzler, had been born in Bombay and attended the school of Alejandro Watson Hutton, who is considered the ‘founder’ of football in Argentina. Two others, Leopoldo Bard and Livio Ratto, both future presidents of River and players on the team, became medical school students and Radicals. Bard, despite being Jewish and born in Austria-Hungary, became an important politician, serving as majority leader in the Chamber of Deputies. Bard's presidency of River occurred before he and the club became important.Footnote 71 Undoubtedly his connections with River helped his political career.
In 1916, five clubs based in La Boca belonged to the major football association, making the search for support difficult. In a popularity contest conducted by a newspaper, Boca Juniors, with 2,067 votes, was the most popular club, and River followed with 1,629. The other three lagged far behind.Footnote 72
For River Plate, the key to observing the importance of politics and influential men is the search for a place to play. River's first pitch was near the docks in La Boca. However, in 1906 the Ministry of Agriculture forced the club off the land. River was offered the use of land in the suburb of Sarandí by José Bernasconi, an executive of a naval store company, Dresco. He became president of River in 1909.Footnote 73
After one year, the team moved back to the ground that it had previously occupied and stayed there until 1913, when the government agency that oversaw the ports definitively evicted it. In 1912 the new president of River, Antonio Zolezzi, had obtained a 3,000-peso subsidy from the municipal government, which River used to build stands for spectators. Zolezzi was a city councillor and presented the motion in favour of the subsidy. When objections were raised, Zolezzi countered that a club from the northern sector of the city had received 15,000 pesos and that some 3,000 people attended River's games. Zolezzi was born in Italy, and came to Argentina at a young age; he subsequently opened a store. He clearly did very well, as he supported mutual aid societies and popular education and founded several institutions for orphans. He also became the conservative political leader of La Boca. He was in addition an honorary member of Boca Juniors.Footnote 74
In 1914 River played on the ground of the Club Ferrocarril Oeste, which was far from its home base. The following year River rented land in the port area in order to build a stadium. In the early 1920s, however, River moved to Recoleta in the richer northern sector of the city, where it rented land. Its then president, José Bacigaluppi, explained the move by saying: ‘River is not a club for a barrio but for a city.’ This vision is not surprising, since his family's business sold subdivided lots throughout the capital, helping the city expand into new areas. The move enabled River to build a stadium holding 58,000 and a basketball court, four tennis courts, three for bocce, a swimming pool, an equipped gymnasium and a place for kids to play.Footnote 75
In the 1930s River needed a new location for a stadium and, after failing to obtain sites closer to La Boca, made the great leap to Núñez, in what was then a practically empty portion of the city. Fans had no way to get to the stadium on public transport. The club received significant assistance from the government. The city ceded a significant percentage of the land and the national government loaned the club 2.5 million pesos (over US$ 800,000 at 1935–9 exchange rates).Footnote 76
The break with La Boca was gradual. Several years after it moved out of the barrio, an official publication of the club dedicated a page to the glory of La Boca. Only in 1938 was the headquarters removed from the barrio, and remnants of fan support still existed.Footnote 77 Although River cut ties to its barrio, it made itself more attractive to the wealthier inhabitants of the northern suburbs.
Conclusions
Football clubs were founded at a time of great change in greater Buenos Aires. As the population increased rapidly, it spread away from the traditional core of the city and a sense of neighbourhood began developing. Simultaneously, political participation increased, especially after 1912, and thousands of civic associations, from libraries to unions, were formed. The founding of football clubs shows the ability of porteños to build the institutions that they felt they needed.
Most of the early football clubs have long since disappeared, but others survived. The latter were successful on the field but, equally importantly, as institutions. Politics and football clubs became intertwined. Politicians, usually from their own barrio, helped clubs obtain places to play and other favours, and in return received support. The clubs became central to the identity of the barrios in which they developed. Loyalties intermingled. This helps explain, in part, why many businessmen gave so much of their time and money to these institutions.
In recent years some who inspired the study of civic associations in Argentina have argued that the world of civic associations was permeated with politics, a much less optimistic view of them. This questioning of the role of civic associations in establishing democracy is part of a worldwide trend.Footnote 78 An examination of football clubs makes clear that in the pre-Perón period powerful men came to ‘colonise’ many of them.Footnote 79 By ‘colonise’ I mean that they came to influence them because of what they offered in real terms. Football clubs turned to those who could solve their immediate problems, even if they were not really ‘one of them’. Politicians’ role in the clubs at times led to divisiveness, as the political conflicts in the larger society came to be reflected within the institutions. This is not surprising, given the frequently heated political atmosphere in Argentina in the 1920s and 1930s.
Clubs looked to individuals as saviours rather than to their membership. This was the experience of Argentine society as a whole. Patronage and clientelism played an ever increasing role. Even labour unions, which ideologically rejected ties to the state and had much more immediate leverage than football clubs, began turning to the state for help during the second decade of the twentieth century.
The politicisation of football clubs intensified in the Perón years; they received many benefits (stadiums for example) but at the same time, like labour unions, they lost significant autonomy. The process continued in subsequent years, though not in a linear fashion. Club elections remain important. A paid advertisement for the club election of Boca Juniors played on the closed circuit television system in the Buenos Aires subway in the southern spring of 2011. Mauricio Macri rode the reputation he had built as president of Boca Juniors to victory as the chief executive of the city of Buenos Aires and became a critical political force in contemporary Argentina. Hugo Moyano, head of one of the national labour confederations, indirectly controls five football clubs which play at different levels.Footnote 80
The emergence in the late 1950s of the so-called barras bravas, the frequently violent bands of fans attached to football clubs, is linked to the politicisation of the clubs, certainly making it difficult to control them. There can be no question that current politicians use the barras for their own purposes. They have corrupted the internal working of many clubs and made attending games frequently a dangerous thing.Footnote 81 The concentration of clubs in Buenos Aires and their barrio bases of support have made the economic position of the clubs more and more difficult, as competition for players and fans among football clubs has become increasingly international.
An examination of football clubs exposes a great deal about the political culture of Argentina. Even large and mostly successful organisations perceived a need to seek help from politicians or the wealthy. Ordinary citizens, even if backed by a sizeable organisation, lacked the clout to obtain the requisite aid. The clubs also helped to shape the sense of neighbourhood that was so important in Buenos Aires for so long.
