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National Identity in the Sports Pages: Football and the Mass Media in 1920s Buenos Aires*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Matthew B. Karush
Matthew B. Karush*
Affiliation:
George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia
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Extract

The 1920s saw the emergence of a distinctive, new urban culture in the city of Buenos Aires. Although this culture did not extend to the borders of the nation, it was a national culture in the sense that it continually manufactured and reproduced images of Argentine national identity. Research conducted over the last two decades has greatly improved our understanding of this new culture. We know that it was, to a great extent, forged in the city's new, outlying barrios where manual workers lived side by side with skilled workers and members of the middle class. The relatively strong performance of the Argentine economy during these years made social mobility a more for realistic aspiration for more people than it had ever been before. Partly as a result of this economic reality, the new barrio culture revealed a less militant attitude on the part of porteño workers, a trend visible as well in the significant decline in membership and effectiveness experienced by labor unions. But the new cultural milieu reflected more than just economic prosperity; it was intimately tied to the birth of a mass culture disseminated by radio, cinema, and tabloid. In particular, the 1920s witnessed the commodification and massification of tango and football, two popular cultural practices that were now transformed into quintessential representations of Argentinidad.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , July 2003 , pp. 11 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2003

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Footnotes

*

The author would like to thank Chris Boyer, Joan Bristol, Mariano Plotkin, the anonymous reviewers of The Americas, and Judith Ewell for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

References

1 See, for example, Moya, José, Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p. 383.Google Scholar

2 Most important among this research is the work of Leandro H. Gutiérrez and Luis Alberto Romero. See Gutiérrez, and Romero, , Sectores populares, cultura y política: Buenos Aires en la entreguerra (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1995)Google Scholar. For a recent summary of the new historiographical consensus, see Leandri, Ricardo González “La nueva identidad de los sectores populares,” in Cattaruzza, Alejandro ed., Nueva Historia Argentina, vol. 7 (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2001), pp. 201–237 Google Scholar. On the decline of the union movement in the 1920s, see Munck, Ronaldo with Falcón, Ricardo and Galitelli, Bernardo, Argentina: From Anarchism to Peronism (London: Zed Books, 1987), pp. 101–102.Google Scholar

3 Lever, Janet, Soccer Madness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 6.Google Scholar

4 Rowe, William and Schelling, Vivian, Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America (London: Verso, 1991), p. 141 Google Scholar. On the political appropriation of football in the Argentine case, see Duke, Vic and Crolley, Liz “Fútbol, Politicians and the People: Populism and Politics in Argentina,” The international Journal of the History of Sport 18:3 (September 2001), pp. 93–116 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the case of early twentieth-century Peru, Steve Stein argues that the emergence of mass culture and the growing intervention of the state stripped football of its usefulness as a site of “popular expression” and transformed it into an effective tool for “social control.” By contrast, in a nuanced account of Brazilian football during the struggle for democracy of the early 1980s, Matthew Shirts shows that the sport helped generate popular identities and social movements with progressive political implications. See Steve Stein, “The Case of Soccer in Early Twentieth-Century Lima,” and Shirts, Matthew “Sócrates, Corinthians, and Questions of Democracy and Citizenship,” in Arbena, Joseph L. ed., Sport and Society in Latin America: Diffusion, Dependency, and the Rise of Mass Culture (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), pp. 63–84 Google Scholar and 97–112. For the case of Costa Rica, see Gaitan, Chester Urbina, Costa Rica y el deporte, 1873–1921 : un estudio acerca del origen del fútbol y la construcción de un deporte nacional (San Jose, Costa Rica: Editorial Universidad Nacional, 2001).Google Scholar

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6 My usage of the terms “populist” and “populism” draws on Ernesto Laclau's definition of populism as a discourse in which “popular-democratic elements are presented as an antagonistic option against the ideology of the dominant bloc.” In this case, football, a sport of the popular sectors, is articulated with an explicitly anti-elitist nationalism. See Laclau, Ernesto, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capialism, Fascism, Populism (London: NLB, 1977), p. 173.Google Scholar

7 For a general history of Argentine football, see Bayer, Osvaldo, Fútbol argentino (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1990)Google Scholar. For a more institutional history, see Scher, Ariel and Palomino, Héctor, Fútbol: pasión de multitudes y de elites: Un estudio institucional de la Asociación de Fútbol Argentino (1934–1986) (Buenos Aires: CISEA, 1988).Google Scholar

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9 At roughly the same time that Crítica achieved a daily circulation of over 300,000, El Gráfico was selling approximately 100,000 copies per week. Clearly many more porteños encountered the discourse on criollo football style in Crítica than in El Gráfico. For El Gráfico's circulation, see Archetti, p. 57. For Crítica's, see Saítta, Sylvia, Regueros de tinta: El diario Crítica en la década de 1920 (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1998), pp. 49, 73.Google Scholar

10 On the weekly novels, see Sarlo, Beatriz, El imperio de los sentimientos: Narraciones de circulación periódica en la Argentina (1917–1927) (Buenos Aires: Catálogos Editora, 1985).Google Scholar On the inexpensive books of the period and on Crítica's status as the “primer ejemplo porteño de periodismo de corte popular,” see Romero, Luis Alberto “Una empresa cultural: los libros baratos,” in Gutiérrez, and Romero, , pp. 47–50.Google Scholar

11 Saítta, p. 117.

12 Saítta, pp. 55–90.

13 Saítta, pp. 65–79.

14 Crítica, 5/14/28, p. 5.

15 Crítica, 2/4/25, p. 13. For Boca Juniors as “ambassadors” see, for example, Crítica, 2/5/25, p. 13.

16 Crítica, 2/6/25, p. 4. These notes were printed in other papers as well. See, for example, La Prensa, 2/4/25, p. 19.

17 Crítica, 3/18/25, p. 7

18 Crítica, 6/13/28, p. 2. See also Crítica, 6/9/28, p. 12

19 More research is needed on the consequences for women of the exclusively masculine national identities constructed around football. For one suggestive interpretation, see Guy, Donna J. Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), pp. 190–192.Google Scholar

20 Crítica, 6/4/28, p. 9.

21 Archetti shows that Gráfico's journalists, Borocotó and Chantecler, did discuss ethnicity. While Borocotó argued that immigrants became criollo by virtue of their contact with Argentina, Chantecler developed a melting-pot theory, in which each immigrant group contributed something to the criollo style. See Archetti (1999), pp. 66–70. Notwithstanding these analyses of the origins of criollo football style, Crítica's day-to-day coverage of the sport never mentioned Argentina's ethnic diversity. Regardless of its origins, the criollo style was seen to belong naturally to any player who wore the nation's colors.

22 Crítica, 2/4/25, p. 13.

23 Crítica, 6/10/28, p. 2.

24 On the diffusion of racial ideas among Argentine intellectuals, see Zimmermann, Eduardo A., “Racial Ideas and Social Reform: Argentina, 1890–1916” Hispanic American Historical Review 72:1 (1992), pp. 23–46 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stepan, Nancy Leys, The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991)Google Scholar. To cite just one example, the influential socialist thinker José Ingenieros, published his essay, “La formación de una raza argentina,” in 1915. Zimmermann, p. 32.

25 Archetti (1999), p. 71.

26 Crítica, 5/28/28, p. 12.

27 Crítica, 6/15/28, p. 5. On the extensive participation of porteño modernists in Crítica during the 1920s, see Saítta, pp. 157–188.

28 Crítica, 6/15/28, p. 5. An impoverished childhood in a lower-class barrio, where football is played with rag balls on improvised asphalt fields or potreros, remains central to the mythology of Argentina's football heroes. See Archetti (1999), pp. 180–189.

29 Crítica, 6/4/28, p. 9.

30 Crítica, 5/24/28, p. 10; 5/17/28, p. 2; 5/18/28, p. 9.

31 On Gardel's nickname, see Savigliano, Marta, Tango and the Political Economy of Passion (Boulder: Westview, 1995), pp. 65–66.Google Scholar For a discussion of the populist usage of the term “negro” in Peronist discourse, see James, Daniel, Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine Working Class, 1946–1976 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 31–32.Google Scholar On “negro,” see also Gobello, José, Nuevo diccionario lunfardo (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1994), p. 180 Google Scholar. On the continuing salience of racial categories in contemporary Argentina, see Joseph, Galen, “Taking Race Seriously: Whiteness in Argentina's National and Transnational Imaginary,” Identities 7:3 (2000), pp. 333–371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Frydenberg, Julio D., “Prácticas y valores en el proceso de popularización del fútbol, Buenos Aires, 1900–1910,” Entrepasados 6:12 (1997), p. 7–29 Google Scholar; Frydenberg, , “Redefinición del fútbol aficionado y del fútbol oficial. Buenos Aires, 1912,” in Alabarces, Pablo, et. al., eds. Deporte y sociedad (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1998), pp. 51–65.Google Scholar Frydenberg argues that the values of “fair play” were threatened by the emergence of football clubs organized by popular sector youth in the early years of the twentieth century.

33 La Nación, 2/4/25, p. 9.

34 La Nación, 2/19/25, p. 4.

35 La Prensa, 6/11/28, p. 10.

36 La Prensa, 6/5/28, p. 14. For another example of the notion that international matches were mainly useful for cementing ties between nations, see the coverage of Boca Juniors’ tour in Caras y Caretas, XXVIII: 1383 (4/4/25).

37 La Nación, 2/5/25, p. 9.

38 Crítica, 2/4/25, p. 12.

39 La Razón, 5/14/28, p. 4.

40 La Razón, 6/7/28, p. 1.

41 La Razón, 6/5/28, p. 9. La Razón's less populist football coverage matched its more traditional appearance and conservative politics. For comparisons of Crítica and La Razón, see Saítta, pp. 48–60; Pujol, Sergio, Valentino en Buenos Aires: Los años veinte y el espectáculo (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1994), pp. 69–74.Google Scholar

42 On the persistence of class resentments in Argentina in the 1920s, see Karush, Matthew B., Workers or Citizens: Democracy and Identity in Rosario, Argentina 1912–1930 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002), pp. 156–163.Google ScholarPubMed

43 Crítica, 5/24/28, p. 10.

44 Crítica, 3/17/25, p. 14. For an example of the paper siding with players against management, see Crítica, 5/5/28, p. 10. In 1926, Natalio Botana served as President of the Argentine Football Association. For analysis of how this “conflict of interest” affected Crítica's football coverage, see Saítta, , “Futbol y prensa en los años veinte: Natalio Botana, presidente de la Asociación Argentina de Football (febrero-agosto de 1926),” http://www.efdeportes.com (Revista Digital) 8:50 (July 2002).Google Scholar

45 Mateu, Cristina, “Política e ideología de la Federación Deportiva Obrera, 1924–1929,” in Deporte y sociedad, pp. 67–86.Google Scholar

46 Crítica, 5/17/28, p. 2.

47 La Nación, 5/30/28, p. 2.

48 Crítica, 5/5/28, p. 4.

49 Crítica, 5/8/28, p. 9. In their discussion of Brazilian football, Rowe and Schelling emphasize that popular football style in that country valued improvisation and the art of the trickster over mere goal scoring. In this sense, Crítica's condemnation of excessive fanciness can be seen as an effort to contain and discipline a popular style. Rowe and Schelling, pp. 138–9.

50 Crítica, 3/17/25, p. 14.

51 Crítica, 3/17/25, p. 6.

52 Guy, pp. 142–156.

53 Crítica, 3/23/25, p. 8.

54 Quoted in Saítta (1998), p. 222. On La Nación's anti-Yrigoyensimo, see Sidícaro, Ricardo, La política mirada desde arriba: Las ideas del diario La Nación 1909–1989 (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1993), pp. 55–81, 108–22.Google Scholar

55 Saítta (1998), p. 234.

56 Crítica, 3/31/28, p. 6.

57 Crítica's effort to sell Yrigoyen as a populist was not limited to its sports section. On the paper's attempt to resuscitate the reputation of the nineteenth-century caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas and to link him with Yrigoyen, see Quattrocchi-Woisson, Diana, Los males de la memoria: Historia y política en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1995), pp. 58–61.Google Scholar

58 Saítta (1998), p. 240.

59 Crítica, 8/1/30, p. 3.

60 Crítica, 7/31/30, p. 1.

61 La Prensa, 7/31/30, p. 14. La Prensa also argued that Argentina should not complain about the violent tactics used by Uruguayan players but should instead field a more manly football team capable of withstanding these tactics.

62 The political use of football predated Perón. General Agustín Justo, Argentina's president from 1932 to 1938 and a friend of Natalio Botana, supported Argentine football in general and Boca Juniors in particular. But while he recognized the potential political significance of football, he was not interested in mobilizing the sport's counterhegemonic associations. See Scher, Ariel La patria deportista: Cien años de política y deporte (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1996), pp. 109–149 Google Scholar. On Perón's patronage and manipulation of popular sports, see Rein, Raanan, ‘“El Primer Deportista’ : The Political Use and Abuse of Sport in Peronist Argentina,” International Journal of the History of Sport 15:2 (August 1998), pp. 54–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar