University of Florida Thesis Or Dissertation Formatting

FOOTBALL IS DEAD! LONG LIVE FOOTBALL! ARGENTINE FOOTBALL LITERATURE BETWEEN TRADITION AND RESISTANCE

CARLOS ANDRES BERTOGLIO

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2016

To myself, for all the hard work. To the universe, for being there.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

All my gratitude goes to my family for supporting me through the duration of this project. Only they know how hard it was. To every one of my professors at UF for guiding me in spite of my own stubbornness. To Dr. Gillian Lord for all your experience and kindness. To Martín, my dissertation chair, for teaching me more than he can begin to imagine. To my parents and brothers, who were always with me, despite being thousands of miles away. To my dad, for creating light out of the darkness and giving me the gift of reading. To my mom, for teaching me about the unbreakable power of dreams. To my dear aunt Mecha for introducing me to literature at a very young age. To

Argentina’s free public education system without which I would not be who I am. To

Antonio Sajid, Carlos Ayerdi Castillo, Whitman Suarez, Diana Pedraza, Andrea Villa,

Iván Yerkovich, Eliana Guise, Mariela Ferreyra and the rest of the few but valuable friends who make our lives much better. Finally, to Yanina for her immense love and perseverance and little Giovanni for making me realize I still have so much to learn.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

ABSTRACT ...... 7

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 8

A subgenre in search of its name and definition ...... 10 Football literature in Argentina: a case for its study ...... 12 A summary of this study’s main goals ...... 14 Theoretical approach ...... 16 Football and academia in Argentina ...... 29 Conclusion and summary of this works’ chapters ...... 35 Notes ...... 43

2 LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF FOOTBALL IN AGENTINA: CONTEXTUALIZATION, CHRONOLOGY AND BRIEF SUMMARY ...... 46

Origins, early history and modern development of association football ...... 47 The beginnings of Association football in Argentina ...... 52 Argentine (criollo) football: the creation of a narrative and the dual foundation’s theory...... 53 Literary representation (s) of football in Argentina: an initial outline ...... 61 Football: stupidity, chaos, barbarism and an alarming popularity ...... 63 Benedetti’s Puntero izquierdo: Football literature’s foundation stone ...... 71 Football literature and its first naming: Santoro’s Literatura de la pelota...... 81 Soriano, Fontanarrosa, Sasturain: creation and consolidation of a style ...... 84 Latest period of growth and development of Argentine football literature (1995-2016) ...... 94 Notes ...... 101

3 FOOTBALL AND TRADITION IN THE CONTEXT OF ARGENTINE FOOTBALL LITERATURE ...... 111

An invented tradition for the Argentine desert ...... 111 Gauchos are dead! Long live gauchos! A minor genre at the center of the cannon ...... 116 Football and imperialism in the nineteenth century ...... 122 “La nuestra”: a tradition from the margins ...... 125 Gauchesca and football literature: tradition, resistance or traditions of resistance? ...... 144 A voice, a destiny, a weapon ...... 144 Gauchos and footballers as naturals ...... 154

Notes ...... 179

4 OF BIRTHS, DEATHS AND RESURRECTIONS IN NEOLIBERAL ARGENTINA. ARGENTINE FOOTBALL LITERATURE AT THE END OF THE MILLENNIUM...... 190

Argentine football in the 1990s: A dream ends, a dream begins ...... 190 The Maradona factor in football literature ...... 199 A star to guide us through darkness: Maradona in times of dictatorship ...... 206 Christmas Eve in Villa Fiorito or how to resurrect a dream ...... 213 Spatial considerations ...... 217 Cultural Panorama ...... 226 The place of football ...... 228 Notes ...... 241

5 GOING BACK, GOING FORWARD.ARGENTINE FOOTBALL LITERATURE AS AN EXERCISE IN RESISTANCE ...... 248

With a little help from my friends: Sacheri and his plan to save our dying football 248 Papeles en el viento: looking for magic in football’s wasteland ...... 255 Play, games, sports ...... 267 How to anhilate our deadly football: Convertini’s third way ...... 279 Nightmare in Villa Luppi or How to feed the pibe’s dream ...... 281 Looking for football’s last miracle: passion, aguante, failed glory and death .. 297 Notes ...... 320

6 CONCLUSION ...... 329

Football Literature: much more than literature about football ...... 329 Notes ...... 338

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 339

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 352

Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

FOOTBALL IS DEAD! LONG LIVE FOOTBALL! ARGENTINE FOOTBALL LITERATURE BETWEEN TRADITION AND RESISTANCE

Carlos Andrés Bertoglio

December 2016

Chair: Martín Sorbille Major: Romance Languages

The main goal of this dissertation is to provide the first thorough analysis of the representation of football/soccer as a sport and cultural phenomenon in the context of

Argentine literature (including the River Plate area) ranging from the first decades of the

20th century to the present day. In order to do so, it would be vital to contextualize the arrival of this sport to Argentina, in addition to studying the impact of the media in the popularization of this sport as well as in the construction and propagation of a discourse that appropriated football and instituted it as a reservoir of Argentine tradition. The central focus of this study will be on the analysis of the intertextual relationship that this discourse—present in the most relevant works of this literary subgenre of football literature—establishes with the mass-media hegemonic discourses of football tradition and sports capitalism on the one hand and the gauchesca literary tradition on the other.

This will, in turn, set the basis for a much more informed approach to the later developments of this subgenre in order to explain its growth in the last two decades and to determine whether or not—and to what extent— it can be read as a counter- hegemonic narrative.

INTRODUCTION

We would not be revealing anything new or surprising if we said that football

(“soccer” in the US) is the world’s most popular sport and, as such, a cultural phenomenon of enormous magnitude and intensity. Nor would we be stating anything unexpected or original if we declared that the analysis of this sport (and sports in general) allow us to reach deep into the societies where, in this case, football is practiced thus helping us delineate some of their central features and get a better understanding of some of their practices. As Richard Giulianotti—author of the intelligent and comprehensive Football: A sociology of the global game and one of the most renowned academics dealing with the study of this sport—says: “Football in any setting provides us with a kind of cultural map, a metaphorical representation, which enhances our understanding of that society” (xii). Later he adds, “Its cultural centrality in most societies means that football carries a heavy political and symbolic significance, to the extent that the game can contribute fundamentally to the social actions, practical philosophies and cultural identities of many, many people” (xii).

The case of Argentina does not escape this description; football is a central aspect of its national (popular) culture and, as such, bears an enormous political and symbolic significance that cannot be ignored when approaching the study of this society and its cultural production. To this respect, Juan Manuel Sodo suggests:

…quizás, nada permita pensarnos mejor por estas latitudes que el mismo fútbol, ese acontecimiento condicionante y constituyente que abarca imaginarios, identidades, relatos, pasiones, símbolos, representaciones, historias, prácticas, ritos y mitos a través de los cuales intentar darnos cuenta. (171)

Moreover, as Argentine writer Beatriz Sarlo explains, from the mid 1970’s onwards, the deterioration and almost entire dissolution of some of the most important institutions that produced a sense of “argentineity’ and provided its citizens with the idea of a “national essence” (state, school, family, etc.), left an empty space that was occupied, in a considerable proportion, by the football universe. Pablo Alabarces elaborates,

Queda bastante poco de lo que la Argentina fue como nación. Las instituciones que producían nacionalidad se han deteriorado o han perdido sentido. Pasan a primer plano otras formas de nacionalidad, que existieron antes, pero que nunca como hoy cubren todos los vacíos de creencia. En el estallido de identidades que algunos llaman posmodernidad, el fútbol opera como aglutinante: es fácil, universal y televisivo. No es la nación sino su supervivencia pulsátil. O quizás la forma en que la nación incluye hoy a quienes, de otro modo, abandona.1 (18)

However, if we proposed to delve solely into the relationship between football and nation in Argentina we would be incurring in a repetitive and probably fruitless exercise since this task has already been (and continues to be) successfully undertaken by prominent academics such as Eduardo Archetti, Pablo Alabarces and María Graciela

Rodriguez among others. Nonetheless, as will become evident in this introduction, their findings will be instrumental in enriching and sustaining our own approach.

What we intend to do along this study is to focus on an area that at first sight may seem at odds with that of popular sports, which is that of literature. Within this sphere, we want to explore the emergence and development of the (sub) genre of football literature in Argentina within the bigger context of Argentine culture/literature. We will move into the peripheries of football (nowadays an eminently ‘televised’ phenomenon as Sarlo cleverly expressed) and Argentine literature2 (traditionally adverse to popular/populist ‘invasions’) in order to provide a deeper understanding of this new

subgenre: a field of literature at a crossroads between currents of tradition and resistance.

A subgenre in search of its name and definition

In the context of Argentinian literature, the subject of football, or football as a central theme of literary works, has gone through different stages, broadly speaking two: the first, characterized by a surprising silence—given the ubiquity of the sport and its relevance at the social level—where many local writers seemed to deliberately ignore their existence or at least its potential for exploitation at the aesthetic and narrative levels and the second one, which goes grosso modo from the last three decades of the twentieth century to the present day, that shows a more abundant, sustained and diverse production.3 As a result of this production we can highlight the emergence of a new sub-genre within universal literature (and sports literature): football literature also known in Spanish as “literatura de la pelota”, “literatura futbolera”, literatura de/con/sobre fútbol”.

The fact that this subgenre does not yet respond to an established name is indicative both of its relatively young age but above all of the scarce attention received by academics. In this regard, Timothy Ashton, one of the few scholars dealing with the study of football literature in the U.S., notices that as the demand for this type of literature grows worldwide “an immense body of work that has been accumulating

“underground” for years” (62) is also “experiencing a breakthrough of mass recognition”

(62) and so “the only thing this genre lacks is a proper name” (62) for which he proposes the adoption of kick-lit based on its perceived catchiness, simple pronounceability and English’s status as planet’s lingua franca which will allow this name to “be used for generations to come in all countries throughout the world” (62).

Ethnocentrism aside, Ashton is correct about this subgenre’s urgent need for a commonly accepted name: a name would not only be beneficial by providing it with a much needed visibility but it would also strengthen the possibility for more fecund dialogues among the (still) few academics doing research in this area. That is why, we will be proposing and using the term football literature as the name for this subgenre as, despite being less catchy and exciting than kick-lit, it clearly, concisely and effectively describes these fictional works’ common element (football and not kicks). The use of the term “football” over that of “soccer” has its risks but also its advantages: the former, the obvious possibility of misunderstandings in the U.S. and Australian contexts where, as we all know the word football designates different and also very popular sports

(American football and Australian football), the latter, the fact that football is the original word designating this sport (at least the version of it played nowadays) and also that is not only easily recognizable in the rest of the world but also that phonetically speaking resembles the way this sport is called in a large number of languages (the clearest exception to this being the Italian word calcio). In Spanish, on the other hand, literatura de fútbol, should be the preferred term over literatura con fútbol, literatura futbolera or literatura de la pelota as the first alternative is broader and less precise (any fictional work containing any reference to this sport would fit this category) and the other two are much more colloquial and this may play against its acceptance all over the Spanish speaking world.

Another important element this subgenre also lacks is the consensus on a definition that would help us delimit what is and what is not considered football literature. However, unlike the case of the subgenre’s name, there are many points in

common among those who have tried to define this area of literature. Ashton affirms that for a literary work to fall into, what he calls, the kick-lit genre, football has to be related to “one of the work’s essential elements” (71) regardless of whether this sport “is represented in a positive or negative light” (71). Meanwhile Australian academic and football fiction writer Lee McGowan provides us with a slightly more detailed definition of this subgenre, where he agrees with Ashton on the necessity for these literary works to present a significant reliance on football (or soccer as its referred to in the US and

Australia) as “a substantive element, including but not restricted to narrative, voice, structure, setting and/or character development” (77). Needless to say, both definitions can be described as being too broad and (as most definitions) partially inaccurate, but this very same broadness is what makes them a perfect starting point (especially at this very early stage in this subgenre’s development) against which to analyze Argentine football literature and from then on being able to add or subtract elements which in turn will help us build a more fitting characterization of these type of works.

Football literature in Argentina: a case for its study

The advent of writers who are interested in football and use it as a central focus of their works is, as we already mentioned, a relatively recent phenomenon (30 to 40 years ago in Argentina) that takes place worldwide but especially and in a more pronounced fashion in countries where this sport enjoys an unreachable popularity (e.g.

Argentina, Brazil, England, Mexico, Colombia, Spain, etc.). However, the steady and progressive increase of this body of literature about football, has not—so far—produced an adequate response or a formal recognition from literary criticism. The case of

Argentina is particularly interesting in this regard, because despite having many of the most celebrated writers of the genre, including Roberto Fontanarrosa, Osvaldo Soriano

and Eduardo Sacheri, the production thereof has not attracted the attention of the local

(or the international, for that matter) academia. This is the vacuum that, from these pages, we will attempt to start filling.

Amid both an economic and a footballing crisis, the (re) emergence of football literature seems only logical. When the epic seems to have abandoned the stadiums it becomes necessary to recreate it in other areas; even in one, at first glance, as peripheral as literature. The footballing turn of literature can be read in other ways; namely as a reflection of an intensely mediated (thus footballized) society where it is hard to find a way to remain impervious to this sport’s narrative or else as a response and a reaction to it; as the need to return and try to (re) imagine what makes us unique and special (our inventiveness) as an (imagined) nation against a world appearing more and more global and flat; as a last refuge of a hegemonic and traditional masculinity threatened by the perceived "attack" of society’s (for the most part also perceived) sexual and mental openness; as one of publishing houses’ last resorts to attract new audiences and turn literature into a more profitable business. Or perhaps a mixture of all options. Or maybe none of it. Either way, our goal in this study is not to unravel why certain writers have turned to write about football, nor to decide if this is especially commendable or not. This would be equally as controversial as useless and it would only serve to add another voice to the general and widespread confusion. This work’s relevance lies in the fact it will try to demonstrate that this young literary movement does not emerge from nor functions in a vacuum so that it is possible to draw a line connecting it with the rest of Argentine literature. On the other hand, even though the simplest thing would be to discard this type of literature as a (another) product of the

intense commercialization of the so called “beautiful game”, i.e., another one of its by- products, it would be imprudent not to dig a little deeper and wonder what kind of readers football literature is trying to reach and which are its messages and/or questions for them, which sources does it feed from, which elements of the popular and enigmatic phenomenon that is football it celebrates and criticizes and ultimately, what adds (if anything) to Argentina’s rich cultural scene.

A summary of this study’s main goals

Going deeper into the the delineation of this work’s primary goals, and to make things clear from the very beginning, we will first disclose those objectives which we do not seek to reach, no matter how tempting, seductive or feasible they may appear. First, it is not our primary intention to create a catalog of authors and works that strictly delimit and establish the field of Argentinian football literature. As we previously mentioned, the production is vast and we will surely fall into unforgivable injustices and oversights. Still, the extensive and intensive reading of much of what has been written to this day on and around the subject of football in Argentinian literature, along with its further reflection on our work and most importantly, the need to provide a context and framework to guide the reader, will contribute to a first approximation to the task of organizing and delineating the aforementioned field as well as setting the first stones for future readings and more promising developments.

Nor is our purpose to conduct an uncompromising defense of football itself as a literary or social phenomenon. We do not want to enter the—at this point—old debate that demonizes and/or sanctifies this sport according to the side one decides to support.

It is enough to say that we are aware of its development and that, according to our perspective, football creates a universe so vast and complex that is capable of

harboring both positions without involving internal contradictions that would make it implode. Football assimilates and transcends these discussions always rich and valuable, but, at some point, futile.

To further illuminate our previous statements we will say that the main objectives of this work are essentially two and are—in our opinion—interconnected: the first one will be to position football literature in Argentina within the broader field of Argentinian literature, making connections with canonical texts that precede it, support it and help to unravel and explain it. More specifically, we will focus on the elements that link football literature with the genre of gaucho literature or gauchesca, especially those who make reference to the search, invention and re-creation of "the national" (a diffuse and uncomfortable category) and, more specifically, of a being or a way of being

Argentinian.

The second objective—and simultaneously the central part of this dissertation— will be to analyze and investigate the operation of a considerable part of Argentinian football literature as a machine of cultural resistance against the dominant discourse

(omnipresent in the football media) that supports, reflects and propagates the idea of the commodification of everyday life and the subsequent imposition of a ruthless capitalist logic that divides society (and football as part of it) into groups of winners and/or losers. In turn, we will also try to determine which one of these tendencies

(conservative vs. progressive) is the dominant one in this area of inquiry and whether or not the counter-hegemonic discourses (or at least, elements) present in football literature 1) are just fueled by nostalgia and 2) only pertain to the football realm or can be extended to other areas of society.

Finally yet importantly, this study will hopefully bring relevance and attention to an area of literature and a group of writers traditionally and routinely snubbed by academia. We know this is a hard task, and one that will not be performed single- handedly, but we are also confident that our analysis as well as the preliminary chronology of the origins and development of this genre that we will offer in our first chapter, will open up the field and the discussion for better, richer and more accomplished contributions.

Football literature finds itself at a crossroads between tradition and innovation; between the conservative toll of its nostalgic elements and the dissonant nature of its counter-hegemonic message, all of which makes it a fertile ground to be analyzed and taken into account when approaching Argentine society and trying to understand part of its cultural production. Throughout this study, we will revisit and examine these tensions within football literature as part of a larger, more ambitious effort to comprehend the emergence of this literary subgenre in the context of Argentine culture.

Theoretical approach

One of the theoretical tools we will employ in order to carry this task is Raymond

Williams’ approach to the study of culture and the dynamic interrelation of dominant, residual and emergent elements at both the micro and macro levels. Building on

Antonio Gramsci’s notion of (cultural) hegemony,4 the Welsh thinker argues that cultures are not static or coherent systems dominated by one singular hegemonic tendency, but always actual (“lived”) complex processes best explained and analyzed by studying its internal dynamic relations, mainly the interplay, interconnection and tension between dominant, residual and emergent elements or perspectives.5

Hence his approach to the concept of hegemony reflects this position: hegemonies will also (naturally) be perceived as lived processes, social/cultural organisms constantly mutating and being recreated as a result and/or consequence of being perpetuallty challenged and resisted.

A lived hegemony is always a process. It is not, except analytically, a system or a structure. It is a realised complex of experiences, relationships and activities, with specific and changing pressures and limits. In practice, that is, hegemony can never be singular. Its internal structures are highly complex, as can readily be seen in any concrete analysis. Moreover (and this is crucial, reminding us of the necessary thrust of the concept), it does not just passively exist as a form of dominance. It has continually to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified. It is also continually resisted, limited, altered, challenged by pressures not at all its own. (112)

In connection to this perspective, the importance that Williams assigns to the role of socio-cultural formations (among them, literature) in the process of negotiation, (re) construction and configuration of a given culture, encourages and supports the need of going back to the study and analysis of literary texts as meaningful participants in these lived processes. Importantly, this idea backs up and coincides with this study’s objective of analyzing the works of Argentine football literature keeping into account its intersection with mainstream football culture and narratives.

However, before going into that analysis it is necessary to try to elucidate some of Raymond Williams’ key concepts in the study of cultural dynamics. First, a residual relationship or a residual element in a given culture or cultural manifestation is not the same as an archaic one (markedly belonging to a past era, passible to be examined, observed or even consciously revived) since the former is, according to Williams:

…formed in the past, but it is still active in the cultural process, not only and often not at all as an element of the past, but as an effective element of the present. Thus certain experiences, meanings, and values which cannot be expressed or substantially verified in terms of the dominant

culture, are nevertheless lived and practiced on the bases of the residue – cultural as well as social – of some previous social and cultural institution or formation. (122)

Residual elements can be oppositional or alternative to the dominant culture/order or they can be (and many times are) incorporated by it “by reinterpretation, dilution, projection, discriminating inclusion and exclusion” (123). In Marxism and

Literature, Williams gives the example of the rural community (or the idea of it) as predominantly residual and in some respect oppositional to urban industrial capitalism but at the same time “incorporated, as idealization or fantasy, or as an exotic— residential or escape—leisure function of the dominant order itself” (122). In connection to this, an important part of our study will consist in tracing the roots of association football and specifically of football narratives in Argentina to examine 1) how they align themselves with other narratives and discourses of a national tradition 2) what is the origin, the role and the relevance of active residual elements in football’s literary representations 3) whether or not (at least, some of) these residual elements act in opposition to the dominant culture.

This process of incorporation of actively residual elements to the dominant culture is key in what the Welsh author identifies as selective tradition. One of his most lucid concepts, for Williams a selective tradition is “an intentionally selective version of a shaping past and a pre shaped present which is then powerfully operative in the process of social and cultural definition and identification” (115). According to this writer, traditions are “in practice the most evident expression of the dominant and hegemonic pressures and limits. It is always 'more than an inert historicized segment; indeed-it is the most powerful practical means of incorporation” (116). Therefore, tradition is always active and selective and, as such, an important “aspect of contemporary social and

cultural organization” (116), “a version of the past which is intended to connect with and ratify the present” (116). In the Argentine context, one of the most evident, well-known instances of selective tradition was the operation of canonization of Martín Fierro as a national epic, the (re) invention of a national literary tradition and the subsequent re- appropriation of the figure of the gaucho as an emblem of argentineity.

As we will see throughout this study, this newly invented tradition had a major impact in the shaping of Argentine popular culture as well as in the configuration of a specific type of local hegemonic masculinity. One of the areas impacted by this tradition will be that of football, a growing popular phenomenon at the beginning of the twentieth century that was in need of a local narrative construction that at the same time distanced it from its foreign (British) origins and allowed for its national appropriation and massification (through the also growing media). At a distance, it seems almost natural that those in charge of creating this sport narrative (the peripheral sport journalists) would borrow elements of this newly established gauchesca tradition in order to infuse this British import and its (imagined and real) practicioners (who were also males as the gauchos) with a hefty dose of Argentineness. However, as Williams explains, traditions are never inert and always seen as tied to the constant process of the construction of hegemony, that is, the ratification of the present as a “natural” result of the past, which is why, it is interesting and fruitful to explore the tensions created by some of this primeval (and many of them now residual) elements of the football tradition more than a century later. As previously stated, our analysis will not try to encompass every area of the immense cultural, political and economic phenomenon that this sport has become but from the much more concise platform of football fiction attempt to

illustrate the constant process of struggle, negotiation and (re) configuration of this central aspect of Argentine culture.

In regards to this process, Williams distances himself from authors such as

Althusser when he affirms that “an effective culture is … always more than the sum of its institutions” (118) since all hegemonic processes are full of contradictions and conflicts that are really negotiated at the level of the whole culture and cannot be simply

“reduced to the activities of an ‘ideological state apparatus’” (118). At this point, he refers to the need to include the study of formations. They are defined as “conscious movements and tendencies (literary, artistic, philosophical or scientific) which can usually be readily discerned after their formative productions” (119).

These socio-cultural formations—Williams continues—present a great historical variability in their relations with institutions (formations cannot be wholly identified with formal institutions, their meanings and values and “can sometimes even be positively contrasted with them”) and, especially in what he calls ‘developed complex societies’, play an increasingly important role in the process of negotiation and configuration of a given culture. As David Whitson explains: “Williams (following Gramsci) suggests, cultural tradition and practice are not mere derivatives of economic and political structures, but are, on the contrary, basic constitutive processes contributing to the actual shape those structures will take in a given place” (73). This is one of the main reasons behind Williams’ rejection of Marxist determinism (or better yet, deterministic approaches to Marxism), the fixed and vertical interpretation of the relation between base and superstructure and the idea of art as a mere reflection of reality.6 At the same

time, it makes the analysis of relatively ‘new’ formations (football literature in this case) a very meaningful and significant task.

However, as this author explains emergent formations or elements are not necessarily the same as new or novel ones although he recognizes that “it is exceptionally difficult to distinguish those which are really elements of some new phase of the dominant culture … and those who are substantially alternative or oppositional to it: emergent in the strict sense, rather than merely novel” (123). Emergent elements or practices typically start at the margins of society and can eventually become less marginal to the point of becoming part of the dominant (after being incorporated by it).7

Nonetheless, Williams posits, “no mode of production and therefore no dominant social order and therefore no dominant culture ever in reality includes or exhausts all human practice, human energy, and human intention” (125) though “… in advanced capitalism… the dominant culture reaches much further than ever before in capitalist society into hitherto ‘reserved’ or ‘resigned’ areas of experience and practice and meaning” (126). Some of these these central and previously reserved and unreachable areas are those of everyday life (or everyday culture) and leisure and recreation (where we can place games and sports). David Whitson sees these areas as important sites in the contest for hegemonic control as capitalism (as society’s main dominant ideology) has been trying to integrate them into “meaning structures less inconsistent with the ethos of production and consumption” (75). Their complete transformation would obviously imply a hegemonic triumph, the institution of a seemingly logical, stable and robust (internalized) common sense,8 ultimately verified and demonstrated by the closure of areas where this dominant ethos of productivity and discipline, accountability

and control could be contested by alternative approaches that highlighted the value of playfulness, idleness and non-instrumental relations. Thus, Williams concludes that the processes of emergence are especially important to study now but even more significant is to focus on a previous, earlier stage: “pre-emergence, active and pressing but not yet fully articulated, rather than the evident emergence which could be more confidently named” (126). In order to study this stage and condition of pre-emergence he will come up with one of its more prominent and controversial concepts, that of structures of feeling.

Admittedly a difficult concept, Williams defines9 it repeatedly (and variously) in

Marxism and Literature (one of its most celebrated works) as a “cultural hypothesis”, “ a social experience which is still in process, often indeed not yet recognized as social but taken to be private, idiosyncratic, and even isolating, but which in analysis has its emergent, connecting and dominant characteristics…” (132) and

social experiences in solution… a structured formation which, because it is at the very edge of semantic availability, has many of the characteristics of a pre-formation, until specific articulations—new semantic figures—are discovered… and only later seen to compose a significant generation. (133-34)

Moreover, the relevance of their analysis cannot be overstated as these structures of feeling become a crucial area of cultural analysis since they not only have the potentiality of becoming a vehicle for the expression and (pre) formation of the counter-hegemonic but also are one of the privileged spaces for the continuous process of propagation of the hegemonic order. As previously stated, the process of hegemony and cultural dominance is much more subtle than the open imposition of a given ideology (if this were the case it would be, in theory, much easier to resist them and adopt alternative positions).Instead, as Whitson explains “ What we are confronting… in

the hegemonic order, is an official system of meanings and values operating at the level of feeling as well as thought, in terms of which existing ways of doing things are experienced as sensible and right, or at least as unchangeable” (68).

The Welsh critic needed a term that allowed him to grasp and analyze the ever forming and formative process of culture, “the undeniable experience of the present: not only the temporal present … but the specificity of present being, the inalienably physical within which we may indeed discern and acknowledge institutions, formations, positions but not always as fixed products, defining products” (128) resisting in that way, the reductive visions and analysis of culture and society in a fixed past tense. For Williams looking at works of art10 is essential in this process since they are “… in one sense, explicit and finished forms—actual objects in the visual arts, objectified conventions and notations (semantic figures) in literature” (129) that are made present through

“specifically active readings”, supporting the notion that expresses that “the making of art is never itself in the past tense. It is always a formative process, within a specific present” (129).

As Filmer says: “Literature’s significance is in providing an analytical and exploratory environment in which structures of feeling can discover how to articulate their emergence. In doing so, literature recovers its own reflective authority for culture”

(216). In this sense, we believe it would be valuable to approach the works from the latest and most prolific period in Argentine football literature with the concept of structures of feeling in mind, in order to analyze the continuous pressure and silent imposition of dominant tendencies within this area of culture but also to look for elements that (might) reveal the possible emergence (or pre-emergence) of counter-

hegemonic or transformational processes inside, but also, outside the realm of

Argentine football.

However, we need to make clear that, as Williams clearly states it, even the most counter-hegemonic initiatives are necessarily affected by the same hegemony it seeks to oppose, “It can be persuasively argued that all or nearly all initiatives and contributions, even when they take on manifestly alternative or oppositional forms, are in practice tied to the hegemonic: that the dominant culture, so to say, at once produces and limits its own forms of counter-culture” (114). Nonetheless, as this author also expresses:

It would be wrong to overlook the importance of works and ideas which, while clearly affected by hegemonic limits and pressures, are at least in part significant breaks beyond them, which may again in part be neutralized, reduced, or incorporated but which in their most active elements nevertheless come through as independent and original. (114)

To conclude, as both Gramsci and Williams maintain, although the final objective of a perfect hegemonic domination is to naturalize this dominion in a way that its limits are not perceived and hence not tested this is typically not the case as power relations involve what James C. Scott has described as “‘micro’ pushing and shoving” (197), that is, a constant testing of the fabrics that hold a dominant world-view together, simultaneously taking place at varied levels of intensity in different spaces and domains of society. This phenomenon leads Scott to characterize the static views of naturalized and legitimized hegemony as untenable as these conditions force the dominant elites

(as he calls them) to be “ceaselessly working to maintain and extend its material control and symbolic reach” as subordinate groups or emerging formations are

“correspondingly devising strategies to thwart and reverse that appropriation and to take more symbolic liberties as well” (197). That is why, it will be especially interesting to see

how the works of football literature move between these spheres and illustrate this constant struggle for domination and power; to analyze the emergence, the development and the present state of this genre both diachronically and synchronically; to elucidate what its position is in relation to both literary and football traditions and its respective hegemonic discourses in order to call attention to the elements it borrows from them and see how much (or how little) it breaks from them and in what proportion these can contribute to the complexification, enriching and modification of said discourses.

As a final point, before moving into the last part of this introductory chapter, we need to mention the rest of the tools and theoretical approaches that we will employ in this study and that will supplement and enrich the use of Williams’ theory and our own understanding and analysis of these works. First, more heavily in the first two chapters following this introduction but also throughout this entire work, we will resort to the sociological-anthropological gaze of two Argentine intellectuals who have worked long and fruitfully with the subject of football and its impact on Argentinian culture such as

Eduardo Archetti and Pablo Alabarces. Their valuable contributions will enable us to examine the relationship between Argentine football and concepts like nation or tradition in the Argentinian context, as well as explore the connection between the mythical, journalistic and literary configurations of both gauchos and pibes. Moreover, to better analyze the pibe construction in the context of the creation of a national footballing style, we will need to consider the idea of liminality (initially introduced by Van Gennep, to the being reelaborated by Turner and Norton among others) as well as the work of the

French intellectual Pierre Bourdieu and especially his concept of habitus, which will

prove central to understanding the redoubt of national identity encoded in body aesthetics and the practices of some of Argentine football literature’s protagonists. Also, when approaching the figure of the gaucho within Argentine literature and to understand the weight and influence of gauchesca in this country’s literary history , we will certainly need to review the production of more than a century of literary criticism including valuable contributions from notable intellectuals such as a Josefina Ludmer, Jorge Luis

Borges, Angel Rama, Sandra Cisneros, Julio Schvartzman, Daniel Link and Ana Peluffo just to name a few.

Needless to say, we will also take into serious consideration the contributions of other Argentine contemporary football scholars such as Julio Frydenberg, José Garriga

Zucal, María Graciela Rodriguez and Mariana Conde whose research will help us interpret a range of footballing phenomena such as its social history and evolution in this nation’s context, the role of women in this process and the emergence of the violent and reactionary ethics of aguante among its fans. Moreover, British football academics such as Richard Giulianotti or David Goldblatt will be instrumental in tracing the origins, history, evolution, and cultural and political signinficance of this sport while Brazilian ones (among them the highly influential Simoni Lahud Guedes) will inform us of the characteristics of the national appropriation of this sport in Argentina’s mirror and biggest rival.

When speaking of football, literature and nationalism in the context of Argentina

(chapter 3), it will be imperative to acknowledge and incorporate the very influential ideas of canonical scholars such as Doris Sommer, Hommi Bhabha, Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson in order to contextualize the process of invention of this nation

as well as the creation of its literary and cultural cannon and mythology. In connection to this, we will resort to the works of prestigious Argentine intellectuals such as Ricardo

Piglia, Beatriz Sarlo and David Viñas among others, in order to shed light on the various particularities of this process in Argentina to be able to explain its consequences and repercussions throughout this nation’s history as well as in contemporary Argentine society.

Closely connected to William’s theory and to illustrate the continuous interplay between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic tendencies in Argentine society in general and the context of football literature in particular, we will resort to James C. Scott concepts of hidden transcripts and infrapolitical practices. Also relatedly, Giorgio

Agamben’s ideas of capitalism as a profanatory and sacralizing machine and his politics of inoperativity will help us to enlighten and deepen our discussion of the current state of professional sports, its significance in today’s society and the construction of some possible alternatives to a univocal approach and understanding of this reality. In this respect, also tied to a good part of Argentine football literature’s ideological program,

Zygmunt Bauman’s ideas will remind us of the always-relevant implication of the building of utopias and the exercise of the imagination in an era saturated by facts, images and information while Mariano Siskind will do the same about the still valid and valuable socio-affective significance of football in times of cold hyper-professionalism.

On the other hand, Ernesto Laclau’s concept of the empty signifier will serve to link the figures of Martín Fierro and Diego Maradona as nodal points around which their respective thematic universes gravitate. Precisely, their openness and potentiality will make possible the most diverse articulations around them, often times conflicting and

exceeding their original spheres. What is more, the centrality of Maradona in the context of football literature is such that even the place he was born (Villa Fiorito) will be used by football fiction writers as a spatial metaphor of Argentine football and society in president Menem’s neoliberal times (right after Diego’s own retirement from the professional practice of this sport). In this context, the spatial theories of Henry Lefebvre and his follower Edward Soja will provide us with the keys to read both the hegemonic construction of space and analyze the counter-hegemonic possibilities of contesting these dominant spatial constructions and configurations, a task that will prove vital to fuel some of Argentine football literature’s utopian dreams at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Finally, Freud’s concept of the uncanny or unheimlich will be used to explore the darker, sinister side of Argentine football’s dreams and utopias once they have been captured and transformed by capitalism’s hegemonic powers. This drastic transformation/revelation will be expressed in the pages of football literature by works where the freedom of play has been turned into dreary and monotonous work (Huizinga and especially Ingham’s conceptions of play, games and sport will help us see the difference between these activities as well as the evolution of professional sports), where footballers lose all rights and control over their bodies and actions, where fans wither away and die as a central part of what made them human is revealed to be just another one of capitalism’s inhuman enterprises (and one of the most successful at that). Agamben once again, along with Katherine Hayles and Donna Haraway, will provide us with the theoretical tools to inform our analysis of football’s posthuman era

as presented in the woks of football literature and find potential ways of insubordination and resistance within this social, historic and economic context.

Football and academia in Argentina

In the last part of this introduction, we will center on the trajectory, development and current state of the academic production on the topic football in the Argentine context. As Pablo Alabarces11 explains, when we talk about football in Argentina we are referring at the same time to an object “que aparece abusivamente extendido” and a field of studies “excesivamente reducido”. The presence of football in the public (and private) spheres of Argentine society can be described as excessive, especially in the last three decades where we have observed a relentless process of footballization of said society.

This fact makes the study of the role (s) and relevance of football in this country’s cultural history an especially promising endeavor. As Rawny Sibaja affirms, “In most countries around the world and in Latin America, soccer is the most popular sport. The

Argentine case, however, is exceptional. Aside from Brazil, no country in the region is as closely associated with the sport as Argentina”. According to the same author, in this country football “affects nearly every aspect of life” and as such “should be included in a study of the cultural history of Argentina”.

However, we cannot talk about football as an academically unexplored subject, unfoundedly denying (as many authors have done in the past) the existence of a growing number of valid intellectual approaches to this topic.12 In an article published in

ALESDE13’s magazine Alabarces (again) puts forward,

Y aunque permanecen (y permanecerán) condenados a la periferia de la legitimidad académica –nunca un análisis de las hinchadas colombianas o de la “heroicidad” de Maradona o Romario ganarán los grandes premios

disciplinares–, estos trabajos han crecido en cantidad, visibilidad, solidez y rigor. Alejados del ensayo, apoyados por las categorías y herramientas contemporáneas de la sociología, la antropología, la historia, los estudios culturales, las investigaciones sobre deporte y sociedad no precisan ya de introducciones quejosas ni de desmentir el viejo lema del “moderno opio de los pueblos” que las visiones de los años sesenta habían afirmado. (14)

Following Alabarces’ advice, in the following pages we will not complain about what is missing or what has not been said about the subject of football in the Argentine academia; instead, we will focus on acknowledging the most significant contributions

(and contributors) to the advancement of this subject of study.

Chronologically speaking, it will not be until the decade of 1980 that we can see the arrival of the first significant texts that deal with the analysis of the subject of football in Argentina. Prior to that historical moment one of the only antecedents we can mention is Alfredo Poviña’s14 Sociología del deporte y del fútbol (1957), described by

Alabarces as “… un débil intento de formular una sociología del deporte que sin embargo fue durante años el único texto sobre el tema en la Biblioteca de Sociología de la Universidad de Buenos Aires…” (43). Also prior to the 80’s we can find Juan José

Sebreli’s first texts about football and masses (included in 1967’s “El fútbol”) as well as

Eduardo Galeano’s compilation Su majestad, el fútbol published in 1968. Both authors polished and refined their approaches to the subject of football in latter works (1981’s

Fútbol y masas and 1998’s La era del fútbol in the case of Sebreli and Galeano’s classic El fútbol a sol y sombra from 1995) but kept their ideological orientations wide apart. Sebreli, an obvious reader of Huizinga and Gerhard Vinnai, reduces and schematizes football to its populist, alienating, fascist extreme15 while Galeano chooses to romanticize it, mainly focusing on this sport’s redeeming qualities.16

The distance between these two very singular and, to a certain extent, irreducible positions will contribute to the obturation of the field in the following years. Alabarces expands,

Dos sintagmas parecían dominar entonces, cualquier posibilidad de producción: los intelectuales no saben nada del fútbol, el argumento periodístico por excelencia... que preserva al cronista de cualquier irrupción excéntrica… y el argumento intelectual inverso, el fútbol como opio del pueblo, que limitaba la intervención a la condena, al prejuicio, a la distancia, o mejor aún, al silencio. (46)

That silence will be (brilliantly) broken by the work of the anthropologist Eduardo

Archetti who—from 1985 to 2005—will trace the (re) invention of a national identity in heterogeneous and peripheral practices17 such as sports, dance or cookbooks. In the case of Argentine football, Archetti will use the national archive of sport journalism (in particular that of the magazine El Gráfico) to see how these narratives that speak of the creation of a national style or a national footballing identity intersect or complement official (or more central if you wish) narratives on the invention of a national identity at the beginning of the XX century. Alabarces claims,

Archetti no hace fútbol: hace una antropología que se desplaza y se toca, continuamente, con la historia cultural. Sus objetos han sido numerosas problemáticas concernientes al deporte (particularmente el fútbol y el polo), la danza (el tango), la cocina y la alimentación. Y más importante aún, ha mostrado cómo estas prácticas sirven para estudiar los modos en los que la sociedad argentina ha articulado históricamente su identidad nacional, popular y masculina. (14)

Archetti’s work is informed and influenced by the pioneering texts of Brazilian anthropologist Roberto Da Matta who—in the Latin American context—was the first author to problematize ‘the national’ through bodily and cultural performances such as samba (in the context of carnival ) and football ( in the pioneering O universo do futebol.

Futebol e sociedade brasileira). Dance, games and sports (tango, football and polo in

Archetti’s studies) constitute apt areas through which to observe and analyze the constant (re) configuration and staging of ‘the national’ as they are part of what the argentine anthropologist calls free zones, that is:

[spaces] that permit the articulation of languages and practices that can challenge an official and puritanical public domain… spaces for mixing, for the appearance of hybrids,18 for sexuality and for the exaltation of bodily performances… privileged loci for the analysis of ‘freedom’ and cultural creativity. (18)

Another central figure and definitely the most active of all social researchers dealing with popular culture in Argentina is the already (numerously) quoted Pablo

Alabarces. In his still young (though vast), successful and prolific career, Alabarces had done research and written over several aspects of popular and mass culture such as argentine rock (‘rock nacional’), football narratives and practices on and off the field

(notably his study on the concept of aguante and its body politics within the context of

Argentine football/society), the role of TV in Argentine society, the binomials football/politics, football/identity, football violence and the discourses of Peronism (and

Kirchnerism) and its mass-media construction and propagation, among other subjects.

Moreover, Alabarces has been a mentor, a collaborator and an inspiration for a large group of new social researchers examining ‘popular culture’ (María Graciela Rodriguez,

José Garriga Zucal, Mariana Conde, María Verónica Moreira, Silvio Noi Varg and

Valeria Añón among many others) in and out of his native Argentina, for instance, in his role as coordinator of the Grupo de Trabajo Deporte y Sociedad of CLACSO (Consejo

Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales) from 1997 to 2002.19

However, in our opinion, Alabarces most significant work to date is his Fútbol y

Patria: El fútbol y las narrativas de la nación en Argentina published in 2002 and revised in 2008. Here the author retakes some of Archetti’s main findings (the mass-mediatic

creation of a national football narrative, Argentine football’s mythical figures and spaces

[the pibe and the potrero] and the radical importance of examining these free zones) and focuses on the historical context of Argentina at the beginning of the XXI century

(with its economic, political, cultural, moral and identity crisis) in order to question the validity of the idea that postulates football (and its narratives) as the last bastion of national identity, the lone surviving grand narrative after the—as we will see, just momentary—disappearance of the state as a producer of national discourses.

Alabarces concludes (in 2002) that as a matter of fact, “…el fútbol no es una máquina cultural de nacionalidad posmoderna; esa máquina es la televisión. Y el fútbol es sólo uno de sus géneros, aunque sea el más exitoso” (208). The relevance of this study, and its conclusion, to our own approach is manifest and as such, we will revisit this and other contributions by sociology and anthropology throughout our analysis.

In the area regarding the history of football (or football history) in Argentina, the name of Julio Frydenberg is an obligatory reference. Author of the brilliant and much needed Historia social del fútbol. Del amateurismo a la profesionalización (2011),

Frydenberg painstakingly traces the birth and evolution of football in Argentina as well as the early connections between this sport and politics and the media and the construction of national myths and sporting identities. This author was also the founder of the Centro de Estudios del Deporte at the Universidad Nacional San Martín in the province of Buenos Aires where he works along with a group of young sociologists, anthropologists and historians.

Also worth mentioning in this respect are the works of Victor Raffo and Rwany

Sibaja. The former published the very detailed El orígen británico del deporte argentino

(2004) where he narrates and documents the pre and early history of football association in Argentina (as well as of rugby, cricket and polo) using sources such as the British newspapers The Standard and The Herald along with other official documentation of the times. On the other hand, in his 2013’s doctoral dissertation

¡Animales! Civility, Modernity, and Constructions of Identity in Argentine Soccer, 1955-

1970, Rwany Sibaja focuses on a very precise historical period in order to analyze the emergence of notions of national and masculine identity as well as polarized views of

Argentine football (football dichotomies) still relevant in today’s media football discourse.

Both works follow Archetti and Alabarces’ leads in the fact that they incorporate the analysis of different types of non-scientific texts (newspapers, magazines, TV, movies, and literature) in order to illustrate and sustain their hypothesis. At the same time, their rigorous research, complement and supplement not only Alabarces and Archetti’s works but also ‘less academic’ texts such as Bayer’s Fútbol Argentino or Escobar Bavio’s

Alumni. Cuna de campeones y escuela de hidalguía to name just a few. Finally, we also need to mention the importance of the work of Tulio Guterman as director and editor of the digital magazine Lecturas en educación física y deportes, which, from 1996 on, has served as a valuable space for the publication, and diffusion of the work of social researchers all over Latin America.

Due to the auspicious increase in the number of books and dissertations written on the topic of football in Argentina it would be literally impossible (and very tedious) to cover (or even try to mention) all of these approaches in this short introduction. Suffice it to say that, fortunately, the period of silence and illegitimacy over this area of studies is now long over and that thanks to the growing diversification of voices and academic

nuclei of production (Alabarces’ group at the University of Buenos Aires, Frydenberg’s at Universidad Nacional San Martín and University of La Plata’s various groups of researchers that tackle football and sports in general from the fields of sociology, anthropology and physical education, among many other all over the country) the future for this area of studies looks promising. However, as Alabarces warns, it will be crucial for social scientists and the rest of researchers to focus their energies and attention on less traveled paths and vacant areas within this field (studies on the relationship between sports and politics that escape the overused thesis of governments manipulation and the opium of the people and more approaches on the trilogy sports/global economy/media, among many others) to avoid futile repetition and exhaustion of certain topics or as he cleverly puts it “ hinchazón, pero no gordura” (18).

Conclusion and summary of this works’ chapters

As was previously put forth, our reading of Argentine football literature will seek to explain its connections with the validation and recovery of both literary and football traditions in Argentina and in turn, we will analyze its position as a producer of a counter-hegemonic (and at times utopian) discourse. That is why the structure of our study will replicate the pendular movement of football literature and will go from the study of its traditional and hegemonic features to those elements that appear to display instances of resistance and counter-hegemonic initiatives.

At this point the ghost of gaucho literature reappears because, as in the case of

Martin Fierro—its most representative work—the denunciation of the injustices to which the protagonist is subjected—when, after resisting a military draft, is forced to go to the border—along with the longing for a happier past, takes place when the “real” gaucho is assimilated or at least in the process of assimilation to the capitalist market system. In

parallel, though more than a century later, Argentinian football literature is positioned in a place of resistance to the seemingly inexorable advance of commodification, globalization, deterritorialization and celebritization of football, pointing its gaze to a better past and a possible alternative present, delving into the realm of essences, emotions and the human, territorial and warm facets of the game, pitting this against the hyper-professionalization of sport in the 21st century.

The paths of the gaucho and the “pibe” of the “potrero” ("kid" of the paddock) seem to converge in this area. Their figures are both captured in the imaginary mythical accounts that seek to construct a prototypical “national being” while at the same time they are displaced in the present. In both cases, the advance of "civilization" (in its capitalist variant) is designated as the main responsible for their disappearance or, in the best of scenarios, their mutations into farmhand and professional footballer respectively. This transformation—according to one of the most commonly accepted theories—seemingly arises from the inability to occupy its "natural" space of belonging: the pampas and the “potreros” respectively. ‘Expanse’ (the Argentine disease per excellence according to Sarmiento) produced them and the economic recipe to get rid of it, "naturally" and progressively diluted them. As a result, it is nowadays possible to see national (commercial) campaigns from firms (for instance that from “Tarjeta

Naranja” a very popular credit card) that promote the reappearance of potreros

(everytime the national team scores Tarjeta Naranja assumes the responsibility of

“building” a new potrero) as a sort of magical solution to Argentina’s contemporary football crisis.20

However, this is neither the only nor the main cause of pibes’ dramatic transformation. From the very beginning a typical product of Argentine football press’ imaginary (which is not the same as to say that “real” pibes did not exist or that they were not instrumental in the configuration of vernacular approach to football), pibes typified a national style that found its capital in kids’ creativity, craftiness and irresponsibility. Against the seriousness and mechanical nature of the British approach to this sport, they were seen as the last guardians of football’s joy and playfulness.

Needless to say, pibes could become a professionals giving their entire families the possibility of an otherwise very laborious social mobility but according to this same narrative construction they always remained pibes, never abandoning their joyful disposition, in other words, pibes, those who became professional football players and those who did not, could still freely play.21 Nowadays, with the unstoppable commodification of this sport, pibes have lost that essential freedom as they are subjected to an increasing pressure from adults who see them as possible future sources of plentiful income. In other words, what once was an area of life and society where values other than those promoted by the hegemonic forces of industrialism could be explored, becomes just another space where these values are not only legitimized but most importantly naturalized, turned into common sense and as a consequence, the only right, logical and possible way of doing things: where achievement and productivity are seen as the ultimate benchmarks for success and those who take part in these

“leisure” activities are not regarded as complex, sensitive and developing individuals but mainly as cold data reflecting their performances and their lucrative potential. As Jorge

Rinaldi vividly illustrates: “Lamentablemente los juveniles están últimos, ya que en el

primer lugar de la fila se ponen los padres, los dirigentes y los empresarios, quienes los miran y los perciben desde pequeños como billetes con dos piernas” (18; emphasis added). The adults anxiety for their children’s (as well as their) economic prosperity leads to their early intrusion in what should be the careless world of play which is dramatically transformed into something that eerely resembles (and presents the characteristic of) the competitive work environment, pibes are alienated22 and become little automatons who dutefuly respond to their coaches’ commands. As former professional player and coach Alejandro Méndez comments:

La presencia de los mayores en la formación es superior a la de años atrás, cuando los niños pasaban horas jugando en el potrero o en la calle de manera auto-organizada. Así, los espacios de libertad que favorecían la creatividad cedieron ante los entrenamientos planificados. El adulto dirige el proceso en forma autocrática, sin respeto por los tiempos y las capacidades individuales. El resultado es un técnico que da infinidad de indicaciones (órdenes) y que imposibilita la toma de decisiones por el jugador, capacidad imprescindible para comprender el juego. Los pibes solo intentan responder a esas órdenes. (19)

This unique kind of ubiquitous disappearance caused by the presence of a double narrative that incorporates, massifies and excludes its characters (the dominant absorbing the emergent in Raymond Williams’s terms), makes the writing and reading of gaucho and football literature a very interesting and fruitful exercise, since both fields present a constant tension between the peripheral and the central, the rebellious and the established. Is this middle ground, this in-between, what we want to focus on; halfway between the popular and the learned, the central and the peripheral, the nostalgic and the disruptive. As we move forward in our analysis we want to be able to tackle questions like these: Exactly to what kind of crisis is this literature reacting, what are the answers or alternatives proposed and to what fields are the relevance of its

answers limited (if this limit exists)? In other words, what are we talking about when we talk about football in Argentine literature?

In the second chapter of this study (the first following this introduction), we will first trace the origins of the game of football in order to provide a brief historical context of the birth and evolution of today’s football association. Then, we will focus on this sport’s arrival to Argentina and its impact and progressive absorption into its society and culture. Finally, in the larger part of this chapter, we will reflect on the journalistic creation of a criollo football narrative to then deal with football’s literary representations and later provide an initial chronology, thematic development and list of main works of this subgenre in the Argentine context. Ideally, the first part of this study, will serve as map to which readers can return in order to contextualize the rest of the football literature works to be analyzed and/or to clarify some of the more prevalent narrative constructions/images to be used throughout this work (pibe, potrero, gambeta, la nuestra, etc).

Throughout the third chapter, we will focus on the comparative analysis of some of the central themes as well as the trajectory of gauchesca and football literature in order to find out common thematic concerns, elements and literary patterns or tropes that will allow us to draw more precise connections between both genres and also in which way these traditional notions and residual elements are used within the latter subgenre. Some of the topics to be examined are: the representation of the popular from the scope of the lettered city, the crucial place of orality in both literary subgenres, the role of creativity and inventive as cultural capital per excellence, the existence of a double reading of the law or a law of outlaws with its own internal codes and

punishments, the use of humor and parody as mechanisms of ridicule and denunciation, and the place of “outsiders” (foreigners, homosexuals and women) in both genres.

The fourth chapter will mark the beginning of the process of becoming between tradition and resistance in this subgenre (following the study’s proposed pendular path) as it will be centered on the always complex and polemic figure of Diego Armando

Maradona as this is approached in football literature. Through the analysis of Juan

Pablo Feinmann’s “Dieguito”, Guillermo Sacommanno’s “Transito”, Rodrigo Fresán’s

“Final”, Eduardo Sacheri’s “Me van a tener que disculpar”, Walter Vargas’s “Bautismos” and Sergio Olguín’s El equipo de los sueños, we will try to capture Maradona’s enormous impact and potentiality as a central figure in this subgenre (not to mention its decisive weight in this country’s recent cultural history). The most vivid reincarnation of the pibe figure, Maradona represents at the same time tradition and disruptive excessiveness, the liberating power of dreams and the heavy heritage of an ingrained, naturalized corruption and the works analyzed in this chapter explore and reveal all these facets, which, at the same time, best exemplify football literature’s vast potential and conflicting internal tensions.

In the fifth and last chapter prior to this study’s conclusion, we will place our magnifying glass on the anti-capitalist/mercantile vision that runs along much of

Argentine football literature to explain how this is articulated as a defiant discourse against the hyper-commercialization /professionalization /mediatization of this sport and all that surrounds it. In the works analyzed in the first part of this chapter, football works as an excuse for deep interpersonal encounters that reinforce individuals’ sense of belonging in their communities and foster the way for the founding and development of

unwavering loyalties that go beyond economic interests and even law. This is tied to the subgenre’s re-valorization of amateurism and the defense of values that clash against the idea (prevalent in football and in every capitalist society) of the absolute preeminence of “winners” over “losers”. Also crucially linked to this idea is the notion of the recuperation of childhood (as a way back to life’s most authentic stage) that football stories typically propose and with it, of a conception of life that privileges the freedom and irresponsibility of games as well as the unashamed enjoyment and exploitation of idleness’s creative potentiality.

In the second half of this chapter, we focus on two works by Horacio Convertini

(his novels El refuerzo and El último milagro) where this writer returns to two of

Argentine football’s traditional (though also updated) narrative constructions or myths: that of the pibe A.M (after Maradona), and the pibe’s dream—originally, the aspiration of playing professionally for the club you loved, now starkly turned into the mirage of economic freedom after being transferred to Europe—in order to explore their darker side and oppressive nature. In an analysis informed by Williams’ cultural theories,

Convertini illustrates in these novels how the power of Argentine footballing narratives is often conjugated (in-corporated) by the dominant forces of culture (in this case the professionalization of sport and life) thus turning the vital and liberating experience of games into an anguishing and painful experience for the characters (players) who are prey to a macabre teleology. Finally, he deals with the conception of aguante

(endurance and/or resistance) as an example of the dangerous closeness between football’s romanticism and the breeding of authoritarian and fascist tendencies, both, very common elements in this sport’s journalistic narratives as in the football literature

subgenre. This characteristic helps justify and explain the inclusion of these works at the end of this study as they serve to illustrate the valuable, complex and wide-ranging array of voices and perspectives this subgenre brings about, ranging from the celebratory, the romantic and nostalgic to the liberating, the counterhegemonic and the destructive, providing a space for reflection and introspection about this sport and its narratives that favors the use of a very productive strabismic gaze working both inwards and outwards.

Notes

1 We have to locate Alabarces’ words within the very specific historical, cultural and political context of the Argentine crisis of 2001 and its aftermath. The same author expresses in 2014 that, after the return of the state as a producer of a nationalist discourse (slowly growing in intensity from 2003 on, reaching its peak with the celebration of Argentina’s independence bicentenary in 2010): “… el fútbol no puede volver a encarnar ningún relato nacional eficaz. Apenas proponer su supervivencia como mercancía, a cargo, una vez más, del mercado, con la publicidad comercial como gran soporte de sus textos. En tanto los sentidos de la patria han vuelto a discutirse en los espacios políticos, al fútbol sólo le quedan las retóricas vacuas pero altisonantes de los sponsors…” (n.pag, “Fútbol, patria y política, una vez más”). However, in our opinion, this does not mean that the study of sports and football narratives in particular has lost all relevance or importance in the Argentina context or, for that matter, that there is not a place for alternative narratives within football’s discursive universe.

2 Sadly, a more and more peripheral area itself.

3 In his doctoral dissertation “Literatura y Fútbol: otros horizontes de la literature en España e Hispanoamérica”, Luis Alejandro Díaz Zuluaga attempts to understand and explains this silence and points to the crucial role of sport journalism in the origins and development of this literary subgenre: “Hubo un momento donde no se veía bien o no era meritorio que un escritor hablara de fútbol ya que este era visto como un arma de masificación y de adoctrinamiento a ojos de muchos. Sin embargo, esas mitologías que ya estaban latentes en el juego y en el corazón del pueblo también lo estaban en la mente y en el espíritu de muchos intelectuales que no entendían la magnitud épica del fútbol. Era un tema que no ameritaba darle espacio dentro de la literatura, porque no representaba los modelos cultos de la sociedad. Sin embargo, así como ocurrió con la crónica negra que supo encontrar su espacio dentro del mundo policial, la literatura sobre fútbol pudo abrirse un espacio gracias a las crónicas y a los relatos de los periodistas deportivos que reproducían los partidos cantando dramática y líricamente cada jugada. Ese fue el comienzo. Así fueron quedando atrás los prejuicios que hacían que los escritores fueran incapaces de confesar su gusto por el fútbol” (344).

4 Gramsci explains that dominant groups create and institute hegemony in a given society not only through coercion and direct implementation of state force but also, very importantly through a more subtle process that typically ends in the reaching of a more or less general consensus that helps explain, justify and naturalize said dominance as commonsensical: "What we can do, for the moment, is to fix two major superstructural 'levels': the one that can be called 'civil society', that is, the ensemble of organisms commonly called 'private', and that of 'political society' or 'the state'. These two levels correspond on the one hand to the functions of 'hegemony' which the dominant group exercises throughout society and on the other hand to that of 'direct domination' or command exercised through the state and 'juridical' government." (12)

5 David Whitson links Gramsci and William’s approaches to the concept of hegemony and points to one of the main consequences/benefits of studying its constant process of construction and reproduction in a given society/culture: “Hegemony, Williams argues, is an advance on organic notions of "culture" (including the functional notion of socialization into a particular culture) in that it directs us to recognize the interests underlying the real socialization practices we are able to identify (in the family, for example, as well as in schools, the media, and other institutions of culture)” (67).

6 At this point, it is very important to remember that a completely deterministic view of Marxism was refuted by both Marx and Engels. The latter, in an 1890 letter to Joseph Bloch, tries to clarify this rigid view of the base-superstructure relationship: “According to the materialist conception of history the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure-- political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class

after successful battle, etc, judicial forms and then even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas--also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form” (488; emphasis in the original).

7 Jenny Bourne Taylor expands on this point, “Williams stresses that the dominant culture is itself dependent on incorporating aspects of emergent forms to maintain its legitimacy and hegemony, and that it is often difficult to distinguish between what is genuinely emergent and what is merely novel. The assimilation of subcultural and subversive styles and fashions into mainstream culture is one example of such incorporation” (201). Williams also indicates that this incorporation by the dominant culture often “looks like recognition, acknowledgment, and thus a form of acceptance” (125).

8 In this respect, Whitson refers to the process of hegemonic dominance and explains it as the constitution of “an internalized sense, not only of what is desirable butwhat is possible, which it is difficult for most people to distance themselvesfrom, to think critically about, and to imagine beyond. This network of "commonsense" understanding must make sense of the political and economic order, of course. It must also, perhaps even more importantly, extend beyond these to make sense of the private life which remains at the center of most people's consciousness: work, leisure, family, and friendships, the powerful affective experiences of most lives” (68).

9 The abundance of definitions contrasts however with the almost absolute absence of examples for which Williams has been repeatedly criticized. Victor N. Paananen refers to this aspect and provides a few possible examples in the context of British culture: “Within structures of feeling (a favorite Williams phrase throughout his writings) found in literature and in other cultural production, even “pre-emergent” elements can be grasped. Structures of feeling are themselves social experience but often mistaken for personal experience and are felt long before being fully articulated. Williams offers no examples, but the various phases of British youth culture over the past fifty years would, perhaps, be full of examples of structures of feeling that are “pre-emergent” but social in origin and in search of cultural articulation over against the hegemonic. Punk music and body piercing are two recent instances of “pre-emergent” resistance to the hegemonic” (194).

10 Williams elaborates on the key role of works of art as invaluable sources of evidence within the process of cultural analysis, “The most interesting and difficult part of any cultural analysis in complex societies, is that which seeks to grasp the hegemonic in its active and formative but also its transformational processes. Works of art, by their substantial and general character are often especially important as sources of this complex evidence” (113-114).

11 This brief summary owes a great deal to the work of Pablo Alabarces who has written several articles analyzing the state of this (sub) field of studies.

12 Alabarces exemplifies this situation and its possible repercussions when he says. “No hay producción sobre el fútbol en la Argentina: el fantasma—¿el estigma?—del mote parece clausurar el discurso, inclusive el populista; y desplazarlo a la charla de café—que, aunque próxima, no puede calificarse de sede académica—o, nuevamente al costumbrismo” (265).

13 Asociación Latinoamericana de Estudios Socioculturales del Deporte, founded in 2008.

14 In the prologue to the compilation “Alfredo Poviña. Homenaje en el centenario de su nacimiento (1904- 2004)”, Olsen H. Ghirardi describes him as, “Amante de los deportes y, especialmente, del fútbol, llegó a ser presidente de la Liga Cordobesa de Fútbol. Cuando se realizó el certamen mundial, en nuestro país, el año mil novecientos setenta y ocho, fue coordinador de la sección de ciencias sociales del Congreso que se efectuó. Versó sobre disciplinas relacionadas con ese deporte, cuyas actas abarcaron tres enormes volúmenes” (8). Despite this voluminous production, neither Ghirardi nor any of the other four contributors, say nothing else about Poviña’s approach to football in the following 88 pages of this work.

15 About Sebreli’s lack of depth and rigurosity when dealing with this subject Alabarces describes, “… ese ejercicio de Sebreli constituyó una especie de propiedad transitiva según la cual el deporte es un

fenómeno de masas, por lo tanto es un fenómeno de alienación, por lo tanto es un fenómeno de fascismo, por lo tanto es un fenómeno de populismo; el orden de los factores podía alterarse, pero lo que unía a todos los calificativos era la igualdad” (262).

16 Alabarces states that Galeano, “ … en demasiadas ocasiones termina refugiado en cierto consabido sentido común futbolístico, con los tópicos populistas de la resistencia cultural, la carnavalización, la inventiva, la fiesta y la belleza a la cabeza, conformando una matriz teórica recuperada por buena parte de una discursividad periodística levemente progresista ansiosa de legitimidad” (45). We cannot help but notice that, at times, Alabarces’ discourse gets close to that of Sebreli (one of his favorite targets of criticism), especially when discriminating “legitimate voices or opinions” from those which are not.

17 In Masculinities Archetti admits, “My research is not on the official ideology of national male identities and nation state but on the margins of the national, the fields where the national can be perceived and related to specific individual features, cultural creativity and public performances.” (19)

18 Hybrids, hybridity and hybridization are also key concepts in Archetti’s work. Alabarces explains how this concept functions in Archetti’s texts and how it differs from García Canclini’s own versión of the same concept, “Hibridación funciona, entonces, como concepto clave, designando la manera particular en que se construye tempranamente la identidad nacional en una sociedad de modernidad periférica como la argentina y con un masivo proceso inmigratorio en las primeras dos décadas del siglo XX. Así, los híbridos resultan construcciones ideológicas del orden social y son, en este sentido, productores de tradición. Los argumentos de Archetti exceden –y en ese movimiento, discuten– las posturas popularizadas por García Canclini: la hibridación deja de ser una suerte de característica posmoderna para recuperar densidad problemática y espesor histórico” (15).

19 During this time he compiled the collections Peligro de gol: Estudios sobre deporte y sociedad en América Latina (2000) and Futbologías: Fútbol, identidad y violencia en América Latina (2003).

20 TV also does its part to promote the re-emergence of potreros: this was the case of TyC Sports’ weekly show “Que vuelvan los potreros” (first aired in 2013) where they traveled throughout the nation’s to discover new “gems” in football’s informal spaces to finally create a sort of dream team of the potreros that (in the show’s final episode) played against a team of former professional players, also product of the same mythical territories.

21 Well into the last part of the twentieth century (1979) it was possible to find cases of players who went directly from the potreros (urban, informal spaces) to play professionally from a team. One of these cases was that of Alberto Márcico—also known as Beto or El Mágico (the magical)—who coincidentally (or not) was born in Barracas and in a recent interview affirmed that had he gone through a strict professional formation “No hubiese tenido la picardía que aprendí en la plaza” (25, “Somos tan boludos que despreciamos a Messi porque era chiquitito”).

22 These “factories of players” into what clubs and private formative schools have become respond directly to the international football market’s neccesities, and as such, manufacture players that fit this requirements, leaving aside kids’ natural tendencies or preferences. As Alejandro Caravario explains: “En la Argentina, la provisión de juveniles a la Primera está unida a la necesidad de vender para sobrevivir. Los clubes más previsores contemplan en su balance anual una venta jugosa para garantizar el equilibrio. Se sabe, por lo tanto, que los buenos son aves de paso. Y que la formación de juveniles, antes que responder a un plan general, a una interpretación del juego, tiende a satisfacer las necesidades del mercado. Por poner un caso en cuestión: seguir criando enganches (aquel número diez arquetípico, gran producto nacional) se considera una pérdida de tiempo. Así que mejor preparar laterales de largo recorrido y delanteros con gol. Mejor enseñar los secretos del doble cinco. Todo eso, se supone, tiene mejor salida al exterior, responde a una demanda. Desesperados por dar el salto, apurar la venta y el gran contrato, los jugadores de inferiores cuentan con su representante desde la tierna infancia” (14; emphasis added).

CHAPTER 2 LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF FOOTBALL IN AGENTINA: CONTEXTUALIZATION, CHRONOLOGY AND BRIEF SUMMARY

As we previously announced, in the first chapter of this study we will try to provide a basic and initial chronology and summary of the process of construction and development of football as a literary topic/area in the larger context of Argentine literature, commenting on its central features as a genre, presenting its major exponents and their most important works and discussing its present state and future. However, as

Fredric Jameson’s mantra goes, it is crucial to ‘always historicize’ in order to come up with a more comprehensive understanding of the cultural phenomenon football has become as well as to provide a context to further elucidate its significance within

Argentine culture.

In order to do that, we will begin by quickly tracing the origins of football (or its pre-history), describing the different types of folk football games played around the world as well as illustrating its cultural relevance and how much of that (if any) is still present in today’s sport (and its literary representations). Later, we will focus on the process of creation of association football in England, its subsequent diffusion all over the world (including Argentina) and the cultural/economic impact this entailed. Finally, and prior to tackling the main topic of this chapter, we will deal with the evolution and popularization of this sport in Argentina, reflecting as well on the journalistic conception of a discourse presenting a national football (ing) identity: a unique and original way to conceptualize, understand and practice this sport.

Throughout this chapter, we will review and take advantage of the vast bibliography presenting sociological, anthropological and historical analysis of football,

both globally and locally. Consequently, our analysis will be informed and supported by the invaluable work and insightful perspectives of authors such as Giulianotti,

Frydenberg, Huizinga, Archetti, Guttmann, Raffo, Sibaja, Galeano, Bayer and Alabarces just to name a few. Their contributions will be highly instrumental in the process of construction creation and establishment of a context and a theoretical frame for the study of the representations of football in Argentine literature.

Origins, early history and modern development of association football

The beginning of the pre-history of this sport dates back to the Neolithic Age. It was in the province of Shan Xi (China) where stone balls were first kicked around in games that bear some similarity to football. Later on, during the Han Dynasty (206 BC-

AD 220) the game of cuju (translated as kick-ball) was played. This game resembled football and its rules much more since two teams of twelve players each would kick a ball around with the purpose of scoring a goal (by sending the ball through an opening into a net) and the use of hands was not allowed. China’s imperial expansion is also behind the appearance of ball games in the Malay peninsula (sepak raga) and Japan

(kemari).

In 1500 BC Central America, ball games (among them the Mayan game of pok- ta-pok) were a central part of sacred ceremonies that often culminated with sacrifices.

Eduardo Galeano explains: “Cuando el juego concluía, la pelota culminaba su viaje: el sol llegaba al amanecer después de atravesar la región de la muerte. Entonces para que el sol saliera, corría la sangre” (27). Galeano notices that the indigenous people of

Mexico and Central America would generally hit the ball with their hips and forearms though in certain games they would also use their feet and knees.

What is more, the central place of ball games in Mesoamerica’s culture as well as its social depth are unparalleled in the ancient world and it represents the closest equivalent to the status of football in our current societies. Sociologist David Goldblatt articulately elaborates,

For 3,000 years, between the emergence of the Olmecs in Central Mexico and the fall of the Aztecs to the Spanish conquistadors in 1521, every society in Mesoamerica, every settlement from the great city of Teotihulucan to the scattered village compounds of the Gulf of Mexico played the game. The material archaeological record left behind cannot quite match the singular splendour of the Coliseum or Olympia but its breadth is unparalleled. Over 1,500 ball courts have been unearthed, from tiny plain rectangular troughs in small villages and ancient hilltop towns to the vast and elaborate stepped constructions of the great Mayan city of Chichen Itza. Many more must have been lost to the jungle or were destroyed by the Spanish occupation. In addition, the ruined ball courts and ransacked tombs have yielded an extraordinary trove of ceramic figurines, glyphs, carvings, reliefs and statues that depict the game and its rituals. (24)

In South America, the indigenous peoples of Chile played pilimatun and those of

Patagonia played tchoekah. Both games are considered ball games though they are only distant relatives of football since hands were used in the first one and a wood stick in the latter one. Meanwhile, in North America, Native Americans would play the game of pasuckquakkohowog, which translates as ‘they gather to play football’ or ‘they gather to play ball with the foot’. This game was played using an inflated bladder, with goals that were 1 mile apart on narrow playing fields that could include as many as 1000 people at a time. This game would also last for more than one day, was very violent and would conclude with a feast for those enduring players.

In Europe, the earliest forms of football play in Antiquity were the Greek games of episcryos and phaininda and the Roman harpastum (the firsts being precursors of the latter). In the case of harpastum—according to Goldblatt “something akin to rugby with

kicking, catching and physical contact” (30)—, it is significant to notice the near insignificance of this game within the specter of Roman society, a perception that is substantiated by the fact that this ball-game could not be found at the Coliseum: a central space for the manifestation of Roman culture and the most impressive sporting architecture of the ancient world. The Romans (as the Chinese had earlier done) took their game of harpastum ( to their conquered peoples (the British among them) but these had already developed their own forms of folk football before the roman invasion.

Some of them were the game of caid (the ancestor of Gaelic and probably Australian football) in Ireland, knappan in Wales, the ba game in Scotland, and soule in France among others.

Another European precursor of football is the Calcio Fiorentino. Played in

Renaissance Florence,1 was much more aristocratic in nature than most of the other forms of pre-historic football,2 had a set number of players per team (27) and its rules were clearer. The game of Calcio Fiorentino was revived during the twentieth century by the dictator Benito Mussolini in order to stir up Italians’ nationalist nostalgia for the days of the renaissance. By reintroducing it into the national culture, Mussolini also placed

Calcio Fiorentino (also known as Calcio Storico) as one of the most significant forerunners of modern-day football so much that the Italian word for football is still calcio. 3

All of these games share some common elements such as its extreme violence,4 a large number of participants (distinguishing players from spectators was in some cases a very challenging task), the lack of clear rules and playing parameters, its disorganized nature and its connection with religious festivities such as Shrovetide (from

‘to shrive’ or hear confessions) in England and Carnival in the rest of Europe. As

Giulianotti points out: “Chaotic football matches between rival villages, towns or guilds, were important adjuncts to these periods of revelry, along with other rustic pleasures, such as cock-fighting and dog-tossing”, to then add

In the manner of many carnivals, these football matches promoted long- term social order by giving youth its head. Local apprentices practised the game to mark their elevation to the guild: through this male ritual, the rites of passage from adolescence to manhood were publicly consecrated. Generally, football fostered a strong sense of social solidarity. (3)

It is important to notice the ‘original’ connection between the early forms of this sport and the carnivalesque since the idea of a football match as an instance of a ‘world upside down’ type of setting has been amply used by both detractors and advocates of the so-called “beautiful game”; 5 the first ones accusing football of being a (powerful) distraction (panem et circenses) from serious and more critical events while the latter ones remarking on the subversive potentiality that such a popular and culturally central activity may entail. In this study, we will touch upon this controversy in the Argentine context though it is not our immediate intention to take sides and/or engage in this already-classic discussion, but rather to explore which of these sides (if any) is privileged within the space of Argentine football literature. However, having said this, it is always key to advocate for less strict and reductionist approaches to such complex phenomena as the carnival and the carnivalesque, where different forms of social conflict and symbolic manipulation take place at the same time. That is why, we agree with James Scott when he affirms that viewing carnival just as a mechanism of social control where the subordinate/subaltern are given a space where to express themselves and/or vent their frustrations, this way defusing actual conflicts/revolts is “not entirely

wrong, but it is… seriously misleading. It risks confusing the intentions of the elites with the results they are able to achieve” (178).

Going back to the narrative of the evolution of folk football into modern association football, we must say that it was precisely the disappearance of its religious and carnivalesque elements, that is, the rationalization and secularization of the game, what marked the transition between these two stages. Another key element of this transition was the passage of this game from the public sphere of the street to the private one of wealthy schools.6 Here is when the figure of Thomas Arnold becomes relevant, as Giulianotti narrates:

In 1828, Thomas Arnold became headmaster at Rugby and revolutionized the moral education of the nation’s wealthy youth. Sport and physical culture became central to this mission. Games were introduced as character- building, teaching the virtues of leadership, loyalty and discipline, epitomizing the noble philosophy of mens sana in corpore sano. The new ‘Christian gentlemen’ would maintain the political and economic order at home and later underpin imperial expansion abroad. (4)

During the first 60 to 70 years of the nineteenth century, there were not consistent rules for this game among different schools.7 Eventually, there was a division between those who thought hackling and handling should be part of this game

(Rugbeians and Etonians) and those who did not (Harrovians and later on

Cambridgians) and favored a dribbling game. Though the first FA cup8 was held between 1871-1872, the laws of association football were not formally codified until

1877. After an initial period busy with changes and additions (introduction of goalkeepers in 1871, permitted use of hands in throw- ins in 1882, introduction of the penalty kick in 1891 along with neutral referees who could enter the field), the rules of

association football suffered comparatively few alterations (introduction of substitutes in

1958, yellow and red cards in 1970 and the back-pass rule9 in 1992).

The international expansion of association football owes a great deal to British political and cultural influence in the world. However, as a sign of the ages, “trade connections rather than imperial links,10 were the most propitious outlets” (Giulianotti, 9) for football’s successful global diffusion.11 The case of Argentina, as we will see, does not escape this description.

The beginnings of Association football in Argentina

The first game of football played in Argentina took place in Buenos Aires on June

20th 186712 in the neighborhood of Palermo in the city of Buenos Aires. The fields were this game was played belonged to the exclusive Buenos Aires Cricket Club and all the players who participated in this historical match (with the exception of Boschetti, probably an Italian according to Archetti)13 were either British citizens or at least of

British origin.14 Little could they know that they were giving birth to a national passion within which it is very difficult to imagine the—already imagined—Argentine community.

The arrival of association football to Argentina was greeted with enthusiasm by a growing nation that wanted to emulate and appropriate European costumes. As

Osvaldo Bayer states: “La república liberal-conservadora argentina se vestía según el corte inglés. Creía en la libertad de comercio y quería marchar al mismo ritmo que

Londres. Era positivista y creía a ciegas en el progreso” (18).

As a British import, football was, in the early years, exclusively managed and played by the British (around 45,000 Britons lived in Buenos Aires at this time) who established this sport through its inclusion in private schools, thus replicating the model that had proven successful at home. Simultaneously, football was also played in

exclusive clubs (“clubes sociales y deportivos”) that were part of the British community

(at first) and the Argentine aristocracy (later on). Alabarces agrees with Bayer when he refers to Argentine aristocrats as “…permeables a toda influencia británica, celosos cultivadores de la mimesis más estricta” (49) to then add “La lengua es parte de esa mímesis;15 las familias patricias argentinas presumen de su dominio del inglés” (49). 16

A third channel of expansion for association football in Argentina, and the most decisive nexus between this sport and less aristocratic classes, were the clubs founded by factories for their employees, most notably those linked to the railway companies

(Ferro Carril Oeste and Rosario Central Railway among the most notable cases).17 The arrival of trains was seen as a key factor for the expansion of progress and urbanization to the vast territory of Argentina along with the arrival of North European immigration and its civilized customs. Ironically, what Domingo Faustino Sarmiento could not foresee was that football, a British import par excellence, was going to run its own course and become, in the view of intellectuals such as Juan José Sebreli among others, a fertile ground for the reappearance of his most-feared barbarism.

Argentine (criollo) football: the creation of a narrative and the dual foundation’s theory

As football gained popularity and transgressed social, economic and institutional boundaries, the need for a narrative that reflected and justified this reappropriation became evident. The British, as creators and promoters of this sport, provided the cornerstone for the construction of a narrative of Argentine football. They played the role of the father to be killed, the master to be surpassed, and a big “Other”18 that would validate, by means of opposition, the creation of a unique and original way of playing and understanding this sport: la nuestra.

The following quote by the writer and journalist Juan José de Soiza Reilly (1879-

1959) illustrates the way in which the process of creolization of football was articulated in the media. As we will see, at this point football is yet a British invention but no longer exclusive patrimony of the imperial crown:

Si bien el fútbol nació en los colegios británicos de Buenos Aires, fue el piberío porteño, quien lo aclimató... [el fútbol] se amoldaba a su temperamento. Las corridas y las gambetas detrás de la pelota, removían los viejos instintos del gaucho que aprendió del ñandú a conquistar su libertad gambeteándole a la muerte. Además, ¡era lindo!... Y fue entonces que los pibes llevaron el fútbol a los potreros del suburbio. Allí inventaron la pelota de trapo y le agregaron al deporte el ingenio de su picardía. (36- 37 qtd. in Roberto Jorge Santoro’s Literatura de la pelota)

In this long but fruitful quotation, it is possible to identify the mention of many of the so-called essences of Argentine football. In the first place, the idea of a "natural" ownership of this sport by the “porteño” kids (“el piberío porteño”);19 a sport that seems to be made for them (“se amoldaba a su temperamento”) and that also makes possible the re-emergence of the old instincts of the gaucho,20 a pivotal figure in the construction of a national identity. The gaucho, in turn, is presented as an instinctive learner who imitates what he sees in the nature that surrounds him and, as a legitimate (legitimized) dweller of the pampas, inherits from it everything he knows about freedom, dexterity and survival. Alfredo Ebelot, a French engineer who immigrated to Argentina in 1870 to work in the construction of a system of trenches to defend the territories from the South of Buenos Aires against indigenous malones (La zanja de Alsina), reaffirms the notion according to which gauchos are characterized by their “natural” predisposition and adherence to a purely empirical kind of learning:

El gaucho payador (...) improvisa versos y los canta sobre un tono melancólico, acompañándose con la guitarra. No sabe leer ni escribir. Lo que sabe de música y de poesía, se lo han enseñado los bramidos de los vientos, los mugidos de los animales, sus costumbres minuciosamente

observadas, y las pasiones de su propio corazón. Sus cantos medio salvajes, sus toscos versos, están empapados en la naturaleza ambiente. (qtd. in Aguirre 73) 21

The age-old debate of nature vs. nurture as well as the one that pits formal vs. informal instruction appear in the background of de Soiza Reilly’s words thematically linking this early football chronicles to the literary genre of gauchesca and specifically to

Martín Fierro as its most representative work.22 Additionally, it is possible to hear the echoes of José Marmol’s Amalia (another one of Argentina’s foundational fictions) in this journalist’s reference to gauchos (and by extension pibes) originality and closeness to nature, who he personifies as a mother and/ or governess to them: “Naturaleza, madre e institutriz del gaucho. (…) Por sus habitudes no se aproxima a nadie, sino a él mismo; porque el gaucho argentino no tiene tipo en el mundo… (…) La soledad y la naturaleza han puesto en acción sobre su espíritu sus leyes invariables y eternas…”

(232-233).

The author’s metaphor that speaks of the reemergence of gaucho instincts as observed in pibes bodily performances (specifically in their tendency to dribble), functions remarkably well in this context, as it provides Argentine players’ with a ‘quasi- biological’ basis to explain and support their stylistic exceptionality, so crucial for the construction of a unique football identity. Moreover, it aligns this British import (once acclimated, transformed and reinterpreted, that is) with some central elements of

Argentina’s cultural, political and literary traditions such as the (fossilized) gaucho as a national archetype and gauchesca, represented by Martín Fierro as the foundational stone of a national literature. That is why, it was not at all surprising that many years later, when having to choose a mascot for the first (and only) football’s World Cup

organized by Argentina (1978), a gauchito (a little gaucho; that is, a gaucho-pibe combination) was the final selection.23

Second, it is very remarkable to notice, on the one hand, the identification of potreros (paddocks, also translated as wastelands) as some sort of primeval (suburban) territories or breeding ground of Argentina’s football identity,24 as well as the importance given to the aesthetic aspects of the game (“Además, ¡era lindo!”) on the other.25 It is in this context that the Argentine kids will add their “own” ingredients (invention, improvisation and a rag ball)26 to the mix and, therefore, will transform the way argentines feel and understand this game forever. As we will later see, the contrast between the natural and the mechanical, rehearsal and improvisation will become one of the richest areas of thematic development in both sports journalism and Argentine’s football literature.

One of the main sources of the dissemination of the narratives of this kind of football nationalism was the sport magazine El Gráfico.27 In its pages, we can see the solidification of the discourse that points up to la nuestra (“our way” or “our style of playing”) as a unique and proper way to interpret and play this sport through the creation of a style that deviates from the perceived British mechanization and favors personal inspiration.

According to El Gráfico’s journalists, criollo football (from the river Plate’s area in the strictest sense of the word) is less disciplined than that of the creators, but also less monotonous and more agile and colorful. The unpredictable character and the aesthetic superiority of criollo football are based on the fundamental differences between man and machine (a symbol of both the industrial revolution and the British Empire). This is

the argument that will underlie the majority of the earliest discourses of criollo football. A clear example of this argumentation can be found in the following passage by Borocotó

(Ricardo Lorenzo Rodríguez),28 one of the most renowned writers of El Gráfico and a very influential figure in the creation of this narrative:

…it is logical as the years have gone by that all Anglo-Saxon influence in football has been disappearing, giving way to the less phlegmatic and more restless spirit of the Latin… it is different from the British in that is less monochrome, less disciplined and methodical, because it does not sacrifice individualism for the honour of collective values… British football is really powerful and has the regular and impulsive driving force of a machine, but it is monotonous because it is always uniformly the same. River Plate football, in contrast, does not sacrifice personal action entirely and makes more use of dribbling and generous personal effort … and for that reason is a more agile and attractive football. (El Gráfico no. 470, 1928:15 as qted in Archetti, Eduardo P. "The Hybridisation of Europeans in the Worlds of Football and Polo in Argentina", 19).

The discursive re-articulation of association football in more “telluric” terms fits well with the theory of a second foundation of Argentine football (also put forward by the writers of El Gráfico). After several decades of exclusivity and British dominance—with the “mythical” Alumni of the Brown brothers being a sort of link between the British and the Creole—, 29 the team of Racing Club de Avellaneda that gets the championship in

1913 is considered the first "criollo" champion and the initiator of a second stage in the history of Argentine football: the one that corresponds to its "second foundation”.30

The Racing Football Club (originally named Football Club Barracas al Sud) took its name and its colors (light blue and white)31 from the French team Racing Paris though they only adopted the colors in 1910 in order to commemorate the centenary of the May revolution of 1810. The historical context is critical in this case, since these are also the times where the Argentine intellectual elite was developing a strong critical-

political program that would look to re-found a nationalist argentine literature32 with the figure of the gaucho as its main paradigm.33

The team of Racing Club that won the 1913 championship had only three players of British origin34 (Wine, Loncan and Prince) while the rest of the surnames were either of Spanish or Italian origin (Ochoa, Olázar, Ohaco, Muttoni, Firpo, Seminario,

Marcovecchio, Perinetti).35 By analyzing this fact, it becomes evident that, in the context of football, the configuration of the “criollo” was more flexible than in other areas of society were precisely the arrival of immigrants was seen as the threat that made the construction of a strong nationalist discourse an imperative and urgent task. What is more, as football became more open and appealing to the popular classes, it necessarily began to shed its original aristocratic fixtures and associations (the gentlemanly notion of fair-play as the most noteworthy in this respect) as the early practicioners of this sport had to find refuge in the undefiled haven of rugby (football’s haf-brother).36 In a gradual but unstoppable process, the game of football was embraced and transformed by these new criollo players (none other than newly arrived immigrants and their offspring) and this sport became a powerful cultural machine capable of assimilating immigrants’ threatening heterogeneity. Needless to say, this operation needed a narrative that legimitized it and extended throughout the country

(and later the world). A banal and marginal narrative like that of Crítica and especially El

Gráfico which despite its uncomfortable origin and position would intersect and act as a complement to the elite’s “legitimate” narratives of nationality. As Archetti intelligently puts it,

It is important to keep in mind that El Gráfico’s application of the term ‘criollo foundation’ to a game transformed by the sons of first-generation

immigrants should have been considered an insult by the nationalist writers of the time. The nationalists were against massive immigration because it contaminated the ‘national essence’ (…) National identity in football belongs to the sons of non-British immigrants: it is a cultural form created on the margins of the nationalists’ criollismo. (64)

The question that naturally arises at this point is how this second-generation immigrants acquired the essential criollo characteristics that legitimized them as ‘full- fledged argentines’ (in case such notion exists). Again, two journalists from El Gráfico

(Chantecler and the already mentioned Borocotó) contributed with the two most divulged theories. On the one hand, Chantecler (Alfredo Enrique Rossi) signaled that the most evident manifestation of the criollo “essence” in the game of football was a bodily one: dribbling (or “gambeta” in the argentine context, a word that comes from gauchesca literature and describes the fast and disconcerting movement of ñandús).37

To be an apt dribbler, a player has to possess skill, agility, craftiness, creativity and especially wiliness (in Chantecler terms “viveza criolla”). Through the cunningly use of dribbling and its many variants (the feint, the ‘bicycle’, the marianela, the tunel or caño38 among others) criollo players could creatively express their individuality, which in turn made them unique, unpredictable and the total opposite of the mechanical British style.

As we can see, this does not differ much from the more traditionalist, essentialist approach that we presented in the previous pages that made reference to the natural unruliness and instinctiveness of pibes.

What makes Chantecler’s approach a bit different was the fact he posited that

Argentine players were the distinctive product of an assimilation and an amalgamation

“of all races” (even the British), each of it contributing in its own way to the final product.

By supporting and developing this melting-pot kind of theory, Chantecler proposed that

the criollo style of playing football was a combination of tradition and individual contributions from all over the world:

When our immigrant country receives in its breast the great migrations of all races, it has assimilated qualities from each of them and has amalgamated them, giving them its own mark (…) we have something from each civilization without belonging typically to any of them. (El Gráfico no 654, 1932:21 cited in Archetti 68)

On the other hand, Borocotó’s theory of national football maintains that the sons—and not the daughters as football is at this point in time an exclusive male arena—of (Latin) immigrants inherited a number of criollo essences that in turn, made possible the existence of a unique style of play. He insists on the idea that nature provides the substances that transform and define criollo players, some of them being, the Argentinian landscape and its food (barbecued meat, mate, etc.). We will once again turn to Eduardo Archetti—the main academic referent when it comes to the study of El Gráfico as a springboard for the discourse of football nationalism in Argentina—as he summarizes Borocotó’s approach: “…something unique and un-transferable becomes naturalized: the contact with nature allows the sons of immigrants—only some sons of course—to be transformed. The style of play is thus derived from nature—it is a natural gift; a criollo player is born so, and cannot be made so” (69).39

Possible ambiguities and contradictions aside, we can find an example of this

‘natural’ transformation in the figure of Francisco Carlos Olázar, a celebrated member of the 1913’s Racing Club team, who is described by Bayer as “el primer caudillo del pasto porteño” (22). The same as gauchos, caudillos40 were very controversial figures of their times. These rambunctious regional leaders were seen (at least in the ‘official’ version of Argentine history)41 as major threats and obstacles in the path of the conformation of the (an) Argentine nation.42 Rawny Sibaja adds: “Caudillismo was a form of nineteenth-

century military and political leadership in Latin America, in which charismatic leaders used violence and patronage to expand their base of power” (245).

In the football context, however, the caudillo figure was brought back to life with a much more positive connotation: the word caudillo generally serves to designate a player that is equally respected and feared (by teammates and opponents), a though man or enforcer in the middle of the field, a ‘natural’ and vocal leader whose attachment to instincts is stronger than his respect for tactics or rules.43 It is easy to see how this characterization fits appropriately with some of the basic tenets of the newly created criollo style of playing football.44

As we have tried to illustrate, the narrative of Argentine football in its criollo version appears as a device capable of including and legitimizing the growing mass of immigrants arriving—among other European countries—from Italy and Spain

(considered a threat by the most conservative and traditionalist sectors) by differentiating them from the definitively excluded English immigrants. The creation of la nuestra— a particular form of playing and interpreting this sport—will do nothing but mix the 'essential' with the hybrid, contributing to the dissemination of a narrative of national football that is open and closed at once, and therefore problematic and contradictory. As

Archetti explains: “The ‘national’ is a typical hybrid product, open but exclusive because the British are eliminated from the new style. The case of football (…) illustrates the process of hybridization as the creation of a ‘pure form’ that did not exist in the past and is historically constituted as a new form and as a tradition” (71).

Literary representation (s) of football in Argentina: an initial outline

As we have already seen, the first encounters between football and literature in

Argentina took place in the written media (newspapers and magazines) at the beginning

of the XX century. On top of the already mentioned Borocotó, de Soiza-Reilly and

Chantecler, we can add (among others) the names of writers Pablo Rojas Paz45 (who wrote chronicles for the newspaper Crítica in the decades of 1920 and 1930 under the pseudonym “El negro de la tribuna”), Miguel Ángel Bavio Esquiú—who, in the 1940’s and 1950’s, wrote chronicles for the magazines Campeón, Rico Tipo and Avivato under the pseudonym, “Juan Mondiola”—and José Gabriel who wrote for the newspaper La nación in the decades of 1920 and 1930.

One element these writers have in common is the emphasis they place on the aesthetic value of Argentine football, which, as we already know, is going to be central to the conformation of an identity as a football-nation. José Gabriel’s “El jugador de football: ejemplo de arte”46 is a clear (and extreme) example of this discursive operation.

In this article, the author takes advantage of the presentation of the celebrated ballerina

Anna Pawlova in Buenos Aires to “shamelessly” announce: “Nada de esto vale lo que un partido de fútbol” (68), since “en esa pantomima rusa de diez pesos la platea, todo movimiento es arbitrario y sin propósito” (77) while in football “la hermosura, la destreza y la agilidad obedecen a un objeto y a un cannon” (77).

José Gabriel’s explicit contempt for Russian ballet (“a pantomime” in his own words) clashes with the traditional tendency of Argentine intellectuals to favor European high culture over the local and the popular. This text, highly provocative and chauvinistic, is valuable because José Gabriel is among the first writers to openly consider Argentine football as a major cultural export. The author is responsible for strengthening the connections with the gauchesque and the telluric referring to football fields as " cuadraditos de pampa derramados por la ciudad " (78) and once again

highlighting the inventiveness of local players and their status as rebellious students against the mechanized English football school: “…también en esto es ejemplarizador nuestro fútbol: cuando supieron cómo se jugaba, trataron de olvidar lo aprendido y se pusieron a inventar” (78). The difference with previous texts is that in this one the roles of teacher and learner are switched and is Europe (and not just England) the one that is

“naturally” forced to surrender to the superiority of this new Argentine form of art:

Todos los actos esenciales de la cultura son productos de una enseñanza convertida en móvil creador. Por eso nuestros universitarios van a Europa maestra y sólo promueven cortesías y van nuestros jugadores de fútbol y arrebatan a las gentes. Llevan lo que Europa conocía, pero lo llevan superado. (79)

It is evident that José Gabriel’s message has two main purposes and addressees; on the one hand, to show the football “other” par excellence the current development of a playing style that has been able to surpass and outshine the original, while on the other, to validate Argentine football as a vibrant cultural product with the potential to dazzle foreign audiences due to its vitality and originality, both lacking in the more submissive and Eurocentric endeavors of Argentine intellectuals (in his text

“universitarios”, the unmistakable second addressee of Jose Gabriel’s message).

Unfortunately, the relevance of the dispute between the Argentine intellectuality (notably among them, the unsurpassable Jorge Luis Borges)47 and the defenders, lovers and/or promoters of football will be such, that these two areas will be a key part of another one of Argentina’s seemingly irreconcilable dichotomies. A dichotomy whose rigidity we will analyze and question from this page onwards.

Football: stupidity, chaos, barbarism and an alarming popularity

Chronologically speaking, the Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga was the first to produce a short story that included football as a central element when in 1918 he wrote

“Juan Polti-half back”, also known as “Suicidio en la cancha”. 48 In this story, the author recounts the tragic ‘fate’ of Juan Polti, a player of the club “Nacional” of Montevideo, who upon hearing that the club he loves and has always played for is going to dispense with his services (a symbolic death) chooses to commit suicide by going at night to the center of his team’s field and, in very poetic fashion, shooting himself in the heart. The inspiration for this short story came from reality itself, as Abdón Porte, a centre-half for the club Nacional committed suicide in identical circumstances on March 5, 1918.49

Through this story, Quiroga becomes one of the initiators of a long tradition of contempt by some writers/intellectuals towards the arena of football in the River Plate area. When referring to the protagonist of the story, Quiroga explains: “Una cabeza que piensa poco, y se usa en cambio, como suela de taco de billar para recibir y contralanzar una pelota de football que llega como una bala, puede convertirse en un caracol sonante, donde el tronar de los aplausos repercute más de lo debido” (62).

Juan Polti cannot handle glory (“ese fuerte alcohol de varones”), is almost illiterate

(“sabía apenas escribir”) and uses affected words that make him sound ridiculous. The protagonist is shown as a brute who practices a sport where thinking seems not to be important. As implied by the author, Polti’s battered head is hollow and can only be used as a tool (a billiard cue) for hitting a ball again and again.

Quiroga’s short story also has the documentary value of being one of the first to expose what was called "amateurismo marrón", i.e. veiled financial compensation from clubs to their players in a time when this was not permitted (“se le consiguió un empleo de archivista con cincuenta pesos de oro”).50 Juan Polti dies for its colors (as we will see a recurring theme in football literature) and leaves some last verses that read: “Yo

doy mi sangre por todos mis compañeros, / ahora y siempre el club gigante/ ¡Viva el club Nacional!” (63).

Even though earlier in the story Quiroga had made fun of Polti’s use of contrived language, at the end he decides to simplify Porte’s last verses51 which were originally much more poetic in form and even had a slight resemblance to Quevedo’s Amor constante más allá de la muerte (Porte’s “polvo amante” reminds us of Quevedo’s

“polvo enamorado”). As we can see, even though Quiroga is the first to incorporate football (and its noxious effects) as a literary theme he apparently cannot go as far as acknowledging the possibility that football players could be interested in (or at least be familiar with) literature thus keeping both areas wide apart.

In the same vein, writers and intellectuals such as Roberto Arlt, Enrique Carriego

(brother of the poet Evaristo Carriego) and Ezequiel Martinez Estrada produced their own approaches to the football phenomenon from a similarly detached, prejudiced and disdainful perspective. For instance, Arlt’s article “Ayer vi ganar a los argentinos52”— published in the newspaper El mundo on November 18th, 1929 as one of his celebrated

“Aguafuertes porteñas” 53—starts by emphasizing the author’s detachment from this sport: “Ayer fue el primer partido de fútbol que vi en mi vida” (98), as well by cleverly— and ironically—diminishing his own opinion on this matter: “…de modo que no les extrañen las macanas que puedo decir” (98).

Arlt’s sharp irony focuses first on football itself to then move to the spectators or

“hinchas”. The author mocks the idea of healthy sports in connection to the aggressive nature of football when he says: “Se apelotonan jugadores uruguayos y argentinos en torno de un jugador estirado en el suelo. Fue una patada en la nuca. No hay vuelta; los

deportes son saludables” (99). He also touches on ‘la gambeta’—the criollo feature par excellence for the writers of El Gráfico among others—to make fun of the unscientificity typical of this sport: “Ferreyra gambetea que es un contento. No hay vuelta, es el mejor jugador del equipo…Ahí lo tienen al juego científico” (99).

The fact that the Argentine team’s best player is precisely the one most connected to his instincts and his improvised bodily performance leads Arlt to make this generalization and, in turn, relates his own vision of football players to that of Quiroga i.e. people who only use their heads to hit a ball. Moreover, the author describes the

Uruguayan’s style as more harmonic in contrast to the Argentines’ disorganized and enthusiastic (en even less cerebral) way of playing: “Los uruguayos dieron la impresión de desarrollar un juego más armónico que el de los argentinos, pero éstos aunque desordenadamente, trabajaron con lo único que da éxito en la vida: El entusiasmo”

(101).

However, Arlt’s main target of derision in this article are not the players or the sport itself but the fans or the hinchas. He gives a detailed and graphic description of them when he says: “El ‘hincha’ es generalmente un sujeto de cara encendida, mejillas como inflamadas por el sol, bocaza perrera o mastinesca, pelo crecidazo, ojos canallas y léxico bravoso. Es decir, carne de cañón.” (103).

The animalistic features are clear and all over the place, hinchas are equated to wild, nasty, dangerous dogs but at the same time, as part of a uniform mass (“gradas negras de espectadores”), are expendable and their lives seem to have little value

(“carne de cañón”). Hinchas do not talk but enthusiastically vomit their words54, they freely (but ‘within their constitutional rights’) pee from the stands55 and liberally throw

objects to other fans (oranges) and players (empty bottles). True to a national literary tradition initiated by Sarmiento in its canonical and higly influential Facundo, Arlt categorizes ‘hinchas’ into three categories: 1) those who attend football matches or stay outside the stadium (when they cannot sneak into the stands), 2) the “hincha de café”, meaning those who rarely or never attend a football much but constantly and feverishly argues about the day’s events,56 and finally 3) those who belong to “la barra”, a mafia- like ‘institution’ infamous for their restlessness and their appetite for destruction. The author sees the proliferation of hinchas in Argentine society as an epidemic and, as such, he feels the need to warn his readers.

Although when he talks about hinchas, Arlt predominantly refers to male fans, he also reserves a space for the women he encounters at the stadium:

… vi un regimiento de mujercitas de aspecto poco edificante acompañadas de la barra de sus “maridos”. Habían hecho rueda en asientos de diarios y tragaban salame de caballo y mortadela de burro. El ruidoso trabajo de masticación era acompañado de una continua repetición de tragos de un brebaje misterioso que tenían encerrado en un porrón. (100)

These “little women” also seem to have renounced to their individuality in favor of the group/mass (“un regimiento de mujercitas”). In addition, Arlt seems to suggest they come from a less than honorable background (possibly prostitutes or at least unofficial escorts) due to their “aspecto poco edificante” and the companion of their ‘husbands’.

They are depicted as being as unrefined as their male counterparts are since they share their “brutish” tastes (for instance eating horse and donkey meat/cold cuts instead of the more Argentinian and ‘civilized’ cow or pork meat) as well as their animalistic traits, such as, sitting on the floor, swallowing their food, noisily chewing and drinking a mysterious concoction.

Carriego’s “El fútbol tema de las conversaciones” and Martínez Estrada’s

“Estadios”, published in 1938 and 1940 respectively, share Arlt’s concern about the futbolization of Argentine society and, along with it, the resurgence and predominance of barbarism. Both writers agree on likening football stadiums with roman circuses,

“infernal” places where masses go—as part of a cathartic experience—to release their tensions (“espíritus” and “cargas hostiles” according to Martínez Estrada), the ball acquires a symbolic meaning the same as lions or bulls and players struggle and fight mightily to entertain and satisfy “the monster”: a homogeneous and irrational crowd.

Martínez Estrada illustrates: “Las alternativas del juego configuran la monstruosa fisonomía pasional de cien mil seres homogeneizados en los saggars de los altos hornos humanos” (130).

Carriego agrees with Martínez Estrada and asserts that football fans are

“energúmenos”, that is, choleric individuals, possessed by an evil force,57 who go to the stadiums to defend their new idols whom he describes as “próceres de la patada” (65).

The author implies that these new national heroes forge their reputation by doing something as shallow and frivolous as kicking a ball and he feels that those who resist to be swept by the football craze are stigmatized and discriminated against in Argentina:

“Despreciar el fútbol significa, a su vez, caer en el desprecio de los demás” (65).

It is interesting to notice that, while harshly criticizing football, Carriego does not go against the imperial notion that elevates the practice of sports as a healthy and civilizing ritual: “… si este sujeto, comúnmente denominado “hincha”, practicara este deporte, nada habría que censurar desde que ya sabemos los beneficios que reportaría para la cultura integral de la juventud…”(66). However, in a line of argument that will be

joined by adherents and opponents of football alike, he declares that footballers (and hinchas) do not play anymore but fight and as such they are just “brutos” that think they represent the country they belong to as they sincerely believe that there is nothing superior or more important than football.

Carriego feels trapped in a sort of football dictatorship where “la conversación obligada hoy, es el fútbol” (65; emphasis added). In addition, what alarms him the most seems not to be this sport’s popularity among the popular classes, but its capacity to break societal barriers and intrude with such force into Argentina’s mainstream culture.

Unlike Arlt, Carriego cannot ridicule or laugh at this hinchas. Instead, he shows his concern at the heterogeneity of those affected by the football ‘virus’ as they go to football stadiums: “… a donde concurren a nivelarse, vinculados por un mismo sentimiento inferior de ‘hinchas’, el señor con el lunfardo, el universitario con el patán, y a plasmar así, todos ellos, el alma colectiva de nuestro pueblo futbolista” (67).

Martínez Estrada, on the other hand, seems to go back to Arlt’s idea of ‘hinchas’ as “carne de cañón” when addressing politicians’ use and abuse of these masses for their own benefit:

Los políticos hacen presa, como las fieras al acecho, de esas muchedumbres. Se entregan aparentemente a ellas; concurren a sus estadios para exhibirse y, si están en el poder, descienden a veces a la pista para iniciar el juego. La muchedumbre los aclama o los silba y es lo mismo. El político sabe que aplauso y silbido, significan una demostración pasional, un santo y seña de entusiasmo irracional, que tarde o temprano ha de servirles. (133)

For this author, hinchas are no longer citizens but just abstract entities58 that can only express their irrepressible and irresponsible incandescent passion.59 They do not purposefully move or go somewhere but spread (again like a virus) through the city, screaming and chanting undecipherable words which to the author represent a step

back in evolution, a reminder of our spelean origin: “… al derramarse por la ciudad, regularmente en camiones, agitando sus lábaros y entonando estribillos de júbilo que no alcanzan a ser canciones. Son gritos, actitudes que se vociferan y se arrojan a la cara de los transeúntes, bocanadas de ancestrales halitos de caverna”60 (132).

The stance of intellectual superiority from which these authors look at the football phenomenon and all of those who form part of it serves to exemplify the breach that at this point in time existed between popular and high culture in Argentina.61 Needless to say, these approaches also demonstrated a very linear, reductionist understanding, and application of the idea of social control in order to describe the events and changes taking place in Argentine society. This is what David Whitson identifies as “the common use” of this term which only helps simplify an always complex reality, promoting “crude images of a conspiracy of capitalists and officials,successfully manipulating the passive

‘masses’” (67). This author sees these images as absurd “caricatures, overestimating the awareness as well as the malevolence of many members of the governing classes, while doing a gross injustice to the awareness of many working people” (67). In this context, football works as the drug or, as Scott puts it, a safety valve that keeps the perceived irrational masses calm and satisfied (the classical and repeatedly discredited

“opium of the people”), emptied out of an otherwise menacing and disturbing energy. 62

Importantly, and regardless of their individual approaches, the fact that writers not usually linked with sports stopped to consider this cultural phenomenon (with either irony, disdain or alarm) reveals the unstoppable growth of football’s popularity and relevance in Argentine society.

Benedetti’s Puntero izquierdo: Football literature’s foundation stone

Despite the clear chronological anteriority of Quiroga’s “Juan Polti, half-back”,

Mario Benedetti’s “Puntero Izquierdo” is considered the foundation stone of football literature in the River Plate region.63 This short story, written in 1954 and later published in 1959’s Montevideanos, addresses the preeminence of economic interests and a capitalist logic in the football arena.

The protagonist and narrator of the story is a left forward/wing (and the team’s top scorer) who is bribed by a team official (Don Amilcar) not to score in a decisive match in exchange for a future transfer to a bigger club. The left wing seems ready to follow Don Amilcar’s commands, but ultimately fails to carry out its mission and ends up scoring the winning goal for his team, an action for which he will be severely beaten (off the field) and sent to the hospital from where he recalls the events:

… hay que estar sobre el pastito, allí te olvidás de todo, de las instrucciones del entrenador y de lo que te paga algún mafioso. Te viene una cosa de adentro y tenés que llevar la redonda. (…) no podés dejársela. Tenés que pasarlo, tenés que pasarlo siempre, como si te estuvieran dirigiendo por control remoto. (40; emphasis added)

It is clear to see why Benedetti’s and not Quiroga’s short story is recognized as the genre’s first example in the rioplatense context. First, “Puntero izquierdo” explicitly recounts key events that took place on the field as part of a football match with a precision and knowledge of the intricacies of the sport that Quiroga—or Arlt, Carriego and Martínez Estrada for that matter—do not show, whether because of their ignorance of the sport or their own deliberate choice.

Second, Benedetti is the first writer to give football players their own voice within the context of literature. The protagonist of “Puntero izquierdo” uses an informal and street-like rioplatense jargon which includes football expressions and terms but also

foreign words and sayings (Italian in this case) that serves to reaffirm the crucial role of immigrants in the (re) creation of this hybrid criollo style of playing football.64 In contrast, we never get to hear Juan Polti’s words; we are simply told that they were contrived and artificial. Instead, we can only have access to his last (written) words once he is dead.

Third, the oral, informal register used by Benedetti will serve as model and inspiration for many of the so called ‘football writers’ (Roberto Fontanarrosa as the clearest example but also prominently Eduardo Sacheri) and will become a characteristic feature of this subgenre. What is more, this will become a crucial factor in the traditional yet alternative diffusion (via radio shows) football literature will enjoy in the 1990s.

Fourth, from a thematic point of view, “Puntero izquierdo” focuses on the impossibility of the protagonist to act against his own nature (the criollo style as something inherent and inherited) and paradoxically reclaiming his agency within a football field, despite knowing that doing so (or in this case, not doing so) will bring nothing but pain and financial strives. In this respect, Benedetti’s short story also signals the way as both the corrupting influence of money in the arena of football and the commodification of this sport are two of the most commonly chosen themes among writers of football fiction. Moreover, generally speaking, the heroes of this subgenre are not usually rich, famous and successful individuals (the heroes of real-life football) but characters who go against the dominant (capitalist) logic in football and life and, regularly, end up poor, lonely, dead or a combination of these. As a clear example of these characters’ mutual destiny, the protagonist of “Puntero izquierdo” knows by the end of the story that he will not be able to keep playing for his team; that he most likely

lose his job in a factory due to the long time he will have to remain hospitalized and that he will obviously not be transferred to a bigger team: “ el período de pases ya se acaba.(…)…estoy colgado. En la fábrica ya le dijeron a la vieja que ni sueñe que me vayan a esperar. Así que no tendré más remedio que bajar el cogote y apersonarme con ese chitrulo de Urrutia, a ver si me da el puesto en Talleres como me habían prometido” (43).

Finally, in this passage we can see the last pair of relevant characteristics of football literature that “Puntero izquierdo” presents and passes on to future writers within this subgenre: in the first case, that which makes reference to the ambiguous character of victories and defeats and the ability to find depth in them, to be able to read beyond the cold facts and numbers. In this sense, this story’s protagonist wins (on the field) but loses (off the field as he neither gets the transfer nor the job) although ultimately “morally” wins not only by not cheating but also by following his instincts, his nature and this way being “faithful to himself”. Second, and closely tied to the first point, from here on the writers of this subgenre will go past the limits of the apparent in this field, specifically searching that features of this sport that escape the unforgiving lens/logic of the mainstream media, rescuing the humanity and its natural counterintuitiveness from this hyperprofessionalized sport.

“Puntero izquierdo” also touches on the clashing confrontation between the ludic and the proffesional/work-like elements and logic in the sphere of modern sports. With the British notion of strict amateurism, fair-play and class distinctions/origins considered as an archaic element at his point in time (1950s), the two dominant contrasting forces that collide in the search of hegemony are those of football’s nationalism (or invented

national style) wich considers and values individualism, improvisation and aesthetic beauty and enjoyment and that of football’s complete professionalizaton and technification, where players following experts’ data are supossed to focus on ways of enhancing, maximizing and automatizing their performance. Crucially, this is a moment where the discourse of professionalization has not yet become naturalized among players, the fans and the media which for the most part does not police nor condemns players’ diversions off the field although Benedetti is able to look ahead and see a very unaspicious future. Regarding the altering influence of money and professionalism on players’ lives and actions on and off the field, John Huizinga indicates:

La actitud del jugador profesional no es ya la auténtica actitud lúdica, pues están ausentes en ella lo espontaneo y lo despreocupado. El deporte se va alejando cada vez más, en la sociedad moderna, de la pura esfera del juego y se va convirtiendo en un elemento sui generis. Ya no es un juego y, sin embargo tampoco es algo serio. (232)

Football’s in-betweenness, along with its immense popularity and cultural relevance in the Argentine context will prove to be problematic and polemic but also inspiring and thought-provoking, since this will cause this sport to be at once signaled by writers and analysts as—for example—“the opium of the masses”, an effective instrument of massive domination, indoctrination and distraction and one of the main symptoms of society’s cultural and ethical decline, as well as one of the last reservoirs of purity, joy, loyalty and authenticity in an increasingly mediated, cynical and repressive society. Football’s complexity as a cultural phenomenon evades simple categorization and pigeonholing and opens up a rich and diverse narrative field that football literature writers will (and continue to) explore and exploit.

In the decade of 1960, three of Argentina’s most celebrated writers—Ernesto

Sábato, Adolfo Bioy Casares and Jorge Luis Borges—will approach Argentine football’s

increasing commodification and spectacularization in the novel Sobre heroes y tumbas and the short story “Esse est percipi” respectively. Even though the presence of football or sports (with the only possible exception of chess in Borges’ stories) as thematic elements in the works of these three writers is insignificant, their contributions to the development of this genre is symbolically much more important than it may, at first glance, appear.65

In both Sabato’s and Borges and Bioy’s stories, football has been profoundly transformed by money and the media correspondingly. In Sabato’s novel, Tito—short for Humberto J. D´ancargelo, a melancholic secondary character who spends most of his time in a bar reading the newspaper and talking to his male friends—is presented as a sort of football pseudo-philosopher who reflects on the—then—current situation of

Argentine football: “Tito echó soda al vermouth, tomó unos sorbos y se sumió en un silencio sombrío (…) Después volvió a su tema preferido: ahora ya no había fóbal.

¿Qué se podrá esperar de jugadore que se compraban y vendían?” (95; emphasis added).

Sabato’s character elision of the final “s” of most words (jugadore) and his use of the vernacular version of English words (fóbal) matches the stereotypical figure of the

‘hincha’ (passionate fan) constructed by the press and the movies,66 that is, someone with a careless use of the language and a restricted range of interests (“volvió a su tema preferido”). However, this is not as significant as his nostalgic and fatalist position regarding the sport he loves: money has turned players into products that can be sold and bought against their own consent thus football as we know it has ceased to exist.

This line of argument will become a constant in the discourse of football literature in

Argentina and will be the responsible for triggering both some of the most lucid as well as the most reactionary textual responses.

The fact that these texts were published in the 1960’s (Sobre héroes y tumbas in

1961 and “Esse est percipi” in 1967) is not a coincidence but the reflection of the so- called period of fútbol-espectáculo in the context of Argentine football. After Perón’s first government (1946 -1955)—where, according to Pablo Alabarces, sports in general and football in particular formed part of a cultural mechanism set up to re-elaborate “un nuevo significado comunitario de nación” (72)—and the failure and disappointment of the World Cup of Sweden in 1958, criollo football’s identity went into a period of deep crisis that resulted in people’s lack of interest in this sport and a steep decrease in general attendance to the matches.67 In order to try to revert this crisis, Argentine football officials resorted to the invention of fútbol-espectáculo. Gustavo Veiga expounds:

La idea fue entronizada por los dos hombres más poderosos del medio: Alberto José Armando y Antonio Vespucio Liberti, los presidentes de Boca y River, respectivamente. Ambos dirigentes no repararon en gastos cuando se plantearon recuperar la capacidad de convocatoria perdida. Por esa razón, contrataron a futbolistas extranjeros—la mayoría eran brasileños—, con quienes intentaron estimular un fútbol que había quedado conmocionado tras la estrepitosa caída de 1958. (32)

Interestingly, in Sabato’s novel, Tito uses the word “espectáculo” to describe the football of yesteryear, capable of filling fans’ hearts regardless of the match’s final result. However, Arcangelo seems to accept that a new era brings new football paradigms and consequently the most (and only) important thing in the new times of fútbol-espectáculo is the final score (and to score): “Y a la final, pibe, se diga lo que se diga, lo que se persigue en el fóbal es el escore. Y te advierto que yo soy de lo que piensan que un juego espetacular e algo que enllena el corazón y que la hinchada

agradece, qué joder. Pero el mundo e así y a la final todo e cuestión de gole” (97). This character sees the tendency to privilege (winning) results over everything else as a sign of the ages, a trend that not only affects his beloved football but life in general and that, apparently, cannot be stopped as “el mundo es así” (that’s the way the world is). Two clear and parallel operations can be seen in this passage, the first one, the hegemonic process endorsed and advanced by the media (which D’arcangelo consumes day and night) through which the idea of performance and productivity as the main indicators of a person’s value are naturalized and carried into the realm of leisure and everyday life by popular professional sports such as football. The second one, shows the flexibility of society’s dominant elements and hegemonic forces through the incorporation and domestication of, for the most part, dexterous Brazilian footballing bodies, capable of producing aesthetic pleasure, showmanship and above all results (after all the Brazilian national team dominated the world’s football scene from 1958-1970), maintaining the illusion of football as a privileged space for freedom, beauty and improvisation.

However, as we saw, despite his apparent acceptance of the new order of things in sports as in life, D’arcangelo is above all a melancholic character, and it is precisely this melancholy of past times which keeps (at least) the memory of an alternative order or an alternative way of understanding the world (through football) alive, even if only in the form of a residual (almost archaic) element. In a passage that will be revisited by contemporary writers such as Eduardo Sacheri and Eduardo Galeano, this football thinker exposes—through the use of an anecdote—the argument/dichotomy at the core of criollo football: that is, to enjoy or not to enjoy, to derive pleasure from playing football by expressing your individuality or to just be an effective cog in a machine:

Y para demostrarte lo que eran esa do modalidade de juego te voy a contar una acnédota ilustrativa. Una tarde, al intervalo, la Chancha le decía a Lalín: cruzamela, viejo, que entro y hago gol. Empieza el segundo jastáin, Lalín se la cruza, en efeto, y el negro la agarra, entra y hace gol, tal como se lo había dicho. Volvió Seoane con lo brazo abierto, corriendo hacia Lalín, gritándole: viste. Lalín, viste, y Lalín contestó si pero yo no me divierto. Ahí tené, si se quiere, todo el problema del fóbal criollo. (97)

Borges and Bioy Casares return to the idea of football’s disappearance in their short story, though they do it in a more literal and critical way. Bustos Domecq, the narrator and main character of the story, discovers one day that River Plate’s stadium

(“El monumental”) has vanished and in order to unravel this mystery, decides to pay a visit to one of the most influential football officials (Tulio Savastano) who coldly informs him that:

No hay score ni cuadros ni partidos. Los estadios son demoliciones que se caen a pedazos. Hoy todo pasa en la televisión y en la radio. La falsa excitación de los locutores ¿nunca lo llevó a maliciar que todo es una patraña? El último partido de fútbol se jugó en esta capital el día 24 de junio del ’37. Desde aquel preciso momento, el fútbol, al igual que la vasta gama de los deportes, es un género dramático, a cargo de un solo hombre en una cabina o de actores con camiseta ante el cameraman. (17)

The authors’ clever use of George Berkeley’s argument (“to be is to be perceived”) that rejects the existence of material substance, is employed in this story to demystify the aura of authenticity attributed to football by fans, sport journalist and populist writers of the time. Football is a lie, a new dramatic genre, simple entertainment, in short, a fantasy that keeps gullible fans entertained and distracted while all that actually exist is the media, in charge of manufacturing people’s reality(ies).68 The advance of mass mediated reality and the predominance of simulacra is deemed by Savastano as an unstoppable and inevitable phenomenon, a sign of the times: “El género humano está en casa, repantigado, atento a la pantalla o al locutor,

cuando no a la prensa amarilla (…) Es la marcha gigante de los siglos, el ritmo del progreso que se impone” (18).

“Esse est percipi”—no matter how insignificant it may be when looking at Borges and Bioy’s complete oeuvres—is vital to understand the trajectory of Argentine football literature as well as to witness the presentation of one of its most frequent and relevant themes: the predominance of the media (especially the TV), its overarching negative influence and the ensuing end (or at least the endangerment) of “real” football.

To cite a few examples, Rubén Benítez’s “Los fantasmas del estadio” (2006) and

Hernán Arias’ “René, o el daño que la televisión le hizo al fútbol” (2008) are two of the most direct allegations against the idea of mass-mediated football as a simulacrum within contemporary football literature in Argentina. Benítez’s story deals with the questionable existence (for all but those who go to the stadiums) of Alfaro, a player either too fast or too inconspicuous, who cannot be captured by cameras and as such is considered a legend, a myth and/or a phantom. The message is loud and clear, the world of football has become as flat as a TV screen and in the current reign of dry pragmatism, probably more than ever before, to be is to be perceived: “… decir hoy en dia, como todos sabemos, que no hay filmaciones de un futbolista es poco menos que decir que no existe y que nunca existió” (85). The rescue of these phanthoms from obvlion is one of the urgent tasks of football literature writers; narrating that which escapes the highlights; naming the unnamed by narrators and commentators, scores of players buried under a mountain of TV and radio ads and commercials, in other words, disputing the media’s sanctity as the sole and indisputable producer of football narratives:

…las canchas de futbol desde hace algunos años están llenas de fantasmas que jamás aparecen en cámara y menos aún en resúmenes de partidos. Jugadores que no son nombrados por relatores ni comentaristas, seres anónimos que cuando toman la pelota se repite una jugada anterior o se pasa un comercial, laboriosos número cuatro, volantes de contención, defensores petisos, asistentes de un saque lateral, arqueros suplentes, a los que solo podemos conocer desde una tribuna y que mañana seguramente serán negados. Los panfletos concluyen: “¡Vayamos a verlos, por la refutación del pragmatismo!” (85)

Arias, on the other hand, narrates the disembarkment of the simulated television football in the realm of ‘real life’ and the consequent end of originality, creativity and autonomous expression in a football field through the proliferation of false copies of football TV superstars. A scary army of football automatons:

Los veo por todas partes, en las calles en los clubes en los parques, todos corriendo como Riquelme69, moviendo los hombros y los brazos como Riquelme, festejando los goles y protestándole al árbitro… también con los gestos de Riquelme. Pero no son Riquelmes. Son falsos Riquelmes… que aprendieron en la television. 70(208-209)

The aura of football as a form of art is diluted and multiplied through an incessant bombardment of matches on TV (and the popularity of increasingly “realistic” videogames) which in turn produces an army of simulated “Riquelmes” who, in most cases, have never seen the real Riquelme in person, but just the version of this player that TV chooses to present. As Cornel Sandvoss explains:

This hyperreal, simulated condition is partially manifested in the single and collective perspective of television football. As television represents the game event with ever more varying shots, angles, positions and the fragmentation of time through replays and slow motions, it constructs a new event in itself. (146)

Needless to say, the number of people who have only experienced football through its mediated, televised version is definitely larger than those who have also been to a “real” match (a more and more mediatized event in itself thanks in part to the monumental jumbotrons projecting replays and information throughout the entirety of

the game) so in this case we can start to talk about the shift of televised football from representation to simulation of a game that becomes “its shadow rather than point of reference” (146). At this juncture, Borges’s map in “Del rigor de la ciencia” seems to have covered most of the football territory and has consequently led us into a baudrillardian stage of football hyperreality. 71

Football literature and its first naming: Santoro’s Literatura de la pelota.

Continuing with our journey through the origins and development of this genre, it will not be until the decades of 1970 and especially 1980 that football and literature will cross paths in a more regular and frequent fashion. A milestone in the development of this genre, Jorge Roberto Santoro’s Literatura de la pelota (published in 1971) is the first book to name and acknowledge the crossover between football and literature in the

Argentinian context.

Santoro, a poet, journalist and editor tragically ‘disappeared’ by the Argentine military junta in 1977, wanted to prove wrong the widespread conception that said that football was not adequately or sufficiently represented in Argentine literature. In the short prologue of this anthology Santoro mentions that football is a latent element in

Argentine society, something that “pertenece a cada uno de nosotros porque se impone a todos por pura presencia” (7) and as such is a ‘natural’ part of the language and the literature.

We cannot forget to mention that Literatura de la pelota has an antecedent72 in

1967’s El fútbol (published by Editorial Jorge Álvarez), a collection of texts by

“sociólogos y narradores ajenos al mundo del fútbol” (7) whose main function is that of providing the first ‘serious analysis’ of this phenomenon. Most of the texts included in El fútbol are also part of Santoro’s compilation—with the exception of two texts by non-

Argentinian writers (George Orwell and Jean Cau) and Bernardo Verbitsky’s “Grandeza y decadencia de ‘Estrella del Sur’”—but their approaches differ fundamentally in terms of scope and intention. While El fútbol consciously separates ‘qualified voices’ from those that are not (basically sports writers who produce an abundant “literatura pintoresca”),73 Santoro’s Literatura de la pelota wants to present readers with a more complete and inclusive map of what has been written about football in Argentina regardless of the origin and pedigree of the writers. Santoro justifies his choice by saying:

Se incluyen aquí, nombres “importantes” en el panorama de nuestra cultura como así también otros ‘despreciados’ por el subdesarrollo de sus Rh estéticos. Es casi un milagro juntar en un mismo equipo a Gagliardi con Pichón Riviere, a Last Reason con Mujica Láinez, a Murena con Iván Diez, a Sebreli con Centeya a Mondiola con Romero Brest. “Lo culto” entremezclado con “lo popular”, ya que el fútbol, el fóbal o la pelota, como ustedes quieran llamarlo es algo que pertenece a cada uno de nosotros porque se impone a todos por pura presencia. (7)

Santoro’s compilation includes not only short stories, chronicles or essays where football appears as a central element but also poetry—where, among others, he unearths Bernardo Canal Feijóo 1924’s rare and forgotten collection Penúltimo poema de fútbol 74 and also includes a poem of his own (“El fútbol”)— and theatre plays which in most cases will later be made into films (a scene from Agustín Cuzzani’s El centroforward murió al amanecer, Malfatti and De las Llanderas’s Los tres berretines as well as Miguel Clemente and José María Chiapetti’s 1925 play Los campeones de football and Solly Wolodarsky’s El crack).

Curiously, we find no trace of Borocotó or Chantecler’s writings (so instrumental in the creation of a national football identity in Argentina) in this book. There is also no mention of Dante Panzeri’s Fútbol: dinámica de lo impensado (1967) nowadays

considered a classic (if there is such a thing) in the literature written about football.75 All three journalists were prominent figures of the popular and influential El Gráfico magazine so we must assume that Santoro decided not to include their texts in this compilation due to their canonical stature in the football narrative universe as he privileged less obvious connections between literature and football.76

Unlike the previously mentioned compilations, Santoro’s Literatura de la pelota does not present an imbalance of authors explicitly tilted in favor or against football, but intends to show both sides of the argument from almost every possible angle and perspective. In the last section of the book named “La poesía del hincha” (provocatively introduced by a Borges’ quotation),77 the author goes as far as selecting poems written by fans (hinchas) published in sports magazines (Racing and Todofútbol) and transcribing the lyrics of the songs created and sung by them in the stadiums. Santoro anticipates possible objections and defends the diversity of his choice:

¿Pintoresquismo? ¿Populismo? ¿Y qué? Si este fenómeno del fútbol es el móvil que provoca en los desconocidos y sumergidos de siempre el ansia de expresarse de una manera poética—por lo menos en cuanto a la forma se refiere—bienvenido sea. Por lo menos él—el fútbol—habrá de cumplir en alguna medida la función para la que algunos intelectuales se han declarado a esta altura del partido incompetentes; esto es: elevar el nivel emocional y artístico del hombre común. (297)

Literatura de la pelota is a highly symbolic and, in many ways, revolutionary book that draws an indelible an unmistakable line in the birth and past and future development (s) of football literature in Argentina. Roberto Santoro defies the unflinching scientific logic that demands some sort of emotional distance and/or neutrality to be able to “seriously” analyze and write about this cultural phenomenon and, at least in this book, breaks the barrier between so-called “cultured” and “popular” writers by mixing and matching them over the more than three hundred pages of his

book. What is more, the author resists the temptation of speaking for them and gives

‘hinchas’ a previously unthinkable symbolic space to express themselves alongside intellectual luminaries like Jorge Luis Borges.

He is also the first to demonstrate the conspicuousness of football in argentine culture (popular or not) and the unjustifiable, invalid and useless nature of its stubborn denial.78 In sum, Santoro’s unparalleled archeological effort, becomes an indispensable first stop for readers and critics alike trying to make sense of the pre-history and current development of what we choose to call football literature (or Literatura de la pelota) in the argentine context.

Soriano, Fontanarrosa, Sasturain: creation and consolidation of a style

It was also the tumultuous decade of 1970 that witnessed the appearance of two of the most symbolically (as well as factually) important writers for the marriage between football and literature: Osvaldo Soriano and Roberto Fontanarrosa. These two non- porteño writers (Soriano was born in Mar del Plata and Fontanarrosa in Rosario) were capable of combining humor—a seriously underdeveloped and undervalued feature in a national literature that can be characterized by its seriousness, its profoundness and, sometimes, its pomposity—, satire and an acute sensitivity that help them read and interpret the explosive and heterogeneous cocktail of Argentine identity as few others could.

Both writers achieved their first taste of recognition for their work in newspapers and magazines (Soriano in Jacobo Timmerman’s newspaper La opinión and

Fontanarrosa as a cartoonist in the humor magazine Hortensia), and both committed the irreparable “sin” of selling well and being popular (for instance, Soriano has sold more than one million copies of his books and his work has been translated to over

twenty languages). Even though they were (fortunately) not exclusively “football writers”, this sport and especially its impact on people’s everyday lives and its way of functioning as a mirror of Argentine society (or better yet as a microscope, reflecting and augmenting the passions, fears and contradictions of many of its members), was a regular and vitally relevant element in their works.

Soriano and Fontanarrosa wrote chronicles, short stories and even novels79 around the topic of football, where they focused not only on the game itself but also on the feelings, thoughts and emotions of those who played it or revolved around it. For instance, Soriano’s first article on this topic “El reposo del centrojas”, published in July

16th 1972 in the culture supplement of the newspaper La opinión, centers on Obdulio

Varela’s disenchanted feelings about what he considers the immoral aspects of football

(the reign of monetary interest above everything else personified by officials, journalists, etc.) and his own bitter sensation of injustice and pain after depriving Brazil and its people (in the now mythical “Maracanazo”) of the happiness that a victory in 1950’s

World Cup would have entailed. Soriano craftily handles Varela’s words to create a narrative that goes past sport clichés and the professional side of this sport to connect with the more profound and universal human aspect of football players.80

As we implied, Soriano’s figure and his unprejudiced original and brave attitude towards popular passions (among them football and literature) is even more important than his football stories per se. He, like no other writer at the time, was the first to— consciously and deliberately—make football and literature references harmoniously coexist in their stories. A high school dropout, a late but voracious reader81 and an

inglorious centreforward in his youth, Soriano did not see the incongruence that others did when reuniting two of his chief passions.

In some of his football stories we find autobiographical references of his time as a third rate kind of player (“El penal más largo del mundo”, “Orlando, el sucio”, “Gallardo

Pérez, referí”, “Mister Peregrino Fernández” “Centrofóbal”, “Primeros amores”) that transport readers to forgotten fields far from the city lights (mostly in the Argentinian

Patagonia but also in Río Cuarto where the writer lived), truly liminal zones where football rules acquired unsuspected flexibility, epic characters abounded and fantasy and myths seamlessly fit with reality.82 Soriano understood the drama and the epic inside a football game like few other writers and as such he used this background to explore themes such as the identity and the (im) morality of Argentines and some of this people’s most deeply-engrained passions and contradictions (chiefly among them,

Peronism).

He was also the first Argentinian writer to acknowledge and refer in his own work to other works of literature and other authors that dealt with football. For example, in his unfinished novel “Las memorias del míster Peregrino Fernández”,83 the main character asks his interlocutor (the journalist/writer in charge of writing his memoirs) if he has read

Hans Jorgen Nielsen’s Football Angel or Peter Handke’s The Goalie’s anxiety at the

Penalty Kick. Then, when revisiting the tricky concept of cunning (vs. intelligence) in connection to one of Argentines’s most often perceived identity traits, míster Peregrino resorts to Albert Camus’s intellectual prowess but especially to his football pedigree:

¿Sabés?, en ese tiempo yo creía que a los argentinos nos sobraba la inteligencia, por eso me largué al mundo haciéndome el piola, el sobrador. Ahora, en cambio, viendo el país que hicimos, pienso que no somos inteligentes, somos astutos, que es distinto. Entre los astutos hay

muchos giles. Creo que eso lo aprendí de un francés que se llamaba Camus, uno de los pocos intelectuales que tenía potrero. ¡Que buen arquero era! Lo conocí en Argelia, en un partido bastante fuerte y le hice un gol de cabeza porque el back le obstaculizó la salida. En la cancha hablaba como una cloaca, pero en el café era parco y decía las palabras justas. (228; emphasis added)

Camus famous quotation “… lo que más sé, a la larga, acerca de la moral y de las obligaciones de los hombres, se lo debo al fútbol…” (13), first rescued by Eduardo

Galeano in his 1968’s compilation Su majestad, el fútbol, has since become a cliché when trying to connect the fields of football and literature.84 What is more, as Pablo

Alabarces affirms, the sentimental affiliation of renowned intellectuals such as Camus only attempts to, unwisely, provide the sport with a kind of “marca autorizante … el aura culta que el fútbol no puede obtener por sí mismo” (164). This kind of operation only deprives football literature (as part of popular culture) of a perceived intellectual legitimacy that can (apparently) only be sanctioned by “true”, prestigious (and foreign) intellectuals. However, as we can see, Soriano cleverly reverts this operation as Camus is presented in his story first as a foul-mouthed goalkeeper and only later as an intellectual who gains an insight that most of his peers lack thanks to his (learning) experience in amateur football fields or potreros.

The same as Soriano, Roberto Fontanarrosa wrote his first football stories in the decade of 1970 (“La barrera”, “La pena máxima”, “Betito” and “Los nombres” included in

1973’s Fontanarrosa se la cuenta, republished in 1997 as Los trenes matan autos) but the bulk of his production took place in the two following decades. Fontanarrosa also shares with Soriano the copious use of humor in his stories and the ability to explore the never-ending process of the constitution and reconstitution of an Argentine identity through (and also) beyond football. For instance, his celebrated comic “Inodoro

Pereyra” parodies the canonical figure of the gaucho created in gauchesca literature, validated by ‘official’ intellectuals such as Lugones and Rojas at the beginning of the

20th century85 and tirelessly reproduced and celebrated by Argentine folk music from the 1950’s onwards .

Thanks to a prodigious popular sensitivity and an acute ear, Fontanarrosa cultivated an oral style of narration that characterized most of his stories and made a profound impact in the genre as a whole. In addition, his masterful use of parody helped him escape reductionist positions and debates that would have seriously limited his scope. Fontanarrosa’s love and passion for football was an important part of his life, but this did not prevent him from taking an uncompromising look at it and, using humor and parody, expose some of its most ridiculous aspects and most serious faults. About this author very particular and exquisite use of parody, Pablo De Santis comments:

… respondiendo a la índole más entrañable de la parodia [Fontanarrosa] nunca destruye aquello que parodia, sino que acepta su lógica y explora imaginativamente las posibilidades que le brinda el ridículo de las afirmaciones genéricas. Si el concepto de parodia implica un “estar junto a”, un paralelismo, en los cuentos de Fontanarrosa esa convivencia es un acto de amor respecto de aquello que es parodiado; como en muy pocos autores, la parodia es un rescate, una salvación, no un modo de ataque por la vía del ingenio o del sarcasmo. (501)

In his more than thirty years as a writer, he touched on almost every aspect of professional and amateur football with unparalleled creativity. For instance (and to mention just a few examples), he took to a literal extreme the idea that football can incarnate or even serve as a substitute for a nation or motherland in El area 18, brilliantly exposed what it takes to become a football (and popular) idol in “Lo que se dice un ídolo”, played with the recurrent idea of myths within the football sphere and linked this with Greek mythology in “ Relato de un utilero”, found the missing link

between gauchos and footballers in “Los últimos salileros”, reflected on the literary quality of football’s radio broadcasts/narratives in “Los nombres” or “Algo le dice Falero a Saliadarré”, imagined the start of a nuclear war (and possibly the end of the world) from the perspective of football commentators in “¡Que lástima Cattamarancio!” and even thought of future developments and mutations of this sport in “Fútbol y ciencia” or “

Lacus Vendelinus”, a story about a player from Venus who signs for Fontanarrosa’s beloved team Rosario Central.

What is more, he was the first writer to use football (in a consistent way) in order to examine some of the most distinct features of (mostly male) Argentinian idiosyncrasy.

In his short stories and novels, he many times exceeded the area of pure humorous

“constumbrismo” and football “pintoresquismo” to reach more transcendental levels through psychological studies of his main characters (the Chekhovian “La observación de los pájaros” as an example of this practice). Pablo Alabarces highlights this unique characteristic of Fontanarrosa’s work and positions this writer at the top of football literature’s early Olympus, “Hay quizás un solo caso en que el costumbrismo permite y ejerce una mirada mucho más fuerte, mucho más productiva: y es una mirada desviada como la de Roberto Fontanarrosa, uno de los mejores etnógrafos de la cultura futbolística en la Argentina” (261).

The combination of this unique approach, his inimitable use of parody86 and irony and his talent as a narrator of simple yet very meaningful and powerful stories, produced some of the first ‘classics’of this genre.87 Short stories such as “19 de diciembre de 1971”, “Escenas de la vida deportiva”, “El ocho era Moacyr” or “La observación de los pájaros” all have football matches (professional or amateur, present

or past) as their main background, but Fontanarrosa’s eye (and ear) go beyond what goes on the field to focus especially on what takes place off of it.

Instead of being content on describing the way Argentine’s play football (and transform this game on the field), Fontanarrosa seems keen on narrating the way

Argentines live and understand football (and are transformed by it), and through this, he is able to explore and expose some of their more deep-seated and ingrained identity traits such as their fatalist view of life and their reliance on lucky charms or amulets, the capital place of orality and within it, of swearing and verbal ingenuity in the context of football in particular and Argentinian culture in general, homophobia and the construction of a “solid” male identity, chauvinism and patriotic arrogance and the cult of friendship, among many others.88

As we anticipated above, Fontanarrosa (the same as the majority of his peers in this genre) did not only write about football, contrary to the media re-construction of his figure especially after his death; his range of topics was extensive and wide and in his work we find references to popular and “erudite” culture (both foreign and vernacular).89

Moreover, his approach to every one of these topics was unique and characteristic of his style as a writer: a straightforward and clear prose (even unassuming at times) containing, both, popular wit and sensibility and intellectual mordacity in equal parts that implacably (and impeccably) dissected Argentine culture and its people’s idiosyncrasies.

Fontanarrosa’s originality, thematic choices and his particular style were— according to writer Juan Sasturain—both a gift and a curse in the context of the official, sanctioning circles of Argentinian literature since, despite being widely read:90 …el

prejuicio respecto del tono –y de los temas, agregaría– de muchos de sus relatos hicieron que, hasta no hace mucho, algunos no lo vieran como escritor, no lo registraran como tal. No había casillero habilitado para él en el sistema de la literatura argentina” (no pag).The case of Fontanarrosa, as a central figure of this genre, is reflective of the often-uncomfortable place of Argentine football literature in general as a simultaneous inhabitant of zones of centrality and marginality.

Using football as a literary theme (or at least as a context) was not only natural for Fontanarrosa (due to his fanaticism for this sport and his sentimental education in it) but also proved to be a highly effective tool and a privileged vantage point from which to study Argentine society. As such, he approached it from each one of his artistic facets, that is, as a cartoonist (in Semblanzas deportivas and Puro Fútbol),91 as a writer in novels (El area 18), short stories (more than twenty-five included in several books such as El mundo ha vivido equivocado, Puro Fútbol and the posthumous Negar todo y otros cuentos, among others) and as a quick-witted and insightful journalist in chronicles

(“Crónicas de la Hermana Rosa” written for the newspaper Clarín on the occasion of the

1994’s World Cup in the US).

In short, we can say that—in the context of Argentine Football literature— tRoberto Fontanarrosa is the most skillful writer (if not the first) at exploring the narrative richness of the obvious: that—which for many—is too close and ubiquitous to notice or pay any attention to, in this case, an overarchingly popular sport which he wisely chose to look through instead of only at.

In a lesser but nonetheless important role in the development and diffusion of football literature in Argentina we find the previously mentioned Juan Sasturain, the third

member of a (sort of) official triumvirate of Argentinian football writers prior to the moment of highest activity of this genre. Also a journalist, Sasturain shares with

Fontanarrosa his love for comics (he was in charge of the script of the comic

“Perramus” first published in Fierro magazine, which he still directs) and with Soriano his past as a frustrated (or at least unsuccessful) football player.

Sasturain wrote his first book about football in 1986 (El día del arquero illustrated by Fontanarrosa) where he included chronicles, essays and short stories92 (“Banderín solferino” and “El ultimo centrojás”) that analyze football from a somewhat philosophical perspective. On these first football texts, Sasturain’s style and his particular take on this sport can be compared to that of Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano (author of El fútbol a sol y a sombra) as he intermixes actual football references with a more profound reading of what takes place on the field: for example, he affirms that those who play as wings are naturally creative and inevitably border madness due to the place on the field they normally inhabit 93 (constantly taking risks and as trapeze artists limited and contained by a line that separates them from the abyss) or that linemen want to be taken seriously, but cannot escape their carnivalesque nature—as holders of a color flag—, their position as outsiders—condemned to remain off the field—or the popular opprobrium due to their unpopular and frankly unheroic job as snitches of the referee.

His ensuing works in this subgenre—Wing de metegol (2004) and Picado Grueso

(2006)—have the same journalistic origin (for the most part, they are compilations of his columns in the newspaper Página 12) and retain the same style presented in El día del arquero. The importance Sasturain’s work lies in its ability to expose, explain and substantiate football concepts and myths from a distinctive perspective that blends

philosophy, literature, sociology with his own empirical knowledge on the field as, both, a player and a sport journalist.

Astutely, Sasturain does not fall into the trap of football fundamentalists who elevate this sport to the level of an indisputable religion, a sacred and unquestionable passion or an all-encompassing (and all-important) cultural phenomenon that reveals like no other essential and eternal truths about different peoples and their cultures. Nor does he jump on the bandwagon of football ‘demonizers’ who blame it (at the very least) as an accomplice of every single crime, atrocity or deceit already committed and to be committed, dutifully and periodically returning to the notion of ‘opium of the people’ that, in fact, reveals more about their own underestimation for the said people (incapable of escaping the flock mentality) than their legitimate (or not) dislike for this sport.

Sasturain affirms (and we must agree) that football is a much more complex phenomenon that invariably escapes reductionist positions like the ones described above: “Sucesiva y simultaneamente juego y deporte, espectáculo, negocio, pasión y enfermedad endémica, el fútbol se resiste—como el amor, el dios de Abraham, el peronismo, el hipo y otras escurridizas entidades—a cualquier definición univoca que no dé cuenta de su elemental complejidad” (11). Football, the writer explains, is as trivial and absurd as any other distraction (literature, gardening and religion among them), that is, one can live without it but, at the same time, one should have the freedom to make sense of it. That is precisely Sasturain’s biggest contribution to this genre, a lucid mind that chose (and dared) to make sense of the most popular of

Argentine trivialities.

Latest period of growth and development of Argentine football literature (1995- 2016)

In the last part of our review of football literature in the Argentine context, we will focus now on the period of highest activity within this genre, which comprises, roughly speaking, the last two decades. Within this period, the number of Argentine authors whose works revolve around the topic of football or use it as a central theme or context has grown exponentially;94 so much, that these growth encouraged, supported and made necessary the creation of Ediciones Al Arco, the first publishing house dedicated to sport literature (with football literature as its “star”) in Argentina.

Much of this growth is indubitably linked to the larger process of commodification of every aspect of people’s lives (sports and, in this case, football included) and as such, football literature can be read (and even dismissed) as just another fleeting trend or fad in the publishing market. However, the fact is that even though part of this phenomenon can be shown to be blindly following the market’s directives (for instance, the evident proliferation of football short stories’ compilations and anthologies in the months leading to a World Cup or the editorial success of famous players’ autobiographies usually published months after their retirement from the football fields), the sustained rhythm of publication in non-World Cup years as well as the diversification of authors (not just males and porteños) and approaches (not only celebratory, complacent or folkloric) seems to be claiming the existence of both a readership and a strong, legitimate movement towards the development of this genre.

As we have seen so far, the connection between journalism (and the media in general) and football literature in Argentina has always been a strong one. Most of those writing ‘football fiction’ started as journalists (or cartoonists in Fontanarrosa’s

case) and in many cases used the very same newspapers and magazines they worked for to first publish their stories and especially their chronicles. Nowadays, many unpublished authors interested in football literature use the blogosphere (via countless football blogs) to share their work.

Interestingly, this connection was revisited and expanded in the 1990’s with the appearance of Alejandro Apo’s radio show Todo con afecto. Starting in 1995 in radio

Continental, this show took over Saturday’s siesta hours—traditionally devoted to the broadcasting of football matches from lower divisions—and filled it with music, interviews, anecdotes and, crucially, football literature.

Amidst the reign of video clip aesthetics and the uninterrupted bombardment of images on the media, football literature makes itself at home in the territory of orality, revalidating the importance and the magical power of words. The oral register dominating large part of football short stories as well as its reduced extension made them perfect for this medium and helped their propagation among Apo’s listeners who could rediscover one of literature’s most fundamental and basic pleasures, that is, the oral narration of a story.

What is more, Apo not only used his show to revisit and disseminate the work of published writers such as Soriano, Sasturain or Fontanarrosa, but also provided an invaluable space for unpublished ones who could send their stories for Alejandro to read in his program.95 The most remarkable of these previously unpublished authors was Eduardo Alfredo Sacheri, a history teacher who in 1996 sent Apo three of his short stories (“Me van a tener que disculpar”, “De chilena” and “Esperándolo a Tito”) that

earned him immediate recognition among listeners and in turn, fueled his career as a writer.

Sacheri—the most prominent writer in contemporary football literature—blends in his stories elements that are present in the work of Argentine football literature’s celebrated triumvirate, that is, humor, straightforwardness, intrigue and orality

(Fontanarrrosa), a strong presence of dialogues and intertextuality (Fontanarrosa and

Soriano) and a marked interest for philosophical and existential aspects in and around football (Sasturain). The latter is the most distinctive trait of Sacheri as a writer as his stories frequently deal with deep, universal themes such as love, death, freedom, destiny, justice, loyalty, solidarity, selfishness, etc., within the context of everyday life in

Argentina, where, as we know, football is omnipresent.

That is one of the reasons why Sacheri’s approach to football, and the inclusion of this sport in the plot of his stories does not seem forced, artificial or the product of literary opportunism. This author—the same as Fontanarrosa, Soriano and Sasturain— shows an evident mastery of football’s codes and traditions in the Argentine context but, for the most part, avoids falling into the trap of creating idyllic, celebratory or hermetic fiction about this sport.

From his very first stories (the three he sent to Todo con afecto), football is the context where the characters’ humanity, their tribes and tribulations, are explored. For instance: the narrator’s moral contradiction of unconditionally loving Maradona, excusing his various faults and being eternally in debt to him in “Me van a tener que disculpar”, the silent pact between the narrator and his dying brother and the reenactment of football miracles in the field of medicine in “De chilena” and the

predominance of loyalty and friendship over the sacred tyranny of monetary interests and football professionalism in “Esperándolo a Tito”.

A common feature of Sacheri’s characters is their condition of anonymous beings, able to salvage a victory even in the midst of general defeat (in football as in life). For these (for the most part) male characters, football acts as the most appropriate and effective vehicle to reach and connect with their innermost (and often walled) sentimental core.

In Sacheri’s works, football is much more than a sport, a pastime, a leisure activity or a branch of business. Football is an integral part of their characters’ identities

(Papeles en el viento), a source of knowledge and experience (“Una sonrisa exactamente así”), the setting for the birth of unbreakable bonds and loyalties (“El cuadro del Raulito”, “Independiente, mi Viejo y yo”), a place for unadulterated joy or agony (“Motorola”) and one of the last bastions of memory, childhood and innocence

(Araoz y la verdad).

This emphasis on the process of re-humanization of football is a common theme and a concern shared by the vast majority of contemporary writers of this genre in response to the progressive and relentless dehumanization of this sport and the media discourse that echoes it.96 It is only fair to notice though, that in the works of this group of writers there is also place for the parasitic nostalgia of better times, chauvinistic delusions of inimitable grandeur and the exaltation and celebration of uncritical and romantic costumbrism. However, and crucially for the purposes of this work, we can also find lucid glances that, through something as banal and meaningless as football, are able to propose (small but nonetheless valid) alternative and enlightening

discourses that challenge the overwhelming capitalist logic that absorbs almost every aspect of people’s lives, while, at the same time, presenting a valuable look at the intra- history of a society as complex as the Argentinian.

Besides the aforementioned Eduardo Sacheri, there is a long list of authors who contribute to the growth and diversification of football literature in Argentina, notably among them Ariel Magnus, Horacio Convertini, Hernán Casciari, Rodolfo Braceli, Sergio

Olguín, Juan José Panno, Marcos González Cezer, Walter Vargas, Daniel Roncoli and

Ariel Scher among many others. While, in the majority of cases, being faithful to some of the genre’s central features (the central use of humor, an eminently oral register, a healthy dose of elements from the fantastic, a choice of—mostly male—characters coming from depressed middle classes, etc.), some of them add new elements and directions to this body of texts. For instance, Ariel Magnus presents a clever fusion of football, philosophy, dry humor and a unforgiving introspective look when analyzing the—often—uncomfortable position of intellectuals (like himself) who love football and are not afraid to admit it in “Tribulaciones de un intelectual en offside”; Horacio

Convertini shows his unique recipe of detective, hardboiled novels, science fiction and tales from Argentine’s football’s underworld in his novels El refuerzo and El último milagro; Walter Vargas makes an incursion into the horrific and pathetic routine of everyday life under 1976’s dictatorship and the first sighting of that football miracle called Diego Armando Maradona97 in “Bautismos”; in “10.6 segundos” Hernán Casciari returns to Maradona’s marvelous and highly symbolic second goal versus England turning the ball into an aleph and presenting Maradona as a magician and “universal” creator; Roncoli launches a diatribe against the reign of virtual football in “Carrilero de

Playstation” and Rodolfo Braceli displays an original collection of women-centered football stories in Perfume de gol.

Speaking of the relation between women and football in Argentina, the fact that this list is made of all-male writers does not necessarily mean that they are completely out of the picture in this area of literature. Even though, up to this point in time there is not a single (published) female author with a consistent production within this thematic area, several compilations (Mujeres con pelotas, Las dueñas de la pelota, etc.) present their valuable and original take on this topic. This ranges from the conventional estrangement and auto-exclusion from this phenomenon (Alicia Diaconú’s “Doble encuentro”, Susana Roman’s “Partido compartido” , Betina González’s “El gol de la muerte según Clara Abel”, Maria Face’s “Hombres que no aman el fútbol”) to the reinterpretation of this game and the re-appropriation of its codes and clichés (Liliana

Alami’s “Las reglas del juego” or María José Eyras’s “El alargue”) and the revisiting of silenced zones within the argentine football imaginary such as the link between football, politics and corruption in Peron’s first government (María Cecilia Quiroga’s “Sólo por ellos”), the political use of 1978’s World Cup by Argentina’s dictatorial regime (Sandra

Lorenzano’s “El mundial y la patria”) or the existence of homosexuality within this sport

(Fernanda Nicolini’s “La cantera”, Ana María Shua’s “Fútbol era el de antes”).

The existence of these all-women compilations is encouraging but, at the same time, continues to reflect the permanence of a generic division between those with the knowledge and the experience (and the societal permission?) to write about football and those who must (and sometimes deliberately choose to) stay outside of this inner circle in order to offer an outsider’s point of view. Nevertheless, for once, literature is ahead of

sport journalism in Argentina, where, despite obvious advancements, women are still in the minority struggling to escape the role of pretty, young faces reading the sport news.98

As a corollary to this chapter we will say (once again) that, in Argentina, football literature wanders between the traditional and the new; it is marginal though it deals and helps propagate central and dominant discourses in Argentine society; it can be conservative and reactionary but also progressive (or, at the very least, rebellious); it is popular and definitely it is not: it is uncomfortable, contradictory and can also be ambivalent, in short, quintessentially Argentine. On these pages, we have tried to provide an initial chronology and contextual study of the birth and development of football literature in Argentina as well as a brief analysis of its major exponents and some of its more relevant works.

Without the slightest intention of being definite or comprehensive, we expect this study will fulfill two important functions: 1) to encourage new and more detailed examinations of this—so far—neglected area of Argentine literature, 2) to serve as a general frame for our own specific analysis, which we will develop in the following chapters. As we already announced, our analysis will move from the more to the least conservative elements within the works of football literature in order to determine which are the traditions and the discourses that intersect it and whether or not (and up to which point) these are assimilated, accepted or transformed. As such, we will begin in the next chapter with the scrutiny of the relationship between football and tradition (s) in the context of this country’s national literature.

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Notes

1 Some historians such as Guttmann (1991) place it between the thirteenth and the eighteenth century.

2 Even Popes such as Clement VII, Leo XI and Urban VIII were said to play this game in Vatican City.

3 From calciare: to kick.

4 Birley says that “Daggers were commonly carried by players in the thirteenth and fourteenth century and liable to cause serious injuries, as much as by accident as design” (32). Due to its violent nature, the animosity and destruction it entailed and the distraction it provoked these earlier forms of football (also called mob-football) were banned in several opportunities (Chinese Emperor Zhu yuanzhang in 1389, Edward II in 1314, Edward III in 1349, Edward IV in 1477, James I of Scotland in 1424, James II in 1457, Phillippe V in 1319 and Charles V in 1369 both in France).

5 Originally not beautiful at all, according to David Winner who provides a vivid description of the early folk games and in a few words explains the transition into association football: “Typical rustic folk games involved hundreds of drunken men from rival villages rampaging through streets and fields, trying to drive, say, a casket of beer (the proto-ball) into the crypt of a church (the proto-goal). The schools distilled such testosterone-fuelled rituals into new formats involving smaller teams, sober boys and sodden leather balls. Codified by the Football Association and later disseminated to the world, this style of soccer was never the so-called beautiful game; the original purpose of educators was to instill manly and martial virtues into future imperial soldiers and administrators” ( “A Soccer empire deeply confused”, New York Times)

6 Referring to the ambivalent nature of this game, Giulianotti expresses, “Football may have been populist in character, but it was also keenly and regularly played by Oxbridge undergraduates from at least the sixteenth century” (3).

7 Some of these first set of rules were those of Cambridge 1848, Sheffield 1857 and Uppingham School 1862.

8 The Football Association Challenge Cup, the oldest association football competition in the world.

9 Goalkeepers cannot handle the ball if this has been passed intentionally by a teammate.

10 In general, more aristocratic sports such as rugby or cricket were far more successful than football in Britain’s dominions.

11 Archetti sees the spread of sports as a combination of different factors: “[it was] a product of Britain’s world power status and its active presence in commerce, industrial production, territorial control and international finance” (46).

12 Paradoxically enough, now a national holiday celebrating Argentine’s Flag Day commemorating the death of its creator, Manuel Belgrano, one of the nation’s founding fathers.

13 In his impressively detailed El origen britanico del deporte argentino, Victor Raffo proves Archetti’s assumption wrong, as he sheds light on Boschetti’s origin: “William Boschetti tenía 21 años y había nacido en Saint Lucía, isla del mar Caribe ubicada al sur de Martinica. Era hijo de John Newbery Boschetti, quien llegó a Buenos Aires en 1861 procedente de Gilbraltar, junto a su esposa Agnes y sus nueve hijos, ocho niñas y un varón” (69).

14 Archetti provides some more background to the (first) foundation of Argentine Football: “The editor of The Standard, a leading British newspaper issued in Buenos Aires, received the rules of football in 1867 and sent them to Thomas Hogg, a well-known and enthusiastic sportsman. The Buenos Aires Football Club, was founded in 1867 by Thomas Hogg himself, together with his brother James and William Heald.

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They decided to play the first game on 20 June the same year …” (48). William Heald’s actual name is Walter Heald as demonstrated by journalist Victor Raffo who included several entries of his personal diary in El origen británico del deporte argentino. According to Raffo, Heald’s erroneous first name made its initial appearance in Eduardo Olivera’s Orígenes de los deportes británicos en el Rio de la Plata (1932) and was systematically reproduced by journalists and historians along the twentieth century.

15 Bayer describes, “Todo se habla en inglés; en las reuniones y en el club. Hasta en la cancha. Para empezar el juego, se repite el ceremonial. El centroforward pregunta: -- “¿All ready?” Y el contrario responde: “¡Yes!” Que será imitado luego por los criollos con el: “¿Aurrieri?” “¡Diez!”” (20).

16 English will remain the official language of this sport for many years to come. In 1893 the Argentine Association Football League is founded and it will not be until 1934 that the acronym will switch to the current AFA (Asociación del Fútbol Argentino). Giulianotti adds: “British cultural hegemony over football remained in these foreign fields. English was often the official language of local football associations, and English football terms (such as ‘corner’, ‘referee’, ‘free-kick’, ‘penalty’ and latterly, ‘hooligan’) became standard among players and supporters” (9).

17 This later stage of expansion took place from 1890 onwards. Some other clubs born from railway companies are: Ferrocarril Midland, Club Central Norte in Tucumán, Central Córdoba in Rosario and Santiago del Estero, Andes Talleres de Mendoza, Club Atlético Talleres de Córdoba, etc.

18 As Pablo Alabarces explains: “Ese ejercicio de una narrativa deportiva nacionalista necesita, como dije, la invención de un Otro, en tanto la dinámica de invención de una identidad exige su alteridad. Ese Otro está demasiado a mano, y es el inglés, el padre, el inventor, el maestro. Asumida esa condición originaria, la invención de un enfrentamiento mítico está a un paso.” (48)

19 When we refer to “Argentine football”, especially when we study its origins, it would be more accurate to use the term “Rioplatense football” as this was the area where the first major developments in this sport took place. We will stick to the broader “Argentine Football” though, in order not to confuse our readers.

20 In short, a type of South American cowboys. We will provide a more detailed explanation of this character in the third chapter of this study.

21 In almost identical fashion, Leopoldo Lugones describes the gaucho’s natural, virtually effortless way of incorporating (inhaling) his artistic streak: “Trotaba al lacio suyo, con la acelerada lengua colgándole, el mastín bayo erizado de rocío. Aquí y allá flameaba un terutero. Y aquel aspaviento del ave, aquella lealtad del caballo y del perro, aquella brisa perfumada en el trebolar como una pastorcilla, aquella laguna que aún conservaba el nácar de la aurora, llenaban su alma de poesía y de música. Raro el gaucho que no fuese guitarrero, y abundaban los cantores” (36). The fact that, according to Lugones, it was rare to find a gaucho who was neither a singer nor poet serves to provide evidence to support the “natural” theory (gauchos as naturals).

22 We will come back to the construction of the figure of the gaucho and its relevance to football literature in the third chapter of this study.

23 Interestingly, Argentina 78’s logo was based on another of this nation’s empty signifiers: Juan Domingo Perón’s (who had been trying for years to bring the World Cup tournament to Argentina) characteristic gesture of saluting the crowd with his arms extended above his head. At this point in time, this symbol was particularly conflicting for Argentina’s vicious military junta who attempted but could not change it as the tournament’s merchandize had already been made. Once again football, classically vilified by the left as the opium of the people, demonstrated its considerable countercultural potential.

24 According to the dictionary of the RAE (Real Academia Española) a potrero is defined as a “Terreno inculto y sin edificar, donde suelen jugar los muchachos” (no pag).

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25 In the Argentine context, the term potrero serves to designate a field (most of the time uneven and with no clear boundaries) where kids (in no set numbers) get together to ‘freely’ play football. As first sight, there is nothing to separate the meaning and use of this word in Argentina and in Spain. However, as we will demonstrate, this word proves to be especially relevant in the construction and development of an Argentine football identity. We will go back to the analysis of this term throughout this study; in chapter 3, we will address the connection between the potreros and the pampas and we will focus on the symbolic relevance of this space as the producer of unique bodily practices within the realm of Argentine football.

26 Which functions as a clear marker of their social class. Therefore, the prototypical pibe will be not just shrewd, cunning and instinctive but also preferably poor. As Alabarces affirms: “La invención del fútbol resulta de constituciones muy complejas, donde las afirmaciones identitarias remiten a formantes disimiles (migratorios, barriales, generacionales, de clase), pero que tienden a reunirse en dos interpolaciones básicas, en dos ejes de oposiciones: frente a los ingleses (inventores, propietarios, administradores), del que resulta un mito de nacionalidad, y frente a las clases hegemónicas (practicantes, propietarios del ocio, estigmatizadores), de lo que resulta un mito de origen—humilde, aunque no proletario” (268).

27 First published in May 1919, it was the most prestigious Argentine sports publication throughout the twentieth century. Its moment of greatest popularity (1945-1955) coincides with the period of the first Peronism when the magazine reaches a press run of 200.00 copies weekly. (Data published in Archetti 57)

28 This Uruguayan writer was also responsible for the scripts of several films that had criollo football as a central theme, notably among them: Pelota de trapo (1948), Con los mismos colores (1949), Sacachispas (1950) and Pelota de cuero, Historia de una pasión (1963). For an analysis of some of these films and its importance in the creation of a football narrative see Alabarces’s Fútbol y patria (2002) and Sibaja’s ¡Animales! Civility, Modernity, and Constructions of Identity in Argentine Soccer, 1955-1970 (2013).

29 The Alumni football club, of the (5!) Brown brothers, can be considered a sort of connecting link between the British and Creole football in Argentina since, despite its British origin, most of their players were born in Argentina and even participated in the first national football teams. The name of this team is derived from the fact that all of its member were former students of the Buenos Aires English School founded by no other than the Scottish teacher Alexander Watson Hutton, recognized as “the father of Argentine football”. Osvaldo Bayer highlights their relevance in the history of Argentine football though he (as well as many other football historians) locates them within the prologue of the story, that is, the British side: “Y llega el primer mito y nacen los primero héroes de la redonda: ¡Alumni y los hermanos Brown! Un equipo con once apellidos ingleses y diez campeonatos ganados en doce años. El prólogo de la historia del fútbol criollo lo escribieron los ingleses” (21).

30 According to Frydenberg this is a key moment in the (re) birth and/or transformation of Argentine football since it coincides with: “… la entrada masiva a la Federación de equipos integrados por argentinos nativos, muchas veces hijos de inmigrantes italianos y españoles (o ellos mismos inmigrantes), y el comienzo del retiro de la práctica del fútbol de los equipos británicos, que comienzan a refugiarse especialmente en el rugby” (22).

31 The fact that the first “criollo” champion wore a jersey with the exact colors of the Argentine flag is very convenient.

32 Pas explains, “Esta ‘fundación de la literatura argentina’, como la llama Altamirano, o segunda fundación, reconoce, antes que un corpus dado de textos, una operación crítico-política por parte de una elite letrada que, ante la evidente fragmentación cultural y social finisecular, ciñe los contornos topográficos de la nación a la “espiritualidad dura” de una entidad criolla predefinida” (53).

33 Coincidentally, Leopoldo Lugones’s influential lectures on the figure of the gaucho (published in 1916 as El payador) took place in the Odeon Theater in 1913. Lugones, along with Rojas and Gálvez, was one of the most important paladins of the nationalist intellectual resurgence.

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34 There is not a clear agreement on this fact. Archetti affirms there were three players of British origin (the already mentioned Wine, Loncan and Prince) while Osvaldo Bayer says there were only two though he does not provide their names. According to the club’s website the players were only two but none of them were Wine, Loncan or Prince but Parks and Worvad.

35 According to Alabarces this is not just a symbolic switch of surnames but also the first step of a complete reconceptualization of football and masculinity in the Argentine context, “… estos nuevos equipos no sólo han reemplazado el apellido Brown por el Perinetti, sino que es todo un sistema ideológico y de clase el que ha sido reemplazado. La oligarquía es desplazada por las nuevas clases populares en formación, pero también es desplazado el fair-play, entendido como un conjunto de normativas éticas que remite a una concepción ideológica—y de clase—de la práctica. Un nuevo concepto de masculinidad está siendo creado, vinculado a condiciones de vida radicalmente diferentes, donde el tiempo libre y de ocio no aparece como natural sino como conquista gremial. Necesariamente este proceso debe desembocar en el profesionalismo, signo último de la democratización de la práctica institucional del fútbol argentino” (52).

36 Jorge Brown, a mythical figure in the origins of football in Argentina, expresses his sadness for the transformation of their sport into something different: more graceful, artistic and intelligent but definitely less virile: “El football que yo cultivé era una verdadera demostración de destreza y energía. Un juego algo más brusco, pero viril, hermoso, pujante. El football moderno adolece de exceso de combinaciones hechas cerca del arco. Es un juego más fino, quizás más artístico, hasta más inteligente en apariencia, pero que ha perdido su animación primitiva….el juego largo ya no se cultiva, en el que se formaron tantos jugadores invencibles. Con el juego nuestro se producían muchos choques…hoy creen que juegan un mejor football los que esquivan el cuerpo…ya no se ve el clásico juego consagrado en Inglaterra e impuesto en el mundo entero” (El Gráfico, 1921, 107: 11 as quoted in Archetti “El deporte en Argentina” 4). As we can see, Brown’s words also help explain these original players’ migration into the more traditional, virile and aristocratic sport of rugby.

37 Rheas in English, large, flightless birds similar to ostriches.

38 ‘To do a nutmeg’ in English.

39 As we will see, Borocotó mantains this essentialist theory throughout the years. This fragment from a later article published in 1950 (more than twenty years after it was first outlined in El Gráfico) demonstrates it: "Cada país juega al fútbol como sabe hacerlo y de acuerdo con el temperamento de sus hombres, con su idiosincrasia, como siente el fútbol. ¿Por qué el pibe nuestro quiere moverla, ablandarla, hacer chiches, todo lo cual le ha dado ese maravilloso dominio de pelota que más de una vez resulta poco práctico? Porque nació así. No se le ocurrió ser así. iEs así! Algo habrá en el aire, en el paisaje, en la sangre, en el asado, en el mate, pero es así. Y por otros lados el aire, la sangre, el paisaje y la alimentación son diferentes. No hay una manera de jugar al fútbol. Hay maneras" (El Grafico, 1950,1618: 48 qtd. in Sacheri 434).

40 Charismatic leaders or strongmen.

41 We are referring to the version of history sanctioned by school books and fed to primary and secondary school students.

42 Domingo Faustino Sarmiento semblance of Facundo Quiroga in his canonical (and brilliant) Facundo: civilización y barbarie is the clearest example of this argumentation and at the same time, the book that helped immortalize caudillos.

43 Facundo’s aversion to discipline is, according to Sarmiento, one of his defining characteristics: “…el alma rebelde de Quiroga no podía sufrir el yugo de la disciplina, el orden del cuartel, ni la demora de los ascensos. Se sentía llamado a mandar, a surgir de un golpe, a crearse él solo, a despecho de la sociedad civilizada y en hostilidad con ella, una carrera a su modo, asociando el valor y el crimen, el gobierno y la desorganización” (81). In the realm of criollo football, the British style is seen as stifling and too disciplinary and this is one of the main reasons the rebellious figure of the caudillo works so well

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44 The typical caudillo is not usually the most technically gifted or the most creative player so in this sense it distances itself from Borocotó’s instinctive dribbler. However, much like the canonical figure of the gaucho, the football caudillo is a constant dweller of a territory of legal boundaries within the game, a rebel who honors and follows his own set of rules and, given the circumstances, is not afraid to sacrifice his body and suffer the consequences of his acts.

45 One of the founders, along with Jorge Luis Borges, Alfredo Brandán Caraffa and Ricardo Güiraldes, of the renowned magazine Proa (in the magazine’s second stage in 1924) and a winner of the National Prize for Literature in 1940 for his work El patio de la noche. The Uruguayan journalist Natalio Botana, founder and director of Crítica, gave Rojas Paz the task of “embellishing football” by using it as a literary theme. Rojas Paz did that and then some more since some of his words left indelible marks in the language of Argentine football. One of the clearest examples is the naming of Boca Juniors boisterous fan base as “El jugador número 12” which will later be shortened to “La Doce” ( nowadays used to describe the most radically violent group of Boca Juniors’ supporters, the infamous “barra brava”).

46 Published in the newspaper La Nación on January 6th, 1929 and later rescued and included in 1971 Santoro’s Literatura de la pelota.

47 Borges, a relevant figure (most probably contrary to his own liking) in our analysis of Argentine football literature, described football as a frivolous, stupid and unaesthetic game, joining the ranks of canonical writers like Shakespeare and Kipling. In “Borges entre los políticos” an interview by Roberto Alifano, published in the newspaper “Clarín”of April 10th, 1981 he expresses: “Se está gastando la plata en hoteles y canchas de fútbol. ¡El fútbol!, Una miseria, una cosa tan frívola... ‘Los viles (o plebeyos) jugadores de fútbol’, dice Shakespeare en El Rey Lear, y Kipling también habla desdeñosamente de ellos, ¡él, un poeta nacido en Bombay, que creía en el Imperio Británico, no en esas cosas tan miserables y bajas como el fútbol!”. However, we have to admit that taking Borges’s words literally would be, most definitely, both a big risk and an innocent mistake, as those who use the canonical writer’s grandiloquent opinions to justify their despise for football continuously prove.

48 First published in the eleventh issue of the porteña magazine “Atlántida” of May 16, 1918 and later compiled in Santoro’s Literatura de la pelota. This magazine was founded by the Uruguayan writer and entrepreneur Constancio C. Vigil, also responsible for the creation of the previously mentioned El Gráfico.

49 Argentine film Pelota de cuero (1963) is also based on Porte’s life/death. However, contrary to Quiroga’s short story, Armando Bo’s film does not ridicule the protagonist but exalts his loyalty for his loved team (Boca Juniors in this case) at a time when football players were beginning to be treated as merchandise. For a deeper analysis of this film see Alabarces (2002) and Sibaja (2013).

50 This was one of the most common forms of covert monetary compensation in the times of amateur football, whereby the club would get a player a nominal job position for which he received a salary without ever having to show up for the aforementioned job.

51 Porte’s actual verses were: “Nacional aunque en polvo convertido / y en polvo siempre amante. / No olvidaré un instante / lo mucho que te he querido. / Adiós para siempre.”

52 The match Arlt is referring to is Argentina-Uruguay (2-0) played on November 17th, 1929 as part of the Copa América of that year.

53 The term “aguafuertes” (literally ‘etchings’) used by Arlt to name his columns makes reference to the almost photographic reproduction of fragmented moments, spaces, people and places in the capital of Argentina (“porteñas”) from 1928 until 1942 (the year of Arlt’s dead).

54 “… vociferar desde allí palabrotas que hacen rechinar sus mandíbulas; con tanto entusiasmo las vomita al espacio” (103).

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55“Había una cosa que me llamó la atención y era el agua que continuamente caía de lo alto de las tribunas. Le pregunté a un espectador por qué hacían ese regado, y el espectador me contestó que eran ciudadanos argentinos que dentro de la constitución hacían sus necesidades desde las alturas.” (100)

56 “… el ‘hincha de café”, el ‘hincha’ que no acudió a ninguno de los parajes donde actúa su héroe, pero discute como un endemoniado en la mesa del café, por la noche, cuando se comentan los sucesos del día” (104).

57 “…gritería infernal que ofrece ese cuadro dantesco de cincuenta mil energúmenos defendiendo denodadamente a sus ídolos…” (67).

58 “Han borrado de su memoria todo el pasado, han suprimido su propia existencia de ciudadanos con nombres, edad, domicilio y oficio, para reducirse a entes abstractos, entidades de pasión incandescente, de libres e irresponsables efusiones.” (129)

59 When analyzing this same text, Jason Borge affirms that it is possible to see in Martínez Estrada’s words what Pierre Bourdieu characterizes as the bourgeois horror of vulgar crowds and this feeling of disgust and apprehension also helps us to understand the non-human features this writer assigns to them: “Martinez Estrada's soccer fan is very much a faceless entity - indeed, the writer's attention is almost entirely focused on the physical gestures and utterances of the spectators whom he likens on more than one occasion to "fieras" (304).

60 In “Fragmentos de los anales secretos” (published in 1948 in the renowned “Sur” magazine) Héctor Alvarez Murena (a well-known Germanist and the first to translate Walter Benjamin’s works into Spanish) agrees with Martínez Estrada’s vision of fans as pre-historic beings: “… de pronto es una fuerza prehistórica la que irrumpe, y todo se ve arrastrado. Una multitud de seres sin nombre, cubiertos de guiñapos, penetran en la cuenca armados con hierros y palos” (175). Murena’s hinchas storm into the field after a decisive match and as a vengeance for what they think was the unjust defeat of their team (after a last minute penalty-kick), decide to sacrifice the referee (a civilized figure representing the law and wearing a white uniform) by hanging him from the higher post of one of the goals. It is 1948 and football along with Peronism are synonymous with the barbaric for anti-peronist writers. Javier E. Sánchez traces connections between this story and “La fiesta del monstruo” by Bustos Domeqc (Bioy and Borges) as he presents them as 20 century re-writings of Echeverria’s “El matadero” in “El estadio de fútbol o el matadero del siglo XX: un cuento de H.A. Murena”.

61 Juan José Sebrelli will become the most prominent continuator of this type of stance/analysis in Fútbol y masas (1981) and La era del fútbol (1998).

62 James C. Scott elaborates on the problems of the safety-valve hypothesis: “The greatest shortcoming of the safety-valve position is that it embodies a fundamental idealist fallacy. The argument that offstage or veiled forms of aggression offer a harmless catharsis that helps preserve the status quo assumes that we are examining a rather abstract debate in which one side is handicapped rather than a concrete, material struggle” (187).

63 For instance, the journalist Nacho Fusco writes in Olé (the first Argentinian sports newspaper): “Es 1954 y el escritor uruguayo le dicta al papel las líneas fundacionales, el espermatozoide literario de un género sin presente. El cuento se llamará “Puntero izquierdo” y lo publicará un año más tarde, en el 55, en la revista “Número”, ya desaparecida” (A 50 años de “Puntero izquierdo”). Unfortunately, at the moment of writing this words, there are no formal studies entirely devoted to the area of football literature so we have to resort to journalism to find the first approximations to a chronology of the genre.

64 “Entonces ya no vi más, se me subió la calabresa y le quise demostrar al coso ése que cuando quiero sé mover la guinda y me saqué de encima a cuatro o cinco y cuando estuve solo frente al golero le mandé un zapatillazo que te lo boliodire y el tipo quedó haciendo sapitos pero exclusivamente a cuatro patas” (42).

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65 In “La literatura hecha pelota: primer acercamiento a los cuentos de fútbol argentino”—one of the few published academic articles entirely dealing with football literature—Javier Enrique Sánchez disagrees with our position as he presents “Esse est percipi” as an example of a “no cuento de fútbol” where Borges and Bioy (“un par de intelectualoides”) enjoy the idea of a world where “el fútbol ha dejado de existir a manos de una farsa mercantilista”. Sanchez also points out that “la voz de Bustos Domecq nunca llega a hacer creer sobre su conocimiento futbolístico por lo que parece un títere diciendo unos parlamentos que no tienen nada que ver con el personaje que pretende ser”. Sanchez focuses on Bioy and Borges’s nature of outsiders to this sport ( not entirely true in the case of Bioy Casares) to disqualify their story as non-authentic; by doing so, he replicates the exclusivist attitude of the most conservative of Argentine intellectuals.

66 Manuel Romero’s movie El hincha (1951) and his protagonist “El Ñato” (Enrique Santos Discepolo) are paradigmatic examples of this kind of construction.

67 Nogera and Frydenberg present more information about this critical period in Argentine football: “Los años sesenta fueron los de menor venta de entradas en la historia del fútbol argentino, y ante esa realidad, los directivos de los clubes más importantes promovieron la contratación de gran cantidad de jugadores latinoamericanos para atraer público. Así vinieron cuatro de Perú, nueve de Brasil y diez de Uruguay, que marcaron una gran fluidez de jugadores entre países latinoamericanos” (197).

68 Borges and Bioy Casares also mention the arrival of men to the moon as another one of the media’s creations.

69 Juan Román Riquelme is a very popular and controversial Argentine football player who plays for Boca Juniors. A very interesting figure, Riquelme appears as one of the last “football romantics” by showing devotion and an unbreakable fidelity to his beloved team and defending and privileging the ludic and the emotional aspects of this game against the more practical and accepted capitalist logic. Some of his detractors say that Riquelme is simply a pretender, and that his popular persona is a façade created to hide a very individualistic player who only cares about his own personal and economic well-being.

70 Arias’s character also protests against the detrimental influence of Holywood movies which have provoked a proliferation of Salma Hayek’s ‘wannabes’: “No se puede medir… el daño que provocó Salma Hayek en las negritas medio pelo de este país y posiblemente del mundo entero (…) Desde que apareció… cualquier petisita se pone lentes oscuros y ropa parecida a la que usa Salma Hayek y se cree que abandonó para siempre su condición de medio pelo” (212). For a thorough analysis and elaboration of the concept of “medio pelo” in Argentine society see Jauretche’s El medio pelo en la sociedad Argentina.

71 Richard Giulianotti deals with the connection of Baudrillard’s theories to the study of sports in “The fate of Hyperreality: Jean Baudrillard and the Sociology of Sport”. In this article the hyperreal is defined as “… the world as simulacrum, in the sense that it is both simulated and ‘realer than real’, characterised by the obscene attention to excessive detail” (233)

72 Two antecedents if we count the Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano’s compilation Su majestad, el fútbol (Arca, 1968). Galeano’s choice of texts is fundamentally different from that of El fútbol’s compiler (the book has no author, but Juan José Sebreli later admitted to be in charge of it) as the Uruguayan writer selects texts from poets, literary writers and sport journalists (in addition to one text by the famed coach Helenio Herrera). For a contrast between the prologues in both compilations and an analysis of its implications for intellectuals in relation to football see Alabarces’s “Intelectuales y fútbol: pensar con los pies”.

73 “Hemos prescindido deliberadamente de esa abundante literatura pintoresca que han venido componiendo una serie de ingeniosos cronistas deportivos en páginas periodísticas y aun en libros (…) Hemos preferido dejar la palabra a sociólogos y narradores ajenos al mundo del fútbol, pues consideramos que quien comparte totalmente una determinada pasión, puede muy bien mostrarla pero difícilmente analizarla, que es lo que intentamos hacer aquí” (7, emphasis added).The anti-populist scope of El fútbol through its choice of texts is not surprising given its compiler’s line of thought in this respect.

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In the prologue to La era del fútbol, Sebreli takes credit for that early compilation: “Comencé pues, contra la indiferencia de unos y la devoción de otros, a publicar una serie de artículos en la revista Confirmado, en octubre de 1966, que fue interrumpida seguramente porque molestaban a los responsables de la edición. Esta frustrada experiencia periodística dio origen al año siguiente a un libro colectivo donde recopilé los pocos textos literarios que pude encontrar sobre el fútbol…” (11, emphasis added). In the lapse of twenty-one years, Sebreli goes from abundance to scarcity, from a deliberate choice to the inclusion of the few texts available on that topic; the key decisive element giving validity and visibility to those texts being their “literariness” or the lack thereof.

74 Bernardo Canal Feijóo was (at the time of his death) the president of the “Academia Argentina de Letras” and had also been a member of the avant-garde literary group known as “Martin Fierro” (or Florida group), identified with the magazines “Martín Fierro” and “Proa” and that included illustrious names such as Oliverio Girondo, Ricardo Guiraldes, Leopoldo Marechal, Raúl González Tuñón and Jorge Luis Borges. His Penúltimo poema de fútbol is the first crossover between football and literature and the only one to take place until the decade of 1960 (and the only one to have been published outside of Buenos Aires). This book was practically lost and unknown for a long period of time (his author being an accomplice of this disappearance) until Santoro rediscovered it for his compilation. Fortunately, the small publishing house “El Suri porfiado” lauched in 2008 a new edition of this foundational book. To read more about Feijoo’s football poems see Carlos Aldazábal’s (a poet and one of the founders of “El Suri porfiado”) article “Bernardo Canal Feijóo y su “Penúltimo poema del fútbol” in his blog “El pimentero”

75 The phrase “Fútbol: dinámica de lo impensado” is used ad nauseum by sport journalist in Argentina and the book is cited as a classic and a source of inspiration for many of them though it seems clear that this is one of this cases where a book is mostly referenced but not read since most of those who use Panzeri’s famous phrase (typically in the tittle or introduction to their articles) never go further/deeper than that.

76 However, he also failed to include Bioy and Borges’ “Esse est percipi”.

77 “Aprendí a vistear con los otros, con un palo tiznado: Todavía no nos había ganado el fútbol que era cosa de ingleses” (297).

78 “Se habla de la ausencia de una ‘valiosa’ literatura de ficción sobre una de las manifestaciones más apasionantes de la sociedad industrial. Se pone de manifiesto; se recalca; se habla. La presente antología, habrá de poner en evidencia la liviandad de ciertas opiniones, pretendiendo—lo cual ya es bastante—, extender un verdadero mapa frente al lector para que él encuentre su camino” (6). Unfortunately, despite Santoro’s best efforts, the argument that denies the existence of ‘valuable’ football literature (or literature about football) and thus justifies the lack of ‘serious’ studies on this topic is still being used in academia.

79 Soriano’s Memorias de Míster Peregrino Fernández was intended to be a novel but was unfortunately cut short by the author’s death in 1997 and was published posthumously the following year along with a compilation of his football short stories.

80 Soriano provides more details about the method employed to write “El reposo del centrojas”: “La historia de Vida, tal como se la conocía en el suplemento cultural de La Opinión, era una de las formas más difíciles del reportaje. Consistía en escuchar, ante un grabador, durante cinco o seis horas—tal vez más—, a un hombre o una mujer que reconstruían los mejores—o los más terribles—momentos de su existencia. Luego había que comprimir sin reducir, restituyendo a la vez, el sabor del relato, el estilo narrativo del entrevistado.” (99)

81 Ángel Berlanga recounts: “[Soriano] Decía… que leyó su primer libro de “literatura” a los veinte años porque en su casa no había biblioteca” (5).

82 Soriano’s “El hijo de Butch Cassidy” takes place in Patagonia in 1942 where an unofficial World Cup is held and Butch Cassidy’s son (William Brett Cassidy an avid reader of Spinoza and Hegel) participates as a referee using nothing but a gun to impose his authority. This delirious fantasy that combines football,

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western, philosophy and politics was made into a movie (a mockumentary) in 2011 by Lorenzo Garcella and Filippo Marcelloni (Il Mundial Dimenticato or The Lost World Cup).Ironically, many news agencies and newspapers assumed the mockumentary was really a documentary and echoed this amazing discovery and wanted FIFA to give the winners of this apocryphal World Cup (a team of mapuches) their deserving place in history. To read more about this confusion see Ezequiel Fernández Moore’s article “El Mundial olvidado” http://canchallena.lanacion.com.ar/1406008-el-mundial-olvidado.

83 Initially published in the newspaper Página 12 between 08/28/1996 and 02/02/1997.

84 Alabarces expresses: “La cita de Camus se transformará, desde el rescate de Galeano en adelante, en uno de los lugares comunes más reiteradamente insoportables cada vez que se quiera habar de fútbol y pasar por culto” (164).

85 As evidence of his continuous interest and expertise in the genre of gauchesca literature—in one of his last works before his death—Fontanarrosa wrote the script and designed the characters for the animated film Martín Fierro (2007).

86 Fontanarrosa not only parodied the Argentine football universe and its different narrative representations, but also a variety of literary genres and registers (gauchesca literature, social novel, scientific texts, detective novels, etc.).

87 Mostly, this distinction comes from the recognition of some of Fontanarrosa’s best stories by fellow ‘football writers’ who used them as inspiration and referenced them in their own works (for instance, Federico Polak’s “Camp Nou” uses Fontanarrosa’s “19 de diciembre de 1971” as narrative frame and inspiration), as well as by readers who disseminated Fontanarrosa’s short stories orally and through countless blogs on the web.

88 Fontanarrosa elaborates on the relationship between football and literature in Argentina and the importance of exploring this connection: “"Cuando leía a los norteamericanos me daba cuenta de que ellos escribían sobre deporte. Hemingway sobre boxeadores, sobre toreros. Mailer sobre Clay. Philip Roth describe en uno de sus libros la literatura norteamericana como si se tratara de un partido de baseball. Pero acá esto no pasaba. De acuerdo, Cortázar y algún otro más habían escrito sobre box, pero sobre fútbol, nadie. Y el fútbol era y es nuestro deporte nacional…escribir sobre fútbol no es contar un partido, lo que pasa en la cancha, sino lo que está afuera, lo que rodea y hace a la cancha. Como hicieron los norteamericanos con sus boxeadores: la pelea es lo de menos. Y lo que interesa no es el combate en sí sino lo que hace a su esencia" (n. pag).

89 The James Bond-like secret agent Best Seller (protagonist of his novels Best Seller and El area 18) and the gaucho Inodoro Pereyra (el renegau) are clear examples of Fontanarrosa’s wide scope and extensive range of interests (escapist fiction and gauchesca literature in these cases).

90 “…siempre tuvo y le sobró de eso que hace que un escritor lo sea: lectores. Después de su talento, es lo que más le envidiamos” (no page).

91 The latter one is a compilation of his football-themed cartoons previously published in several magazines and newspapers.

92 Published between 1981 and 1983 in the magazines Siete días, Humor, Contraseña, Don and Feriado Nacional.

93 Fontanarrosa takes this idea to a farcical extreme in his short story “El loco Cansino” where the protagonist (remembered as a hero among his team’s supporters) is a seriously unbalanced individual (a right wing, what else?) who cries while playing (every time the opposing time scores) and ends up being locked away after trying to strangle a teammate.

94 The journalist Pablo Hacker provides specific data that reflects this growth in his article “La pelota literaria”: “Según la Agencia Argentina de ISBN (International Standard Book Number), en 1996 se

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publicaron 21 títulos con la temática fútbol; mientras que, en 2005, fueron 65 los ejemplares, y, en 2006, 59. Dentro de la categoría narrativa argentina, hay 48 libros que contienen en su título la palabra fútbol, pero, desde la Cámara Argentina del Libro, aseguran que la cantidad sería mayor, porque hay muchos que escriben sobre este deporte, aunque al registrarlo no hacen ninguna mención temática”

95 Apo would not check stories before reading them for the first time “on air” as he wanted to experience the same surprise and emotion as his listeners.

96 The historical context for this to take place will be provided by President Menem’s infamous decade (1989-1999), the subsequent economic, political and social crises and the transformation of football into a frivolous, mechanical and commoditized territory under the domination of television (primarily from 1991 through the AFA agreement with the sports multimedia “Torneos y Competencias”) along with the arrival of a new group of officials with no experience in the football field and big political ambitions ( Mauricio Macri, who went from president of Boca Juniors to mayor of the city of Buenos Aires and finally current president of Argentina as the best example of this, not so, rara avis). Julio Frydenberg reflects on the heightened social and symbolic capital of football clubs in nowadays Argentina: “Los clubes como arena política o como espacio generador de un capital social, también pueden ser evaluados en la medida en que son escenario de generación de cuadros dirigentes políticos, es decir dirigentes que nacen a la vida pública con una gimnasia democrática. Además son escenarios de construcción de un capital simbólico, que se puede asimilar a los lazos identitarios, hábitos, sentimientos comunes de una comunidad, a espacios de generación o recreación de creencias y valores” (69).

97 In the Argentine context, the figure of Maradona was be able to embody most of criollo (now Argentinian) football essences that seemed irreparably lost, namely its plebeian and ambiguous origin ( in the margins of the city), the value of individual skill, the irresponsibility of “pibes”, their rebellious nature and constant inventiveness, in sum, the resurrection of potrero football. His downfall (due to drug addiction, public and private scandals, and a life lived almost exclusively on the fast lane) and subsequent retirement from professional sports (1997) coincide with the beginning of the most prolific period in Argentine football literature. Maradona (both, his myth and his phantom) will take a prominent role as source of inspiration and reservoir of the now (forever?) lost identity in the area of football. That is why, his relevance within this genre is as important as in the field of Argentine football itself. Some of the works written in a maradonian key are: “Me van a tener que disculpar” (Sacheri, 2000), “Maradona sí, Galtieri, no” (Soriano, 1998), El equipo de los sueños (Olguín, 2003), “Dieguito” (Feinmann, 1996), “Como el Diego” (Nicastro, 2010), “Tránsito” (Saccomanno, 1997), “Dalma salvadora: recomendaciones para parir un hijo que salga Maradona” (Braceli 2009) “10.6 segundos” (Casciari) among many others. We will come back to his topic throughout our study and specifically center our attention from chapter three onwards.

98 In what it can be described as a historic landmark in this process, Viviana Vila became the first woman in the role of commentator in the history of Argentine TV on February 12th 2012 (Argentinos Juniors vs Unión). Regardless of Vila’s aptitudes or lack of them, her figure created surprise and controversy in a society that is slowly trying to catch up with its government’s anti-discriminatory and inclusive legislations. What is more, the role of the commentator is a highly symbolic one, since that is the person in charge of analyzing what goes on in a football match, that is, understanding and being able to read the game (going past the realm of simple, perceptible actions to reach the conceptual basis of them), an activity that women are stereotypically barred from in Argentine society.

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CHAPTER 3 FOOTBALL AND TRADITION IN THE CONTEXT OF ARGENTINE FOOTBALL LITERATURE

An invented tradition for the Argentine desert

After the valuable contributions of Homi Bhabha, Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict

Anderson—to name just three of the most renowned authors that reflected on these topics—it would be an intellectual sin to approach notions such as nation, nationalism and national tradition (s) from essentialists, naïve, ahistorical perspectives. It is now a widely shared belief and a validated conception that nations and its respective traditions are nothing but human inventions,1 ideas, concepts, narratives that, as Bhabha famously stated, “… lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully realize their horizons in the mind’s eye” (1) thus attempting to create an illusion of atemporality, immemorial existence or, at the very least, temporal and historical continuity in order to assert its aura of inscrutability, normalcy and authority over its subjects. As Rodolfo

Schweizer explains:

Si bien desde nuestra visión actual damos por normal la existencia de las naciones, estas recién comienzan a aparecer en el siglo XVIII, gracias a la aparición en escena de un nuevo concepto político: el del nacionalismo, en cuyo nombre se comienzan a fundar estados donde antes solo había habido monarquías absolutistas y pueblos actuando como siervos (21).

It is also common knowledge that literature had (and hopefully still has) a significant role in the configuration of these imagined communities we like to call nations, going well beyond their aesthetic function and becoming powerful political tools.

In the case of argentine literature, authors such as Esteban Echeverría, Domingo

Faustino Sarmiento, José Mármol and Leopoldo Lugones among others set the path for the advance of a number of texts that would found the nation through the performative

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power of written words, the foundational fictions that Doris Sommer famously refers to; 2 texts that like conquering armies and efficient war machines would be in charge of drawing the geographical and cultural maps of the newly born Argentine nation.3 In that respect, the fact that one of Argentine literature’s first images is that of ‘the desert’,4 which symbolizes a blank sheet where to draw the aforementioned maps, is highly emblematic. Hernán Pas elaborates,

El paisaje del interior argentino es aquí un desierto, “misterioso” e “inconmensurable”… No es, estrictamente hablando, un espacio geográfico, sino una cartografía imaginada que provee al territorio un sentido, que es estético – figurativo—pero también político—en la medida que tal representación naturaliza al objeto representado. En términos tropológicos, es la escritura de una página en blanco que no reconoce otras escrituras ni otras marcas: no hay, no puede haber huellas de otras culturas porque ese espacio es tramado por los jóvenes del 37 como espacio vacío. El desierto, que lo resume, niega la presencia del Otro, porque donde hay desierto no hay cultura. (55-56; emphasis added)

This group of Argentine intellectuals (most of them from the so-called

“Generación del 37”) decide to cut all ties with a colonial or pre-colonial past in their quest to start writing (that is, creating) Argentina anew. As Beatriz Sarlo says, “La

Argentina iba a ser inventada y nada de su pasado prehispánico o colonial podía ser reciclado en un proceso de modernización” (29). They would look to Europe (though certainly not to Spain) for literary models (these will come mainly from France in the form of Romanticism) but at the same time, they needed to search inside the (not yet established) borders of their own country for elements that will infuse their works with a much-needed originality and distinctiveness. Ricardo Piglia explains this process by using the metaphor of the constitution of a strabismic vision or double vision that will allow writers to reclaim their literary independency without really abandoning their ties with ‘civilized’ Europe, thus funding a national tradition, “La mirada estrábica funda una

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verdadera tradición nacional: la literatura argentina se constituye en esa doble visión, en esa relación de diferencia y alianza con otras prácticas y otra lenguas y otras tradiciones” (22).

Beatriz Sarlo, on the other hand, refers to Argentine’s literature romantic paradox, which implies the building of a national literary tradition from a foundational vacuum, that is, the rejection of the colonial metropolis and its culture along with all the

‘barbaric’ pre-Hispanic elements without, however, the possibility of doing away with the imperial language as she shrewdly asks, “¿Qué sucede con la cultura y la literatura, con la identidad cultural, en ex colonias que siguen hablando la lengua de sus conquistadores?” (28). Finally, this strabismic visión that Echeverría and the writers of

1837 commended as a synthesis between the European and the local will provoke an undesirable result that will, in turn, leave an permanent mark in the trajectory and future developments of Argentine’s culture: the omnipresence of dichotomies and polarization in this area. We concur with David Viñas when he affirms,

La polémica contra Rosas condiciona que el planteo inicial del 37 formulado originariamente como síntesis se escinda, polarice y congele en dicotomía: lo idealizado contra lo real en Mármol, la civilización frente a la barbarie en Sarmiento, el europeo opuesto al criollo, el gringo reemplazando al gaucho, la ciudad en guerra con el campo, la capital enfrentando al interior, lo libresco excluyendo a lo empírico y así siguiendo. El liberalismo se convierte en maniqueísmo provocando fracasos literarios y desencuentros políticos… (126).

The ascendance of these writers and its works over the future of the young nation was mainly due to yet another paradox: the impossibility of being (just) a writer.

As Piglia notices, this impossibility is connected to the fact that we are in the presence of “… una literatura que no tiene autonomía; la política lo invade todo, no hay espacio, las practicas están mezcladas, no se puede ser solamente escritor” (19). To write about

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the nation (at this stage, always a future, better nation) is to inaugurate a space for its own discursive creation: a space that serves to announce political agendas (as in the cases of Sarmiento or Alberdi) and to articulate such intricate conceptions and attributes as ‘nationality’ or ‘the national’ at the same time.5

The “blank sheet” that the topographic discourse of the writers of this generation had produced (and that the army with its ‘glorious’ conquest of the desert and its forced conscription along with a number of long and bloody internal conflicts and the war of independence had helped materialize) needed to be filled by an envisioned wave of

(preferably North European) immigrants who would have the crucial task of infusing this land and its culture with a much-needed civilizing effect. Juan Bautista Alberdi’s motto

“gobernar es poblar” (to govern is to populate) denotes the central place this essential prerequisite had in the process of construction of a new nation like Argentina. It was imperative to populate what had been previously depopulated, start anew in the quest for hegemony and homogeneity, as Domingo Ighina explains,

La nación surge, entonces, en el territorio argentino, como un proyecto de colonialismo interno que ocupa, simbólica y efectivamente, los territorios de la diversidad—pueblos indígenas, los mestizos mediterráneos, las aristocracias del Interior—para imponer una homogeneidad étnica, histórica y política, que se correspondiera con el esquema de dominio imperial que vigorosamente se desarrollaba en Europa. La nación, en definitiva, era un fenómeno hegemónico de colonialismo interno, no solo frente al indio, sino también frente a los grupos subalternos blancos y mestizos, y esto por la lógica de definir a la nación desde el discurso unilateral del proyecto civilizador.(25)

Timely and successfully enough, the European immigrants, that according to

Alberdi and Sarmiento (among others) this new nation needed, started to arrive in hordes from all over Europe (and not just the preferred north), forever altering

Argentina’s society and cultural landscape.6 The increasingly “babelic” configuration of

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Argentine’s larger, most populous cities, presented in turn the menacing face of a disruptive heterogeneity that would place the civilizing project of the members of the

“Generación del 37” at risk. Beatriz Sarlo comments, “Lo que el imaginario republicano había pensado como una “buena heterogeneidad se estaba convirtiendo en una ‘mala’ mezcla” (32).

The arrival of this new wave of immigrants (also characterized by traditional groups as “la ola”, “la invasión”, “la polenta humana” or “la plebe ultramarina”) evidenced the urgent need for the creation and articulation of a “national art” which would provide the newcomers with a set of values and distinctive features to adopt and reproduce. Viñas explains, “Hacia 1900 la Argentina necesita un arte nacional: lo reclaman sus grupos tradicionales, lo apoya Roca… lo teorizan los escritores conectados con el grupo gobernante y a cada rato apelan a él las estructuras periodísticas articuladas con esos intereses” (272).

This sense of urgency leads a group of intellectuals closely connected to the state to partially dismount the narrative dispositive of the desert in order to unearth a sort of “missing link of argentineness”; a figure that would become a precious repository of national essences and the preferred emblem of tradition: this figure is none other than that of the, by then already extinct, gaucho. It is precisely his extinction (or in the best of cases his mutation into rural worker and his assimilation into the emerging capitalist economy) what makes possible the complete and radical shift in the way gauchos are perceived by the intellectual and the ruling elites. Formerly presented as social outcasts and barriers to the ‘sacred’ mission of civilization, most notably in

Sarmiento’s canonical Facundo, they swiftly become mythical guardians of said mission

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as well as unblemished paradigms of a truly ‘national being’. Cultivating another one of

Argentina’s now classic dichotomies, tradition is going to be found in the deep confines of the nation (the interior) in contrast to the much more diluted version of it that the heterogeneous and Europeanized city capital of the country could offer.

Gauchos are dead! Long live gauchos! A minor genre at the center of the cannon

Gauchesca literature—treated by its contemporaries with the kind of gentle condescendence reserved for perceived minor, unimportant genres7—not only will escape oblivion but also become the center of a newly created Argentine literary canon.

Nationalistic writers such as Manuel Galvez, Ricardo Rojas and Leopoldo Lugones among others, played a decisive role in the transformation of the most celebrated work of this “minor” literary genre (José Hernández’s Martín Fierro) into the first and only national epic poem.8 As Ariana Hubbermans states,

Lugones introduced Hernandez’s poem ‘Martin Fierro’ as a foundational epic and that enabled the configuration of a national identity. In El payador, Lugones’ reading of “Martin Fierro” maintained Sarmiento’s civilization/barbarism dichotomy. However, he referred to a mythical and ahistorical version of the gaucho as civilized, and to the Indian and the immigrant as barbaric. (18)

This new, mythical gaucho propagated and sanctioned by Argentine intellectuals will be stripped of most of his controversial traits (chiefly among them his propensity towards violence, a marked sentimental side and a certain indolence) 9 and, as an integral part of his process of ascension to the heights of Argentina’s Olympus, will incorporate distinctive Hellenic features and also reclaim part of his Hispanic heritage

(which in turn serves to distinguish him from the irredeemably barbaric indigenous peoples), thus linking once again national and European traditions in order to legitimize

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the former. Sandra Contreras offers more details of this narrative ideological construction,

El payador de Leopoldo Lugones sintetiza la operación ideológica de estetización del gaucho al postularlo como el “héroe y civilizador de la pampa”… y al entroncarlo con la tradición grecolatina portadora de los valores de libertad, justicia, bien y belleza. Elegante y bello en su porte, cantor amante de la música y la poesía, valiente con pasión caballeresca (no como cultor del coraje en el estilo de Moreira), el gaucho mítico de Lugones encarna la vida heroica de la raza, inmortalizada en el poema épico nacional a través del tipo más perfecto de justiciero y libertador -el Martín Fierro y condensa el antecedente del que proviene todo lo que es propiamente nacional. (300)

However, as we know, Hernández’s masterpiece consists of two parts, El gaucho

Martín Fierro also referred to as La ida from 1872 and La Vuelta de Martín Fierro from

1879, each representing a different stage in the social, cultural and political configuration of the gaucho figure (and Hernández’ life). In the first book, the voice of the gaucho establishes and recognizes a system of values and laws that go beyond the written law to the point of disobedience to the latter and this act of rebellion turns him into a fugitive, a criminal and a deserter. In the second, on the other hand, the same voice is in charge of transmitting and disseminating, through his wise and experienced oral advice to his sons, the written law enacted and promulgated by the state. La vuelta,

Josefina Ludmer asserts, is “el texto estatal (la institución misma del género, su teorema y condición), distribuye voces, palabras y relatos de un modo preciso.

Representa la unificación jurídica y política en la fiesta del encuentro y a la vez un pacto de saberes y decires” (279), yet, symbolically potent as it is, La vuelta cannot completely obliterate the powerful nature of the insubordinate message as well as the social, cultural and political tensions present in the first part of the poem. This situation demonstrates once again that, as both Gramsci and Williams knew well, the

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construction of hegemonic consent is a never-ending process that goes beyond the comparatively straightforward task of imposing (or trying to impose) a given ideology. As a consequence, these two sides of the gaucho (along with many others) will survive and coexist in the context Argentine culture in an uneasy manner throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first century, revealing the futility of trying to manufacture homogeneity and imposing single readings or interpretations of any text or narrative. About the different values attributed to the figure of the gaucho and the various readings of gauchesca literature, Sandra Contreras reflects:

Sintetizar los valores que aún hoy representa la imagen del gaucho no haría más que seguir mostrando las disputas político-ideológicas que la atravesaron desde su génesis y que aún hoy la constituyen: o la nostalgia por una supuesta esencia nacional, arraigada en la naturaleza de la tierra y en los valores de la tradición, apta para los pintoresquismos románticos y para los usos nacionalistas y populistas más retrógrados, o la supervivencia de una imagen de rebelión y resistencia que abreva bien en el mito de la vida errante y libre del gaucho insumiso o que, en sus variaciones moreiristas, reaparece periódicamente para contar una historia literaria de la violencia en Argentina desde fines del siglo XIX hasta hoy. (301)

Nevertheless, the enormous, lasting significance of Hernández’s poem within the context of Argentine culture in general, and Argentine literature in particular, cannot help but emphasize the successful nature of the ideological operation carried away by the

Argentinian intellectual elite at twentieth century’s dawn. No other work in this context has inspired such a diverse range of analyses and interpretations nor enjoys such a cultural relevance more than one hundred years after its first publication or as Jorge

Luis Borges’s caustically expressed “Sospecho que no hay otro libro argentino que haya sabido provocar de la crítica un dispendio igual de inutilidades” (26).

Among the many critical approaches to the poem, there are some, which are already canonical in themselves such as the already mentioned El payador by Leopoldo

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Lugones (Martín Fierro as an epic, “civilizing” poem), ‘Los gauchescos’ by Ricardo

Rojas (Gauchesca literature at the core of the Argentine literary canon and Hernández as the last payador), Miguel de Unamuno’s essay in La revista Española (Martin Fierro as a work “annexed” to the Spanish literary tradition and connected to the Mio Cid),

Jorge Luis Borges’s El Martín Fierro (Martín Fierro as a novel with a highly complex character as a protagonist), Ezequiel Martínez Estrada’s Muerte y transfiguración del

Martin Fierro (Martín Fierro as the reverse of Sarmiento’s Facundo), Angel Rama’s Los gauchipoliticos rioplatenses ( Martín Fierro as both the most artistically developed work of the genre and the clearest expression of the voice of the defeated gaucho), Josefina

Ludmer’s El género gauchesco (La ida as the most representative work of gauchesca literature: where the whole genre can be read; where its emergence and closure are found) and the recent Letras gauchas by Julio Schvartzman ( the whole genre of gauchesca traversed by a tension between the oral and the written). The fact that this long enumeration of varied in depth analytical works dealing with Hernandez’s canonical poem makes only a small fraction of the vast literature written around this work, reveals the perils of trying to travel this more than well-trodden path; one of them clearly being the production of a text worthy of being filed under Borges’s scathing category.

However, the potentiality of establishing valid, “original” connections between

Martín Fierro in particular—and gauchesca literature in general—and a new group of texts within the context of Argentine literature—those that fall into the area/ subgenre we insist in calling football literature—, in addition to the undeniable cultural and political weight and significance Hernández’s text still possesses make this a desirable and promising, yet risky, intellectual enterprise. As Ricardo Piglia affirms, despite all the

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(partially successful) canonizing, “musefying” efforts of state intellectuals at the beginning of the twentieth century, gauchesca tradition can be defined as “Una tradición re actualizada, reformulada, para nada muerta” (145).

Not only writers like Jorge Luis Borges, Leonidas Lamborghini, Antonio Di

Benedetto, Ricardo Zelarrayán, Cesar Aira or even Ricardo Piglia himself (to name just a few of the most notable) have re-appropriated and re-written gauchesca literature in the twentieth century but also a similar practice can be found in some of the works of rock/pop musicians like Andrés Ciro Martinez or Andrés Calamaro and cartoonist and central football literature figure Roberto Fontanarrosa. Looking at contemporary twenty first century Argentine literature, some works that are chiefly based on El gaucho Martín

Fierro, to the point of re-writing it, are El Martín Fierro ordenado alfabeticamente (2007) by Pablo Katchadjian and El guacho Martín Fierro (2011) by Oscar Fariña.

In the first case, Katchadjian does exactly what the title says, that is, (in a ready- made type of exercise) he reorganizes Hernández’s poem in alphabetical order, re- opening the text to new interpretations, while in the second work, Fariña re-writes the story of Martín Fierro (in this case “Tincho Fierro”) as a marginal citizen of today’s

Argentina (a “villero” or city slums’ dweller) leading a life of crime and illegality. The political implications of these re-writings (re-readings) of the main work of gauchesca literature are as evident as the current potentiality and relevance of the original text. As

Sabine Schlickers affirms: “… el género [gauchesco] se nutre constantemente de sí mismo, introduciendo con cada texto una variación que provoca a su vez una nueva reescritura o parodia” (230).

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Another prominent example of this re-visiting of gauchesca by contemporary writers is Pedro Mairal’s novel El gran surubí (2013). Entirely written in sonnets, and illustrated by Jorge González, it tells the story of Ramón Paz, a writer that, in the context of an apocalyptic Argentina—marked as in El matadero, by an always alarming scarcity of meat—is taken by the army (while playing a pick-up football game with his friends) and forced to embark in a patriotic search for food: in this case fish or the mythical surubí (barred surubim). Mairal cleverly juggles with and intertwines a disparate set of texts (José Hernández’s Martín Fierro, Tim Burton’s The big fish,

Esteban Echeverría’s El matadero, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, etc.) which, combined with his own overflowing originality and talent, makes this work one of the most powerfully lyrical (or viceversa) reincarnation/re-appropriation of the gauchesca in the twenty first century.

What is more, the relatively high frequency with which a good number of so- called “young” or “new” Argentine writers are revisiting this genre, has served as central motivation and inspiration for Chilean writer Gonzalo Leon to edit La última gauchada

(2014), a compilation of texts by eight of these writers (among them the already mentioned Katchadjian) that, according to the anthologist, have been summoned “to exorcize gauchesca’s demons/phantasms”. Literary critic Daniel Link believes the latter may not be a simple task, as the exercise of returning to gauchesca has become a tradition in itself in the context of Argentine literature,

Ya sabemos cómo ha funcionado nuestra historia literaria. Por un lado, la canonización del género gauchesco: Martín Fierro como poema de la patria, como poema estatal. Por el otro, la folclorización de sus versos en el refranero (“Hacéte amigo del juez...”). En el contexto de la literatura argentina, cada movimiento estético supone necesariamente dos pasos: ignorar el escritor canónico y volver a la gauchesca.10 (n.pag)

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Contradictory as it may seems, Link statement refers to two crucial elements within the cultural history of Argentina: on the one hand, the need to establish concomitant and dissimilar looks of a given cultural stage, moment or artifact; on the other and in close relation to the previous, a distinctive fascination with the creation and instauration of dichotomies, binarities and alternative codes that make possible a simultaneous breaking and honoring of law (s) and traditions. This partly explains the fertile ambiguity surrounding the mythical figure of the gaucho Martín Fierro, both a symbol of the margins and the marginalized—as in Fariña’s text—and of everything that is central, orthodox and traditional in Argentine culture (after the political and intellectual operation of canonization/sacralization of the text).11

This concurrent adherence and belonging to, in principle, mutually excluding spheres (the aristocratic and the popular, the central and the marginal, the established and traditional and the disruptive and unorthodox, legality and illegality, the civilized and the barbaric, etc.) that gauchesca literature in general and Martin Fierro in particular— as the highest exponent and most representative work of the genre—present, is a good starting point to begin tracing the connections between this central part of Argentine culture and literary history and another one of the country’s most potent, distinctive and equally ambivalent cultural manifestations; that of football.

Football and imperialism in the nineteenth century

As explained in the first chapter of this study, the modern version of this sport was conceived as an essential part of elite male education in British public schools of the Victorian age. Educators such as Mathew Arnold (schoolmaster of Rugby from 1828 to 1842) were firm adherents to the idea of public schools as central instruments in the formation of civilized Christian gentlemen that would serve and help expand Britain’s

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empire.12 To this end, the imposition of discipline among pupils was a vital step, especially in contexts were violence and fighting were endemic.13 Here is when team sports make their key contribution to this goal by allowing the teaching staff “ to insert themselves into the pre-existing hierarchy of power with themselves at the top, senior boys below and new arrivals at the bottom and then to delegate some of their power down to the seniors” (43, Goldblatt). At the same time, team sports were thought to contribute to the burning of excess hormonal energy, which in turn would lead to the decrease of “immoral practices” such as homosexuality and masturbation. Following J.

A. Mangan seminal work on game ethics and masculinity, Rawny Sibaja provides more details about the strong link between sports and civilization, “With a missionary zeal, instructors preached bourgeois values of sportsmanship, athleticism, and “fair play” as a way of contrasting civilized Britons to German “automatons” and uncivilized colonial peoples” (46).

What is more, according to Victorian thinking, the practice of sports led was directly connected to physical health, which in turn was tied and contributed to moral and mental health. This trilogy would be at the core of the formation of a new kind of elite imperial masculinity known as muscular Christianity. As Goldblatt states:

Sport physically hardened up the Victorian ruling class for the task of imperial conquest and global hegemony in an era when office work would otherwise enfeeble them. Sport simultaneously taught the essential lessons of cooperation and competition that such an elite would require. (44)

It would be public schools alumni’s “burden” and responsibility to transmit and disseminate these ideals (among them the practice of football) to the rest of the imperial spaces. However, while football, as synonym of colonization, faced a stern opposition in

Britain’s former and (then) current colonies or dominions (which either played their own

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version of this game or simply favored another sport) it was rapidly embraced by

European and Latin American nations and societies.

In the case of Argentina, the large British community present in Buenos Aires and the local elite’s marked preference for European fashions and imports paved the way for the successful introduction of this sport. Along with the imposing figure of

Scottish schoolteacher Alexander Watson Hutton as chief football evangelizer within the highly exclusive domain of Buenos Aires’ elite schools, it is also necessary to highlight the key role of British railway managers and workers.14 They were responsible for taking the game off the schools and the capital’s limits (initially to the city of Rosario) and starting a process of growth and popularization that would never stop. The restricted role of Latin American countries as exporters of natural resources within the world economy provided the ideal setting for a strong British economic presence in the region, which in turn would help facilitate the reproduction of this process of cultural influence along most of the (sub) continent. David Goldblatt provides a clear description of late nineteenth century- early twentieth century British economic preponderance in Latin

America:

By the late nineteenth century, the British were making money out of copper in Chile, guano in Peru and government debt everywhere. They ran the banks in Argentina, the meat, hide and wool export industries across the Río de la Plata and took a big chunk of the Brazilian and Colombian coffee markets. From 1863, when the Argentine central railway was first started, the British designed, funded, built and ran the many railway networks that were snaking out from the ports to tap the wealth of the continent’s hinterlands. (159)

The tumultuous first decades of the twentieth century witnessed the gradual dissolution of British monopoly over football—historically marked by the disappearance of the successful Alumni in 1912 and the emergence of Racing club as the first criollo

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champion in 1913—, which slowly but surely became fútbol. The number of clubs and players grew exponentially all over the country but the center of this movement was, undoubtedly, the city of Buenos Aires, which by 1910 had over three hundred amateur teams, reaching the astonishing number of four hundred and eighty teams the following year. This growth and popularity can be explained by resorting to two factors: the first being (chronologically speaking) the “traditional” thirst of Argentine elites for European

(that is, civilizing, or in this context, modernizing) influences and novelties (Western

Europe as a barometer of progress), the second, the game’s distinct appeal, mainly based on its simplicity (just a few rules and one ball as the solely indispensable equipment) and flexibility (it could be played, at least informally, in a variety of settings by a variable number of players).

“La nuestra”: a tradition from the margins

However, what makes football popularization’s process in Argentina worth looking at is the creation of an “alternative” narrative of nationality and tradition around this game. Alternative especially considering its place of inception: the growing

Argentine sports media or as Alabarces (following Archetti and Bourdieu) puts it, the peripheral of the peripheral of intellectual circles,

Como señala Archetti (especialmente 1995), en la discusión sobre la identidad nacional los periodistas deportivos, intelectuales doblemente periféricos—en el sentido de Bourdieu: periféricos en el campo periodístico, que es periférico en el campo intelectual—intervinieron con una construcción identitaria no legítima (porque el lugar legítimo es la literatura o el ensayo), pero pregnante en el universo de sus públicos. Así el fútbol se transformó en la revista deportiva El Gráfico, soporte fundamental de esta práctica desde los años 20, en “un texto cultural, en una narrativa que sirve para reflexionar sobre lo nacional y lo masculino” (Archetti, 1995:440). (40)

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As shown in the previous chapter, this discursive operation lead to the creation of la nuestra, a powerful, contradictory and hybrid narrative used to describe a prototypical and unique way of playing football in Argentina or, in other words, of being Argentine within a football field thus in-corporating a national football identity. Powerful because it appealed to the popular masses including the large number of newly arrived immigrants and their (future) Argentinian offspring as integral part of football’s creolization; contradictory, because its apparent inclusiveness was refuted by the strong exclusion of the British community and a stern opposition to its contributions and stylistic influences within this area (chiefly its perceived “mechanical” type of football); hybrid because it took some elements from the elitist discourse of gauchismo (such as the cult of courage and inventiveness) and combined them with features representative of an eminently urban and popular phenomenon like that of football in Argentina, such as the already mentioned inclusion of immigrants and popular classes and the creation of a football style that privileged players’ dexterity in confined spaces. Eminent Brazilian anthropologist, Simoni Lahud Guedes comments on the birth and configuration of football national styles in emerging footballing nations such as Argentina and Brazil and draws the attention to the central value attributed to footballers’ distinct bodily practices within this context:

Los “estilos nacionales” se gestan, justamente, dentro de ese espacio simbólico en el cual los incipientes sentimientos nacionalistas encuentran posibilidad de expresión en una práctica que comienza a ser comprendida y valorizada por todos los segmentos de la población y, además de ello, tiene ecos más allá de las fronteras de la nación. El “producto” de ese proceso, tanto en Brasil como en Argentina, resultará en la valorización de una corporalidad específica, en un determinado uso social del cuerpo (Mauss, 1968) que explora sus potencialidades estéticas y su capacidad de vencer al opositor a través de la habilidad. (175)

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Continuing with this idea, one of the central tenets where the original discourse of

Argentine football is grounded is the one that points to the crucial importance of spatial, geographical and socio-cultural contexts in the creation and development of unique bodily performances or styles of play. Following Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas, we can speak of a discursive creation of an original (and later traditional) habitus of Argentine football players. The concept of habitus, first used by French anthropologist Marcel Mauss in

1935,15 is re-elaborated by Bourdieu who defines it as:

…systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. (53; emphasis added)

By using the term habitus to explain and analyze human practices and representations, Bourdieu is able to overcome a number of dichotomies such as individual vs. social, objective vs. the subjective or nature vs. nurture. As Webb,

Schirato and Danaher explain, for Bourdieu “practice is always informed by a sense of agency (the ability to understand and control our own actions) but that the possibilities of agency must be understood and contextualized in terms of its relation to the objective structures of a culture—what he refers to, generally, as cultural fields” (36). Thus even though people’s practices are not completely determined by their habitus (or the relationship between fields and habitus) they cannot be explained without reference to them. 16

This is why Bourdieu relates the concept of habitus to that of a "second nature" or "the transformation of history into nature", i.e., that which helps explain seemingly

"unconscious", “pre-reflexive” or automatic individual actions through the body’s social

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and historical roots.17 In his concept of "body", central for his theory of habitus, Bourdieu takes into account its biological and physiological aspects though it gives special relevance to its social and cultural construction and its function as "an articulator of social mythologies". The body is, for Bourdieu, a "reservoir of meaning" full of "numb imperatives", where the social conditions of existence are inscribed, as well as a potential reservoir of symbolic capital: “…this body which indisputably functions as the principle of individuation… [is] open to the world, and therefore exposed to the world, and so capable of being conditioned by the world, shaped by the material and cultural conditions of existence in which it is placed from the beginning…” (133-4 Bourdieu).

In the context of Argentine football literature, there is probably no clearer example of the process of in-corporation of football’s traditional narrative constructions than Alejandro Parisi’s story “Hinchada hay una sola”. In it, a middle aged Argentinian man living in Spain tries to fill his existential void and battle nostalgia by playing football every Saturday with a group of émigrés like himself (all coming from, either, South

America or Africa). Despite being almost completely assimilated to his new country’s culture and way of life (by the end of the story we learn that he is in the process of becoming a Spanish citizen), he feels the need to stop playing football with Europeans simply because he could not stand their strict adherence to fair play: “… no soportaba jugar con gente que paraba un contraataque porque alguien se había caído al suelo (el fair play europeo no tenía limites)…” (154). It is as if his foreign status forces him to become a near perfect representative and a guardian of Argentine football’s fabricated tradition of rebelliousness and ingenuity; his body awakening to the call of culture’s numb imperatives:

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… ese era el único momento de la semana en que uno podía vivir el fútbol, su mismo fútbol, ese que se jugaba en el lugar en que habíamos nacido. (…)Salvo el marroquí, los demás nos habíamos criado en las ciudades, estudiando inglés, computación y un montón de cosas que nos habían mantenido ocupados y fuera de la calle. Sin embargo todos sentíamos nostalgia de ese potrero que nunca habíamos pisado pero que simbolizaba eso que supuestamente nos definía. (157; emphasis added)

The influence of the official football narrative is evident in the words of the narrator. He feels the need to incarnate the “original and pure” football from the potreros as a way to resist his assimilation to European culture (the culture of the metropolis).

Even though he knows very well this is all a fabrication (as he had never even been in a potrero), he finds in the narrative construction around this sport, an element that could function as an accepted symbol of Argentineness and provide him with the cultural capital he is looking for in order to deny his much more factual assimilation.Therefore, football becomes a “natural” space for happiness, instictiveness and the recovery of what he feels as a more “authentic” identity, one that distances him from the European, adult, alienated version of himself: “Poco a poco, mi cuerpo fue recordando antiguos reflejos, saltos, giros y movimientos mucho más arriesgados que llevar una bandeja o agacharme para encender la computadora. Cubierto de sudor, festejaba los goles como un desquiciado, feliz” (157; emphasis added). It is crucial to notice in this fragment the existence of a common element/pattern that connects this subgenre with the first journalistic football chronicles and at the same time serves to identify the central relevance of understanding the continuous operation of the residual in these narratives.

The same as in De Soiza Reilly’s text (analized in the previous chapter), football acts as a trigger that makes possible the reemergence of old instincs and bodily performative configurations: in the former it was that of the gauchos while in the latter is that of pibes, in both cases reconnecting those who take part in it with a perceived more natural, less

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mediated version of themselves, which function in the present of the narration as unpararelled reservoirs/sources of agency, identity and inspiration. What is more, the protagonist of “Hinchada hay una sola” can be said to be simultaneously responding to two (interconnected) national traditions, both deeply seated in the Argentine (masculine) idiosyncratic imaginary: on the one hand, to that of football as a privileged territory for the expression of passion and creativity and on the other, to the one that sees rebelliousness and indomitability as a form of cultural capital, sanctioned by canonical gauchesca. 18

The potency of liminality: the case of gauchos and pibes

In the narrative construction of an Argentine football tradition/ethos, the correlation between material, cultural and social conditions and the configuration of distinct bodily performances is clearly marked. Accordingly, the archetypical Argentine player is a product of society’s margins, leading a dangerous and precarious life that turns him (and, sadly, never “her”) into an artist of guile and deception, central features of this unique style:

… es un hecho cierto que el futbol más ingenioso que se haya jugado fue en gran medida la extracción impensada de condiciones sociales y económicas, también educacionales y espirituales, muy propias de la miseria, el precario confort de la vida y la más obligada inclinación de los jóvenes a recrearse en el deporte que improvisaba su propio ingenio (…)Tengo para mí, muy fuertemente afirmada como convicción, que en gran medida el buen jugador de futbol es fruto de la miseria y el bandidaje juvenil. (47 Panzeri).

For sport journalists such as the influential Dante Panzeri, football’s evolution owes greatly to the instinctiveness and audacity of street kids, who infused this sport with their picaresque spontaneity, thus making possible its transformation and

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nationalistic re-appropriation.19 In relation to this, Juan Sasturain condenses some of the main characteristics of “la nuestra” in the following definition:

El fútbol argentino tiene potrero en la extracción social de los mejores, tiene zaguán y pasillo en el virtuosismo excesivo e improductivo del pisador que puede encontrar el arco como un lebrel, sin levantar la cabeza, pero tiene vereda y calle en lo que es definitivamente nuestro: la improvisación. (50)

Improvisation, in the context of Argentine football, is born out of scarcity or a lack, in this case, the lack of space characteristic of urban informal settings not particularly apt for the practice of sports. This geographical configuration leads players to adopt and present distinct bodily performances that in time become central, mythical elements in the creation of a narrative of national football identity. Sasturain continues:

…si esto estuviera infestado de espacios verdes amplios, con arcos con red y todo nuestros argentinitos le darían fuerte y largo, cabecearían como morteros pero necesitarían veinte metros cuadrados para sacarse un marcador de encima, lo que un habilidoso criollo baquiano en estrecheces hace en una baldosa… ¿Y dónde hay baldosas sino en la vereda y el pasillo, eh? (50-51)

In this passage, the author uses the expression “en una baldosa” (literally “on a floor tile”) to trace and confirm the urban origins of Argentine football. This expression, employed by sport journalists and football fans alike, forms part of the football jargon in

Argentina and is typically used to describe a visually ornate action through which a player fools his markers and exhibits his dexterity with the ball in a very small, tight area. However, Sasturain also includes the word “baquiano” (“baquiano en estrecheces”) which refers both to a type of gaucho (Sarmiento’s gaucho baqueano) and to an expert who has developed as such without the need of an institutional instruction. Therefore, the formation of "la nuestra" deviates almost completely from the schooled football proposed by the British and despite being a characteristically urban

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phenomenon will retain a distinctive aura that will also link it to a national rural mythology.

Additionally, according to this narrative construction, Argentine potreros will not only determine a series of characteristic bodily performances but also of very specific body types. In this respect, the typical products of potreros, will not be physically gifted individuals, typically short and either frail or stocky (similar to chidren or, in the

Argentine context, pibes), who will have to compensate this lack with their intelligence, swiftness and above all their deceitful craftiness. The validity and force of this construction can be found as early as 1931 in the pages of El Gráfico. For instance when describing the style and football qualities of Fernando Paternoster (a central defender who was a starter in the Argentine team that lost 1930’s first World Cup final versus Uruguay) they state:

Hay algo de inglés en su colocación impecable pero se sudamericaniza en la elasticidad de sus quites, en la falta de premura por rechazar y, sobre todo, en su apostura indolente.... Basta decir que es argentino para comprobar que no ha estudiado teoría, aprendiendo por pizarrón.... Fue de los del potrero; su falta de corpulencia le indicó la necesidad de arreglárselas con maña; y una maña eficaz no es otra cosa que muestra de inteligencia.... Tiene limpieza de prestidigitador, rapidez hecha de agilidad y concepción instantánea (El Gráfico, n. 619, 1931, p. 5 qtd. in Archetti 270; emphasis added).

Some interesting elements to notice in this quotation: first, it seems too soon to discard all British influence in this sport; however, Paternoster only retains just “a little something” from the masters, something that has to do more with the tactical aspect of this sport in contrast with the purely performative ones which, as we see, are explicitly non-British. Second, it is possible to observe a distinction and also a point of contact between South American and Argentine football identities: in the first case South

American football shares a preoccupation for the aesthetic side of this sport that is not

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such in the British. Additionally, there is no urgency in their style of play as the possession of the ball is not only a common characteristic but also a source of enjoyment. However, Paternoster is not simply a South American product but one that is characteristically derived from Argentine potreros; evidences of this are his bodily composition (“su falta de corpulencia”), his untheoretical approach to the sport and specially his cunning trickery.20 This, many times concurrent, movement in and out of a continental football identity will be a constant of Argentine football narratives (and it is also reflected in some works of football literature such as the already quoted “Hinchada hay una sola”) depending on the context and the circumstances: for instance, in Parisi’s short story the protagonist pledges a symbolic allegiance to his Argentine football identity as part of a bigger and marginal stylistic tradition (which includes other marginal narratives such as the African ones) in contrast to a European/metropolitan/central one, while Omar Hefling’s “Pepeu” presents the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the same Argentine footballing conception and the Brazilian one in the local South

American context. In all of these cases it is possible to see the pibe myth functioning as privileged reference that supports and transverses the narrative that explains and justifies Argentine players’ perceived uniqueness on a football field. A uniqueness that, for obvious reasons, is not easily demonstrable if we abandon this heavily conditioned approach to the world of football.

Needless to say, when we refer to pibes as “short and frail” we are adjusting to its stereotypical (mythical) narrative construction and not to football’s verifiable reality and it is only fair to recognize that they (Argentine football players and pibes) do come in all shapes and sizes and this does not automatically negates their incorporation into

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what Archetti describes as a plural and ambiguous imaginary. However, following

Archetti, it is also important to understand that a perfect, athletic, strong and disciplined body cannot be a dominant figure in this narrative, first, because it resembles too much the idea of a machine (which as we already know it is closely associated with the British style) and second, because as we explained earlier, the presence of a lack (an absence of sorts), of a series of imperfections, is central in the construction of pibes as vulnerable figures who have to resort to individual creativity, dexterity and slyness to compensate for their lack of power and strength. Some final defining features of a typical pibe will be their irresponsible behavior, an element of chaos and disorder not only present on the field but also off of it, and the tendency towards the permanent enjoyment of play which at the same time leads them to arbitrary and very disputable choices and judgements and the propensity to some sort of irrational heroism. As

Archetti summarizes: “un pibe es creativo, libre de agudos sentimientos de culpa, autodestructivo y, eventualmente, un mal ejemplo para otros jugadores.En la evaluación moral de este tipo de jugadores el último criterio, sin embargo, es la creatividad corporal” (274). This in part explains why Diego Maradona is the archetypal

Argentine pibe (and why Lionel Messi will never entirely fit this description) and will also help to better contextualize and elucidate the logic behind the actions of football literature’s various pibe-like characters.

In regards to the idea of pibes as natural products of the Argentine soil, in his brilliant short story “Campitos”, Juan Sasturain translates the idea of Argentina as “the granary of the world” to the realm of football by tracing a connection between this sport and agriculture in the Argentine context. José Campodónico, an agricultural engineer

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and the story’s protagonist, discovers (after long years of meticulous data collection) that certain areas of the country (in certain periods of time) produce/yield very specific types of players. That is, players are not made, they simply grow in Argentina’s fertile soil: “Los jugadores nacen, y no en cualquier lado: parece que tiene que ver con la producción de cada lugar” (222). Argentina’s extension—the disease this country suffers, according to Sarmiento immortal words— is both a gift and a curse for

Campitos (short for Campodónico and another one of potrero’s synonyms): “Este es un país muy grande, Bermudez. Hay producción natural de jugadores pero mucho desperdicio; en Uruguay, en cambio…” (214). However, all of Campodónico’s data cannot explain the “growth” of the most talented players as these are “excepciones”, and a football without exceptions is a dead football: “Con estos datos, no solamente van a querer cosechar sino fabricarlos a medida.21 Con años y años de anticipación.

Imagináte, un asco. Y después no van a aceptar, no van a reconocer, no van a poder soportar las excepciones. Y ahí se acabó todo: se acabó el fóbal” (225).

Accordingly, Argentine (or creole) football and its greatest exponents will necessarily arise or—following Sasturain’s metaphor—grow from informal settings

(potreros, baldíos, pasillos, veredas) where the written laws of this sport reach their highest point of flexibility. Reproducing the discourse of the sport’s magazine El Gráfico,

Eduardo Archetti states that:

…del baldío y del potrero saldrán los jugadores de fútbol argentinos. No salen ni de los patios de los colegios primarios o secundarios, ni de los clubes, es decir de espacios controlados por maestros y directores técnicos. El baldío, es como la pampa y el arrabal, un espacio de libertad. Los grandes jugadores serán, en consecuencia, productos puros de esa libertad que les permite improvisar y crear sin las normas o reglas impuestas por los expertos o pedagogos.22 (436; emphasis added)

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The transfiguration of the pampas in potreros and vacant lots in the city suburbs accounts for the growth of the city and of football as integral part of it. At the same time, it is key to notice the survival of some of gauchesca’s main themes—as they appear in

Martin Fierro, its most important and representative work—such as the definition of the pampas as a space of freedom and producer of what is “typically” Argentine and, linked to this, the preponderance of improvisation (a central aspect of payadas) as a marker of distinction vis-a-vis the rehearsed, normative and constrained practices produced by institutional spaces such as schools or sport clubs.

From a contextualized historical perspective, the construction of this gaucho- footballer type of hybrid can be explained as a product of the extensive cultural influence of the discourse of gauchismo in the first two decades of the last century.

What is more, one could even go as far as to propose the year of 1913 as the initial point of connection between these narratives as it coincides with Lepoldo Lugones’ conferences on Martín Fierro in the Odeon Theater (collected and published three years later in Lugones’ El Payador), the emergence of the Racing Club football team as the first creole (non-British) champion and the first edition of Natalio Botana’s Crítica

(September 15th, 1913), the first Argentine newspaper to include an entire section devoted to sports.

Sports journalists, as marginal figures in the intellectual circles, will create a national football tradition that feeds on those same territorial and societal margins.

Central to this narrative construction is the role of potreros that, the same as pampas and arrabales, are considered liminal spaces (liminality from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold”), which, due to its ambiguous nature, present

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characteristics of more than one geographical and cultural area or zone (e.g. in- between the city and the countryside) and therefore produce liminal subjects. Liminality is a concept first developed by anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep (1909) and later taken up by Victor Turner (1967) among other authors. Though originally used to describe transitional stages within rites of passage in small scale tribal societies, this concept is now applied to study and characterize temporal and spatial interstices defined by their ambiguity, potentiality and indeterminacy (typically brought about by social changes and crises) and observe the effects these have on individuals, groups, social classes, whole societies and even entire civilizations. Anne Norton elaborates:

Liminality is a threshold state “betwixt and between” existing orders. Liminars, whether their rites of passage are ritual or revolutionary, are between identities. In politics, they are between allegiances. This state is marked by ambiguity, ambivalence, and contradictions, yet it is from this order that new orders arise.23 (53)

As Archetti points out, in the first part of the nineteenth century, the pampas were literally the frontier between different and oppositional territorial settlements (indigenous vs. criollos) and the gaucho as main inhabitant of these large expanses was a typical liminal subject, roaming freely between both areas, not subjecting himself to one logic or law in particular.24 Kathryn Lehman links the liminal position of the gaucho to the conflicting views his figure inspired:

His proximity to indigenous people… places the gaucho in an ambiguous or liminal position with respect to the settler population. (…) This ambiguous set of relations accounts for the disparagement of their culture by urban writers and also provides explanation for the popularity of the gaucho figure among rural communities who realized that the urban population depended for their survival on the gaucho soldiers conscripted to defend them against neighboring states and indigenous warriors…(152- 153)

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Similarly, the literary representation of the gaucho (especially after the process of canonization of Martín Fierro) becomes an intensively and immensely fecund symbol, ambiguous and complex enough to be adopted by dominant and subaltern groups alike, the elites and the popular classes, the defenders of the status-quo and the anarchists.

Sociologist Pablo Alabarces provides an illustrative snapshot of this phenomenon in early twentieth century’s Argentina:

Su productividad simbólica [Martin Fierro’s] fue enorme: hacia 1905, puede titular el suplemento cultural de un diario anarquista, La Protesta, como símbolo de las clases populares perseguidas; hacia 1912, se entroniza como símbolo épico de un nacionalismo construido desde las clases dominantes. (38)

This author characterizes the symbolic figure of Martín Fierro as an empty signifier, which condenses the gaucho character and allows for diverse and contrasting re-appropriations.25 Later in the century, a sport like football become a new “empty signifier” in the context of Argentine society and culture and as such, it will be, repeatedly, diversely, and many times, unscrupulously utilized as a potent ideological instrument. However, the potentiality of football as a free zone 26 of Argentine society— a concept introduced by Archetti to designate cultural arenas that “permit the articulation of languages and practices that can challenge an official and puritanical public domain”

(18)—will allow the incorporation of some of the anti-structural features of liminal zones while escaping from classic Marxist interpretations that can only understand it as an alienating instrument.

Another example of liminality within the territory of Argentina can be observed in the case of arrabales; typically located on the external border of the cities (the edge or las orillas) and configured as a transitional space between the urban and the rural, it was occupied by a marginal population: among them orilleros, guapos, malevos and

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compadritos, violent individuals considered to be gauchos’ descendants.27 In the context of Argentine literature, Jorge Luis Borges will take these arrabales or orillas to the mythical status of the pampas and from its cardinal point (The South, “El Sur”) will

(re) read (and write) a national tradition. As Beatriz Sarlo says, “Borges inscribe una literatura en el límite, reconociendo allí una forma cifrada de la Argentina” (50). In his essay “La pampa y el suburbio son dioses”, Borges refers to the mythical character of these places when he says:

Ambos [la pampa y el arrabal] ya tienen su leyenda y quisiera escribirlos con dos mayúsculas para señalar mejor su carácter de cosas arquetípicas, de cosas no sujetas a las contingencias del tiempo. Sin embargo, acaso les quede grande aquello de Dios y me convenga más definirlas con la palabra tótem, en su acepción generalizada de cosas que son consustanciales de una raza o de un individuo. (21)

Finally, potreros can be said to be liminal in two senses: first, in the original meaning of the word, as the last space not completely altered by modern agriculture

(thus liminal in relation to the cultivated lands), left for cattle and horses to roam under the supervision of gauchos by then turned into rural workers. As Archetti affirms: “En el imaginario de la civilización y domesticación de las pampas, los potreros quedaron como territorio libre, no totalmente salvaje como en los tiempos coloniales pero no ocupados permanentemente por la agricultura” (3). Secondly, when transferred to the cities as part of the national football imaginary, the word potreros would serve to designate vacant lots or baldíos that people (especially kids or pibes) would reclaim and transform into informal football fields. These typically untended vacant lots are surrounded by buildings and fenced, private-owned lots where trespassing is a felony and playing football obviously not an option (not a legal one at least).28 These urban potreros—also known as campitos a diminutive of the word campos, a Spanish word for

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countryside—retain part of their rural aura and its association with freedom, or at the very least, in-betweeness, and as such, can also be understood as liminal spaces between society’s capital and pre-capital stages. Archetti, who understands territorial liminality as a central element in the construction of the Argentine nation, expands on the metaphorical potency of potreros:

La pampa y el potrero son metáforas poderosas en el proceso de construcción del imaginario de un paisaje que no ha sido transformado del todo. La pampa es originalmente salvaje y poderosamente fértil mientras que el potrero es una suerte de rémora de lo que fue. La pampa salvaje vive metafóricamente en los potreros, el dominio exclusivo de los gauchos que no pueden cabalgar con libertad en campos sembrados o cercados. La identidad nacional perdería mucho de su encanto sin la fascinación y la mística de un territorio particular. (261)

Conversely, when the young Argentine nation starts embracing football as part of their cultural production (especially after being recognized by the European other who in the 1920s starts importing these footballing able-bodies), it will need to create a territorial imaginary where to establish its own football tradition and this is when “La memoria del fútbol, su fundación mítica, aparecerá, entonces, influenciada por el imaginario de la pampa y el potrero” (262).

What is more, the relationship between football and territorial liminality can be traced back to the primeval times of this sport in Argentina. A stage when football was not yet defined as an urban phenomenon and its practice was confined to the city limits or orillas. Sociologist Juan José Sebreli characterizes this first group of players:

El jugador de fútbol de los primeros tiempos era el habitante de zonas ambiguas donde la ciudad se mezclaba con el campo, donde había extensas zonas de pastizales que permitían la improvisación de canchas. El jugador era un campesino trasplantado a la ciudad. (22; emphasis added)

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Once again, it is interesting to see how the notions of ambiguity and in- betweeness that define these territories are symbolically inherited by those who occupy them, in other words, how the subjects engendered by these liminal spaces cannot help but share their features. In this regard, following the study of lanscape by anthropologists such as Morphy and Toren, Archetti asserts “…prácticas sociales y culturales importantes se vinculan a la idea de que territorios determinados no solo encapsulan sino que generan y transforman a los individuos que lo habitan” (3). One of these privileged liminal spaces as reflected in one of the foundational works of

Argentine literature, tango lyrics and football narratives is that of Buenos Aires’s suburban southern neighborhood of Barracas.29 At one point inhabited by the Argentine capital’s aristocratic families, the yellow fever epidemy at the end of the nineteenth century radically transformed the class identity of this barrio as rich families moved to the northern parts of the city and were replaced by newly arrived working class

Southern European immigrants. This created the perfect pot were the essences contained in El Gráfico’s (specifically, Chantecler’s) authoritative narrative of Argentine football would melt and flourish.30 What is more, these liminal spaces continue to define and influence a very particular way (argentinecentric?) of interpreting football reality, that is, a way of solving (or trying to) the frequent conflicting disparities between this mythical narrative and the (often times cruel) reality of everyday fooball. In this respect, it is from Barracas that originates one othe most telling an annoying clichés of Argentine sport journalism: that of wondering (half-jockingly but dead serious)—every time they see what they considered a football anomaly (in this case, typically a European player who could play like “one of ours”)—if this person (Zidane, Stoichkov, Butragueño, Ozil,

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Cantoná, etc.) was not really born in the said neighborhood of Barracas instead of in

Munich, Madrid or Paris.31 Accordingly, players formed (or thought to have formed) out of the primeval mud of Barraca’s potreros will posess not only the inventiveness, creativity and improvisational capacity of the inhabitants of these liminal zones but will also receive their braveness and resiliency which will centrally contribute to differentiate them from the South American “other” par excellence (Brazil) whose football style, being equally or more ornate than that of the Argentines, will be customarily associated with the joy and cheerfulness of samba and carnival.32

The ambiguity and elasticity of the concept of Argentine football’s pibes—typical of liminar subjects—is precisely what makes possible and explains the multiplicity of sometimes contrasting characteristics attributed to them as well as the variety of types of pibes that can be identified. For instance, pibes can be factually foreign (although never Brazilian) and this ‘detail’ will be obliterated by the feeling of Argentineness oozing from their bodily performances, as they are embraced and appropriated by this highly-chauvinistic sport narrative (as demonstrated by the “born in Barracas” journalistic construction). The same contradiction can be found in the cases of

Argentine players: naturally, not all of them can be identified as pibes neither by their body tipes nor by their style of play. However, in this case, the place of birth (as a human being but also as a football player in the case of immigrants) leaves an everlasting imprint (following El Gráfico’s theory) that is always ready to manifest itself.

That is why, according to this narrative construction, any Argentine player regardless of their individual characteristics, carries the potentiality of becoming a pibe, of revealing, if only for a fleeting moment, the teachings of the omnipresent potrero, both on and off the

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field. Interestignly, when this takes place on the field their picaresque actions are widely celebrated by the media and its consumers, and are almost instantly incorporated to the long list of traits that define and differentiate Argentines from the rest: for instance in his excellent chronicle El partido, Andrés Burgo refers to Argentina’s now legendary match against England in the World Cup of Mexico 1986 where Maradona scored “el macho alfa de los goles y el más ilegítimo” (18) as both the paradise and the aleph of Argentine football.33 On the other hand, pibes who stubbornly continue to be pibes off the field are customarily rejected and vilified (Maradona as the clearest example once again) their actions and traits thought of as being part of what the Argentine society as a whole has to avoid and/or leave behind in order to become a “serious” and “exemplary” nation.34

To conclude, the same way the extension and features of the pampas contributed to the creation and configuration of gauchos and the arrabales did the same with guapos, malevos and compadritos; potreros—as pampas’ potent (sub) urban metaphors—will be in charge of generating and transforming pibes, Argentine football’s own mythical (and liminal) figures. Borocotó, one of El Gráfico’s most influential journalists and a pivotal figure in the media creation of Argentine football mythical discourse, envisions a future when pibes would be have their own monuments, honoring their essential contribution (the creation of dribbling or gambetas) to the creation of a national football style.35 According to this writer, the monument should present the figure of:

... un pibe de cara sucia, con una cabellera que le protestó al peine el derecho de ser rebelde; con los ojos inteligentes, revoloteadores, engañadores y persuasivos, de miradas chispeantes que suelen dar la sensación de la risa pícara que no consigue expresar esa boca de dientes pequeños, como gastados de morder el pan «de ayer». Unos remiendos unidos con poco arte servirán de pantalón. Una camiseta a rayas

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argentinas, demasiado decotada y con muchos agujeros hechos por los invisibles ratones del uso (...) Las rodillas cubiertas de cascarones de lastimaduras que desinfectó el destino; descalzo, o con alpargatas cuyas roturas sobre los dedos grandes dejan entrever que se han efectuado de tanto shotear. Su actitud debe ser característica, dando la impresión de que está realizando un dribbling con la pelota de trapo. Eso sí: la pelota no puede ser otra. De trapo, y con preferencia forrada con una media vieja. Si algún día llegara a instalarse este monumento seríamos muchos los que ante él nos descubriríamos como ante un altar. (El Gráfico Nº 480, 1928, p. 11)

Borocotó’s ideal pibe appears in this fragment as a picaresque-like figure, a clever and persuasive trickster always on the verge of laughing (or always doing it on the inside).36 Clearly belonging to society’s margins, the condition of his clothes (and his teeth) are a testament to his poverty and his rambunctious nature, forever playing (that is, dribbling) with the “mandatory” rag ball. Presented as the archetypical nature’s son

(naked feet, uncombed hair, dirty face), this seemingly parentless individual (his knees are full of scratches from small wounds that “destiny” itself disinfected and healed) exhibits equal doses of power and powerlessness, of marginality and centrality and as such is firmly established in the same ambiguous, contradictory territory of liminal (and mythical) gauchos:

Liminars, constituted “betwixt and between” existing orders are constituted in contradiction. They brag, they chant, they speak louder and better than other men, and they are silent. They dress, they eat, they live like animals, and they have superhuman powers. They wear uniform clothing, they display their eccentricity in dress. Each contradiction affirms their liminality. They are “not this” and “not that”. They exist in defiance of categories. (67 Norton)

Gauchesca and football literature: tradition, resistance or traditions of resistance?

A voice, a destiny, a weapon

From now on, having established the historical moment of contact between the discourses of the gauchesca and the creation of national (criolla) football narrative and

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have outlined the first topics in common we will work to further analyze the re-visiting of two central aspects of gaucho literature (as displayed in the Martin Fierro) by Argentine football literature. First will discuss the place of improvisation (in payadas as in dribbling)37 as cultural capital in both narratives, while secondly we will approach the importance of the oral law or the double coding of the law in the fields of gauchesca and football literature.

From the first verses of Martin Fierro, it becomes clear that singing and improvisation skills of the gaucho are considered not only an important part of their heritage and reputation but also perhaps the most effective weapon with which to defend himself: “Con la guitarra en la mano / Ni las moscas se me arriman, / Naides me pone el pie encima…” (La Ida Canto I vv. 55-58). His art as a singer provides him with the possibility of expressing himself, allowing his voice to be heard, creating a symbolic force field where he obtains the power, protection and status he does not possess outside this circle. The creation of this ‘magic circle’ where, in this case, gauchos find the freedom to raise their otherwise silenced, ignored or manipulated voices (for instance, the justice of the peace resents Martín Fierro for having abstained to vote for the official candidate in the last elections), is also one of the main attributes of play: a central element in the analysis of both literary genres. John Huizinga elaborates on this definition:

Here, then, we have the first main characteristic of play: that it is free, is in fact freedom. A second characteristic is closely connected with this, namely, that play is not "ordinary" or "real" life. It is rather a stepping out of "real" life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own. (8)

Within the field of football fiction, Roberto Fontanarrosa presents a phenomenon of similar characteristics in the short story "Entre las cañas", where one of the

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characters refers to the football field as another area ( physical and symbolic) in which those who are socially silenced and excluded have an opportunity to express themselves and, for once, impose their own terms :

Es la única revancha que tienen contra nosotros, Talo—siguió Norberto--. El fútbol es la única posibilidad que tienen de superarnos, de ganarnos y de gozarnos. Entendelo. Ahí adentro de la cancha no hay autos, ni champán ni pilcha que valga. Todos en camiseta y pantaloncitos, Talo, y se acabó. La ventaja que no te pueden sacar socialmente, o en el trabajo, por lo desparejo del estrato social, te la sacan en la cancha… (158, emphasis added).

As we can see, in dynamic conditions such as those of play or informal games, those in the subordinate position find a valuable channel to express their aggression towards those who customarily subject them. This type of infrapolitical practice is classically understood as simply a cathartic experience that works in favor of the oppressors as it works as a safe-valve that weakens or takes the place of “real” resistance (precisely the main line of argumentation behind the idea of football as “the opium of the masses”). However, James C. Scott sees this in a completely different light, as he wonders why these instances of offstage resistance cannot be thought of as

“dress rehearsals” of future rebellions and, what is more, minor, lateral, partially hidden but real lived processes of power negotiation: “any argument which assumes that disguised ideological dissent or aggression operates as a safety valve to weaken “real” resistance ignores the paramount fact that such ideological dissent is virtually always expressed in practices that aim at unobtrusive renegotiation of power relations” (190).

On the other hand, the reference to a menacing and imminent verbal jouissance

(“gozarnos”) is very important as it marks the return to the idea of the voice, of language as a weapon, typical of liminal subjects. As Norton indicates, “Oral aggression is characteristic of the territorially liminal, whether manifested in drinking contests, eating

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contests, mythical prodigies of consumption, or poetic duels” (60). In this regard, it is very interesting to notice the establishment of a tradition of oral aggression in the realm of Argentine football, ranging from its most spectacular (singing and chanting duels between opposing team supporters) to the most intimate of manifestations (the teasing, ridicule and scorn among acquaintances, friends and/or family). Moreover, in this setting verbal scorn can even function as a sign of acknowledgment and recognition. For instance in Fontanarrosa’s short story “Jorge, Daniel y el Gato”, three middle-aged friends sit to discuss the incidences of a football game they have just played (and lost), when one of the characters (el Gato) reflects: “ Por eso te digo, Daniel… Alegrate que todavía te putean. Alegrate. Quiere decir que todavía te consideran apto para jugar, para meter goles, para mezclarte con ellos…” (122). Having this in mind, is possible to affirm that in the Argentine context, football is not only listened, watched, imagined, written or played, but also, significantly, spoken (and sung).

In connection to this, Julio Schvartzman finds an interesting point of contact between gauchesca and football literature by comparing the use of ironical greetings in

Bartolomé Hidalgo’s cielito “Un gaucho de la Guardia del Monte, contesta al manifiesto de Fernando VII, y saluda al Conde de Casa-Flores con el siguiente cielito escrito en su idioma” and Argentine football fans’ songs or chants.38 In both cases, the author explains, the greeting masks a direct verbal (or, in this case, written) insult, which masked or not is part of a hidden transcript that can only see the light in the ludic context of play and or literature:

… la puteada de Contreras [the poem’s narrator] colma el sentido irónico del saludo del gaucho anunciado en el título, 39 en una línea asociativa muy duradera en los decires populares; un canto de estadio de fútbol y de concentración política (dos manifestaciones de rítmicas y poéticas afines)

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hace consistir el saludo a la parcialidad contraria o al enemigo político en la puteada misma: se pronuncia tres veces el nombre del otro seguido del engañosamente afectuoso “corazón” (o los más directos “maricón” o “gorilón”), y luego: “la doce te saluda:/ ¡la puta que te pario! (54)

As Schvartzman indicates, there are many football songs/chants that follow the same pattern of ironical greeting + verbal abuse. One of the clearest examples goes as follows: “Hola River, ¿qué tal? ¿cómo te va? (x3)/ ¡gallina hija de puta/ te saluda tu papa!”.40 As we can see, the addressee (River Plate) is characterized as both a “gallina” to refer to their alleged cowardice and a “son” of Boca Juniors (its biggest rival), that is, not an adult or a “complete” male. In 1984’s “Fútbol y ethos” (the work that inaugurated the field of football studies in Argentina), Eduardo Archetti provides more details to help readers understand this central logic in Argentine football: “El mundo másculino se opone no solo al mundo femenino, sino que aparece asociado a la idea de madurez, autonomía, independencia y capacidad de ejercer su voluntad (…) Descalificar al otro es convertirlo en niño, es negarle su adultez y su autonomía” (24).

Relatedly, in Hidalgo’s cielito, Fernando VII, the Spanish King, pretends to maintain his authority over the American colonies claiming similar paternal rights: “Dice en él [in the manifest] que es nuestro padre/ Y que lo reconozcamos” (vv. 25-26). This idea is ridiculed by Contreras who presents the king as useless – “este Rey es medio zonzo”— and a coward – “si fuese algún guapo... ¡vaya! / ¡Pero que nos grite un flojo!”— who has never risked his life in a battle – “Para la guerra es terrible, /balas nunca oyó sonar”. It is clear that “el amigo Rey” (as Contreras addresses him shattering all remnants of formality and royal respect) cannot be a father as he is not regarded as gauchos as a complete man.41

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However, we must make clear—before it is too late—that even under the pretense of utmost authenticity, both the voices of the protagonists of gauchesca and in a lesser degree of those of football literature correspond to (following Ludmer’s interpretation) “un uso letrado de la cultura popular” (13). 42 Later (following Borges) she adds: “Se trata del uso de la voz, de una voz (y con ella de una acumulación de sentidos: un mundo) que no es la del que escribe” (13). According to Jorge Luis Borges:

Las guerras de la Independencia, la guerra del Brasil, las guerras anárquicas, hicieron que hombres de cultura civil se compenetraran con el gauchaje; de la azarosa conjunción de esos dos estilos vitales, del asombro que uno produjo en otro, nació la literatura gauchesca. (6; emphasis added).

Discovering a character’s voice and tone is, for Borges, equal to revealing his world and destiny. Highlighting Bartolomé Hidalgo’s essential contribution to the genre of gauchesca literature, he adds: “En mi corta experiencia de narrador, he comprobado que saber cómo habla un personaje es saber quién es, que descubrir una entonación, una voz, una sintaxis peculiar, es haber descubierto un destino. Bartolomé Hidalgo descubre la entonación del gaucho; eso es mucho” (8). As we indicated in the previous chapter, it was coincidentally another Uruguayan writer (Mario Benedetti) the first to start searching for that voice and intonation (in his short story “Puntero izquierdo”) within the realm of football literature.

The confluence of the oral and written codes and the transgression of the boundaries between both spheres is one of the legacies of gauchesca that football literature inherits. The strong presence of literary orality and the ensuing return to the realm of the oral is a phenomenon found in the history of both genres. In the case of gauchesca, the return to orality occurs through the reading aloud of its works

(Hernández’s Martín Fierro being the best example of this due to its unparalleled

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popularity within the genre) to a predominantly illiterate audience. The form and structure of these works facilitates their oral transmission and makes possible the ensuing incorporation of many of its verses to the "popular lore".

Ángel Rama reflects on this passage between codes and considers it a deliberate and conscientious one: “Aunque la gauchesca transitó, desde sus orígenes por la escritura, la usó como puente para recuperar la oralidad en cuyo cauce se había formado” (200). Similarly, Rodolfo Borello understands gauchesca’s tendency towards orality not just as something intentional but also truly revolutionary:

…la poesía gauchesca intentó, en el siglo del industrialismo y de la gran novela burguesa, algo realmente revolucionario desde el punto de vista de la relación público-obra literaria: volver a instalar las obras en un nivel auditivo anterior a la invención de la imprenta. (55)

Regardless of the impossibility of guessing authors or literary movements’ intentions (unless they are clearly stated in a manifesto, which gauchesca lacks) or denying factual incontestable evidence (according to Argentina’s 1869 census 71% of the population was illiterate), gauchesca revolutionizes the Argentine literary space by opening it to new voices (among them those of the defeated) and audiences, traditionally excluded from it.43 As explained in the previous chapter—though in a lower degree of relevance and popularity—football literature takes a similar route as gauchesca, since their texts—for the most part thanks to the creation of a colloquial effect, reinforced by the habitual presence of a framing narrative voice—have been and continue to be disseminated through radio programs (Alejandro Apo’s Todo con afecto) and theatre performances (La pelota, un cuento y un abrazo and Y el fútbol contó un cuento both also Apo’s initiatives) where stories and music intersect (similarly but not exactly as in payadas), reaching some of their present and future readers in a

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simultaneously traditional and revolutionary way (in the same sense as Borello understands the dissemination of the works of gauchesca as revolutionary).44

Now going back to the idea of the appropriation of a voice in both genres is important to ask ourselves whether this process is identical in both cases. The answer is negative, especially if we take into consideration that the function and preponderance of gaucho orality cannot be compared with that of footballers and also because in the last and most important period of development in football literature it is hard to clearly find this encounter of two separate worlds that Borges refered to. While we can affirm that in some of the works that first explored the football phenomenon from a “lettered” perspective the clash between these two dissimilar worlds can be seen—for instance in

Quiroga’s “Juan Polti-half back” or Arlt’s “Ayer vi ganar a los Argentinos” the tone which the writers employ to describe and make reference to those who are part of this popular universe is predominantly mocking and derisive (similar to what Estanislao del Campo does in Fausto)—there is not a particular interest in discovering or bringing attention to the voices of their subjects (needless to say, considerably less vocal than gauchos as their perfomances relied much more on their bodies). Nonetheless, this changes in

Benedetti’s “Puntero izquierdo” as the story’s narrative voice is that of a player denouncing the already dominant violence and corruption in the arena of amateur football. From this point onwards, football literature continues bringing relevance to the oral universe in and around this sport, as this works as a powerful gravitational center in the daily conversations of many Argentines and as a privileged vehicle for sentimental expression, particularly between males.45

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As previously mentioned, football in Argentina is not only played but primordially and thoroughly spoken and football literature can be said to feed and evolve from this original oral source, finding a bridge that closely connects it to gauchesca. Evidence of this is the conversational tone of the majority of football short-stories, a feature of this subgenre present from the very beginning. For instance, in the inaugural “Puntero izquierdo” the protagonist narrates his story as part of a conversation with an interlocutor that is never revealed but can be assumed to be a friend who is visiting him at the hospital. What is more, there is probably no better example of the important of orality in football literature than the work of Roberto Fontanarrosa (considered by many of his peers to be this subgenre’s most talented writer) as a big part of his football short stories are vignettes that stem from conversations among friends that usually take place at either a social club or a bar: in his case, the bar was “El Cairo”, located in the city of

Rosario where the writer lived his entire life. 46 The successors of gauchos’ pulperías, social clubs and bars (or many times bars within the space of clubs) occupy a very significant symbolic space in the construction of football narratives, escaping media’s control and censorship and allowing for the use of creativity, humor and parody thus contributing to the creation of an urban oral tradition (then, as usual, reflected and reappropriated by the media in TV shows/sketches like “Polémica en el bar” or “El contra” just to name a few of the most representative ones). Moreover, from the very beginnigs of the twentieth century, bars and sport and social clubs become actual nuclei of social life in the Argentine context, free zones outside the immediate scope of State institutions that however many times collaborate with them in the building of community.

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As Julio Frydenberg explains in his article "La crisis de la tradición y el modelo asociacionista en los clubes de fútbol argentinos":

En el caso de Argentina los clubes cumplen un papel abandonado por el Estado, brindan espacio e instalaciones para que alumnos de escuelas públicas practiquen deportes, además suelen otorgar becas a alumnos, tienen colonias para niños, etc. Los clubes han participado activamente en la construcción de la sociedad civil (junto con Iglesia, sindicatos, etc.). Por otro lado, y en un nivel más elemental, los clubes cumplen un papel importante en el proceso de socialización. Desde un espacio territorial y un universo identitario fuerte, construyen vínculos sociales básicos muy conectados con la institución familiar cruzando las estructuras de la vida cotidiana y del sentido común. (…) Las asociaciones (junto a instituciones como la escuela, así como otras más informales como la esquina, el bar, etc.) han construido una red de escenarios de encuentro. Además, le han dado un estilo propio a esa conjunción, a la que han sumado un fuerte lazo identitário (…) son escenarios de construcción de un capital simbólico, que se puede asimilar a los lazos identitarios, hábitos, sentimientos comunes de una comunidad, a espacios de generación o recreación de creencias y valores. (no pag.)

Finally, and to point out another difference between these two literary manifestations, it is possible to affirm that, with the exception of the first anonymous cielitos (in what we could consider pre-gauchesca), gauchos are invariably spoken by lettered writers approaching their world from an outsider’s perspective regardless of the more or less intimate and extensive contact between them and we cannot say the same about football literature since 1) most writers are or have been amateur practicioners of this sport; that is, “legal” inhabitants of this universe and in many cases are still passionate fans and even professional football journalists, 2) without getting into the thorny area of autobiographies where player voices are typically mediated by those of phantom writers, we can currently find actual footballers writing their own stories in the context of this subgenre (2016’s compilation of short stories Pelota de papel as the best example in this respect). Neddless to say, by marking this difference, it is not our intention to affirm that the voices of football literature can be thought to be in any way

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more “genuine” than those of gauchesca, as both are necessarily fictive representations of a specific targeted orality, but instead we want to emphasize a mutual preoccupation with the symbolic return and re-valorization of oral tradition regardless of its rural or urban origin. Once again going back to Fontanarrosa as one of the most representative and most lucid exponents of football literature, the skill or trait of his that was most frequently praised by peers and critics alike was his incredibly acute ear, capable of capturing and recreating (mostly but not only) the local, popular, colloquial speech and thus fabricating the illusion of a voice (or better yet a multitude of voices) telling his audience an enchanting and unmediated tale. As Tamara Strugo comments,

Fontanarrosa wants his readers to feel they are sitting at a café’s table listening to the stories a group of friends are narrating (or even eavesdropping on the conversations), an effect that is achieved in many of his stories thanks to their typical in medias res beginnings. By doing this the writer from Rosario is, acording to Strugo, trying to approach and recapture what he understands as the “fenómeno de encantamiento que, según el, se produce cuando alguien aparece para contarnos una historia” (50) and so his type of “orality” is not simply urban or colloquial but can be aligned to that of traditional oral narratives: “Fontanarrosa escribio cuentos, pero, en realidad, habria querido poder contarlos alrededor de un fogon. La oralidad primaria estaría presente especialmente en un plano que sobrepasa el de los personajes y donde Fontanarrosa recrea la situacion de sentarse a contarnos algo” (50).

Gauchos and footballers as naturals

Continuing with the examples found in the work of Hernández, Fierro asserts his identity and his art through his singing when he intones “Yo no soy cantor letrao, / Mas si me pongo a cantar / No tengo cuando acabar” (Canto I, vv. 49-51). The idea is as

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clear and specific as the positioning of the gaucho. He portrays himself as a product of nature: a “natural”, the exact opposite of “lettered” singers and poets. Consequently, his art is not learned or artificial and his words and inspiration "spring" naturally without any apparent effort: “Las coplas me van brotando / Como agua de manantial” (Canto I vv.

53-54).

In the prologue to La Vuelta de Martín Fierro, Hernández confirms the gaucho’s aesthetic afffiliation: “El gaucho no aprende a cantar. Su único maestro es la espléndida naturaleza que en variados y majestuosos panoramas se extiende delante de sus ojos”

(263; emphasis added) to then add, “No tengo noticia que exista ni que haya existido una raza de hombres aproximados á la naturaleza, cuya sabiduría proverbial llene todas las condiciones rítmicas de nuestros proverbios gauchos” (263). What is more, besides the central influence of nature in his art, Fierro acknowledges life experience as his only othe school. Accordignly, his knowledge will derive exclusively from this source and suffering will primarily be his master:

Junta esperiencia en la vida/

hasta pa dar y prestar/

quien la tiene que pasar/

entre sufrimiento y llanto; /

porque nada enseña tanto/

como el sufrir y el llorar” (Ida, vv. 121-126).

However, in the same section he notes that it is a very difficult task, if not an impossible one, to determine whether gauchos sing using their own original words or if they just pick their verses from popular sources since “… todos sus refranes, sus dichos agudos, sus proverbios comunes son espresados en dos versos octosílabos

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perfectamente medidos, acentuados con inflexible regularidad, llenos de armonía, de sentimiento y de profunda intención” (263).47 Even if the latter option is considered to be true (although what we typically find is a combination of the two), this does not contradicts the notion that sees the archetipical gaucho placing himself exactly on the opposite side of erudite learning, as shown by Fierro when he rejects lettered doctors and ministers as well as their books as symbols of this foreign and destructive culture

(as far as he and his kind are concerned). To their system of knowledge, their science, their world-view, Fierro opposes his own, which, as we previously commented, is based on empirical and experiential knowledge. His audacity and originality derive from the fact that unlike previous fictional gauchos (for instance Hidalgo’s Ramón Contreras in

“Dialogo patriótico interesante”), Fierro is not shamed by his lack of formal, bookish or scientific knowledge but instead he is proud of his own expertise which he considers, at least equally if not more valid (especially in his context and territory) than that of the city’s “others”:

Aquí no valen dotores,

solo vale la esperiencia,

aquí verían su inocencia

esos que todo lo saben,

porque esto tiene otra llave

y el gaucho tiene su cencia. (Ida, vv. 1457-1462)

In a clear contrast to Del Campo’s Fausto, in Martín Fierro (with special emphasis in the book’s first part) gauchos are not the gullible, innocent ones whose main function is to be derided and ridiculed. On the contrary, in a subversive textual operation that will also be found in Argentine’s foundational football narratives, the

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others’ world including their learning styles and system of values is deemed flawed and inappropriate vis-à-vis their own. This is evident in the following fragment written by

Borocotó in 1931 (published in the magazine El gráfico), where the English—a term that, despite not being technically the same, was customarily interchanged with that of the British in these early football narratives—are ridiculed because of their ‘outlandish’ idea of ‘teaching’ football (at school!) by using a blackboard: a system that—the writer acknowledges—could be more effective in terms of cold results (a logic that Borocotó opposes by affirming that not every victory is morally satisfying) but that will never generate the joy, the grace and the emotion of Argentine pibes’ particular cultural appropriation of football:

Si señor, sí: el fútbol inglés será más técnico, más efectivo, lo que Ud. quiera me da igual. El goal acredita la victoria, pero hay victorias sin pena ni gloria y existen derrotas que son amplios triunfos a puntos. Reconozco que la disciplina vale mucho, pero viejo, no me vengas con un pizarrón por favor.... Solamente a los ingleses se les ocurre el fútbol con un pizarrón. Hay que embromarse.... Allá hay que ir a la escuela para aprender el fútbol, aquí hay que hacerse la rabona en la escuela. ¡Casi nada! Allá hay un internacional con la redonda en la mano y la regla en la otra, frente a un pizarrón; aquí una de cuero en un campito y muchos pibes haciendo apiladas. Allá la técnica depurada, severa, concienzuda; aquí la gambeta, la gracia, la improvisación. En un lado la frialdad de los números y las hipotenusas; en el otro la alegría y la emoción del espectáculo.... Entre el pizarrón y el baldío, entre los de allá y los de aquí, mil veces los nuestros, aunque pierdan, porque dejarán un cachito de gracia en cada apilada, un granito de emoción en cada conquista (El Gráfico, n. 614, 1931, p. 6 qtd, in Archetti 269; emphasis added).

Going back to Hernández’s work, in the second canto, Fierro returns to the idea of improvisation as the central trait of his art—turning once again to the image of verses naturally springing like water—when referring to his "gala en las pulperias" i.e. that which differentiates him from the rest and highlights his individual value: “Mi gala en las pulperías era, / En habiendo más gente, / ponerme medio caliente” (Canto II vv.

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301-303). This “calentura”, partly explained by the influence of alcohol and encouraged by the presence of a bigger audience, gives him the incentive he needs to boost his inspiration and stand out as a popular singer, “Pues cuando puntiao me encuentro / Me salen coplas de adentro / como agua de la virtiente” (Canto II vv.304-306). The boisterousness and exuberance of Fierro’s favorite setting, present him (once more) as the reverse of the archetypal lettered writer from the city, a meticulous individual in need of silence and isolation.

The intersection between art and nature is a constant theme in this work and as such, it is addressed by more than one character. Sergeant Cruz, Fierro’s ally and dearest friend, makes an intertextual reference when he sings: “A otros les brotan las coplas / Como agua de manantial: / Pues a mí me pasa igual” (Canto XI- 1885- 1887).

Not trying to outshine Fierro as a singer, Cruz tries to make clear that improvising skills are part of gauchos’s essence: “Aunque las mías nada valen, / De la boca se me salen /

Como ovejas del corral” (Canto XI-18887- 1890). Acting as Martin Fierro’s double, the gaucho Cruz quotes the poem from within and signals his affiliation as a popular singer.

The art of the Moreno (a black man, in this case the son of one of Fierro’s victims in La

Ida) is also recognized by Martín Fierro when in the payada’s counterpoint he associates his rival’s skills to that of a male singing bird: “Sos varón, y no me espanta/

Verte hacer esos primores--/ En los pájaros cantores/ Sólo el macho es el que canta.

(La vuelta Canto XXX vv. 4117-4120).

In spite of his notorious xenophobic and intolerant tendencies—more than evident in La ida when he effeminizes Europeans, ridicule blacks and animalizes indigenous people—, in La vuelta, the protagonist appears more accepting towards the

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Moreno (whose father Fierro killed in La ida) whom he acknowledges not only as a brave individual and a natural singer like himself, but, most importantly, as a fellow member of the male gender (conditio sine qua non of all performers).48 Regarding sexism in Martín Fierro, Josefina Ludmer comments:

…to define the gaucho as an Argentine man, the sex, the gender, of the foreigner must be changed. The gringo recruits are women and carry this identity inscribed in the names of their countries, which are differential parts of the female sex. Only the gaucho’s motherland belongs to the masculine gender. (36)

The symbolic exclusion of women (or women-like figures) from this male-only universe based on the idea of an innate inability or a peculiar generic disposition, is another one of the ultra-conservative aspects that a good portion of football literature shares with gauchesca. For instance, male players who avoid physical contact or show no dexterity in the game of football are typically described as “feminine” figures:

“Dicroza, sin ir más lejos, estaba hecho una señorita dulce y temerosa, una bailarina clásica, mal rayo lo parta” (88, Sacheri “Por Achaval nadie daba dos mangos”). In addition, a player’s clothes, body language or vocabulary can quickly identify him as foreign to this all-masculine field and anticipate his failure to perform as evidenced by the following fragment also from Sacheri’s previously quoted short story:

Que un tipo te venga a jugar en chomba blanca es delicado. Pero que espere el balón con las manos cándidamente cruzadas a la espalda se parece a una tragedia… No hace falta que diga que cuando la pelota le llegó hasta los pies la devolvió sin intentar siquiera el más modesto de los jueguitos. Y le pegó de puntín, sin flexionar la rodilla. “Dios Santo”, pensé. (78)

Finally, Brazilians (the South American big other Argentines love to hate) are not only invariably represented as homogeneously black in stark contrast to an imagined white and civilized Argentina (and so racially discriminated), but also as cowardly and

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pusillanimous individuals, not real machos: “brasucas esencialmente cagones” (59,

Hefling “Pepeu”), that show their lack of courage, most especially when they get out of their territory “Arrugan los negros. Cuando salen de Brasil se cagan en las patas” (166,

Fontanarrosa “Plegarias a la virgen”).49 Within the most conservative authors of

Argentine football literature, the only fully accepted feminine presence appears to be that of the ball (the feminine “la pelota” in the Argentinian context). For instance, in “Ella: la novia del wing que había una vez”, Rodolfo Braceli narrates the story of a famous player (Corbatta) and his life-long companion, the only one who never betrayed him; the ball (la pelota: “Ella”). Women are presented not only as betrayers and abandoners

(Sacheri’s Aráoz y la verdad and Papeles en el viento) but also as outsiders, incapable of comprehending the logics of this masculine world (Sacheri’s “El cuadro del Raulito”).

What is more, those who dare enter this sacred territory, either as players or fans, are almost instantly deprived of their generic affiliation to be considered freaks, ambiguous and dangerous creatures (Braceli’s “María: el error de Dios”, Urman’s “Pibes con tetas”,

Panno’s “La piel de Judas”).

Needless to say, this is not (unfortunately) an excusive feature of the Argentine football culture nor can it be said to be derived from gauchesca as we can trace the highly masculinized aura of modern sport right to its very origins. As Michael Messner reminds us” the modern institution of organized sport, as we now know it, emerged as a male response to social changes which undermined many of the bases of men’s traditional partriarchal power, authority, and identity” (204). Sports not only were thought to help in the formation of strong men (future leaders coming from exclusive British public schools) but also contributed to naturalize, elevate and propagate a hegemonic

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type of masculinity that privileged vigorous, resisting and active bodies stigmatizing those who did not comform to these standards while, at the same time, excluding or at the very least discouraging women from taking part in these practices based on supposedly solid biological evidence.50 Messner again explains:

Sport was a male created homosocial cultural sphere which provided (white, middle- and upperclass) men with psychological separation from the perceived “feminization” of society, while also providing dramatic symbolic “proof” of the natural superiority of men over women (Messner, 1988). But it is not simply the bonding among men and the separation from women, but the physicality of the activity, which gives sport its salience in gender relations. (204; emphasis added)

In relation to our study, both the narratives of gauchesca and those of football

(especially the journalistic one), place a special emphasis on the physical (and also verbal of course) prowess of their protagonists (in neither case not the most athletic or naturally gifted individuals but especially resilient, dexterous and creative) and as such they inhabit competitive territories that, as Messner indicated are/were thought to be out of reach for women. In addition, the mythical space of the football potreros were doubly closed to women, first, because of their supposed physical “unfitness” and second, due to their status as schoolteachers, that is, the natural imposers of rigorous discipline and order, which, as we know, had no room in these areas as it symbolized exactly the opposite of a national style, that is, the mechanical football of the British other. Having said this, it is always important to mention that football literature also constitutes a space (one of the few ones) for women to freely and authoritatively express themselves in relation to this sport, including—in times where football is pushed as a product they ought to consume in the name of a very suspicious interpretation of the notion of

“gender equality”—their total disinterest or active self-exclusion from it.

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Returning to the notion of the possession of a natural artistic ability/disposition on both genres, the closest equivalent to the art of improvisation within the context of

Argentine football is that of gambeta (dribbling): a term that football inherits from gauchesca51 but that according to Juan Sasturain has “etimológicamente resonancias italianas (…) viene de “cruzar las gambas” (48). 52 As we have seen, gambetas are thought to be the natural product of the practice of football in informal spaces (potrero, baldío, pasillo, vereda, etc) where the possession of the ball is a privilege that must be defended by any means. Sasturain explains, “La experiencia de la gambeta es absolutamente determinante en la formación del jugador argentino. No se aprende en la tele ni en la escuelita de fútbol. Para gambetear bien, hay que aprender cuánto cuesta conseguir la pelota” (48).

That which provides gambeta with its non- institutional (thus not learned) character is precisely its unpredictability, the impossibility to program it within a game, its un-mechanized nature. Born out of a necessity (or a lack) as an autistic and self- defensive resort, it becomes the quickest, most effective way of generating imbalance and advantage (or disadvantage, depending on the play’s outcome) within a football field. A player who chooses a gambeta (instead of a pass or other less risky options)

“obliga al rival a una atención exclusiva” (49 Sasturain); a mano a mano challenge in which both participants expose their individual prestige. This is the reason why we cannot completely agree with Archetti’s notion that maintains that the use of the gambeta as the essential feature of criollo players, distances them from “el coraje, la bravura y la fuerza física” (440) of gauchos and compadritos as well as from duel-like situations. On the contrary, gambeta exposes (physically, visually and even

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intellectually) those who attempt it like no other move within this sport. What is more, always being careful to remember that the notion of duel clearly transcends and precedes gauchesca as they were formally practiced in Europe from the 15th century onwards and their early origins go as far as Pre-Christian times and the Middle Ages, as

Sandra Gayol indicates in Honor y duelo en la Argentina moderna, sports such as football, polo or boxing took the place left by public duels (after their social and cultural decline) in the first two decades of the twentieth century since these “… se asentaban en la competencia e invocaban también la intrepidez varonil. Poseían además muchas otras virtudes y estaban major equipados para proveer sensaciones y experiencias vinculadas con el cambio, la velocidad y la experimentación” (235).

Having already discussed the fundamental relevance of gambeta in the media construction of an Argentine (creole) football identity, it is time to study its force and validity in the pages of football literature. Already central in Benedetti’s foundational

“Puntero izquierdo” and consistently relevant throughout many of the genre’s works, gambeta will be employed by football literature writers in two main ways: first, as one of their preferred tools to convey characters’ individuality, inventiveness, instinctiveness and rebelliousness; second, to align these same characters with a national football tradition. Once again, conservative and disruptive forces meet at the core of this genre.53

In order to exemplify these uses of gambeta within football literature we will begin by looking at Roberto Fontanarrosa’s El área 18, one of the few novels that revolves around this sport. El área 18 narrates the story of Congodia, a young African country where football has replaced politics and economics to the point that all its great

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battles take place in stadiums and their founding fathers are none other than their more illustrious footballers. In Fontanarrosa’s Congodia, football transcends its space and role of metaphorical representation of the nation to become (and hyperbolically create) the nation itself. It seems obvious that Fontanarrosa is not primarily or exclusively interested in reflecting on the growing role of football in Africa but, as Alabarces implies, he is sagaciously looking at his own country and its football-nation articulation:

… el guiño de Fontanarrosa… es una mirada cómplice a la vez que crítica: detrás de Congodia no está África, sino más ampliamente toda la estructuración nacionalista de las afiliaciones futbolísticas de la periferia. Incluso, evidentemente, la argentina. (140-141)

To this country travels an international team (a sort of footballing foreign legion), put together by an American multinational (Burnett) in order to obtain (naturally by winning a football match) the right to install missile bases in their territory (the novel was written in 1982 in the midst of a full-blown cold war atmosphere).The rigorous Helmutt

Muller (a German coach through which the author parodies obsessive, neurotic, pseudo-scientific approaches to this sport) is in charge of training and preparing this team of football mercenaries for this decisive battle in African territory. The players, on the other hand, come from all over the world and each one of them stands as a representative of their nations’ perceived stereotypical idiosyncrasies and bodily identities: for instance, Ted the American player is a corpulent goalkeeper who trains incessantly, Renault, obviously French, is a short, light and agile wing and Dragomir, the Brazilian, is incredibly talented, superstitious and emotionally fragile. Predictably, the Argentinian Oscar Rómulo Garfagnoli becomes the personification of Argentine football’s most cherished essences.

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When referring to Garfagnoli (“naturally” of Italian descent) the Syrian agent Best

Seller-- protagonist of this book-- says: “Tampoco me resulta del todo convincente el argentino —agregó Seller. (…) —Es un poco rebelde. Poco afecto al trabajo. Pero se ha adaptado bien” (107). Fontanarrosa seems to return to the figure of the gaucho in order to endow Garfagnoli with some of its perceived dominant features: rebelliousness, indolence and adaptability.54 However, once the game starts and Garfagnoli gets the ball, what primarily defines him as a player are his creative inspiration, his courageousness and his ability to deceive and mislead rivals through the use of the gambeta:

Fue cuando sucedió. (…) [Garfagnoli] Se lanzó en el aire con sus combadas piernas al frente y atrapó entre ellas el balón y el botín derecho de uno de los rivales. Tres hombres cayeron sobre él... Pero el contacto con el cuero de la pelota inyectó de bravura al argentino y rebotó en el césped como un resorte. Pisó el balón y lo retrotrajo por detrás de su pierna izquierda, lo impulsó apenas hacia adelante con la punta del botín y de inmediato lo volvió a sepultar bajo la suela de su zapato diestro para devolverlo al lugar de partida de la misma forma en que un gato podría juguetear con un ratón moribundo. La parte superior del torso del argentino se insinuó hacia la derecha como para emprender la carrera pero fue tan sólo una finta, la ilusión de un movimiento, el espectro móvil de una intención. La cintura tornó a quebrarse y Garfagnoli salió limpio hacia su propio campo con el balón misteriosamente adosado a la capellada de su botín derecho. Todo duró menos de dos segundos… (260; emphasis added).

In this long quotation, Fontanarrosa admirably grasps and transmits the underlying magic of gambeta along with the individual imprint that characterizes it and transform it into a "mysterious" art, an exclusive asset of brave, irresponsible, creative bent-legged players. Garfagnoli is portrayed as a magician within the field, capable of

‘freezing time’ (“todo duró menos de dos segundos”), deceiving opposing players and audiences alike, a trickster with the ball, playing and irresponsibly having fun, as only a kid or a pibe would do. Little could Fontanarrosa know that four years later in a blistering

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Mexican midday, Diego Armando Maradona (the most potent reincarnation of the mythical pibe) would start the play that covered him in eternal football glory in an almost identical fashion. Hernán Casciari majestically narrates the first couple of seconds of

Maradona’s second goal versus England in Mexico 86:

Raudo y con pasos cortos, el jugador argentino traslada la escena al terreno contrario. Solo ha tocado el balón tres veces en su propio campo: una para recibirlo y burlar al primer Peter, la segunda para pisarlo con suavidad y desacomodar al segundo Peter, y una tercera para alejar el balón hacia la línea divisoria. (15)

In Casciari’s short story “10.6 segundos”, Maradona is never referred to by his name but just as “el jugador argentino” or simply “el jugador”, a kind of ball sorcerer, privileged knower of the secret geometry of gambeta (“Hay una geometría secreta en la precisión de ese zigzag…”), able to suspend time and belief for the duration of his 10.6 second miracle. Through his intimate contact with the ball (as a sacred sphere), the player can see the infinite universe from his own leathered aleph: “…ve el cadáver de un hombre viejo que ha muerto en Ginebra ocho días antes de ese mediodía, un hombre que también ha visto todas las cosas del mundo en un único instante. Ve

Fiorito de día; ve Nápoles de tarde; ve Barcelona de noche” (18). Not for the last time in this journey, Argentine literature and football are reunited through the figure of their two most mischievous players.55

In fact, in "Final", Rodrigo Fresán uses Borges’ contempt for football and the author’s death in 1986 as a starting point to talk about his brief football infatuation (from which he declares himself cured at the end of the narration) during the Mexico’s World

Cup (which also coincides with the end of his first marriage”).56 Here, the author returns to the idea of gambeta as the result of magical, pure and miraculous inspiration when referring to Maradona’s masterpiece: “El segundo gol de Maradona contra los ingleses

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seguía siendo tan hermoso como entonces, pocos días atrás, sí, no había ilusión o ingenio mecánico detrás de ese milagro. Había sido algo fuera de este mundo. Una revelación” (97). Archetti elaborates on the magical qualities of Maradona’s skills: “The magic of Maradona is always understood as a performing skill, for it produces inexplicable effects and illusions, paralysing opposing players and charming his audience. This is defined as a powerful, bewitching quality” (186).

The mythical image of the quintessential gambeteador (dribbler) in the context of

Argentine football is that of the pibe. His figure stands for the unlimited creativity of an irresponsible individual who privileges aesthetic enjoyment (primarily his own enjoyment in the possession of the ball) over everything else. Consequently, a pibe is someone who refuses to stop enjoying himself, someone who keeps on playing (in the ludic sense of the word) in times when sports’ high level of professionalization demands seriousness, docility and responsibility from its participants. Pibes’ un-mechanized, capricious drive resemble that of Martín Fierro’s inspiration (pensamiento) which “plays”

(juega) when singing a story (“cantar un argumento”) (La Ida Canto I vv. 43-48). Archetti continues: “…a pibe is by definition an unpredictable player, finding unexpected solutions in the most difficult moments of a game” (186).

Even though the word pibe is normally used to designate a young kid, in the context of football and its literature, being a pibe is not exclusively tied to person’s age but also to a distinctive disposition and set of qualities. This explains the fact that the condition and status of pibe can be retained (forever as in the case of Maradona) or even momentarily recovered. Eduardo Archetti sheds some light on this issue:

This paradox, a mature young man [Maradona] at the top of his career being defined as a pibe, is significant: an important virtue for the best

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Argentinian players is to preserve as far as possible, this pure, childlike style. Through this image, football is conveyed as a game and, as such, can only be enjoyed when one has total freedom. Football is ideally perceived as a perfect game for children. (183)

In Eduardo Sacheri’s short story “Ultimo hombre”, López, an obscure and veteran player defined as “un back enérgico y silencioso, lector de buenos libros” (117)

57 accustomed to his minor role in the team and to the fact that “la pelota estuviese en sus pies eternamente de paso” (117) has an epiphany in the middle of a game and for a few unforgettable moments becomes a pibe. This takes place after stripping an opposing player of the ball and transitorily focusing his eyes on “sus pies embarrados, su rodilla raspada, sus medias bajas, y la pelota brillante, reluciente” (119). The magical allure of the (in this case, brilliant and shiny) ball is reinforced by the symbolic potency of the image López immediately recognizes when he looks down. His muddy feet, the socks all the way down and his scratched knee epitomize the informality of football in potreros and bring forward along with it the surviving instincts of its original occupants

(pibes, of course), dormant but seemingly ready to emerge in every Argentinian player.58 As an immediate consequence of this football epiphany, López rebels to his coach’s orders—“el técnico le gritaba que la colgara, que la colgara” (119)—and to the dominant logic of the division of work applied to his own role and position within the team (defenders are supposed to defend) in order to obey what is described as an instinctive force “ una libertad indómita que le nacía en el vientre” (120) that leads him to start dribbling (“gambeteando”) towards the opposing goal for the first time in 33 years. As we can see, López is rebelling to the disciplinary system of professional football by establishing his agency; that is, in a foucaldian sense, making use of the power that transverses him and turning his (at least momentarily) indocile body into a

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locus of resistance while at the same time, unconsciously following the dictums of a national football habitus.59

Sacheri describes the protagonist of his story as someone who runs “irrevocable a su destino” (120) and once he closes his redemptive offensive incursion (the narrator decides not to reveal whether López scores or not as he considers this an insignificant detail) returns to his usual place in the defense as renewed man, his face showing:

“Una mirada sin destino fijo, apoyada en todo caso en un punto cualquiera del horizonte; de esas que los hombres sólo usan para mirarse a sí mismos” (122). Almost as if echoing Borges’ immortal words—“Cualquier destino, por largo y complicado que sea, consta en realidad de un solo momento: el momento en que el hombre sabe para siempre quién es” (55)— López, incarnating (or even possessed by) the spirit of the mythical pibe of criollo football, sets up his own transient revolution, defying the mandates of organized sport, choosing instead the creative irresponsibility of play, through which he is able to meet his unalienated self, catching an eternal glimpse of himself.60

As previously established, a tendency towards the noncompliance with written official law (s) and a simultaneous allegiance and respect for informal oral codes is a mutual characteristic of liminal subjects such as gauchos and/or pibes that, as we will see, will be prominently featured in their literary representations. Following Josefina

Ludmer’s analysis, the most culminant and subversive moment in Martín Fierro takes place when—in the first part of the book—Sergeant Cruz acknowledges Fierro as a brave man (and at the same time acknowledges himself as a gaucho and decides to join ranks with him: “Tal vez en el corazón / Lo tocó un Santo Bendito / A un gaucho

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que pego el grito / Y dijo: -“Cruz no consiente / “que se cometa el delito / De matar ansí un valiente!” (La Ida, Canto IX, vv. 1621-1626).

Killing a brave man in the condition of disproportionate numerical inferiority Fierro finds himself in constitutes a serious crime and offence in the oral code recognized and respected—over the written law—by gauchos (at least in La ida). Ludmer says: “El reconocimiento de la existencia de un derecho oral, orgánico y relativamente autónomo

(y por lo tanto de una “pluralidad de ordenes jurídicos”) es tan subversivo como la alianza entre Fierro y Cruz” (210). Thus, similarly to López in Sacheri’s story,61 Cruz, in the midst of total darkness, is able to look frankly at himself and, as Borges explains, understand that: “un destino no es mejor que otro, pero que todo hombre debe acatar el que lleva adentro (…) que las jinetas y el uniforme ya lo estorbaban. Comprendió su

íntimo destino de lobo, no de perro gregario; comprendió que el otro era él” (67).

The triad Sacheri, Fierro, Borges symbolically meets again in the novel Aráoz y la verdad, where Sacheri tells the story of Ezequiel Aráoz, a bogged down and frustrated man engulfed in a deep personal crisis and trying to come to terms with his wife’s abandonment, that one day decides to take the train to O’Connor, a small, almost desolate town in the south of Buenos Aires (the references to Borges’ “El Sur” are difficult to overlook) 62 in order to meet Fermín Perlassi, a retired footballer who happened to be Aráoz’s childhood idol.

Aráoz needs to know the truth (“la verdad”) about what happened to Perlassi the fateful day his team (Deportivo Wilde) got relegated (later entering a period of decline that would culminate with its disappearance) in an effort to salvage the last remnants of purity, innocence and truth (locked in his hero’s reputation) from an otherwise sad

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childhood marked by the presence of an abusive father. In the final seconds of the fateful match, Perlassi (captain, leader and symbol of the team) finds himself side by side or mano a mano (again the notion of the duel) with the opposing team’s striker ("el tanque" Villar) whom he simply chases from behind for the tragic fifteen seconds and sixty meters that separate Villar from scoring the decisive goal which brings glory for the latter and perpetual ignominy for the former. After that incident, surrounded by suspicions and allegations of foul play, Perlassi retires from football and simply

"disappears".

Once in O’Connor, Aráoz does not meet Perlassi (as he is supposedly on a business trip) but Lépori, an employee in Perlassi’s gas station who, after a long week, will be the one revealing “the truth” the protagonist has been searching for. The fact that

Perlassi never returns from this long business trip (from which we are given very little, imprecise and contradictory information) together with the thoroughness with which

Lépori narrates “Perlassi’s truth”, open the possibility to presume that Lépori is in reality none other than Fermín Perlassi, which, the same as Fierro at the end of his story, has decided to change his name, accepting his defeat and trying to alter his destiny.63

However, once again Sacheri seems to believe that this is also a "minor detail" and therefore does not confirm nor deny this hypothesis within the text.64

This is an operation that more than one of Sacheri’s characters performs

(another example can be found in his short story “La hipotética resurrección de Baltasar

Quiñones” analyzed in chapter five), that is, that of renouncing to their name and by the power invested in that action, escaping from the insufferable weight of an other’s desire: in the case of Baltasar Quiñones, those of a whole nation, in Perlassi’s that of Aráoz

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and the press who from time to time insists on finding “the truth”. Additionally, by moving towards the periphery and, in a way, blending with the landscape, not only they increase their mysterious aura but also go beyond their given signifiers (emptying themselves so to speak), becoming a cipher of this nation’s tradition and cultural history (more than evident in the case of Martín Fierro and only contextually valid in the cases of Sacheri’s characters).

Lépori tells Aráoz that Perlassi and his football nemesis, “el tanque” Villar had previously been teammates under, at that time, a renowned coach (Lamadrid), characterized by a strict disciplinarian, militarist approach to football. Lépori defines him as “…un pelotudo que se cree un adelantado y es una mezcla de muñequito de torta y de aprendiz de nazi (…) Humilla a los pibes. Desprecia a los veteranos (…) Premia a los alcahuetes” (212; emphasis added). This coach is presented as the quintessential cog in the machine; traversed, trapped and spoken by power (in this case, the

“modern”, scientific approaches to football favored in the decades of 1960 and beginnings of 1970 in the Argentine context) he follows and values the norm (rewarding players’ obedience, pusillanimity and submissiveness) and is apprehensive about the margins and its excesses (pibes and veterans). His inhumanity derives from his profound lack of freedom, which in turn is tied to the absence of a voice (or a body) of his own, the cake figure metaphor (even less mobile than a puppet) perfectly illustrating this situation.

If “Puntero izquierdo” presented the ominous beginnings of a professional and money-driven logic in the football realm, by the time Perlassi is a player this logic and discourse is completely naturalized: football has become a territory rife with experts and

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players and their bodies have consequently turned into mere tools. 65 This is precisely what Williams refers to when he acknowledges the need to consider the areas of leisure and everyday life as the spaces to defend against the control of the dominant industrialist-capitalist hegemonic logic; spaces where even the most minute and isolated form of rebelliousness must be taken into consideration as possible structures of feeling of emerging alternative (residual or not) and necessary view-worlds or following Scott’s theory instances of open declaration of infrapolitical practices (or hidden transcripts as he calls them). In relation to the important task of contesting hegemony in these vital areas of society, Whitson comments:

The achievement of an ethos of productivity and discipline, accountability and control in precisely those areas of life which were once defined by their contrast with work would constitute a significant closure of those spaces where it was once possible to learn the meaning (and hence the value) of playfulness, of self-expression, of democratic and noninstrumental relationships. Thus, it would constitute a significant hegemonic triumph. Conversely, the protection and expansion of such spaces could be an equally significant achievement in laying the groundwork for an alternative hegemony which might challenge the dominant order on a broader front. (75)

Perlassi cannot stand the imposition of this new order and reacts by verbally challenging the coach’s authority in front of the whole group of players (embodying, at the same time, Argentine football’s rebelliousness and conservatism) after which the latter decides to expel him from the team since “en su equipo no tolera la indisciplina”

(212) to then add “cualquiera que esté de acuerdo con el señor Perlassi que se levante y se vaya, que él no necesita ese género de fracasados en el equipo” (213; our emphasis). As Scott states these type of acts of public insubordination are decisive and extremely significant—regardless of the final results/consequences for those involved—

66 as every single one of them “pierces the smooth surface of apparent consent, which

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itself is a visible remainder of underlying power relations” (205). Moreover, the effect this acts of rebellion have go beyond the particular aspect they are resisting since it is understood that “any particular refusal to comply is not merely a tiny breach in a symbolic wall; it necessarily calls into question all the other acts that this form of subordination entails” (205, Scott).

Here is when Villar replicates Cruz’s trajectory (discovering a destiny and recognizing himself in the other) and joins Perlassi’s road to nowhere, creating an eternal bond and a moral debt that, five years later, the former will have to settle: “Por eso lloraba mientras lo corría durante esos quince segundos y esos sesenta metros.

Porque había llegado el momento de pagar” (217). 67 The irrevocability of this moral decision derives and owes its strenght to the equally irrevocable status of the momentous initial act of dissent, which cancels from the very moment of its inception the possibility of going back on your steps. Scott remarks on the dramatic force of such acts: “The initial act that publicly breaks the surface of consent owes a part of its dramatic force to the fact that it is usually an irrevocable step. A subordinate who takes such a step has, symbolically speaking, burned his bridges” (215)

The validity and unwavering respect for the oral code reappears in this work to confront both official written laws and/or legal documents (professional players are their clubs’ employees, and, as such, they must follow and respect their directives) and unwritten football maxims (opposing players, especially those running freely with the ball towards the goal, must be stopped at all costs).68 Villar has revealed himself as a brave man (the utmost virtue under the oral code) raising his transgressive and challenging voice in support of the "insubordinate" Perlassi—“Yo también me voy;

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porque pienso que Perlassi tiene razón y que usted es un boludo de marca mayor”

(213)—69and the latter cannot do anything less than reward his friend’s loyalty with a final sacrificial act.

From that defining moment, Villar and Perlassi nurture an unconditional friendship that only culminates (the same as in Hernández’s poem) with the death of one of the parts (Villar in this case). The topic of profound male friendships and the strong presence of homosocial relationships marks another important legacy of gauchesca and a new point of connection between these two genres70. As Fierro famously advised: “Al que es amigo, / jamás lo dejen en la estacada, / pero no le pidan nada / Ni lo aguarden todo de él” (La Vuelta Canto XXXII vv. 4631-4634).

What is more, it is possible to link the role of friendship (or better yet, the myth of the Argentine cult of friendship) as the preferred and most regarded interpersonal relationship in the context of this nation’s culture to its previleged place in Hernández’ canonical poem.71 In this regard, Carlos Gamerro understands Martín Fierro as the work that single-handedly founds and institutes this myth as a quintessential feature of the

Argentine idiosincracy. Love, on the other hand, is relegated to a secondary place as demonstrated by the clear precedence of the protagonist’s relation with Cruz over those with his immediate family; that is, his unnamed wife, and his sons. Needless to say, the crowing of male, heterosexual friendship as the “king” of interpersonal relationships had a lasting influence on the way the hegemonic dominant cultural forces approached those relationships that did not exactly fit this mold. Given Martín Fierro’s tremendous symbolic weight in the creation and delimitation of Argentineness, Gamerro laments

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what he considers the lost opportunity of having defeated (or at least mitigated) traditional machismo and homophobia with the power of this foundational narrative:

Es una lástima que los patrones morales de la literatura de entonces no le hayan permitido [to the author] siquiera imaginar una consumación sexual de esta amistad, con la eventualidad, dada la enorme influencia del Martín Fierro en nuestro modo de ser, de haber mitigado esa cultura hegemónicamente homofóbica que recién entró en crisis en 1983. (81)

The inevitable question at this point is: would Martín Fierro had become one of this country’s central foundational fictions had Hernández openly suggested the possibility of sex intercourse between these two gauchos? Keeping in mind the uncomfortable internal tension that homosociality and the glorification of male friendships produce within both gauchesca and Argentine football literature (a tension that, as previously put forward, is one of its constitutive elements in the case of the latter) , and crucially for this study, this critic also points to the(still present) utopian potential of friendship, and the connection of these elements with another focal characteristic of an imagined Argentine being, that of rebelliousness. Friendships, this author continues are typically forged against and/or outside the State and its institutions; in the case of Fierro, he does not have friends while in the army, he only finds his friend and double in Cruz as a deserter: “La amistad es posible únicamente entre desertores:

Fierro ya lo era, y Cruz se hace desertor para poder ser su amigo. Su amistad se basa en un gesto de rechazo radical por el mundo social, la ley y el Estado…” (81). In the realm of Argentine football literature, the theme of (for the most part, male) friendship takes a central relevance as it represents one of the last human relationships not entirely colonized by capitalism and as such a space (at least partially) open for the staging of resistance to the hegemonic power and the pursuit of dreams. As such it also helps explore the validity of an ideal of friendship within this country’s culture. An ideal

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according to which friendship will always be an end and never a mean unlike what takes place in more “developed” societies (like the American one for instance) where the culture of networking is slowly but surely stirring the waters of disinterested interpersonal relationships. As Gamerro concludes, following Borges, in the Argentine context: “Que un amigo pueda entregar a otro a la ley no sólo nos parece moralmente reprobable, nos resulta… ‘incomprensible’” (83).

To conclude, by returning to Martín Fierro’s culminating moment and rewriting it in a football key, Eduardo Sacheri seems to be endorsing Ludmer’s view when she states that: “El tiempo del género [gauchesco] es siempre el futuro, la literatura del futuro, el libro futuro” (42). Although it would clearly be an exaggeration to affirm that gauchesca is rewritten in the pages of Argentine football literature (for although Araoz and Villar fight against football capitalist influx from inside and as matter of fact, join forces deserting the social and economic institution that contains them, they are not, strictly speaking, outlaws or deserters), it would be equally mistaken not to perceive the numerous stylistic and narrative elements these two genres have in common. By revisiting some of the central themes and features present in the traditional discourse of argentine football, “football writers” cannot help but recapture fragments of the original articulation between the mythical pibe and the canonical gaucho.This allows, on the one hand, for a (valid) reading of (most part of) football literature as a conservative, nostalgic and elegiac monument of long lost times. For instance, this is the way Pablo Alabarces reads Eduardo Sacheri’s work, describing his literary efforts not only as nostalgic and anachronistic, but also utterly conventional, repetitive and monothematic: “La literatura futbolera de Sacheri se vuelve toda su literatura (…)

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cuando todo se vuelve fútbol, nada queda que no lo sea: y… el fútbol es bello cuando es excepcional, no cuando es rutina” (no pag.). However, in the process of rearticulating these residual cultural elements,72 Argentine football literature recaptures and puts into play the disruptiveness, ambiguity and subversive potentiality characteristic of their liminal nature/origins. This aspect, central for our approach to this area of literature, should not be ignored in order to avoid simplistic and reductionist views of this literary manifestation.

Throughout this chapter, we have attempted to trace the first series of connections between some works of football literature and both national literary and footballing traditions. Clearly connected to traditional football narratives through their character’s absorption and recuperation of pibe-like features, Argentine football literature is also presented as fully indebted to the local literary traditions of performing marginal/lateral translations (for instance, transforming the imperial football to fútbol or even the vernacular fóbal or fulbo, parodying media discourses on sports, taking over their protagonists’ voices and relocating Borges’s Aleph) and—following Link’s mandate—returning to gauchesca; a genre and a tradition that despite all canonizing efforts does not belong to museums. Perhaps, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was right

(once again) when he warned his readers that “… el espíritu de la pampa está allí en todos los corazones; pues si os levantáis un poco las solapas del frac con que el argentino se disfraza, hallareis siempre el gaucho más o menos civilizado, pero siempre el gaucho” (168).

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Notes

1 According to Hobsbawm’s definition, the notion of invented traditions “… is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past. In fact, where possible, they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past” (1).

2 In her influential study Foundational fictions : the national romances of Latin America, Sommer focuses on the allegorical power of a handful of Latin American texts written in the aftermath of these nations’ independence processes. Typically presenting the story of “star crossed lovers” who, in turn, acted as symbols of different regions and national interests, the author understands this type of fiction’s central message as “an exhortation to be fruitful and multiply” (6). What is more, the fact that Latin American literature and politics were closely connected at this point in time (evidence of this is the fact that several foundational writers such as Domingo Faustino Sarmiento ended up being presidents of their countries) turns these texts not only into strong allegorical statements but also into actual drafts of their authors’ nation-building projects (again Sarmiento’s Facundo appears as a perfect example of the latter). Sommer elaborates on the connection between the public and private in these novels and the strong performative power of words: “Romantic novels go hand in hand with patriotic history in Latin America. The books fueled a desire for domestic happiness that runs over into dreams of national prosperity; and nation building projects invested private passions with public purpose (…) Romance and republic were often connected, as I mentioned, through the authors who were preparing national projects through prose fiction and implementing foundational fictions through legislative or military campaigns” (7).

3 As Julio Ramos expresses, Argentina’s foundational texts were, metaphorically speaking, in charge of populating this empty space, filling an uncomfortable void: “Si la condición de viaje en Sarmiento es el desnivel, la distancia entre lo alto y lo bajo, el proyecto de su escritura es la disolución del desajuste: cubrir el vacío. Nivelación que presuponía, a su vez, la necesidad de poblar el desierto americano con las estructuras de la modernidad” (20). Needless to say, the ‘desert’ the intelectual elite saw, was not a desert per se or an uninhabited land (although those inhabiting it were not considered as subjects or even people); it was not etither the savage and pure nature of the romantics but as Justin Read proposes it was more of a place-holder, the space were this new nation was going to be built: “… el concepto desierto es nada más un marcador de lugar (place-holder) en el discurso liberal, para reservar el campo como un espacio por venir. El desierto, en este caso, es el ‘espacio-por-venir’” (178).

4 In the first canto of 1837’s epic poem La cautiva by Esteban Echeverría.

5 In reference to this point, Doris Sommer comments about the impossibility of leaving politics aside and the difference between the contextual situation and approaches between writers in North and South America: “As for the foundational bonds between this literature and legislation…they were no secret in Latin America. One stunning acknowledgment is the page-long list, by the turn of the century, of Hispano- American writers who were also presidents of their countries. A comparable list for lesser offices might seem endless. And despite important parallels, North American writers who were establishing a national literature might assume a metapolitical posture, an apparently disinterested critique that was rare for the South. Latin Americans seemed more integrated into partisan struggles and less available for transcendent social criticism” (4).

6Adolfo Prieto presents the data, “Según el registro del segundo Censo Nacional en 1895, la población del país alcanzaba prácticamente los 4.000.000 de habitantes, de los cuales el 34% eran extranjeros. Para el tercer Censo, levantado en 1914, la población casi se había duplicado, con 7.885.000 habitantes, un porcentaje elevado ahora al 43% de extranjeros” (18).

7 Beatriz Sarlo affirms that Argentine romantic writers such as Echeverría, Gutierrez o Mitre viewed oral and traditional literary forms simply as “minor”, that is, good enough as poetic exercises (which they sometimes incurred in) but not relevant or conducive to asserting and establishing their cultural and

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intellectual reputations and their image as writers, “ La poesía gauchesca circula por un nivel social que es considerado propiamente no cultural o, como muchas veces se afirmó entonces, más próximo a la naturaleza” (31).

8 Addressing the capital importance of Lugones’ conferences for gauchesca’s change of status, Graciela Montaldo reflects: “Hasta estas conferencias de Lugones, ningún intelectual argentino tomaba excesivamente en serio la gauchesca, ni siquiera el poema de Hernández [que] era un excelente poema gauchesco pero, en tanto gauchesco, era un discurso que había que relegar a un segundo plano porque hablaba desde la barbarie misma” (63). Similarly, Doris Sommer points to the popularity of Hernández’s work at the moment of its publication (also acknowledged by the autor in the prologue to the book’s second part) but at the same time she makes clear the fact that neither Hernández nor Martín Fierro were accepted into the upper echelon of Argentina’s intelectuality until Lugones’ deliberate rediscovery of it at the begining of the twentieth century: “Not that he [Hernández] wasn't immediately popular; he was, both with city people who could safely indulge their nostalgia for the vanishing gauchos and with the very gauchos themselves who lingered on for a short while as they recited his poem. Hernández was popular, but not seriously regarded as an artist, and certainly not an artist of national stature, until Leopoldo Lugones started a literary polemic in 1913 by proclaiming Martín Fierro to be Argentina's epic. He hoped that celebrating its local particularity would safeguard Argentine culture from the socialist and anarchist "corruption" of foreign immigration” (113).

9 Ana Peluffo provocatively indicates that the process of hyper-virilization of the canonical gaucho figure had to do with the necessity to return to a more traditional and/or monolithic configuration of masculinity in times when “una subjetividad masculina en crisis que corría el peligro de feminizarse al acatar en demasía las costumbres refinadas del proyecto urbanizador” (191). The author affirms that male characters’ sentimentality appears in gauchesca as a structure of feeling, a pre-emergent and counter- hegemonic social and cultural formation that will find its way and emerge in the lyrics of tango and (radio and TV) melodrama. Needless to say, football and the fictions built around it constitute another privileged area where to explore the configuration of sentimental masculinities in the Argentine context.

10 Published in Radar, cultural supplement of the newspaper Página 12 on June 3rd, 2002.

11 At the precise moment of writing this text (October 2014), Ivo Cutzarida (a second-rate Argentinian actor) has become Argentine conservative media’s favorite face in the crusade against crime in this country. Using a street-like jargon, Cutzarida presents himself as the quintessential ‘average citizen’, voicing what (according to his opinion) “the vast majority of the population demands”, that is, stricter punishments for criminals. What makes this situation pertinent to our topic of analysis is that Cutzarida acts like a TV preacher whose sacred book of preference is not The Bible but El gaucho Martín Fierro. Accordingly, the actor goes to every TV show imaginable armed with a copy of Hernández’s book from which he reads fragments (invariably those from La vuelta, in which Fierro advises his sons against a life of crime and illegality) in order to educate and instill positive values to the younger generations. What is more, he has gone as far as performing the equivalent of an (unsuccessful) exorcism in live TV by reading a passage of the Martín Fierro to a convicted criminal (thus trying to “civilize” him).

12 John Hargreaves revises the social and political implications of the process of construction and constitution of gentlemanly bodies, traversed by power and prepared to disseminate it: “Under this Spartan regimen the many hours per week devoted to the sporting ritual and physical exercise taught pupils the need for sustained effort and spirited determination in the face of adversity, for self-denial and control over one’s egoistic impulses, the acceptance of authority, how to fit in with one’s peers, how to take decisions and lead subordinates, and to accept responsibilities. Gentlemen were constituted irrationally in the sense that such ritual activity engaged individuals in their bodies and emotions; it appealed to their sense of good form rather than intellectual faculties” (143.)

13 David Goldblatt provides data that supports this affirmation: “The army was called to Rugby in 1797 to put down a pupils’ revolt, while the militia were summoned to Winchester in 1818 with fixed bayonets. It was their sixth such visit to the school in fifty years” (41).

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14 Besides the central Watson Hutton, it is only fair to mention the important contribution of other school teachers/founders to the diffusion of football in Argentina such as Reverend Joseph H. Gybbon-Spilsbury, who founded the Flores Collegiate School in 1881 or Isaac Newell founder and headmaster of the Anglo- Argentine Commercial School (1884) in the city of Rosario. In 1903 the alumni of Newell’s school founded the Newell’s Old Boys club, one of the biggest, most popular clubs outside of Buenos Aires to our days

15 When defining habitus Marcel Mauss explains that “la palabra no recoge los hábitos metafísicos (…). Estos hábitus varían no sólo con los individuos y sus imitaciones, sino sobre todo con las sociedades, la educación, las reglas de urbanidad y la moda. Hay que hablar de técnicas, con la consiguiente labor de la razón práctica colectiva e individual, allí donde normalmente se habla del alma y de su facultades de repetición” (340). Although Bourdieu re-elaborated Mauss’s conception of habitus, it has to be mentioned that this concept was originally introduced by Aristotle in the idea of hexis (Greek word for habitus) which referred to the possession of acquired or trained dispositions that guided people’s actions.

16 Sociologist Eduardo Galak, provides a definition of practices which goes beyond ther simplification as mere actions: “ Cuando hablemos de prácticas estaremos haciendo referencias no sólo a las meras acciones de los individuos sino también a un conjunto de disposiciones teóricas, sociales, históricas, políticas que las configuran” (3)

17 Throughout the long process of development and redefinition of this central concept, Bourdieu moved from the original notion of habitus as the transformation of “history into nature” (criticized for its seemingly deterministic, dehistorizicing properties) to the one that understands it to the transformation of “history into body”. Eduardo Galak proposes the substitution of the problematic and somewhat limiting concept of history (which history? whose history?) for the more productive ones of archeology and genealogy of the body: “… pensar a los habitus en términos de arqueología y de genealogía implica una dimension política que la historia no: además de las continuidades, indagar prácticas corporales compromete las crisis, los sucesos no-lineales que se hayan suscitado… Se opta por este pasaje porque se entiende que las prácticas no sólo tienen elementos históricos que las reproducen, sino también componentes altamente productivos, políticos y transformadores; y que son sólo posibles de ser indagadas si se reconfiguran y se significan según los pasados del agente (que es en definitiva el objeto de la genealogía y la arqueología).” (13-14)

18 Needless to say, a situation in which a supposedly assimilated individual unexpectedly contests the culture of the assimilator can be found and expressed in different and varied contexts and, on top of that can be validly interpreted as simply an exercise in idiosyncratic intolerance. However, our intention here is to show how a sport like football in the Argentine context aligns its official narratives with those of the nation’s sanctioned traditions and provides an ideal scenario (although not the only one) for the articulation of social mithologies and the expression of the body’s numb imperatives.

19 “Cuantitativa y cualitativamente, el futbol evolucionó mucho más hacia sus mayores cumbres de seducción como espectáculo de ingenio y destreza, a través del instinto de los jovencitos vagabundos que le pusieron su acento picaresco en la creación dictada por la espontaneidad; que no a lo largo de todos sus más pedagógicos y racionalizados procesos de enseñanza organizada en niveles educacionalmente más formales” (55 Panzeri).

20 Notice also the magic element (“limpieza de prestidigitador”) already connected with Argentine footballers bodily performances.

21 As we will see in chapter five of this study, Horacio Convertini revisits this scenario, imagining an extreme case of a footballer’s artificial manufacture in his novel El ultimo milagro.

22 Archetti cleverly points out that the exclusion of teachers from these “spaces of freedom” also represents a symbolical exclusion of women, traditionally in charge of that role in the Argentinian context.

23 About the disruptive and creative potentiality of liminality, Turner explains: “…if liminality is regarded as a time and place of withdrawal from normal modes of social action, it can be seen as potentially a period of scrutinization of the central values and axioms of the culture in which it occurs” (167).

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24 Nicolas Shumway describes gauchos in the following way: “Los gauchos (como la población rural en general) provienen de una triple raíz étnica: española, india y africana. Se desplazaban libremente por las pampas, vivían sin esfuerzo de una tierra próvida, capturaban y montaban caballos salvajes, bebían en abundancia, apostaban, contrabandeaban, robaban, reñían, cazaban ganado salvaje, vendían cueros para comprar lo poco que necesitaban, se alimentaban principalmente de carne, cantaban baladas improvisadas celebrando sus hazañas y amores y vivían en uniones libres rara vez consagradas por el sacramento del matrimonio. En resumen, eran supersticiosos, desaseados, analfabetos y felices” (29; emphasis added).

25 “Suerte de significante vacío, el gaucho Martín Fierro condensa la figura del gaucho, para ser llenado con los significados que los distintos discursos hegemónicos así decidan” (38, Alabarces). In his book Emancipation (s) Argentine thinker Ernesto Laclau defines the empty signifier as “… strictly speaking, a signifier without a signified” (36) to then add “this definition is also, however, the enunciation of a problem. For how would it be possible that a signifier is not attached to any signified and remains, nevertheless, an integral part of a system of signification?” (36). Before getting into a more detailed conception of this term it is important to remember that when referring to language and discursivity, Laclau is following Ferdinand de Saussure’s theory that understands the former as a system of differential elements, that is, the idea that there are not positive terms in language and meaning is arbitrary and relational, in other words, signs only get their meaning (are attached in semi-stable relations to a particular signified) according to its relational position vis-à-vis other signs. However, within this system, for signification to be possible it is necessary to find its limits, that is, that which it is different from it, as Laclau explains: “An empty signifier can, consequently, only emerge if there is a structural impossibility of signification as such, and only if this impossibility can signify itself as an interruption (subversion, distortion, etcetera) of the structure of the sign. That is, the limits of signification can only announce themselves as the impossibility of realizing what is within those limits - if the limits could be signified in a direct way, they would be internal to signification and, ergo, would not be limits at all” (37). Finally, if discursivity is based on a lack or an impossibility to represent its own limits, the importance of these empty signifiers is crucial, for without them there would not be discursivity at all. As Claes Wrangel explains: “The empty signifier is the discursive centre, what Laclau & Mouffe calls a nodal point, i.e. a privileged element that gathers up a range of differential elements, and binds them together into a discursive formation. But it is only by emptying a certain signifier of its content that this process can be achieved. Its emptiness makes it possible for it to signify the discourse as a whole. The power of a certain signifier is therefore coterminous with its emptiness. It is only through this emptiness that it can articulate different elements around it, and thus produce a discursive formation. With this emptiness the nodal point becomes universal in its scope, but it cannot be completely universal, since it is only given meaning by the particular elements, which it stands in relation to. Rather it is becomes a signifier of an absent universality – of a lack within the discourse’s core” (n. pag).

26 Alabarces sheds light on Archetti’s concept of free zones: “… se llamaba así a los ámbitos donde se discutían y reinventaban las identidades y las nuevas narrativas de modo más creativo que en los espacios clásicos impuestos por la modernidad: el Estado, la universidad, la escuela, los intelectuales. Las zonas libres predilectas, según Archetti, son la danza, la comida, la música, el juego y el deporte: además de ser menos controladas por los aparatos institucionales y de prestigio intelectual, estas zonas son más populares y democráticas desde la participación… y de sus debates…” (65).

27 In her book Borges, un escritor en las orillas, Beatriz Sarlo explores the connections between the inhabitants of these marginal areas and some of the main features of a national (criolla) tradition: “…el término "orillas" designaba a los barrios alejados y pobres, limítrofes con la llanura que rodeaba a la ciudad. El orillero, vecino de esos barrios, con frecuencia trabajador en los mataderos o frigoríficos donde todavía se estimaban las destrezas rurales de a caballo y con el cuchillo, se inscribe en una tradición criolla de manera mucho más plena que el compadrito de barrio (de quien Borges no propone ninguna idealización), cuya vulgaridad denuncia al recién llegado o al imitador de costumbres que no le pertenecen” (48-49). Following Borges, Sarlo marks a clear distinction between orilleros and compadritos centrally based on the idea of the inferiority and falseness of that what is learned or imitated against what is naturally bestowed: “El orillero arquetípico desciende del linaje hispano-criollo, y su origen es anterior a

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la inmigración; el compadrito arrabalero, en cambio, lleva las marcas de una cultura baja, y exagera el coraje o el desafío farolero para imitar las cualidades que el orillero tiene como una naturaleza”( 49).

28 Which does not necessarily mean that kids would abstain from breaking the law in order to play football. In fact, this breaching of the law is one element that contributes to the configuration of pibes as liminal figures.

29 For instance the lyrics of Enrique Cadícamo’s tango “Café de Barracas” makes reference to the dangerous setting of the orillas, a place where brandishing knives were part and parcel of the neighborhood’s typical scenario at the beginning of the twentieth century: “Viejo café de Barracas,/ turbios recuerdos de entonces,/que allá por el año once/ tenía entreveros de facas”. In addition, Esteban Echeverria’s foundational story “El matadero” takes place in Barracas, precisely in what the author refers as “matadero del Alto o de la Convalecencia”, a space now occupied by Plaza España.Justin Read centers on the liminality of this area: “Como una localidad cívica, Buenos Aires debe ser un centro de la civilización. Mas la acción del relato no tiene lugar en el centro, sino en las márgenes de la capital. En la época, el Matadero del Alto se ubicaba al borde sureño de la ciudad, encima de una colina que lo protegía de las aguas crecientes del Riachuelo, dentro de una frontera liminal entre el núcleo urbano y la extensión rural de la pampa. En la cartografía imaginaria del letrado, esta zona intermediaria existía en “suspensión”. Por un lado, estaba lo suficientemente apartada de la ciudad como para faltarle el civitas requerido para construir una civilización; y, por el otro, estaba lo suficientemente cercana al “desierto” como para sufrir la intrusión de la barbarie” (178).

30 The fact that Alfredo Di Stéfano, one of the first and most celebrated jewels (cracks) of Argentine football was born in this neighborhood only seems to corroborate and give validity to this narrative.

31 For instance Carlos Juvenal comments in his article “Después de la final, el dolor de los argentinos debe ser mayor”: “Salvo los franceses, que tienen un toque latino en su fútbol, sobre todo porque Zidane parece nacido en Barracas y no en Francia…” (no pag, emphasis added). In a heated diatribe against the idea of “la nuestra”, Carlos Polimeni expands on this topic: “En uno de los peores reflejos de la concepción argentinocéntrica del fútbol, hace ya demasiados años alguien inventó el concepto de “la nuestra” para identificar una forma de jugar bien. “La nuestra”, se dice, es poner la pelota al piso, hacerla circular de tal manera que corra más que los jugadores, buscar por abajo, ganar en base a habilidad, gambeta y toque corto. “La nuestra” es la que jugaron los grandes equipos brasileños de toda la historia. La nuestra es el repertorio de todos los grandes intérpretes del fútbol, desde Beckenbauer, Zidane y Cruyff hasta Puskas, Overath y Eusebio, pasando por Gento, George Best, Gianni Rivera y Krol. “La nuestra” es un ideal de identidad: el caño que Diouf le tiró ayer a un sueco sobre la izquierda, cuando las papas quemaban. “La nuestra” no es “la nuestra”: es la de todos los que juegan bien. Para los argentinocéntricos “jugar bien” equivale a haber nacido en Barracas” (no pag, emphasis added “Senegal no queda en Barracas”). Notably, in his effort to attack this “argentinecentric” conception of football, Polimeni seems to naturalize the equation Buenos Aires=Argentina for in more precise terms, the idea of Barracas as the mythical potrero is strongly “porteñocentric” as this geographical location may not mean much to someone born in Jujuy, Córdoba or Santiago del Estero. Always taking into account that football’s narrative construction took place and developed from Buenos Aires to the rest of the country/world, it would be very interesting to analyze in depth in future studies whether this is accepted or contested in the rest of Argentina.

32 As Archetti explains, a tradition (in this case a football tradition) is only built through “triumphs” and the ensuing recognition of relevant “others”. This is also true in the case of Brazil’s football, which, developed a consistent style and an accompanying narrative later than its neighboring River Plate countries (Argentina and Uruguay) after a successful third place in France’s 1938 World Cup. In his article “Foot- ball mulato” (first published in 1938 in Diario de Pernambuco), sociologist Gilberto Freyre affirms: “…o nosso estilo parece contrastar com o dos europeus por um conjunto de qualidades de surpresa, de manha, de astúcia, de ligeireza e ao mesmo tempo de espontaneidade individual. Os nossos passes, os nossos pitus, os nossos despistamentos, os nossos floreios com a bola, há alguma coisa de dança ou capoeiragem que marca o estilo brasileiro de jogar futebol, que arredonda e adoça o jogo inventado pelos ingleses […] Acaba de se definir de maneira inconfundível um estilo brasileiro de foot-ball; e esse estilo é mais uma expressão do nosso mulatismo ágil em assimilar, dominar, amolecer em dança, em 183

curvas ou em músicas técnicas européias ou norte-americanas mais angulosas para o nosso gosto: sejam alas de jogo ou de arquitetura. Porque é um mulatismo, o nosso – psicologicamente, ser brasileiro é ser mulato” (qtd. in Velho Barreto 235; emphasis added). The similarities with the Argentine football narrative are obvious, however the elements of race and dance are much more prominent than in any other South American football construction. It is also interesting to see how monolithical this continental football identity becomes when compared with the European masters: in general terms one can affirm that the major South American football nations at the beginning of the twentieth century (Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil) practice similar versions of what was described as a type of artistic football or Fútbol- Arte. However, these similarities vanish when the national styles come into comparison as Uruguayans will embrace the notion of a fierce type of football in the concept of “garra charrua” (Charruan claws or spirit), while Argentines will continue to adhere to the romantic magic of dribblers (at least until the first major footballing catastrophe in 1958’s World Cup) and Brazilians to that of their own rendition of the beautiful game (jogo-bonito).

33 It is important to mention that Burgo uses the term “aleph” in reference to Jorge Luis Borges acclaimed short story (under the same name) where the Aleph is described as a point in space that contains the entire universe. Already employed by Hernán Casciari in his short story “10.6 segundos” (which narrates in excruciating detail the time that elapsed from the initial point to the conclusion of Maradona’s majestic second goal against England in 1986), this writer metaphorically expresses the idea that the entire universe of Argentine football is somewhat contained in those two goals and that particular match.What is more, one can go as far as to affirm that this universe is also entirely contained in Diego’s figure, turning him into a walking aleph in this context.

34 A final contradiction: unlike Argentine ones, foreign pibes who continue to be so off the field are not nearly as harshly condemned or reviled. Instead, their “coherence” only feeds and augments their legendary status as magical and rebellious individuals with a suspected Argentine origin (this is clear in the cases of British players such as George Best or Paul Gascoine).

35 This time has arrived, as the entire country is being populated by statues celebrating their football idols. The most recent and notable example was current mayor of Buenos Aires Horacio Rodriguez Larreta unveiling a bronze statue of Lionel Messi (in the capital’s Paseo de la Gloria on the shores of River Plate) hours after this player had decided to stop playing for Argentina’s national football team following their third consecutive defeat in the decisive game of a tournament. The mayor hoped (and announced it on social media: https://twitter.com/horaciorlarreta/status/747530990516527104 ) that this homage would make the talented player change his mind and reconsider playing for the national team again.

36 This notion of a picaresque dimension of pibes can be connected to Leonidas Lamborghini’s vision of gauchesca as an “arte bufo” which denounces the system’s inequalities by using humor and parody. See Lamborghini’s Risa y tragedia en los poetas gauchescos.

37 Competitive performances where singers (payadores) would improvise verses (most typically in the ten- line verse form called Décimas octosílabas) in counterpoint and accompanied by their guitar.

38 Importantly, Julio Schvartzman is the only other academic outside of the already mentioned Pablo Alabarces and Eduardo Archetti to make an explicit connection between the realms of gauchesca and that of football. However (to our knowledge), at the moment of writing this words, the points of contact between the two literary subgenres have not yet been approached or taken into serious and detailed consideration.

39 “Cielo, los Reyes de España, / ¡la puta que eran traviesos! / nos cristianaban al grito /y nos robaban los pesos” (vv. 165-168). Schvartzman says: “Toda puteada tiene valor interjectivo, para admirarse o para ofender” (41). As we see, in this poem, Hidalgo uses it in both senses.

40 http://youtu.be/8NacVrURH-g

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41 Fernando is a King without a horse (in this case a metaphor of his kingdom): profoundly incomplete. Moreover, Hidalgo’s “ya se le murió el potrillo” brings echos of one of Maradona most famous sayings “se le escapó la tortuga renga” used by the former player to disqualify and ridicule his “enemies”.

42 However this is far more evident in the case of gauchesca than in football literature (“¿Existe la cultura popular más allá del gesto que la suprime?” a radical De Certeau would wonder) where we find cases of professional players and coaches (Jorge Valdano, Angel Cappa, Claudio Morresi, Juan Hebella and the philosopher Claudio Tamburrini among others) who write their own stories (The clearest example of this being 2016’s Pelota de papel the first compilation of football short stories entirely written by players and coaches). Moreover, most writers of football fiction are amateur practitioners of this sport, passionate fans and in many cases sport journalists. For reasons of time, space and directionality of our study, we will not discuss here to what extent the subaltern can (or cannot) speak in both literary representations. For an interesting approach to the issue of the legitimacy of popular culture in Argentina, see María, G. Rodríguez’s article “La pisada, la huella y el pie”.

43 As Ángel Rama explains, especially social gauchesca poetry (1872-1879) responds to: “… una demanda del producto literario que no quedaba reducida a la elite consumidora de literatura y en general de la palabra escrita—o sea, para los promedios rioplatenses de la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, al cogollo educado de la burguesía capitalina—y por lo tanto delataba las necesidades de otro sector social, de escasa o nula educación , el cual, debido a su particular situación crítica dentro del panorama económico-social del país, requería interpretación de la realidad, análisis de su conflicto y destino, solidaridad con las dificultades que pasaba, tres demandas a las que tradicionalmente ha dado respuesta la literatura” (103).

44 About Alejandro Apo and his central role in the popularization of football literature, Ignacion Martino comments: “Alejandro Apo fue uno de los mayores responsables de visibilizar y darle lugar al binomio literatura/fútbol en la Argentina. Su aporte en el programa radial Todo con afecto (ciclo dedicado, desde 1995, a cuentos de fútbol, historias y entrevistas a viejas glorias del fútbol argentino) sumado a su obra teatral «La pelota, un cuento y un abrazo» (1999, junto al músico Marcelo Sanjurjo) y sus libros Y el fútbol contó un cuento (2007) y Con todo mi afecto (2010), se tornan fundamentales para tomar a este periodista bonaerense como el principal referente del fortalecimiento de la literatura futbolera nacional. En el caso del segundo libro mencionado, su éxito derivó en el espectáculo teatral que lleva el mismo nombre y con el cual realizó alrededor de 650 presentaciones en más de 375 ciudades” (235)

45 Needless to say, football literature keeps functioning as a platform to denounce the injustice and inhumanity of professional sports as well as a valuable contesting space to the dominant journalistic narratives.

46 The central role of orality in his work is such that even when Fontanarrosa’s stories take place in a football field his protagonists do nothing but talk. This is the case of the celebrated “Escenas de la vida deportiva” where his readers have the opportunity to witness the pre-football liturgy of a group of friends who meet every week supossedly to practice this sport. Instead, what we see is much more than that, as this space becomes an arena where symbolic capital is constructed, identity (ies) is tied to a set of common practices (chiefly among them, the bantering among friends) and community is constantly being (re) built. The irony in the title becomes obvious when one of them punctures the only ball available when trying to inflate it and everybody has to go back home without having played a single minute. As we will repeatedly see, the playing of actual football only occasionally elevates beyond the status of the anecdotal within this subgenre.

47 At this point, it is essential to remember Borges’s advice (then re-appropriated by Rama) that urges critics not to derive gauchesca literature from gauchos themselves since, as Rama says, when dealing with gauchesca “… estamos en presencia de una lengua literaria y no de una transposición dialectal” (31).

48 However, it is necessary to notice how, through his clever reply, the Moreno refutes Fierro’s misogynist theory: “A los pájaros cantores/ Ninguno imitar pretende/ De un don que de otro depende/ Naides se debe alabar/ Pues la urraca aprende a hablar/ Pero sólo la hembra apriende” (La vuelta Canto XXX vv.

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4127-4132). Julio Schvartzman adds: “No sólo desbarata, así, por la vía de la excepción, la ley del canto del género enunciada livianamente por el rival, sino que mina sus bases filosóficas. Si antes Fierro había proclamado que lo innato no puede ofender (pero, claro, ponía lo innato en su propia versión de la diferencia, ofendiendo), su antagonista lo obliga a ser consecuente con aquellos presupuestos: lo innato, entonces, tampoco podría hacer mérito” (460).

49 In part this is the result of the Brazilian press own narrative construction after the humiliating defeat in the final game of 1950’s World Cup (popularly known as Maracanazo). This fateful game would bring serious psychological consequences not only for the football team and the nation (after this game writer Nelson Rodrigues coined the term “complexo do vira-lata” or Mongrel complex to describe Brazilians sense of inferiority towards the rest of the world) but specially for the black players that were part of the team as they became the scapegoats of a still very much racist press and society.

50 In an extreme case, in Brazil, commonly known as “the country of football” (o país do futebol), women were legally forbidden from playing this sport (or any other that were “incompatible with their female nature”) for a period of almost 40 years (from 1941 to 1979). The law/decree 3199 from april 1941 in its article 54 affirmed that “às mulheres não se permitirá a prática de desportos incompatíveis com as condições de sua natureza, devendo, para este efeito, o Conselho Nacional de Desportos baixar as necessárias instruções às entidades desportivas do país” (as quoted in Franzini 322). In the case of football, doctors alleged that the practice of this sport could be dangerous to women’s reproductive organs (thus compromising society’s generic equilibrium). In his article “Futebol é “coisa para macho”? Pequeno esboço para uma história das mulheres no país do futebol”, Fabio Franzini rescues the words Dr. Leite de Castro, one of Brazil’s first sports doctors who at the time expressed that “não é no futebol que a juventude feminina se aperfeiçoará. Pelo contrário — é o futebol o esporte que lhe trará defeitos e vícios; alterações gerais para a própria fisiologia delicada da mulher, além de outras conseqüências de ordem traumática, podendo comprometer seriamente os órgãos da reprodução (ovário e útero)” (321).

51 From Martín Fierro: “Y en las playas corcoviando / Pedazos se hacia el sotreta, / Mientras él por las paletas / Le jugaba las lloronas, / Y al ruido de las caronas / Salia haciéndose gambetas!”(La Ida Canto II vv. 175-180). In this stanza, the word gambetas refers to the constant change of direction of a horse while being tamed by a gaucho.

52 Sasturain is right in pointing out the Italian etymological roots of this word (a diminutive of the Italian word gamba) and by doing so it highlights the profoundly hybrid nature of Argentine criollismo.

53 “Insai izquierdo” (Humberto Costantini), “Gerez” (Walter Vargas), “Memorias de un wing derecho” (Roberto Fontanarrosa), “Esperándolo a Tito” (Eduardo Sacheri), “Disquisiciones sobre la habilidad” (Gustavo Grabia), El refuerzo (Horacio Convertini) and “El sudoeste” (Juan Diego Incardona) are just a few examples of the numerous works that deal with the centrality of gambeta as a distinctive means of expression within Argentine football literature.

54 Martín Fierro, after deciding to relocate to indigenous territory, brags about gauchos’ ability to adapt to any environment and fantasizes about a future devoid of obligations “…echao panza arriba/mirando dar guelta el sol” (La Ida Canto XIII vv. 2249-2250). Regarding another one of the characteristics that the prototypical Argentine footballer shares with gauchos that is, their rebelliousness, we need to acknowledge the role, importance and influence of anarchists (who arrived in Argentina in the late nineteenth century,that is, roughly speaking the moment Martín Fierro was being written) have in this construction. As a matter of fact, it is possible to find references of their societal relevance (and the uneasiness they provoked in the authorities) in the second part of Hernández’s masterwork, when Picardía (Cruz’s son) is acussed of being an anarchist by an army officer simply because he tries to exercise the right to vote freely: “Y ya me gritó... ‘Anarquista,/ ‘Has de votar por la lista/ ‘Que ha mandao el Comiqué’” (411, La Vuelta, Canto XXIV, vv. 3357-3360). Later, when another officer is choosing people to forcibly send to the frontier, he refers to one of them as “Este es otro barullero/ Que pasa en la pulpería/ Predicando noche y día/ Y anarquizando a la gente,/ Irás en el contingente/ Por tamaña picardía”. (415, La Vuelta, Canto XXV, vv.3445-3450). What is more, the intersection between gauchos and anarchism does not end in this references and works both ways as the anarchist movement in Argentina will try to reappropriate the figure and the symbolic weight of Martín Fierro, using its name for a 186

magazine first and a weekly supplement later of the anarchist newspaper La Protesta. Carlos Gamerro refers to this “anarcogauchos” and the process of dispute of this national symbol in the following way: “El movimiento de apropriación de Martín Fierro por parte de la clase dominante comenzó antes de la publicación de la segunda parte y fue encabezado por el propio Hernández, que trató, al escribirla, de obturar o mitigar el potencial libertario de la primera, pero el poema ya había iniciado su carrera viral y ni siquiera su autor podía controlarla. Así, no podían pasarlo por alto los anarquistas que por la misma época empezaban a llegar a las ciudades y a viajar por el campo difundiendo sus ideas entre los paisanos” (64). Later he adds, “Entre 1904 y 1905 se publicó, al principio de manera independiente y posteriormente como suplemento semanal del periódico anarquista La Protesta, “la revista popular ilustrada de crítica y arte” Martín Fierro, dirigida por Alberto Ghiraldo, que precede casi en veinte años a la más famosa fundada por Eva Méndez. La de Ghiraldo recurrió a la figura del gaucho para difundir las ideas anarquistas bajo el paraguas—o poncho—de la gauchesca, intentando así contestar la estrategia oficial de desacreditar las ideas anarquistas por extranjeras e improcedentes”(65).Although anarchists could not resolve the internal tension between their ideas and Martín Fierro’s strong nationalist tendencies, and thus, could not entirely reappropriate the gaucho figure for their cause, anarcogauchos made their presence felt in Argentine national history in the shape of rural leaders such as José Font aka Facón Grande (Big Knife a central figure in 1921 rural strikes in Patagonia) and Juan Bautista Bairoletto also known as The Pampa’s Robin Hodd and still remember as the gaucho Bairoletto.

55 In “Me van a tener que disculpar”, Eduardo Sacheri also avoids mentioning Maradona’s name (in vain?) although the story revolves around Diego’s figure and the narrator’s impossibility to judge or condemn him despite of his numerous flaws outside the football field. We will return to the analysis of this story in the fourth chapter of this study.

56 Accordingly, the title refers to (at least) four endings (or finales) at once: his marriage’s, the World Cup’s, Borges’ life, and his short-lived love for football.

57 Old-fashioned way to refer to one of the two central defenders in a football team. This player is typically the one who is farther away from the opponent’s goal and consequently the closest to the goalkeeper his own goal (the last man or “el último hombre”).

58 The image of the prototypical pibe is obviously another one of the media’s constructions. An emblematic starting point in this case is the first cover of the kid’s magazine Billiken, first published by Editorial Atlántida (also responsible for El Gráfico) on December 17, 1919. On it, a banged up kid (unkempt and with one of his socks down) appears, proudly holding a ball in a green, uneven and seemingly unlimited field, a highly symbolic representation of the liminal Argentine potreros. Interestingly, this drawing by the Sevillian Pedro de Rojas is an almost identical copy of the cover of the November 21, 1914’s edition of the American Magazine The Saturday Evening Post. The illustration by J.C. Leyendecker shows the same bandaged young boy (although in this case his hair is completely white) holding a football in one hand (the one used in the American version of this game) and what appears to be a leather helmet in the other. There is a flag by his feet just like in de Rojas’s drawing but neither green turf nor (naturally) Argentinian flag expanding on the horizon. Once again this helps reaffirm the notion of the profoundly hybrid nature of national symbols and traditions.

59 Needless to say, the metaphor of Argentine football players as eternal dribbling pibes can also function as an insufferable imposition for those not apt or not willing to incarnate it. This will be explored in more detail in chapter five when we analyze Horacio Convertini’s novel El refuerzo.

60 This reaffirms Borocoto’s idea of Argentine players (that is, pibes) as natural products of this country’s soil. Once a pibe, always “potentially” a pibe is the idea that explains and justifies Lopez’ quiet revolution. El hecho de que la condición de ser pibes no encierre un cambio futuro es de interés teórico, porque significa que la liminalidad de los pibes trasciende la noción aceptada de ritos de pasaje como limitados en el tiempo y en el espacio, y como conduciendo, siempre, al cambio de estatus.

61 Who, in turn, seems to be rewriting Borges’s “Biografía de Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874)” or even sharing that responsibility with his story’s protagonist: López “lector de buenos libros”.

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62 In Borges’s short story, the protagonist (Juan Dhalmann) travels south to what is left of his grandfather’s estancia in order to recover from a septicemia that had almost killed him. However, this train seems to be not only transversing space but also time as Dahlman finds himself in a small countryside town where things seem not to have changed too much in the last hundred years (the narrator refers to the South as an ancient, firmer world). The same as Araoz, Dahlmann seems to be looking for an older, firmer version of himself (the one represented by his grandfather) as well as a more glorious end to his existence which he supossedly finds when he’s challenged to a knife-duel by one of the locals (one of the most widely accepted interpretations of this story is that which affirms that Dhalmann does not ever leave the hospital and deliriously chooses a better, more honorable way to die).

63 Regarding the connection between names and destinies, it is important to mention that the town where Perlassi/Lépori live(s) has also changed its name from “Colonia la Hermandad” (originally chosen by the first group of anarchist Italian immigrants who settled there) to “O’Connor” (which refers back to the original Irish landowner) after a decree issued by Onganía’s dictatorship. The imposition of a new name marks the beginning of a deep decline in the town’s fortune. As Lépori says: “Fue cambiarle el nombre y se empezó a ir todo al mismísimo carajo” (96). The return to O’Connor symbolizes an oligarchic turn, not just from a footballing perspective (the return to a British rule of this sport) but also from an economic, political and cultural one: Argentinian dictatorial regimes typically brought with them the imposition of brutal neo-liberal economic policies promoting the indiscriminate introduction of imported goods, which led to unemployment, a higher volume of internal migration and the virtual death of small towns like Perlassi’s. It is important to notice that Eduardo Sacheri is not the only writer revisiting the names=destinies theme within Argentine football literature, another good example of this intersection can earlier be found in Fontanarrosa’s short story “Los nombres” although in this case the author focuses his attention on the sonority of players’ last names (the rugged and solid “Camaratta” vs. the cold and uninspiring “García”) as a crucial attribute that marks their destinies as heroes (or not) in football’s radio narratives. In “Campitos” Sasturain supports Fontanarrosa’s theory (and mentions him as the creator): “… yo creo que el arquero, un buen arquero, no es un pibe que nace o se hace sino un nombre que se dice: yo, como mi amigo Fontanarrosa, por ejemplo, tenía un buen nombre para arquero: Campodónico. (215; emphasis in the original)

64 Both O’Connor and Perlassi (along with some minor secondary characters like “el Viejo Medina”) reappear in Sacheri’s latest novel La noche de la usina (2016) but there is no trace of Lepori which could help confirm the theory of Perlassi/Lepori as one person.

65 About the proliferation of experts in the fields of sports and recreation and the consequence this phenomenon entails, Whitson reflects: “In this regard, we must finally see sport science and recreation management as particularly problematic instances of that general phenomenon whereby the rationalization of successive areas of life is presented as self-justifying; and as justifying, moreover, the ascendancy of new groups of "experts," in areas once largely outside the reach of expert control. Experts can indeed, work out how "results" can be achieved or the productivity of the athletic body maximized, but no specialist techniques can determine whether these gains in productivity are worth the less measurable sorts of losses (in autonomy, in opportunities for self-expression, in the quality of human relationships) which typically accompany them” (75).

66 “The first public declaration of the hidden transcript… has a prehistory that explains its capacity to produce political breakthroughs. If, of course, the first act of defiance meets with a decisive defeat it is unlikely to be emulated by others. The courage of those who fail, however, is likely to be noted, admired and even mythologized in stories of bravery, social banditry, and noble sacrifice. They become themselves part of the hidden transcript” (227, Scott). These words help provide a specific relevance and a context to football literature’s tendency to examine and construct an ethics of defeat within this sport by mainly focusing on “losers”.

67 The echoes of Fierro and Cruz’s desertion are unmistakable“… me gusta esa imagen de dos tipos que caminan sin tener la menor idea de hacia dónde carajo sigue la vida, pero que están seguros y aliviados de haberse ido del lugar en el que piensan que estaba mal quedarse sentados” (216).

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68 An equivalent to the corrupt figure of Martín Fierro’s "juez de paz" (as that who imposes the law arbitrarily) in the context of football literature is that of the referee (in Spanish also called árbitros). In his short story “Los Salileros”, Fontanarrosa gives life to an almost extinct breed of players (los salileros) who, after being persecuted and deprived of all their possessions (including Sundays), narrate their misfortunes to a sport journalist. Fontanarrosa creates this fantastic hybrid—a sort of delirious missing link between gauchos and football players— by combining, in his characteristic humorous vein, the lamenting tones of social gauchesca with that of provincial resentment typical of Argentine football: “Y siempre la justicia en contra. Siempre la justicia en contra. Como no podían con nosotros los porteños, nos ponían los jueces en contra. Nosotros eramos buenos, señor, buenazos. Gritábamos nomas, a grito pelado, para alentar a los nuestros. Alguna piedra de vez en cuando, también, cuando ya veíamos que la injusticia era muy grande o los contrarios muy superiores. Esa es la verdad, señor. A nadie le gusta verse humillado en su propio campo. Pero nada más que eso. Y empezaron a perseguirnos, señor. Siempre los jueces en contra, nos penalizaban, señor. Nos echaban jugadores por pavadas, señor. Y los linieres, señor, cierro los ojos y veo todavía esas banderas amarillas o solferinas levantadas, señor, porque alguno de los nuestro había invadido terreno prohibido. ¡Terreno prohibido, señor, si la cancha era nuestra!... siempre los porteños persiguiéndonos… Nosotros somos buenos pera la injusticia era mucha. Los porteños nos perseguían, señor, como a animales. Nos provocaban para que nosotros más nos enojáramos, señor, y más nos castigaran” (45). Other works that deal with this subject are: “Rene o el daño que la television le hizo al fútbol” (Arias), “Gallardo Pérez, referí” (Soriano) and “El juez de línea que corrió por las calles de Lomas y se salvó por un bautismo” (Garofalo).

69 To be sure, one cannot equate the seriousness and the potential grave consequences of literally breaking the law (Cruz’s case) with the breaking of a norm (players should obey their coach) or even a legally binding agreement (a contract in Villar’s case). Nonetheless, Villar’s self-recognition in Perlassi’s bravery and rebelliousness and the moral bond that this act entails, altering forever the trajectory of these two male partners is what allows us to compare this moment in both literary works.

70 This theme is a constant in Sacheri’s literary production as it reappears in several other of his works such as “Esperándolo a Tito”, “La promesa”, Los dueños del mundo and Papeles en el viento. In the last chapter of this study, we will return to the analysis of the role and importance of male allegiances within football narratives.

71 Jorge Luis Borges was one of the supporters of this notion as he affirmed that “Aquí en la Argentina la amistad es quizá más importante que el amor” (qtd in Gamerro 81).

72 Raymond Williams defines residual cultural elements as “effectively formed in the past, but is still active in the cultural process as an effective element of the present” (122). Their relevance in the present is what distinguishes from archaic elements: formed in the past but inactive in the present.

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CHAPTER 4 OF BIRTHS, DEATHS AND RESURRECTIONS IN NEOLIBERAL ARGENTINA. ARGENTINE FOOTBALL LITERATURE AT THE END OF THE MILLENNIUM.

Argentine football in the 1990s: A dream ends, a dream begins

Diego Armando Maradona played his last match as a professional on October

25th, 1997. He did so wearing the colors of Boca Juniors, his childhood team, which, that day defeated their archrivals River Plate by a score of 2-1. The considerably slow, aging and overweight Maradona did not play well and was substituted at halftime by the

(then) young and promising Juan Román Riquelme, a player later considered to be a sort of heir (one of many more to come) to Diego’s crown as the national pibe. Only 5 days later, precisely on his 37th birthday (Christmas day according the Maradonian church’s calendar),1 the golden pibe announced his retirement from professional football.

The void left by his absence was going to prove too big to fill: Maradona was not only the last Argentine (football) hero but also probably the most “real” and authentic of them all. He was not only an erratic individual, a unique and inimitable genius touched

(by his own admission) by God’s grace,2 but also the most potent incarnation and re- actualization of Argentine football’s mythical narratives: he was not like mythical pibes, he was the mythical pibe. As Eduardo Archetti explains: “Maradona is the perfect product of a mythical tradition and is put historically into motion through the emotional contract with the worshippers. The cult of Maradona is the worship of a tradition” (49).

A figure and a tradition that, as we will see through the rest of this chapter, will be intesenly courted by the hegemonic forces of capitalism, always ready to capture and transform it into highly valued commodities, ready to be sold and exhibited (that is, de-

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activated) as part of the new sacred. However, Maradona, as Archetti states, is a figure that transcends its own economic significance and productivity (which are nonetheless very important) and precisely this excessiveness along with the deep emotional contract with Argentine fans will make possible his crowing as a nodal figure in the construction of many of football literature’s counter-hegemonic discourses. Maradona as an irrevent and contradictory voice,3 a picaresque figure par excellence, and above all, an eternal kid who does not relinquish his prerogative to play and dream becomes a potent and revolutionary symbol for this subgenre (especially so after his retirement) as well as another instance that serves to demonstrate the counter-cultural potentiality of the residual.

What is more, Maradona’s retirement from the football fields not only represented a crisis for Argentinians’ ongoing construction of a national football identity but also coincided with the beginning of a social and economic decline that would reach its most dramatic point in the year 2001. By 1997, Argentina was two years into the second period of Carlos Menem’s neoliberal government and the dream of belonging to the select group of nations enjoying the privileges of the so-called “First World” (thanks in part to the delirious peso-dollar peg implemented by Harvard graduate and so-called

“Super-minister” Domingo Felipe Cavallo) was starting to show its uglier face ( a consistent trade deficit, the shutdown of factories, the growth of economy’s informal sector, etc.) and slowly but surely turning into what was going to end up being 2001’s full scale nightmare.

In close connection to this, on Sunday October 26th, 1997, the day after

Maradona’s last match as a professional, Argentina’s ruling party (Partido Justicialista)

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lost the national legislative elections for about a 10 % margin (46.97% to 36.33%). This marked the successful first steps of the political party known as the “Alianza” (short for

“Alianza por el Trabajo, la justicia y la educación”), a coalition between members of the two most important political movements in Argentina: a dissident fraction of

Justicialistas, also known as Peronistas, who thought Menem had betrayed the core values of the party and their historical rivals from the Radical Party (Radicales). This unlikely alliance between historically opposing parties will be crowned with the victory in

1999’s presidential elections only to be forced to leave office, amidst serious social and economic chaos and popular insurgence, just two years later.

In Boquita, a book where he aims to understand the football phenomenon in

Argentina through his own sentimental affiliation with Boca Juniors, Martín Caparrós reflects on the significance of those final days of October of 1997, in the long run, not just the final days of Maradona as a player:

Aquel día no lo sabíamos, pero [Maradona] acababa de jugar su último partido de fútbol oficial. En la semana recrudecieron rumores de doping e, incluso, algunos medios llegaron a contar que su padre había muerto. El Maestro se hartó y dijo que esta vez sí se iba—y, para sorpresa de todos, lo cumplió. Aquel día no lo sabíamos y, además, la atención de muchos estaba en las elecciones legislativas nacionales. Después de ocho años de victorias tremebundas, el gobierno estaba perdiendo inesperadamente (…) Aquel día fue el final de la carrera del Maestro y fue, también, el principio del fin del menemismo. (232-233)

Moreover, as put forward in the introduction to this study, the decade of 1990 witnessed a serious deterioration and in some cases almost the entire dissolution of some of the institutions in charge of producing a sense of “Argentineness”, specifically the state and along with it the public school system and the family. In this context, the media (especially the TV) took over the role of main producer of narratives and football became one of its most successful products and effective social binders. As Alabarces

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eloquently states, football is not the nation but it becomes its easy, universal and pulsatile substitute.

It was also from this decade on that Argentine’s society experienced an emerging process of complete footballization fueled, in big part, by a strong and constant media presence. Several sport channels (with football as its central product) were born: the already disappeared Cable Sport (VCC) and PSN, TyC Sports, ESPN Latinoamerica,

America Sports, Fox Sports, etc. Argentine radio, which had traditionally been in charge of disseminating football matches’ oral narrations throughout the country, saw (or better yet, listened to) the launch of Radio La Red (also in the highly symbolic year of 1997), a

TyC Sports’ owned station entirely dedicated (24 hours a day) to sports.

In addition, Olé, the first Argentinian sport newspaper (with approximately 70 % of its pages reserved for the coverage of national and international football), appeared in 1996 and with the use of an innovative visual design, journalistic informal style and street-like jargon revolutionized the way of doing sport journalism in Argentina, putting an end to a more than 50-year old reign of the magazine El Gráfico which had no option but to cease its publication in 2002 to re-appear later (with much less relevance) as a monthly magazine. The significance of Olé’s arrival was such that almost every single national newspaper as well as numerous regional and local ones were forced to follow suit and include a daily sport supplement (in color in the majority of cases) in order to try to compete with Argentina’s first sport newspaper. 4

Last but not least, the ties between sports (in general) and football (in particular) and politics became stronger than ever. President Menem may have not held the title of the country’s “first sportsman” (that honor was reserved to Juan Domingo Perón,

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another one of this country’s empty signifiers) but he was the first and only head of state to play the whole 90 minutes of a football match for the national team. The game took place on July 22nd, 1989 at the Velez Sarsfield stadium in Buenos Aires and Menem was cheered by about 40,000 people that defying the cold winter night had gathered there to show their support for the newly elected president and be part of a charity (and historic) event. Needless to say, Maradona (a year later appointed by Menem as

Argentina’s sporting ambassador) was also there as was the TV to carry the images of this game to the rest of the nation and the incredulous world. When entering the field, an emotional Menem declared: “Soy presidente de los argentinos y estoy jugando al lado de los astros de la selección nacional de fútbol, más no puedo pedir”. His own

“sueño del pibe” (boy’s dream) had been fulfilled. At this point, there was no way of denying the obvious profitability as well as the enormous visibility and relevance of football within Argentine society. The worst fears of intellectuals such as Carriego,

Martínez Estrada or Sebreli were realized: the much anticipated football “invasion” had taken place leaving no corner of Argentine culture untouched or indifferent to it.

In this context of hyper-footbalization, the proliferation of literary texts that revolve around this sport seemed almost logical. Even though, as shown in the previous chapter, there were writers such as Soriano and Fontanarrosa who consistently (more evident in the case of the latter) produced stories about/with football as a central part of them, it is not going to be until the decade of 1990 that these football short stories will be given a special attention thanks mainly to the publication of compilations that gathered them all (or at least tried to) in single volumes: this is the case of Soriano’s

Cuentos de los años felices (1993) and Memorias del Míster Peregrino Fernández y

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otros relatos de fútbol (1998) (followed by Arqueros, ilusionistas y goleadores in 2006) and Fontanarrosa’s Puro Fútbol (2000).

This decade will also see the return to the topic of football of two of the forerunners of football literature as are Eduardo Galeano and Juan José Sebreli. The former with the best-seller Fútbol a sol y a sombra (1995) later translated to English as

Football in Sun and Shadow (1998) and the latter with his essay La era del fútbol

(1998). In Fútbol a sol y a sombra, Galeano, through a series of exquisitely written vignettes, traces the evolution of football throughout its history, denounces the process of commodification of this sport and highlights the latent spaces for creativity, beauty and resistance football still offers. Galeano’s works about football had been attacked (by

Alabarces among others) for its lack of theoretical rigor and his tendency towards a much romanticized vision of this sport. Although this accusations have a valid point

(Galeano’s writings about football are romantic and he makes his points mainly through the use of anecdotes rather than theory), the symbolic importance of Fútbol a sol y a sombra for the emerging generation of football writers cannot be denied. The fact that

Galeano, being a well-known progressive thinker and a respected writer, devoted an entire book to deal with football gave this sport a literary legitimacy it did not possess up to this point. Moreover, the author’s attempt to salvage the poetic, beautiful and ludic elements of the game in times of football’s commodification and hyper-professionalism is a gesture that will be repeated by many of the post 1990’s Argentine football writers.

Sebreli, on the other hand, continues on La era del fútbol (“coincidentally” published just a couple of months before 1998’s World Cup in France) with his diatribe against this sport that he sees as a reservoir of fanaticism, authoritarianism and racism

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among other evils. This essay is nothing but the re-edition of 1981’s Fútbol y masas with the addition of two new chapters about 1978’s World Cup in Argentina (why not in

1981?) and the figure of the already retired Diego Maradona (which he will attack again in 2009 as part of his Comediantes y mártires: Ensayo contra los mitos). As Alabarces affirms, the problem with Sebreli is not the fact that he despises football as he has all the right to do so, but the fact he does not or cares to understand it. Clinging desperately to the quaint notion of football as opium of the masses, Sebreli sounds and writes like humorless Borges, a self-constructed quixotic figure trapped in a nightmarish footballized world that, like in Cortazar’s canonical short story, is taking over his house.5

It would be easy, and very naïve, to say that the attention and space given to football literature in Argentina from the last decade of the last century onwards is the result of a radical democratization of the Argentine literary circles that were, all of a sudden, eager to hear the voices of a growing number of “popular” writers (among them many former/current sport journalists) who were producing texts centered on ‘the beautiful game’. This is clearly not true, evidenced by the fact that (more than 20 years after this “explosion”) there is not yet a single critical work entirely devoted to this literary subgenre.

However, it would be equally shortsighted to reduce this phenomenon exclusively to cold market variables. It is true, new “football” authors like Sacheri have a numerous readership, but that could also be said of Fontanarrosa and Soriano in the seemingly distant 1980’s. What is more, the publishing house Ediciones al Arco, responsible for publishing many of the new football fiction authors (especially those coming from sport journalism), remains as small, humble and peripheral as it was in its beginnings in the

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year 2003. The truth is, when looking for best-sellers within football literature, one has to focus on non-fiction books such as biographies or autobiographies of famous players or coaches (typically written by either phantom writers or sport journalists), journalistic narratives about popular clubs’ origins and evolution through history and investigative reports uncovering football’s darker side.

It could be affirmed though that the growth of football’s transversal presence and relevance in Argentine society opened the doors for new critical approaches to this phenomenon (especially from the social sciences) and established its legitimacy as an object of studies. Simultaneously, the increasing number of writers who started including football as part of their fictional universes helped dispel (in part) the notion that it was a thematic area not worth exploring by (“serious”) literature. More than twenty years later, when reflecting about this football “explosion”, Pablo Alabarces concludes:

…la explosión futbolística de los años noventa, el crecimiento descomunal del peso del deporte como mercancía mediática —cuantificable en horas de televisión y radio, centimil gráfico, cadenas exclusivas de cable, facturación por publicidad y merchandising, entre otros indicadores irrefutables—, permitió otra configuración del campo. En lo académico, se dio una mayor visibilidad y legitimidad a los estudios sociales del deporte y el fútbol latinoamericanos, paulatinamente más prolíficos en papers y libros, en conferencias y reuniones científicas. En lo literario, apareció una profusión de compilaciones de crónicas, memorias y biografías — deudoras de la práctica periodística, que se volcaba al libro como forma de colonizar un espacio de una supuesta legitimidad mayor a la del periódico—; pero también narraciones, ficcionales o semificcionales, deudoras de la serie que inaugurara el inglés Nick Hornby con Fever Pitch (1992). (n. pag)

Without trying to diminish the impact that Hornby’s acclaimed Fever Pitch and the works of the group of ensuing Brittish socceratti may have had in the Argentine football literary scene, it has by now been extensively shown that this country had its own models and precursors in writers such as Fontanarrosa and Soriano. Furthermore, as

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we previously indicated, Galeano’s Fútbol a sol y a sombra marked a significant milestone in the evolution of football literature in Latin America as it did in Argentina the publishing of Cuentos de fútbol argentino, a book compiled by Fontanarrosa and published by Editorial Alfaguara in the momentous year of 1997. 6 With the possible exception of Santoro’s pioneering but obscure Literatura de la pelota (1971) and former player Jorge Valdano’s Hispano-American compilation Cuentos de fútbol (also published by Alfaguara in Spain in1995), there were no other compilations that brought to light the presence of football short stories within the field of Argentine literature.

Right from the first three lines of the prologue of Cuentos de fútbol argentino,

Fontanarrosa acknowledges his condition of outsider in the literary field as he admits:

‘No crecí queriendo ser como Julio Cortázar. Crecí queriendo ser como Ermindo

Onega. Por eso llegué a la literatura por la puerta de atrás…” (11). The ‘backdoor’ metaphor will also serve to locate the only possible entrance for the emerging subgenre of football literature, a peripheral position that Fontanarrosa inhabited with incomparable grace and intelligence.

About ten lines later, he reinforces this idea by presenting the selected group of writers as a football team, relegating those authors whose works were more closely connected to football (among them Soriano, Sasturain, Dolina and himself) to the ignominious substitute bench: “Entiendo largamente el deseo imperioso del amigo lector por deleitarse con un Juan Sasturain, un Pacho O’Donnell, un Negro Dolina o un

Gordo Soriano. Figuras que quizás, caprichosamente; junto con Constantini, Fernández

Moreno y quien esto escribe; pueden ir al banco de suplentes…” (11). 7 If, as we see, the field is inevitably taken by more “serious” writers, the specialized media, and even

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academics, football literature finds in the oblique perspective of the bench the space and the freedom to produce its own singular approaches to this central cultural phenomenon.

The Maradona factor in football literature

Cuando Maradona, fue por fin, expulsado del Mundial del 94, las canchas de fútbol perdieron a su rebelde más clamoroso. Y también perdieron a un jugador fantástico (…) En el frígido fútbol de fin de siglo, que exige ganar y prohíbe gozar, este hombre es uno de los pocos que demuestra que la fantasía puede también ser eficaz. (236)

In these lines, Eduardo Galeano summarizes part of the appeal of the stocky

Argentinian number 10, that is, basically what we presented in the previous chapter as the main features of a pibe: his rebelliousness and his magical creativity. What is more,

Maradona—Galeano continues—was not only a rebel (and a leftist) within the football field, standing for players’ rights and denouncing “a viva voz las cosas que el poder manda callar” (232). 8 This insolence, this crime of having a voice (and using it extensively), was not going to be forgiven by the powerful “puppeteers” of FIFA which persecuted him for years (banning him in several instances), until he finally retired from the professional practice of football.

Despite Galeano’s known tendency towards romanticism and Maradona’s own contradictory tendencies (for example, defying FIFA and supporting Menem’s neoliberal government in the same decade), the weight, relevance and fertility of this player’s figure (both metaphorically and literally) cannot be denied, and this is what transforms him into a potent star around which many football fiction writers will gravitate. This is already evident in 1997’s Cuentos de fútbol argentino, where José Pablo Feinmann

(“Dieguito”), Guillermo Saccommano (“Transito”) and Rodrigo Fresán (“Final”) arrange their stories around the Maradona persona/myth. While Fresán presents the magical

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feats of Diego in Mexico as both background noise and curative treatment for his recent divorce, Feinmann and Saccomanno focus on the off-the-field football star, as shown and consumed on TV (Feinmann) and on the street posters of an infamous anti-drug campaign (1996’s “Sol sin Droga”) during Menem’s government.

Some quick notes about these stories; Maradona is presented in all of them essentially as a mediated individual, either as a via satellite miracle-maker equally capable of mesmerizing an intellectual with no previous football interest or experience

(in Fresan’s “Final”) or an eight-year-old doll-loving idiot (in Feinmann’s “Dieguito”) or as a time-frozen and multiplied smiling face captured and reproduced in a million posters invading the streets of Buenos Aires (in Saccomanno’s “Transito”). The only material appearance of the flesh and bone Maradona occurs when he is already presumably dead, when Dieguito (the idiot in Feinmann’s story) finds his idol’s deteriorated body moments after being crushed by a train when trying to cross the railways with his luxurious car while the rail barriers were down (the ineffable pibe fulfilling his destiny by dying while attempting to break the law). 9 Feinmann’s metaphor is strong: now that the national hero is down, it is time for us (the football idiots?) to try to re-assemble his figure. This is exactly what young Dieguito struggles to do in a literal way by carrying

Maradona’s body to his house’s attic and—using his doll-maker expertise—attempting to sew him back to life: in his own gerund-ridden speech “Dieguito armando Maradona”

(Dieguito assembling Maradona). What is more, if we decide to follow Agamben’s theory that explains and understands capitalism as a gigantic profanatory and sacralizing machine as it “does not simply profane the sacred or sacralise the profane but rather sacralises its own profanation, thereby fortifying the reign of modern nihilism”

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(87), what young Dieguito does to Maradona’s body (clearly both a product and a sacred site) is to render it inoperative by suspending its canonical function and at the same time returning its lost potentiality (always present in inoperativeness) by giving him a new use (in this case, that of a doll). Having this in mind, Feimann’s metaphor can be proven at this point to be twice as potent and appropriate as the recuperation of the freedom and potentiality of play in times where this has become more and more scarce, not only describes the result of this character’s morbid and innocent actions but also one of the main goals of the entire football literature subgenre.

Meanwhile, Saccomanno cleverly plays with the different meanings of his protagonist’ name (originally “Tránsito” then shortened to “Transi”) associating it with

Maradona’s more decadent and “mortal” side. Young Tránsito (after Tránsito

Cocomarola, a popular folklorist from Corrientes), moves from the northeastern of

Argentina to the big capital of Buenos Aires in search of the dream of becoming a famous football player:

A los diez años, el profesor de gimnasia y entrenador del equipo de fútbol le garantizó que tenía pasta de campeón y que podía ser como Maradona. Tránsito se daba cuenta que no iba a serle fácil ser como Maradona quedándose donde estaba. Y se escape. (189)

Once in Buenos Aires, Tránsito’s optimism rapidly dwindles as he realizes the opportunities for a street boy to become a football star are close to zero and understands that, in order to survive in this monster of a city, he will need to make concessions and compromise—in Argentine slang transar—thus adopting his new name. Transi, like most “transas”, navigates through the more informal/illegal circles of

Argentina’s pauperized economy and has basically two occupations: during the day he opens and closes taxis’ doors for money and at night he becomes a male prostitute

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(ironically, also referred to as a taxi-boy) whose clients are mainly homosexual men:

“Transi, también le dicen los putos de Lavalle, Santa Fe y Marcelo T., cuando busca ganarse unos pesos más. Con los putos se gana más, pero conviene andar con cuidado…” (187). 10

Maradona haunts Transi in his dreams, transformed into a Quiroguian venomous snake that bites his right foot and stops him from reaching his dream( just as it cut short his mother’s life), as well as in his waking hours, from the streets posters from which he, proudly wearing a promotional T-shirt, endorses Menem’s government anti-drug campaign. Transi pulls his knife and shreds the idol’s smiling face to pieces. Life is sad and dangerous in 1990s Argentina and even Maradona has switched shirts; revealing himself as nothing but another transa.

However, arguing about Maradona and his chaotic life is another one of

Argentina’s favorite pastimes and football literature is no stranger to this peculiar national habit. Eduardo Sacheri confirms this in “Me van a tener que disculpar” one of his first and best-known football short stories when the narrator affirms: “… hablar de él, entre argentinos, es casi uno de nuestros deportes nacionales. Para enzalzarlo hasta la estratosfera, o para condenarlo a la parrilla perpetua de los infiernos, los argentinos gustamos, al parecer, de convocar su nombre y su memoria.” (53).

Written in 1995, read for the first time in Alejandro Apo’s radio show Todo con afecto in 1996 and published in 2000’s Esperándolo a Tito and 2013’s La vida que pensamos, “Me van a tener que disculpar” is both a diatribe against the fanatical admirers as well as the implacable detractors of the legendary number ten and an

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attempt to rationally articulate the narrator’s own suspension of all critical judgment and ethical coherence when dealing with Maradona’s figure:

Sigo siendo incapaz de juzgarlo con la misma vara con la que juzgo al resto de los seres humanos. Y ojo que no solo es un pobre muchacho saturado de virtudes. Tiene muchos defectos (…) Pese a todo, señores, sigo sintiéndome incapaz de juzgarlo. Mi juicio crítico se detiene ante él, y lo dispensa. (52)

The author’s exceptional treatment of Maradona stems from a debt he feels he has with the emblematic football player. A debt that originated on June 22nd, 1986 in the torrid midday of Mexico city, a day in which Maradona entered immortality (see also

Casciari’s “10.6 segundos”) by scoring the twentieth century’s most beautiful and symbolically charged goal (or we should say, pair of goals) against the English team:

“… la vida es así, a veces se combina para alumbrar momentos como éste. Instantes después de los cuales nada vuelve a ser como era. Porque no puede. Porque todo ha cambiado demasiado. Porque por la piel y por los ojos nos ha entrado algo de lo cual nunca vamos a lograr desprendernos” (55).

As the narrator explains, the political resonance of this match was obvious: the

Falklands/Malvinas war had taken place only four years earlier and the pain and the pain and the frustration were still fresh in the minds of most Argentinians. In this context, something as banal as football becomes a much more emotionally charged territory, a communal and potent channel of expression:

No es un partido. Mejor dicho: no es solo un partido. Hay algo más. Hay mucha rabia, y mucho dolor, y mucha frustración acumuladas en todos esos tipos que miran la tele. Son emociones que no nacieron por el fútbol. Nacieron en otro lado. En un sitio mucho más terrible, mucho más hostil, mucho más irrevocable. Pero a nosotros, a los de acá, no nos cabe otra que contestar en una cancha, porque no tenemos otro sitio, porque somos pocos, porque estamos solos, porque somos pobres. (55)

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It is precisely in the midst of this rarified scenario that “he” (Sacheri, the same as

Casciari almost twenty years later, does not need to mention Maradona by name) humiliates the English “big Other”, first by stealing from them, illegally using his hand

(from then on known as “the hand of God”) to score the match’s first goal and later by embarrassing them, single-handedly dribbling past six incredulous English players before delicately sending the ball to the net. As he narrates Maradona’s second goal,

Sacheri does not shy away from employing the notion of football as a metaphor of war, in this case, a little, insignificant war won by an artist dancing to the idiosyncratic (thus hardly comprehensible for “the others”) music of gambetas: 11

Arranca desde el medio, desde su campo, para que no queden dudas que lo que está por hacer no lo ha hecho nadie. Y aunque va de azul, va con la bandera. La lleva en la mano, aunque nadie la vea. Empieza a desparramarlos para siempre. Y los va liquidando uno por uno, moviéndose al calor de una música que ellos, pobres giles, no entienden. (56)

The narrator understands the obvious risks of mixing two seemingly disparate concepts/areas as football and nation or fatherland but he decides to— actually cannot help but—assume them: “Y aunque yo sea de aquellos a quienes les desagrada la mezcla de la nación con el deporte, en este caso acepto todos los riesgos y las potenciales sanciones” (54). The fact of the matter is that when dealing with the figure of Maradona (especially within the Argentine context) it seems hard for writers to abstain from (at least partly) doing it from an emotional realm. However, this should not come as a surprise as it confirms and reinforces Archetti’s theory that bases and explains not just the popularity of the pibe from Villa Fiorito but also the intensity and the extensity of the devotion for this football player on his remarkable capacity of producing collective joy:

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The fond remembrance of his achievements however does not explain his almost sacred status and cult in Argentina. (…) His possession of the human gift of producing and giving joy lies behind his incomparable cult. Being the cause of individual feelings of joy and enabling a collective expression is Maradona’s precious secret, a very simple one indeed. (44)

What is more, the range of Maradona’s impact within Argentine society is such that it makes possible a semi-consonance between two antipodean writers such as

Pablo Alabarces and Eduardo Sacheri, whose entire work Alabarces recommends to just briefly revise before discarding it forever.12 When dealing with the ignominious memory of the national team’s triumph in the World Cup of Argentina 1978, Alabarces affirms that the only possible way of trying to clean that “ethical stain” (Argentina’s

World Cup was organized, overseen and, some say, fixed by the most vicious dictatorship in the history of this country) is highly improbable, that is, to renounce to this title and give the Cup and the medals away:

… la persistencia de una memoria simultáneamente confusa, culposa y fragmentaria, que no puede ni podrá, resolverse en la única dirección éticamente necesaria: renunciar a ese “triunfo”, devolver la Copa y las medallas, ganarlas de nuevo en buena ley, de ser posible de visitante. Como hizo Maradona, solito en 1986. Y todavía nos preguntamos por qué lo amamos. (141)

It is very interesting to notice that despite the fact that Alabarces chooses to center on a much less arguable and easily certifiable achievement—the Argentine team

(mainly thanks to Maradona’s brilliant performances) becoming football’s world champions in the distant Mexican stadiums vs. the Argentinians, led by Maradona’s genius, winning a crucial and highly symbolic match against the English team (although the symbolism of it is debatable and open to various interpretations)—the emotional contract Archetti refers to is still present. People do not seem to simply regard, esteem

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or admire Maradona due to his footballing feats but straightforwardly and unconditionally love him for bringing fleeting yet much-needed joy into their lives.

A star to guide us through darkness: Maradona in times of dictatorship

In “Bautismos”, a short story exquisitely written by Walter Vargas, two idle and very horny teenagers witness, essentially by accident, the first-squad “baptism” of a pubescent Diego Maradona in a friendly match between the teams of Argentinos Jrs and Estudiantes de la Plata. The city is La Plata; the month, September; the year, the tragic 1976. They are only days away from the beginning of the process of persecution and infamous “disappearance” of a group of ten “subversive” teenagers (from

September 8th to September 21st)—presumably targeted for having participated in public protests demanding the introduction of a reduced bus fares for high school students13

(Boleto Escolar Secundario) — later to be remembered as “La noche de los lápices”

(Night of the pencils).14

This match, which has been forgotten, logically eclipsed by Diego’s official debut on October 20th of that same year, actually took place on September 5th 1976.15 In “Un sueño de barrilete” (A kite’s dream) a half-chronicle, half-interview that the journalist

Horacio Pagani wrote in November 17th, 1976 (published in that day’s edition of the newspaper Clarín), 16 Maradona makes reference to the friendly match that Vargas rescued from oblivion: “Un día fuimos a La Plata a jugar un amistoso contra Estudiantes y cuando bajaba del micro el técnico me avisó que iba a estar en el banco de Primera.

Jugué cinco minutos”. We are in the presence of another one of Argentine Football literature’s distinctive characteristics, that is, the ability to go above and beyond the journalistic coverage of sports (many times occupying an in-between kind of space),

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turning their attention to “non-events” like this one and capturing their human, social and intra-historical significance.

In the now highly-collectible article, Pagani describes the state of Argentine football in that period as “anemic” and the 16 year-old Maradona is presented as an illusion, a dream, which feeds the collective imaginary of the entire “football nation”. A dream that, especially in those somber days, only a teenager can be brave enough to entertain: “Hay que soñar para retomar la fe. Entonces nos meteremos sin miedos en el mundo de la adolescencia. En la magia de los "caños", las pisadas, las gambetas y el atrevimiento futbolísticos” (no page, emphasis added).

It is precisely dreaming, as they walk through the streets of La Plata, what the two teenagers in Vargas’ story continually do. They dream of the beautiful spring to come—“Mirá que linda está la tarde, me dijo Roberto. Y me dijo, vamos a tener una linda primavera, una primavera con mucho sol y el agua necesaria, una primavera cabal, así se dice, ¿no? Y no me pude negar” (103)—, of all the women they are going to have sex with (“la caballo verde”, “la Chuchi”), of summer and with it the annual opportunity of spying the girls wearing their swimming suits, letting them feed their erotic fantasies—“La de bikini azul está ocho puntos, me da mínimo para tres pajas. La de enteriza blanca está ocho cincuenta, hoy no bajo de cuatro” (106).

However, all this daydreaming is abruptly interrupted by the presence of a police cordon: “…Roberto desaceleró su tranco apurado, metió nerviosamente una mano en el bolsillo y me preguntó: -- ¿Trajiste la cédula? (…) En la rotonda de 122 y 60 había cuatro patrulleros y un cerco policial. Paraban a los autos, a algunos ocupantes los hacían bajar, revisaban papeles, hurgaban baúles” (103-104). After showing their IDs

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and receiving the obligatory admonition by the person in charge of the police operation17—“… no hagan boludeces, eh. ¿Entendido?” (104)—the two boys realize they have just gone through their own kind of sordid baptism: “- Es la primera vez, che. -

¿Es la primera vez qué? –Que nos paran los milicos (…) es la primera vez desde que subieron” (104).

One of Vargas’s major accomplishments in this story is the vividness with which he is able to show us the everyday, routinely aspects of living under a dictatorship; a subtle and ominous presence working in the background of an otherwise sunny and peaceful Sunday afternoon. Another one is his ability to uncover the density and significance of even the most seemingly trivial actions, the characters’ dexterous inhabitance of the microscopic instances of power within society, the creation of almost imperceptible pockets of resistance.

For this he resorts to the intrepidness of pibes, neither afraid to verbalize their raging, imaginative (and up to that point mainly imaginary) sexuality in times of strict state censorship and imposed decorum, nor to express their simple yet powerful and insightful political views: “- Qué cosa estos milicos hijos de puta, ¿no? Porque San

Martín era milico… -… y no era hijo de puta—completé. – Claro. Y Perón también era milico. – Ahí está, ¿ves? Perón también era milico… pero seguro no tan hijo de puta

(…) Perón era un milico diferente, Perón era otra cosa” (105). However, as Pagani indicates in his article, one has to dream in order to regenerate the faith, and this is by far the most subversive of all actions these pibes (the story’s two protagonists and the young Maradona) perform.

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After going through the police control and spending some time talking, laughing and fooling around in the park in front of the School of Medicine of La Plata’s University, the teenagers decide to head to the stadium of Estudiantes de La Plata as they know a friendly match is being played there and assume the doors should be opened as the game must be reaching its final stage. Their assumption turns out to be correct and they unimpededly join a small crowd of fans being bored to death by a slow and uneventful match: “Habíamos llegado en mal momento. El partido era redomadamente malo y se encaminaba hacia un empate módico, lánguido, vacuo, incapaz de emocionar a interesados directos o simples espectadores neutrales, fundamentalistas de la pasión por el fútbol, incondicionales” (108). Enter Maradona.

When spotting the stocky Diego (“un morocho de rulitos, más bien bajo, de muslos macetudos”) getting ready to enter the field, the teenagers first recognize him due to his ephemeral participation as a ball juggler in a famous Argentine TV Show

(“Sábados circulares”) to then acknowledge him as a fellow generational member, a pibe in a world of adults: “¡Pero es más pibito que nosotros! (…) Mirá la cara de pendejito que tiene. El técnico debe querer probarlo para ver si se la banca” (108). The idea of a rite of passage is clear in this fragment, Maradona has to prove his coach (and everybody else for that matter) he can perform adequately among adults, that he has not only the necessary skills but also the required courage and endurance.18

As soon as he gets the ball, two experienced and tough defensive players of the opposing team (Miguel Angel Reguero and Carlos Pachamé) approach him with the unmistakable intention of intimidating the young Diego, knocking him down while also,

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as they were at it, trying to strip him of the ball. In short, a typical “welcome” to the rough world of adult football; Diego Maradona’s own baptism:

El tres de Argentinos le había pasado la pelota al morocho de rulos y a su encuentro iban Reguera y Pachamé. Iban a su manera, como lo que eran, dos leones hambrientos, sedientos de sangre, entendidos, además, de que no estaba en juego una pelota cualquiera, así nomás, sino una pelota que definía claramente la línea que separaba el honor de la humillación. ¿O se iban a dejar ningunear por ese mocoso que a lo mejor todavía juntaba figuritas? (109; emphasis added)

Once again we find the notion of the duel and the ensuing menace to the participants’ personal honor reverberating throughout football narratives; in this particular situation with the added (central) ingredient of a generational showdown.

More importantly, for the purpose of our analysis, the rough and violent nature of

Maradona’s adversaries in this story not only can be said to typify the state of Argentine football in the mid 1970’s, but also the temperament of a society as a whole.19

“Naturally”, Diego responds to this threat by dribbling past his opponents, toying with them, making them look ridiculous thus reverting their age statuses:

… el morocho de rulos pasó entre los dos con la pelota estampada en su botín zurdo y a la salida del zigzag se la llevó por la raya. Reguera cayó sentado como un bebé que juega con el balde y la palita en el charco de la playa. Pachamé quedo con una rodilla apoyada en el suelo, como Colón en tierra americana, pero con pantalones cortos negros y una camiseta roja y blanca a rayas verticales. (109)

Nevertheless, in this context, the emergence of Maradona represents more than just the arrival of another Argentinian dribbler, plentiful up until the 1950’s and always part of the national footballing landscape. As previously stated, Maradona incarnates the mythical construction of the figure of the pibe in the realm of Argentine football, but crucially, as a prototypical pibe, he also embodies the quintessential defiance to rules and authorities; a rebellious individual (a teenager who else?) who dares to dream (and

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play!) in times of death and nightmares, discreetly camouflaged under the quiet monotony of a sunny Sunday afternoon:

Nos reímos. Caminamos alrededor del lago. Nos cruzamos con decenas de matrimonios que paseaban con decenas de chicos que lamian helados en palitos o comían pochoclos (…) El sol ya no castigaba tanto y prometía ser un lindo atardecer de domingo. Nos sentamos en un banco enfrente del zoológico.

-Che, Robert, ¿todavía estarán los milicos en la 122?-mientras tanteaba con disimulo, en el bolsillo izquierdo, la cédula.

- Ojalá que no. Igual esperemos un rato. Total que apuro tenemos. La Caballo verde ya ni debe estar.

-Che, el pendejo de Argentinos, el de rulos, ése juega, eh…

-Juega. (109; emphasis added)

At this point in our work, it would be frankly obvious and a bit redundant to say (to repeat, actually) that any articulation of the figure of Maradona that restricted its approach to Diego’s relevance as a footballer would be just capturing part of the phenomenon (as essential as this part is, though) for Diego Maradona’s symbolic resonance (at least in Argentina) greatly exceeds the realm of sports. For instance,

Maradona’s two goals versus England not only were able to encompass and sustain a central part of Argentine football’s mythical narratives (Argentine football players— invariably pibes at heart—are eminently cunning and unpredictably creative and this makes them unique), but also, at the same time, responded to some perceived traits of a constructed notion of “Argentineness” (as presented, for example, in gauchesca literature to be later collectively adopted and propagated) such as, Argentinians’ distinctive adaptability, improvisational ability and individualistic tendencies.

What is more, in the latter part of his career, Maradona will embody another one of Martin Fierro’s (and Argentine culture) central themes by adopting the role of the

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victim of an unjust, corrupt and abusive justice system, by the name of FIFA, that would punish him for the audacity of raising his subaltern voice against power20. Alabarces— who sees Maradona (the same as Martín Fierro) as an empty signifier, always ready to be filled and appropriated by, typically, conflicting hegemonic powers— 21 reflects on the powerful intertextual resonance of Diego’s off-the-field role:

…la nueva situación que se genera tras su suspensión, al mismo tiempo que lo excluye del territorio donde su producción de sentidos parecía más rica—el estadio—, lo colocó en un lugar más interesante: la víctima que se rebela contra el poder. En esa victimización Maradona trabaja además con un contenido fuerte de las tradiciones populares argentinas: el rebelde perseguido por la justicia, que no es justa porque está dominada por los poderosos. Esa tradición, que por otra parte es común a las culturas populares, se remonta en la Argentina al texto fundacional de su cultura: el poema gauchesco Martín Fierro. (159; emphasis added)

Diego Maradona is pure excessiveness, the nodal point of most contemporary football narratives in Argentina. That is why, it should not be surprising that his creativeness exceeds his bodily performances within a football field; that is, Maradona is much more than an incredibly gifted left foot, he is also a voice: a very resounding one. In his autobiography Yo soy el Diego de la gente, he acknowledges and embraces this characterization:

Dicen que yo hablo de todo, y es cierto (…) ¿Porque salí de Villa Fiorito no puedo hablar? Yo soy la voz de los sin voz, la voz de mucha gente que se siente representada por mí, yo tengo un micrófono delante y ellos en su puta vida podrán tenerlo. A ver si se entiende de una vez: yo soy el Diego. (133)

Maradona’s loquacity and verbal inventive helped to give birth to a large number of phrases that immediately resonated with his audience and were thus rapidly incorporated into a sort of popular national inventory (again, very much like what happened with fragments of Hernández’ Martín Fierro or Juan Domingo Perón’s classic speeches). 22 One of the most memorable of this long list of phrases was uttered on the

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occasion of his farewell match in the Boca Juniors stadium, on November 10th, 2001— coincidentally and very significantly, “Tradition’s Day” in the Argentine calendar, a national holiday celebrating José Hernández birth—only 40 days before President De la

Rua’s resignation and helicopter escape from his office in Argentina’s Casa Rosada.

There, an exhausted and very emotional Maradona took the stage after the match had concluded and in front of 50,000 people declared: “El fútbol es el deporte más lindo y más sano del mundo (…) Porque se equivoque uno no tiene que pagar el fútbol. Yo me equivoqué y pagué, pero la pelota no se mancha”.23 The “Golden Pibe” had come full circle. Leaving his own demons (as well as his gigantic ego) behind, he surrendered to the beauty and the innocence of the game, paying homage to the ball as the unblemished and indisputable center of this sport. No doubt, Borocotó would have been very proud.

Christmas Eve in Villa Fiorito or how to resurrect a dream

This unblemished ball (or the idea of it) is at the core of Sergio Olguín’s novel El equipo de los sueños (2004), a football bildungsroman in times of crisis. Olguín cleverly turns Maradona’s original, metaphorical and unstainable ball into a real and historical one: young Diego Maradona’s first ball, a sort of Holy Grail of Argentine football, which in the midst of social and economic chaos and corruption, has been stolen in order to be sold to the highest bidder. Fourteen year old Ariel, the story’s protagonist, is the one

(along with a group of friends) in charge of recovering this highly symbolic ball and with it, salvaging what is left of football’s—and metonymically society’s— integrity in the aftermath of 2001’s Argentinian collapse.

The story’s plot can be summarized as follows: Ariel, a fatherless teenager who lives in Buenos Aires’s populous neighborhood of Lanús, falls in love with Patricia, a

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skinny teenager whom he meets while working at his uncle’s produce shop. The problem arises when we found that even though Patricia’s house is only blocks away from Ariel’s shop, that real, insignificant distance becomes a seemingly insurmountable obstacle as she happens to live on the other side of the invisible line that divides Lanús from the shantytown of Villa Fiorito. The—real and figurative—trip that Ariel embarks on when Patricia enters his life leads him through a process of demolition of some sturdy societal/geographical barriers that had previously constrained him, seriously limiting and inhibiting his personal development. By the end of the novel, the protagonist reflects on his evolution, thus closing the bildungsroman, when he admits: “Entré a la villa sin darme cuenta de que entraba a la villa. El límite se había perdido para mí. Ya no significaba nada” (197).

However, what makes Olguin’s novel special and significant for this study is not its adherence to the structure and typical features of the bildungsroman but its incursion in what could be described as a football bildungsroman. Football is of capital importance to the advancement and understanding of the plot as it is virtually everywhere in the story: in the numerous conversations/arguments between Ariel and his friends

(markedly those where they select and compare their “dream teams”), as the single space where Ariel could intimately connect with his absent father, as a game, a pastime and a sport, at all times on TV, on the Internet (where the boys go to vote for Maradona in FIFA’s election of footballer of the century) and also from the posters in Ariel’s room.

Nevertheless, nowhere is football more present than in the “forbidden” territory of Villa Fiorito; Diego Maradona’s mythical place of origin (his own Bethlehem) and (one of many) dampened but still resistant reservoir of dreams for Buenos Aires’ excluded

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classes. This is also the birthplace and current residence of Luis (Patricia’s father), a pauperized and lonely odd job man, once a promising project of a footballer and, more importantly, little Diego Maradona’s childhood local idol.24 The admiration Diego had for

Patricia’s father moves the seven-year-old Maradona to give him his first ball as token of his respect and affection when he learns that Luis will not be able to keep playing due to a strange case of infantile paralysis: “Es lo único que tengo. Por eso te la quiero dar.

Cuando juego siento que soy como vos, siempre voy a querer jugar como vos” (66).

From that moment up until it is stolen by Patricia’s mom (following the directions of her new partner), Luis clings to the small ball as a priceless treasure, a round breeding ground of illusions: “Una vez—me dijo Patricia—vino un tano y le ofreció cien mil dólares si se la vendía. Pero mi papá no quiso. Él dice que las ilusiones no se venden.

Que a los sueños hay que guardarlos para que crezcan y se cumplan” (67).

Interestingly, British writer and journalist Jimmy Burns, (author of Hand of God:

The Life of Diego Maradona, a very successful and controversial unauthorized biography of the Argentine football star) echoes Luis’s perception of the ball although he links this object’s magical status to Maradona’s humble origins in Villa Fiorito: “When you’re born into poverty, a toy, any toy, is steeped in magic. In the shacks where Diego

Maradona spent his childhood years, there were neither teddy bears nor electronic games, but there was a leather football” (9). What is more, the original ball is also referred by Maradona himself in his autobiography and the idea of it as an enchanted treasure reappears: “La primera pelota que tuve fue el regalo más lindo que me hicieron en mi vida: me la dio mi primo Beto, Beto Zarate, hijo de la tía Nena. Era una número uno de cuero; yo tenía tres años y dormí abrazándola toda la noche” (11). 25

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In El equipo de los sueños, the ball’s disappearance triggers Ariel’s crusade into

Villa Fiorito in order to recover it. Even though the journey into the slums’ uncharted territory is teeming with perils, Ariel’s resolve never falters:

Fue espontaneo. No lo pensé pero si lo hubiera pensado hubiera llegado a la misma conclusión… más tarde iba a encontrarme con mis amigos… ellos no me iban a fallar nunca… por eso no podía fallarles a mis seres queridos (…) se trataba de la pelota de Maradona. Y no podía dejar que su pelota estuviera en manos de delincuentes. (92-93)

Maradona’s original ball stands a symbol of purity, innocence and loyalty to our dreams and feelings and the protagonist addresses all these aspects when providing an explanation for his seemingly irrational and very risky resolution. Additionally, going back to Agamben’s theory of profanations, recapturing this ball also means fighting back capitalism’s tendency to transform it into another one of its sacralized profanations – profanated by turning it into a commodity and then sacralized and consecrated by focusing mainly on its exhibition value (specifically in the media but also in the new and celebrated football museums— canceling the potentiality for its free use. This ball is also a metaphor of one of this subgenre’s main common objectives, that is, to rescue what is left of the game of football and bring it back to its original communal territory and be able to rediscover its seemingly lost potentiality. For Diego’s ball not only belongs to

Luis or his daughter but to the entire community who can use it as it pleases: as a toy, an amulet or a crucial reminder of the importance of dreaming; a lot like what happens with Diego Maradona’s himself (and most times in spite of himself). As we will see,

Sergio Olguín also uses this young-adult novel to explore the relevance and validity of

Maradona’s emotional contract with the Argentine people in the somber post-Diego era.

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Spatial considerations

The novel replicates the structure of both a football match and a football tournament’s knockout phase, that is, it is divided into two parts: the first one taking place mostly outside of the slums of Villa Fiorito (playing as locals) while the second one deals with Ariel and his friends’ initiatory journey through Maradona’s birthplace in search of the ball (doing it as visitors). Needless to say, this also emphasizes the vital importance that breaking the geographical/social barriers of Villa Fiorito has for the protagonist’s process of learning, development and maturation (an internal sort of journey).

Faithful to the characteristical features of young-adult novels, the teenagers’ journey through Fiorito is full of dangerous and fantastic adventures. Right from the beginning, they feel they have entered an alternate dimension; a place where the chances of celebrating the upcoming Christmas seem very slim—“- Si Papá Noel llega a venir acá, se muere de calor- dijo Ezequiel secándose el sudor de la cara con la mano. –Papá Noel no viene nunca por acá- agregó Pablo…” (101)—and the intense heat, added to their increasing anxiety and fear, makes them believe they are stepping into a conurban’s version of Hell:

El sol pegaba duro a pesar de que todavía no eran las diez de la mañana y nada parecía más inadecuado que el pronóstico del tiempo que anunciaba lluvias para esa Nochebuena. Desde el piso surgía un calor tan fuerte como del cielo. Había muy poca sombra y las chapas de las casas hacían calentar más el ambiente. Calor de arriba, de abajo y de los costados.

-Un infierno, viejo—dije yo… (101-102)

Following Henri Lefebvre theory of space according to which this should not be thought of as something essential, static or given and always seen as the result of a

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social construction, a continuous process of struggle and negotiation between perceived, conceived and lived space,26 we can see how the story’s protagonists, despite being empirically grounded for the first time in the—up to this point—purely imagined and constructed space of Villa Fiorito, cannot help but have their first impressions of this new site heavily influenced and informed by a hegemonic narrative that seeks to promote the naturalization of difference and the stigmatization of these occult and liminar territories, typically characterized as big hot pockets of crime surrounding big cities. That also explains the boys’ incredulity when, ten minutes into their walk through the unpaved streets of Villa Fiorito, they encounter a large group of concrete houses (with small gardens and unlikely Christmas decorations ) and naturally find them out of place:

… por ese lado la mayoría de las casas eran de cemento o prefabricadas, incluso tenían un terreno adelante y hasta algún adorno navideño en la puerta; no parecía estrictamente una villa miseria sino un barrio de casas humildes con sus paredes pintadas y el revoque fino en casi todos los frentes. (102)

The city, which frames and plays an important role in this story, fits the

"paisaje después del ajuste" (the landscape after the economic adjustment) that Beatriz

Sarlo depicts in his book La ciudad vista, where she characterizes the post-nineties

Argentine society—specifically the large group of socially and geographically displaced persons ( a direct consequence of the zealous and merciless strand of neo-liberalism implemented by the government of Carlos Menem and continued during Fernando de la

Rua’s short and ignominious stint as president of Argentina)—as one without hope, consisting of people who can only rarely prevent the failure to which they seem invariably destined.

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Within this context, the urban geographical map closely reflects Argentina’s societal fragmentation. As Sarlo illustrates, “Se han reconfigurado las ciudades, divididas por barreras culturales intimidatorias y por las diferencias en los consumos materiales” (93). As anticipated, this divide and the creation of internal frontiers is not arbitrary at all and responds to a clear intention on the part of the hegemonic powers to naturalize class and societal differences and so maintain their privileged status. As

Edward Soja explains:

The multisidedness of power and its relation to a cultural politics of difference and identity is often simplified into hegemonic and counter- hegemonic categories. Hegemonic power, wielded by those in positions of authority, does not merely manipulate naively given differences between individuals and social groups, it actively produces and reproduces difference as a key strategy to create and maintain modes of social and spatial division that are advantageous to its continued empowerment and authority. 'We" and "they" are dichotomously spatialized and enclosed in an imposed territoriality of apartheids, ghettos, barrios, reservations, colonies, fortresses, metropoles, citadels, and other trappings that emanate from the center-periphery relation. In this sense, hegemonic power universalizes and contains difference in real and imagined spaces and places. (87)

Accordingly, in the first part of the book, Ariel addresses the powerful nature of these barriers, separating the accessible from the inaccessible and even more crucially, the narratable from the inenarrable:27 “Cada vez que ella [Patricia] atravesaba la primera línea de casas de la villa entraba en una historia que me dejaba afuera, una historia inaccesible para mí y que, a pesar de mí, a pesar de ella, nos alejaba” (73).That is why, having the courage to trespass these intimidating barriers and doing it with their eyes wide open, will prove to be not only a learning but also a liberating experience for the novel’s protagonist who will be able to symbolically tear apart the mass-mediatic map shrouding the territory. As Esther Labovitz indicates, “the road from nothingness to selfhood is traversed in the quest” (18) and precisely this interconnection between the

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quest and the road (the latter characterized by Bakhtin in his concept of the chronotope as a meeting place where time fuses together with space facilitating the collapse of social distances) is a decisive element in Ariel’s (and metonymically the whole nation’s) process of maturation and expansion of horizons. 28

The Villa Fiorito that Ariel and his friends discover is ripe with a varied assortment of improbable dangers (a pack of hungry wild dogs, a pond infested by aggressive white rats, several teenage gangs, an informal brothel masked as an innocent kiosk, a paramilitary/vigilante faction that terrorizes the population, etc.), but is also the only home for a large group of working families looking for a new start, exiled from the city as a result of a long decade of Neo-liberalist policies that contributed to

Argentina society’s restructuration and ended with the country’s most serious economic crisis of its young history. In his book El país de las maravillas: los argentinos en el fin del milenio, Mempo Giardinelli uses data from the Argentina’s National Statistic and

Census Institute, INDEC (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos de la República

Argentina) to illustrate this situation:

Los datos del llamado ajuste estructural de la década de los ’90 son impresionantes. Mientras por un lado fue visible un acelerado crecimiento de muchos índices económicos, la agudización de las desigualdades muestra heridas y daños absolutamente escandalosos para cualquier sociedad que todavía se estime a sí misma: el 10% más rico de la población argentina se apropió en 1995 de aproximadamente el 37% del total de la riqueza generada mientras que el 30% más pobre del país absorbió solamente el 8%. Los ingresos del 10% más rico fueron 22 veces superiores a los ingresos del 10% más pobre (esta relación era de 15 veces en 1985, y de 12,5 veces en 1974). (24)

The consequences of Argentina’s neoliberal nightmare can be found everywhere in the novel. For instance, there is not a single mention of any type of industrial activity in the area the story takes place: not a single factory, workshop or even repair shop.

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Instead, all we find is a depressed, informal and predominantly service economy: Ariel and his uncle’s grocery store as well as the one inside Fiorito, the old lady’s kiosk/brothel, a record shop, an ice-cream shop and, of course, a central mall. This type of economic scenario transforms the traditional male provider into a severely endangered species as demonstrated by the cases of Ariel and Patricia’s heads of their families which have to resort to their most extreme ingenuity to try to keep these roles afloat. Ariel refers to his uncle (Roberto, also known as “el turco”) as an intrepid businessman which is constantly on the move, switching trades and professions: 29

“Creo que lo que más lo empujaba a hacer negocios era la diversión del desafío más que la intención de hacerse millonario” (13). Patricia, on the other hand, offers a less romantic vision of her father’s precarious job situation: “Mi papá es albañil, bah, se las arregla con todo. Es plomero, arregla luces, te corta árboles. Pinta” (81). As we can see, Argentinians’ self-perceived creativity and adaptability (which we already identified in gauchesca) flourishes and is put to test in times of crisis.

To complete this critical panorama, the once widespread influence and support of the Argentine State is rapidly shrinking and its representation in this novel, through two of its most characteristic institutions as are the public school and the police, does nothing but confirm its decline and deterioration. When referring to the school, Patricia’s words reflect the disrepute into which this institution has fallen in the context of twenty first century’s Argentina. Being questioned by Ariel about her plans to drop out of school, she responds: “Volvió a hacer el mismo gesto con los hombros [she shrughs them] y me dijo: - Para lo que me va a servir” (83). What is more, the inadequate results of public education are evident as Patricia (a fourteen year old seventh grader) joins

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Ariel for a movie at the mall but is frustrated at her impossibility to adequately follow the subtitles. In her book Tiempo presente: notas sobre el cambio de una cultura, Beatriz

Sarlo shares this character’s pessimism and frustration about the declining and inadequate role of the school institution in postmodern Argentina as she states that

“…la escuela, en lugar de ofrecer la ocasión del cambio de alternativas, refuerza el destino social de origen” (105).

One paragraph later, Patricia also reinforces the idea of a future where her highest aspiration is that of being recognized as a member of society, which in this context not only means being acknowledged as a citizen with equal rights and obligations but more and more, in concordance with García Canclini’s theory, as a free consumer. 30 In her foray into the shopping mall, a captivating but alien territory (as the

Amazon),31 Ariel’s girlfriend expresses her dreams of economic freedom: “No me gusta no tener plata. Toda esa gente puede comprar cosas y yo no. Si gano plata yo también voy a poder comprarme lo que quiera. - ¿Y qué querés?- No sé, todo, algo. Cuando tenga plata se me va a ocurrir” (83). The shopping mall or shopping center, with its voracious appropriation and privatization of public space to turn it into its aseptic, de- historicized counterpart (what Marc Augé describes as non-places), is at the heart of the quintessential neo-liberal city and works in the novel as Villa Fiorito’s opposite pole.

In this respect, Patricia is the character that best exemplifies the end of modern utopias and the notion of progress as that of shared communal improvement and its transformation into what Zygmunt Bauman defines as escape that is “the name of the most popular game in town. Semantically, escape is the very opposite of utopia, but psychologically it is its sole available substitute… its new rendition, re-fashioned to the

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measure of our deregulated, individualized society of consumers…” (317). In this context, progress is synonymous with individual survival and the continuous and unbearable anxiety “to stay in the race”, following Bauman’s words, to be the hunter and not the hunted, which is exactly all Ariel’s girlfriend aspirations are reduced to be. She needs to escape the slums, her life, herself—abandoning her underprivileged, localized and stigmatized dwellings in the hopes of reaching the tourist’ coveted exterritoriality— in order to become someone else, someone who has money to buy what she wants, needs or does not (for this is irrelevant in the end as all it matters is to be part of the wave of consumers). As Bauman explains, postmodern consumer society is

the kind of society in which you can no longer seriously hope to make the world a better place to live and you can’t even make really secure that better place in the world which you might have managed to cut out for yourself. What is left to your concerns and efforts is the fight against losing: try at least to stay among the hunters, since the only alternative is to find yourself among the hunted. And the fight against losing is a task which to be properly performed will require your full, undivided attention, 24 hours a day and seven days a week vigilance, and above all keeping on the move – as fast as you can . . . (318).

Neo-liberalism translates and understands every dimension of human life through its unique and restricting economic rationality turning the homo-sapiens into a homo-economicus. Within this context, Patricia’s inability to become a full-fledged consumer symbolically excludes her from her access to full-citizenship. In relation to this idea, Wendy Brown comments: “A fully realized neo-liberal citizenry would be the opposite of public-minded, indeed, it would barely exist as a public. The body politic ceases to be a body but is, rather, a group of individual entrepreneurs and consumers”32

(43). Crucially, Patricia’s dilemma (on the one hand she admires her father’s romantic resolve to cling to Diego’s ball but on the other, she dreams of leaving the slums and acquiring a certain economic independence like her mother did) reflects the novel’s

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central tension between the power of utopias and the urgent need for their recovery and the imperious need for survival in the fast-paced and tumultuous Neo-liberalist Agentina of beginnings of the 21st century.

The rest of the characters, on the other hand, fluctuate between their indifference to school (Ezequiel) and their attachment to it as a safety zone, primarily designated as a space of social containment: this is especially evident in the cases of Pinocho (Ariel’s co-worker) who, at the age of eighteen or nineteen (the author is imprecise in this respect), is chronically tucked up in the familiar safety of fifth grade and Ariel who identifies school as a type of cocoon, providing a sense of security completely absent in the threatening nature of the outside world. Needless to say, this situation is disheartening to say the least and reveals the inadequacy of a modern, and thus outdated, institution in postmodern times.

In Instantaneas: medios, ciudad y costumbres en el fin de siglo, Sarlo insightfully affirms: “…la posmodernidad es la etapa de la alfabetización mediática, por encima de la alfabetización de la letra” (135). Accordingly, faced with the models of immediate success with virtually no effort proposed by the omnipresent television as well as the rest of the media, the role of the school within Argentina’s society is seriously put into question. Moreover, in the presence of a State that operates with cold and unforgiving business logic, the economic loss-making nature and the meager results produced by the public school bring about a series of crippling and, in this context, consistent budget cuts in education. Once again, Giardinelli’s words describe this grim situation:

… la inversión es mínima: apenas el 3,8% del PBI (en países desarrollados llega al 6%)… sólo el 75% de los niños provenientes de hogares de bajos ingresos completan la educación primaria; sólo el 14% termina la secundaria, y apenas el 3% llega a la universidad…. (47)

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Meanwhile, the police institution has in the characters of officers Chuy and

Balizas and sergeant Polonio (members of the suspected Buenosairean police) their leading representatives in Olguín’s work. Chuy, Balizas and Polonio are in charge of applying law and order at the official and unofficial level, that is, legally and illegally, as they are also the heads of a gang or mafia mob called “Los Gardelitos” responsible for terrorizing Villa Fiorito.

As portrayed in contemporary Argentine movies such as Pablo Trapero’s critically acclaimed El Bonaerense (2002), police work is one of the last stable floating rafts in the midst of a crisis that threatens to submerge every area of Argentine society: an evidence of this in the novel is the fact that Patricia’s mom leaves his chronically sub-employed/unemployed husband in favor of the aforementioned officer Chuy.

However, job stability seems not to be enough and the prevailing low salaries among the force added to the job’s risky nature and the majority of officers’ lack of adequate physical and intellectual preparation results in an explosive cocktail that, most often than not, leads them into a life of crime and corruption. Accordingly, Olguín aligns himself with the tradition started by the authors of most socially critical strain of gauchesca by presenting those in charge of exercising the law as group of morally decadent individuals who embody many of the most negative features of an archetypical and imaginary "Argentine being", among them immorality, xenophobia, corruption and barbarism.

In the closest thing to an allegation against the deeds of the so-called “maldita policía” (the term used by the media to refer to the corrupt Buenos Aires police), the author fills almost two entire pages with an enumeration of the names of those fallen

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victim to police bullets.33 This coincides with moment when Ariel goes into a kind of informal sanctuary built in the deepest part of the slums. The idea is clear; what beats at the innermost core of Argentine society is (and, we may affirm, has always been) injustice, regardless of names, times and circumstances:34 “Los nombres propios se volvían cada vez más comunes, sinónimos de una misma locura y de una misma injusticia” (174).

This is the hard task that Ariel and his friends have to face: to survive and grow up in a violent and unjust society where certainties and institutions crumble at the same precipitous rate. A society where the light at the end of tunnel seems to come exclusively from the flickering screens of millions of TV sets selling instant happiness in the form of commercial products: chiefly among them, the ubiquitous football.

Cultural Panorama

In Imaginarios urbanos, García Canclini makes reference to the peripheral site that Latin American countries occupy in regard to the production and marketing of cultural products and mentions television as one of the main entrypoints of foreign products, especially American: “… aún donde se cuenta con mayor producción propia, como en la televisión brasileña, mexicana y argentina, en promedio el 70% de las películas y series son importadas de EE.UU., y los programas de este país ocupan más del 50% del prime time” (39). The undisputable victory of the US in the battle for the valued scepter of "global entertainer", has turned this nation into the largest exporter of cultural garbage according to critics such as the incisive Michiko Kakutani who, in her article "Taking Out the Trash", affirms, “Some of America's cultural exports are so awful that you begin to suspect that we're using the rest of the world as a vast toxic waste dump, and charging for the privilege”. In a society where the education system finds

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itself on life-support and functional families are the exception rather than the norm, it is not surprising that television (an internet connection at home is still unaffordable for typical Argentinian middle and lower class families at the end of the twentieth century) becomes a central figure at the home, exerting the influence that comes with all authority.

The said influence can be clearly perceived in the daily lives of the teenagers portrayed in this novel. For instance, Ariel and his friends do not just play pick-up football or other informal ball games but video gaming is already present in the form of a

Sega console—or as they call it “el Sega” (25), a pair of sneakers are simply “unas

Nike” (42), the journey inside Fiorito resembles a mission from the game Age of

Empires and on the wall of Ariel’s room the posters of Boca Juniors and the Argentine

National Team compete for space with those of Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls.

In addition, when Ariel and Patricia (whose childhood dream was/is to own a Barbie) have a date in the shopping mall, the movie they watch is American Pie and as their meal they have a burger with fries and the customary Coca Cola.

Moreover, as the novel’s only narrative voice, Ariel describes much of what he sees and experiences through the use of similes and comparisons that incorporate many American cultural products. For example when Pinocho uses his knife to repel the white rats’ attack he looks like a Power Ranger attacking the Orgs to then throw the rodents “ como si fuera el major pitcher de los Yanquees de Nueva York” (135). A bit further in the story, as his friend Ezequiel celebrates Los Gardelitos’ momentary flight from the scene, driven out by the neighbors’ rain of furiously hurled rocks, Ariel comments: “Ezequiel saltaba y festejaba como si estuviera jugando fútbol americano y

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hubiera marcado un touchdown” (125) and later adds, “-¡Touchdown!- grité pero nadie me prestó atención salvo Pablo. Por algo habíamos pasado parte de nuestras tardes viendo juntos ESPN. – Un auténtico Dream Team…” (126). Finally, in order to describe the hangar where Los Gardelitos kept their booty, he explains: “Tenía el aspecto de un hangar, el hangar de Jay-Jay el avioncito y el tarado de Narices salvo que adentro, en lugar de estar esperándome Brenda, el Gran Jake o Tracey, estaban Balizas, Chuy,

Polonio y sus otros secuaces” (182).

In a society where the marginalization and lack of opportunities for its members is as marked and prevalent as the influx of cultural neo-colonialism, the role and importance of football (another imported cultural product) through the myth of

Maradona’s first ball will be vital not just as a space of resistance but also as a starting point for the re-articulation and configuration of a foundational fiction capable of working efficaciously within the very particular historical, social and economic coordinates of

Argentina at the end of the millennium.

The place of football

As we are already aware of, football has functioned as a “máquina productora de nacionalidad” in the context of twentieth century Argentina even when the central role in this process of manufacturing of Argentineity was adopted by other participants such as the State, the school system, the military and even the Catholic Church. 35 However, the neoliberal dismantling of the Argentinian State, the inefficacy and disrepute of the school system and the loss of power and prestige of both the church and the military, contributed to produce a material and symbolic void (a new one in a nation that as we saw in the previous chapter was born out of them), a space of silence and confusion

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that had to be filled. The media and football (by this time, one of its central, most successful products) take the central stage. Pablo Alabarces explains:

Ante la ausencia de relatos inclusivos, entonces, a excepción de la falacia televisiva, las posibilidades de la identidad se astillan, se multiplican, se vuelven un espejo trizado. El fútbol, espacio de la identidad cálida que sólo pide una inversión de pasión a cambio de un relato de pertenencia sin mayores riesgos, se torna identidad primaria; no un relato entre los otros, sino el único sentido- trágico- de la vida. (22; emphasis added)

The social panorama that El equipo de los sueños presents coincides with

Alabarces’ vision by of a highly televised (mediatized)/footballized society that generates fragmented, shallow and warm identities. However, instead of joining the pessimistic choir that longs for a time of solid identities and grand, encompassing narratives, the novel decides to explore the possibilities of a paradigm change from within, challenging the macro-power from the microscopic level of everyday life, recognizing the political potentiality of something as trivial and (but) ubiquitous as football.

Football, in its own Argentine idiosyncratic variant, is ingrained in the local culture in such a way that it becomes an inseparable part of the characters’ actions and language. For instance, Ariel pledges allegiance to the football axiom that indicates that a winning team should never be altered—“Como ya lo decía Bilardo: equipo que gana no hay que cambiarlo” (41)—when justifying his choice of the same T-shirt for the second date with Patricia, providing a glimpse, at the same time, of the power and predominance of superstition and magical thinking within the football universe. What is more, the fact that she chooses not to repeat their first date’s outfit fills Ariel with dread as he considers this a bad omen: “A los diez minutos apareció ella (…) Tenía puestas una pollera de jean y una remera negra, pero no la de los Redonditos sino otra que

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decía “Punk not dead”. Me pareció un mal síntoma que no trajera puesta la remera que nos había unido. “Todo mal” me dije” (43).

Likewise, the teenagers make use of football expressions to semantically capture and define their everyday experiences. Ariel refers to the risky mission of recovering Maradona’s first ball as “un partido chivo” (93) that is, a complicated or difficult match. Similarly, when Ezequiel wants to ascertain their friends’ commitment to participate in the search for the ball, he does so by simply asking: “¿Y, hay equipo?”

(95). This phrase will also be used several times in an affirmative way (“Hay equipo”, which translates as “we’ve got a team”) to express the boys’ pride and confidence in one another as well as in the favorable outcome of their epic mission.

Football—as a mutual passion, a game, a spectacle, a product or the most common topic of conversation and discussion—also works as an agglutinating element, capable of connecting seemingly dissimilar individuals as is the case of Ariel and his friends: “Nadie que nos viera por separado pensaría que podemos ser grandes amigos…Aunque hay algo que nos une (además de la celeste y blanca) y es que los tres somos también hinchas de El Porvenir” (17). It is very interesting to notice that “la celeste y blanca” makes reference primarily to the colors of the national football team’s jersey and only laterally to the flag used to represent the nation. Although the boys belong to both imagined communities (the national and the national footballing one) the latter seems to be the one working more effectively at the passionate, fervent level of football’s warm identities. Something similar occurs in the case of Pinocho—originally not a member of ‘the team’—who is four to five years older than the rest and comes from a completely different background: “[Pinocho] Se sentaba encima de unos cajones

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y se quedaba a charlar conmigo. Hablábamos de fútbol (era hincha de Huracán), de música y a veces él hablaba de mujeres...” (22).

Within the territory of Villa Fiorito, football makes possible Ezequiel’s assimilation into “Corazón Boliviano”, a team formed exclusively by players coming from this neighboring country participating in an ‘intra-slum’ sort of tournament (“el triangular final”) created by officer Chuy and the rest of his gang on the dispute of much more than the proclaimed prize of a cup and five hundred pesos. One of the Bolivian players recognizes Ezequiel as a member of the youth divisions of the club El Porvenir and invites him to join their team. The other two teams participating in this informal tournament are Chuy’s “Gardel Vive” representing Argentina and the (corrupt) law in

Villa Fiorito and “Los Perfectos de Fiorito” a team made of Uruguayan players belonging to the Waldensian Evangelical Church (hence the name ‘los perfectos’ or the perfect ones).36 Both the Bolivians and the Uruguayans represent the group of new inhabitants of Villa Fiorito and as such are routinely bribed and terrorized by the Argentinian vigilante faction. Football also gives them (a sort of oppressed of the oppressed) a rare and valuable channel of expression within this repressive context. 37

Finally, not only the characters’ exogenous interpersonal relationships are mediated by this sport but also the endogenous ones as is evident in the cases of both

Ariel and Patricia. For Ariel, the instances of deepest emotional connection with his taciturn father (already an absent figure when narrating this story) would exclusively take place during their autobus trips together to the Boca Juniors’ football stadium: 38

“Me gustaba ir a la cancha con mi viejo porque él aprovechaba esos viajes tan largos de Lanús a la Boca, en el 54, para contarme historias de su infancia, de la colimba, de

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sus primeros trabajos. No sé por qué pero nunca hablaba de esas cosas si no era a la ida o a la vuelta de la cancha” (62; emphasis added).

This is what Mariano Siskind describes as the “socio-affective significance” of football (he uses the word “soccer”) which he presents as a “proven global fact”.

Football, he continues, is much more than a sport as it is also “…one of the names of the sentimental mediations that make up our (masculine for the most part) subjective identities, and the relations we form with our fathers, our sons, our friends” (8). In other words, football is not just a sport but a sentimentally and emotionally charged symbolic territory where identities are shaped and which accompanies subjects throughout their lives: “Soccer is not just soccer. Soccer is the emotional world that contains it and determines the weight of its social and subjective significance” (8). A world, we may add, that most football writers find imperative to protect. 39

Patricia, on the other hand, identifies herself with the figure of her father, for the most part, thanks to his romantic attitude of choosing to keep Diego’s ball, an object that would help alleviate most of their financial problems if it were to be sold. Despite her ‘logical’ ambition for money in order to become a full-fledged consumer, Patricia is proud of her dad’s ‘illogical’ resolution of keeping the ball (as invaluable treasure and powerful symbol and amulet) within Villa Fiorito, bravely defying the prevailing commoditized vision of life:

… el papá le cuenta a Patricia que en los momentos difíciles saca la pelota, la mira, la acaricia y siente que sus problemas desaparecen (…) todos en el barrio conocen su historia y siempre hay un pibe o algún vecino nuevo que le pide que le muestre la pelota. Entonces su papá la saca del aparador y la pone sobre el mantel para que la miren (66).

Symbolic distances are shortened and indescribable territories like those of the slums lose some of their hellish stigma following Ariel’s team courageous incursion.

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Football, love and the (more than ever) rebellious nature of dreaming are the engines that drive this journey into the depths of Argentina’s structural networks of social inequality at the dawn of a new millennium, making possible the disarticulation of the dominant paradigm (reproduced ad nauseam by the media) that tends towards the separation and isolation of ‘the unknown’ as different and dangerous. In the midst of an individualized society that considers utopian grand narratives with distrust, fear and apprehension (rightly so, since many of these modern instituational and collective utopias turned into totalitarian anti-utopias), Olguín seems to coincide with Bauman when the latter affirms that “utopia is an undetachable part of the human condition… one of humanity’s constituents, a ‘constant’ in the human way of being-in-the-world” (49) and so makes it an integral part of his attempt to re-humanize football throughout this novel. However, following Bauman we can say that utopias in this age do not necesarilly have to be realized or materialized as a specific social order but at least thought of, considered as a latent possibility and a hidden, subterraneous, infrapolitical but always active alternative to the present. There resides the strength and the always dynamic potentiality of dreams; dreams that—like that of Ariel—are other-directed including not only the dreamers but also crucially their communities. Needless to say, for these isolated counter-cultural efforts to gain traction and be reunited with other similarly (or not) unattended and unsatisfied social demands (turning heterogeneity into hegemony, creating a chain of equivalence by inhabiting an empty signifier that constitutes and represents the former)40, it is imperative for such society to be repolitized, re-moralized and re-institutionalized. It is obvious that this is not precisely the case when Olguín is writing this novel (2003), which again brings relevance to Raymond Williams’ notion

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about the vital role of cultural formations such as literature in the continuous process of configuration and re-configuration of given cultures and societies and the imperious need for its careful study in order to better approach said processes.

The search of Maradona’s mythical ball serves as an excuse to bring to light remnants of a reality that, due to its disturbing heterogeneity, mainstream discourse would rather keep in the dark. To that effect, the (re) creation of a myth (that of the liminal and magical pibe who plays for the sake of his own pleasure and enjoyment) allows for the destruction of others which are responsible, among other things, of unjustly equating poverty and marginality with crime showing us once more the always laten potential of the residual to emerge as an alternative to the society’s dominant forces. What is more, this novel presents not only his central character’s process of becoming and maturation but also the key transformation of the slums’ status as an unknown, inenarrable and stable space into what Lefebvre calls a lived space or spaces of representation. This category supersedes and includes those of perceived space

(also known as Spatial Practice or an empirical knowledge of space) and conceived space (also known as representational space or imagined and mentally conceived approaches to space), breaking this dichotomy and allowing for a conceptualization of these marginal territories that takes into consideration not just its role as dominated spaces but also their radical openness and its potential as privileged loci of resistance and the production of utopian and counter-hegemonic discourses and spaces (defined by Lefebvre as counter-spaces).41 Edward Soja—probably the closest follower of

Lefebvre’s theories—charcacterizes this third space:

For Lefebvre, the spaces of representation teem with symbols, hence the tendency of some to see him primarily as a semiologist and to describe

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lived space as a “symbolic” space. These spaces are also vitally filled with politics and ideology, with the real and the imagined intertwined, and with capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and other material spatial practices that concretize the social relations of production, reproduction, exploitation, domination, and subjection. They are the “dominated spaces,” the spaces of the peripheries, the margins, the marginalized, the “Third Worlds” that can be found at all scales, in the corpo-reality of the body and mind, in sexuality and subjectivity, in individual and collective identities from the most local to the most global. They are the chosen spaces for struggle, liberation, emancipation. (68)

The recovery of Maradona’s first ball is ultimately the product of a joint effort between Ariel and his friends, his uncle—dressed as a bulletproof Santa Claus— 42 and a group of Uruguayan and Bolivian neighbors, tired of the constant abuse of Los

Gardelitos and particularly furious after being deprived of the football tournament’s prize despite, against all odds, having won it on the field. Together, they make an unlikely dream team (or equipo de los sueños) that attacks the Gardelitos’ hangar on all fronts and forces them to flee the scene leaving all the robbed merchandise behind (including

Diego’s ball) to be shared among the people of Villa Fiorito in what can adequately be described as a Christmas miracle (especially so because it takes place precisely on

Christmas eve).

In addition, insofar as Maradona’s ball symbolizes the purest, most essential aspects of the hyper-commoditized sport of football, its retrieval, along with the deliberate effort to not turn it into saleable merchandise, represents not only an act of rebellion but also the reclamation of utopia in the midst of a corrupted and cynical social and political scenario. This is the utopian space where almost everything seems possible: where effort, will and talent are enough to overcome the seemingly inevitable as “Corazón Boliviano” defeats “Gardel Vive” and triggers a micro-revolution that ousts this group from power and ends, at least temporarily, their illicit and tyrannical ruling in

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the slums. Where football reacquires its true carnivalesque potential (going well beyond fans’ shallow, folkloric carnivalization that TV loves to celebrate) of imagining and being able to stage a world upside-down kind of scenario that provides popular imagination a strong and valid channel of expression.43 This is also the space where the collective good comes before the individual benefit;44 where the concept of the dream team is centrally re-signified and re-semanticized going from the name that designates a select group of supremely gifted strangers to become a more flexible and inclusive notion that turns the dream into a communal experience, a shared illusion and not just a futile, exclusive and unreachable ranking. As Ariel says when justifying his own inclusion (and that of his friends) into an Argentina’s all-time dream team: “Si es mi Equipo de los

Sueños yo quiero jugar. Si no, no sueño y listo” (118).

In El sueño argentino, Tomás Eloy Martínez reaffirms the legitimacy and the power of dreams and utopias when he intelligently reminds us that Argentina is a country that was “fundado por ficciones” (13) and so necessarily and almost inevitably

“…cada fin de siglo crea las utopías que está necesitando el siglo que vendrá…” (13).45

Myths, Martínez continues, express “… al fin de cuentas, el deseo común. Y nada pertenece al porvenir con tanta nitidez como el deseo” (16).

In El equipo de los sueños, Sergio Olguín shows the audacity and the courage of dreaming and re-creating an unbreakable myth, a traditional narrative—reclaimed from the core of the Argentine popular imaginary—in times dominated by predominantly fragmented narratives and identities; one that is able to dispense with humans and their many fallibilities. “La pelota no se mancha” (the ball cannot be stained) said a wise

Diego Maradona only minutes after playing his last professional match and symbolically

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stepped down from the golden pantheon a whole footballing nation had built for him.

This “dirty God”, as Galeano once defined him,46 had the grace to accept his profoundly flawed nature in front of a crow of his most fervent adorers and by doing so, was able to direct everyone’s attention back to the simplicity and spotlessness of the ball as the indisputable center of this particular universe. Ariel confirms this idea in the novel’s closing paragraphs:

Ahí estábamos ella y yo a solas los dos. Bajé mis manos como deben hacer los creyentes que meten las manos en el Ganges. Tomé la pelota y la sentí en mis dedos, ese cuero viejo y gastado pero limpio, eternamente limpio por los siglos de los siglos (…) Juro que esa pelota latía. (198-199)

The ball, la pelota, the essence of this beautiful, thrilling and representative sport for a vast number of Argentinians, appears in this novel as the fierce guardian of childhood dreams, of the freedom and the enjoyment embedded in games, a symbol of a life blossoming in front of our eyes where every untraveled path is a new possible opportunity, of a nation’s old and stubborn heart, still beating despite centuries of mistreatment and neglect. Ariel’s learning process consists mainly on the re-capturing of this fresh, innocent approach to life, abandoning the always arbitrary social barriers and impositions and daring to assume a horizontal perspective from which to look at one another without fears or prejudices and with renewed hope.47Therefore, his vision of an imagined community includes, along with the usual guests, those typically forced to

“stay out of the party”. Almost like in early Christianity or in football48, that magical stage were in spite of everything there is still room for utopian dreams and miracles.

To conclude, even though this is Sergio Olguín’s only incursion, so far, in the realm of football fiction, this novel is of medullar importance for the purposes of this study. Its critical significance derives of two main reasons: in the first place, its highly

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symbolic and unmistakably central location since the novel narrates a contemporary return journey to Argentine’s football mythical womb, in this case, Diego Maradona’s original potreros in Villa Fiorito, infested at that historical moment by the same high degree of corruption engulfing both the country and the sport.

It is from this particularly somber geographical, social and historical coordinates that Olguín offers a hopeful and encouraging vision that understands football with its enormous transversal potentiality as a site from which to rebuild a disintegrating community (and a disintegrating sport) or, at the very least, offer a space of resistance to this gradual but seemingly inevitable process. This is a space and a struggle that many of the genre’s contemporary writers—as well as many of those who preceded

Olguín—unequivocally share, thus, helping to support the novel’s weight within football literature as well as our understanding of it as a coherent point of departure from which to read much of the recent production in the context of Argentina. Morover, as writer and social activitst Gloria Jean Watkins (popularly known by her pen name “bell hooks”) understands it, marginality—“as a site one stays in, clings to even, because it nourishes one’s capacity to resist”(150)—is crucially central as “it offers the possibility of radical perspectives from which to see and create, to imagine alternatives, new worlds” (150).

As we have seen this is true for the characters in Olguin’s novel but most importantly it is of pivotal importance to locate and identify the space this subgenre so comfortably inhabits.

Secondly, El equipo de los sueños serves as an example of the in-between space that Argentine football literature occupies: torn between a traditionalist defense of grand narratives and a conservative reluctance to changes (the evident secondary role

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of outsiders or traditional “damsels in distress” that women occupy in this novel as unmistakable evidence of this characteristic)49 and the adoption of a countercultural position from which to criticize the obnoxious effects of savage capitalism on society in general and football in particular. This feature distinguishes football literature’s approach from the (in general) much more compliant position of journalistic narratives, always ready to celebrate the monumental and dehumanized business this simple game has turned into.

It is for these reasons and more that Olguín’s novel becomes an excellent vantage point from which to begin to approach, understand and analyze the recent phenomenon of football literature in Argentina. In it the author escapes from televised football and the panoptic experience of the stadiums to take his attention back to this sport at the grassroots level where community replaces commodity and people can afford the luxury of entertaining their own dreams.

El equipo de los sueños is simply a dim light in that dark tunnel unilaterally constructed by postmodernism’s inexorable “end of History” but this flickering football story is very valuable precisely by being able to hint at a different direction, capturing society’s discontent and disillusionment with the prospect of the definite instauration of an exclusive and excluding narrative: a structure of feeling (or using Laclau’s terms a plurality of unsatisfied demands) that the Argentine governments of Nestor (first) and

Cristina Kirchner (later) will lucidly interpret.

In this regards, an evidence of this lucidity can be found right from the start, specifically in Nestor Kirchner’s 2003 inaugural speech (published as supplement in the edition of May25th, 2015 of the newspaper ‘Tiempo Argentino”) aptly titled “Vengo a

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proponerles un sueño” (I come to propose a dream) where he points to the urgent need of paradigm shift that puts an end to the times of neoliberalism’s univocal truths and prophesies. Kirchner knows this is a daunting task, but just like Olguín, he is not just a dreamer but a firm believer in the benefits of team-play: “Deben encararse los cambios con decisión y coraje, avanzando sin pausas pero sin depositar la confianza en jugadas mágicas o salvadoras ni en genialidades aisladas” (1; emphasis added).

The president elect demonstrates in this passage one of his most salient qualities, his intelligence and savviness to capture and translate the popular demands.

Diego Maradona’s kingdom is over and with it the phantasies of Argentine grandeur and worldwide dominance (equally cancelled are Menemist delusions of Argentina as a first- world economy); this is the beginning of a new era: an era of reconstruction50 dominated by obscure, laborious and passionate players, like Kirchner himself or the majority of

Argentine football literature’s characters (and writers), an era of a slowly and communally-built utopia. Needless to say, Sergio Olguín is a dreamer but, as we have seen and continue to see in the following chapter, he is definitely not the only one.

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Notes

1 The Church of Maradona or Maradonian church was founded on October 30th, 1998 by Alejandro Verón and Hernán Amez. They refer to Diego by using the neo-Tetragrammaton D10s which combines the number 10 of Maradona’s shirt with the word God in Spanish (Dios). The Maradonian church, a parody of a religion centered on the cult of Diego, is said to have about 20,000 followers all over the world. Other religiously syncretic experiences around the figure of Maradona (Te Diegum and San Gennarmando) took place in the Italian city of Naples were he reached its peak as a professional footballer and was consequently adored by the passionate local fans.

2 When recounting his football masterpiece (his second goal vs. England in the World Cup of Mexico ’86), Maradona admits: “Estaba en el mismo lugar que en aquella jugada de Wembley, ¡en el mismo lugar! Iba a definir de la misma manera, pero… pero el Barba (Dios) me ayudó, el Barba me hizo acordar…” (126-127). Maradona recounts a similar instance in a previous match versus England (in 181 in Wembley stadium) and gives God (which he informally addresses as “el barba” or “the bearded one”) credit for his inspiration.

3 Maradona’s excessive and contradictory nature help highlight his humanness (always problematic in the hyper-professionalized world of sports) but also (naturally) bring relevance to some of his most backward and reactionary traits, chiefly among them his misogynistic tendencies (as we know the football tradition/discourse in Argentina is markedly chauvinistic and exclusionary). In this respect, Maradona’s figure and symbolic relevance can be associated with the hegemonic construction of masculinity or in the best case scenario with what is (hopefully) becoming an archaic feature of Argentine society.

4 As a matter of fact, El Gráfico became one of such color sport supplements, being published daily as part of the newspaper Tiempo Argentino but still maintaining its monthly magazine version.

5 We are referring to “Casa tomada”, Cortazar’s allegorical description of the insurgence of Peronism in Argentine society. In it, two siblings (brother and sister) see how their house is taken over by mysterious and unknown entities until they are finally forced to leave.

6 Also in the mid-nineties (1995), the celebrated Mexican author Juan Villoro publishes Los once de la tribu, a book of chronicles (not all connected to sports) where he first explores the literary possibilities of the topic of football. Later on, he will write short stories about this sport such as “El extremo fantasma” (included in 1999’s La casa pierde) and “El silbido” (in 2007’s Los culpables) as well as new compilations of football chronicles (2006’s Dios es Redondo and 2014’s Balón dividido) and Ida y vuelta (2012), a book that reveals his correspondence with Argentine journalist, writer and football analyst Martín Caparrós during 2010’s World Cup in South Africa in. Villoro’s prestige as a writer and journalist as well as his lucid, honest and frequent approaches to the football phenomenon will help bring more visibility to this area, turning him into an ineludible continental reference of this literary subgenre.

7 The team’s line-up goes as follows: Sacommano, Cohen o Lucero, Fresán, Borges y Valenzuela; Gandolfo, Hecker y Bioy Casares; Feinmann, Mayer y Libertella. This is a 4-3-3 classic formation that, logically, includes Sacommano as a keeper (see Fontanarrosa’s “Los nombres”), and ironically Borges as a destructor (center half back) and Bioy Casares as the number ten, the team’s creative midfielder. Also important to notice, two of the three female writers included in the compilation (Luisa Valenzuela and Liliana Hecker) make the team.

8 For instance, protesting against the scheduling of grueling midday or early afternoon matches (to accommodate to European TV audiences) in Mexico 86 and USA 94 or creating AIFP (Association Internationale des Footballeurs Professionnels) the first international football players union, in September 28th 1995. Regarding football players’ lack of rights and representation Galeano dennounces: “Hasta ahora, los protagonistas del espectáculo han brillado por su ausencia en las estructuras de poder donde se toman las decisiones. Ellos no tienen el derecho de decir ni pío en los niveles de dirección del fútbol

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local, ni pueden darse el lujo de ser escuchados en las cumbres de la FIFA, donde se corta el bacalao en escala mundial. Los jugadores, ¿qué son? ¿Los monos del circo?” (237).

9 “Dieguito miró a través de la ventanilla y se llevó la sorpresa de su corta vida: allí adentro, algo deteriorado, estaba él, el hombre que más admiraba en el mundo, su ídolo” (62).

10 Transi recounts a dangerous experience with one of his male clients, “un puto gordo y fino” that takes him to his country house in Moreno and then dress as a military tries to tie him up to supposedly torture him. Saccomanno revisits the generational ghost of the military dictatorship and his inhuman practices and (coincidentally?) takes them to the outskirts of Buenos Aires (Moreno), the exact same place where Maradona owned a country house from which a very agitated version of himself (in February of 1994) infamously shot a group of journalists with an air rifle, injuring six of them. There were rumors that Maradona had accepted to be the face of the “Sol sin drogas” campaign in exchange for his absolution in this case—María Graciela Rodriguez makes reference to this suspicion in her article “Diego, un héroe global en apuros ( o la agonía del ultimo dinosaurio)”— but the fact is that he was eventually found guilty (in 2002) and condemned to 2 ½ years in prison (which were left “on hold” as they fell below the minimum three-year sentence needed for it to be effective according to Argentine law).

11 Unsurprinsingly, the music par excellence accompanying these dancing pibes in the Argentine context is that of tango (Buenos Aires as the metonymy of Argentina once again). Not only are they imagined as great (tango) dancers by writers like Sacheri but are also the TV reinforces this idea when showing clips of skillful players doing their tricks to the rythym of 2 x 4. A very typical tango/song used for this clips background is Julio Sosa’s “El firulete” (a flourish or twirl).

12 “De los libros de Sacheri, alcanza con revisar su última compilación, La vida que pensamos (Buenos Aires, Alfaguara, 2013), y no leerlo nunca más” (205).

13 There is considerable debate about this point, with some people—among them Pablo Díaz one of the four survivors and Jorge Falcone (Claudia Falcone’s brother) —claiming that the persecution and torture was not specifically linked to that single students protest but to a much more (politically) significant counter-insurgent and revolutionary militancy that the Argentine dictatorship was trying to annihilate. Hector Olivera’s movie La noche de los lápices (1986) also points to the Boleto Escolar Secundario’s protests as the main reason behind the students’ kidnapping, torture and disappearance, simplifying a much more complex political scenario.

14 On the early hours of September 16th, 1976, six of the total group of ten kidnapped students (Claudia Falcone, María Clara Ciocchini, Claudio de Acha, Daniel Racero, Horacio Ungaro y Francisco López Muntaner) were taken from their homes by the military to be tortured and interrogated. They remain missing until this day. In 1988, under Raúl Alfonsín’s presidency, the province of Buenos Aires (governed by the peronist Antonio Cafiero) passed the law number 10671 that institutes September 16th as “Día de los derechos de los estudiantes secundarios” (Secondary Students Rights’ Day).

15 That first game is an integral part of the Maradona myth, to the point that almost every Argentine football fan knows such trite details as whom he replaced (Rubén Giacobetti), the number of his jersey (16), the game’s final result (his team lost 1-0) and especially what he did once he got the ball (he kicked the ball through Juan Domingo Cabrera’s feet in a play that is popularly known as a ‘nutmeg’). Needless to say, Cabrera also entered football immortality thanks to his role as victim of the young prodigy. Moreover, the historic significance of this game is such that much more people than the stadium could possibly have held claimed to have been there, participating as witnesses of Maradona’s apparition. Weed explains that this phenomenon of retrospective recall of a live event people were not part of is usual in significant sport moments like this one as those who participate “have some kind of experience of ‘otherness’ that will set them aside from their peers on their return” (406).

16 Given Pagani’s publicly known predilection for the music genre of tango, it seems only logical to connect the title of this article to Eladia Blázquez’s tango-song “Sueño de barrilete” composed in 1959 and included in Blázquez’s first tango-only album “Buenos Aires y yo” (1970). The song has a markedly melancholic tone and explores the reflections of a frustrated dreamer at the end of his/her life.

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Interestingly, the metaphorical connection between Maradona and kites will survive this first article to be rearticulated by the Uruguayan journalist and football commentator Victor Hugo Morales on occasion of his masterpiece against England in the World Cup of Mexico 1986 when he famously referred to Maradona as a “barrilete cósmico” (cosmic kite).

17 Described as a stereotypical 1970’s member of the Argentine military forces, (unofficially) directing a police operation with their characteristic authoritarianism: “Cuando el supuesto jefe del operativo, un morocho de cuarenta y tantos, con anteojos de sol, nos vio venir, se cruzó de brazos, puso doble cara de bull dog y exigió, porque pedir no pidió, que le mostráramos la cedula” (104).

18 The story’s protagonist and narrator minimizes Maradona’s previous success in the formative divisions as he suggest that anyone (in Argentina?) can be a skillful dribbler when the competition is not up to par: “Que querés con los torneos Evita. Ahí juega y se luce cualquiera, es lo mismo que a mí me hubieran llevado a primera cuando los gambeteé a todos en el desafío contra el equipo de Mate Cocido en el campito de los Rodríguez” (108; emphasis added).

19 Moreover, as Archetti points out, Maradona’s arrival can also be seen in the context of international football as a break with the dominance of football highly tactical systems where teams worked as efficently as perfectly-oiled machines: “Maradona apareció en el mundo del fútbol en un momento en que triunfaban las ideas de esquemas tácticos basados en que un equipo debía funcionar como una máquina. El dominio de Alemania y Holanda en los 70 son claros ejemplos de la situación entonces imperante” (278). Diego, as a prototypical pibe, cannot simply adjust to these systems, so, despite reaching the highest glory as a professional player as part of Carlos Salvador Bilardo’s (an obsessive football tactician) team, but as the natural genius, a heroic figure carrying the entire team on his shoulders.

20 He was actually punished for failing drug tests in 1991 (cocaine) and 1994 (ephedrine) but Maradona always made clear that FIFA and his Brazilian president Joao Havelange ( a sort of nemesis of his) were after him long before those incidents. For example, Diego makes Havelange the main responsible for Argentina’s defeat in the final match of the World Cup of Italia 1990 (Argentina lost 0-1 to Germany after a controversial penalty kick), characterizing him as “the face of injustice”: “… el [Havelange] tenía la culpa de mis lágrimas, que no eran solo por la derrota. Me dolía más la injusticia. Y Havelange, en mi paso por el fútbol, fue la cara de la injusticia” (143)

21 We understand Maradona as the indisputable center, the nodal point or point de capiton following Laclau’s (and Lacan’s) term, around which the discourse of Argentine football is organized. In this sense, he acts as an empty signifier (but also a floating one), providing the internal limits of discursivity and the possibility of producing new chains of equivalence—for instance, Messi is obviously not Maradona (hence he is Messi) but all of his actions on and off a football field are characterized and defined in relation to Diego’s, the same as that of every new talented football player or locuacious popular star. However, as we affirmed, Maradona not only is relevant within the scope of professional sports as his figure is variedly and continuously interpreted as:1) the most perfect reincarnation and condensation of the pibe figure, that is, of Argentine football essences, in this regard, a living and growing myth in itself 2) a cabecita negra (a derogative term used to refer to people of mied races), the product of internal migration to the capital and a subproduct of Peronism which he will also embody in all its contradictory facets 3) a national popular hero that was able to bring joy to fans of all football teams 4) a resonant voice for those without one (not only lower classes but even more importantly footballers) 4) a new rich, despised by Argentine oligarchy and high middle classes (much like Eva Perón) 5) a symbol of Menem's infamous neoliberal decade with all its superficiality and decadence 6) a symbol of Kirchnerism and its popular policies, bringing football to the front of this country’s cultural patrimony 7) part of football's left with its key role in the constitution of a player's union and its status of Cuban resident and personal friend of Castro 8) a millionaire leading a luxurious life in fiscal paradises and a close ally of sheiks, sultans and monarchical rulers 9) a representative of a traditional and conservative masculinity, a symbol of the worst part of Argentine's culture of machismo 10) a symbol of the perceived notion of Argentineness, with its internal tensions and contradictions. In other words, what makes Argentines proud: the talent, the inventiveness, the rebelliousness but also what embarrases them as a society: the inconsistency, the corruption, the insufferable machismo and the lack of scruples; in short, all that is right and wrong with this country's 243

culture and idiosyncracy. Similar to Perón, (following Laclau) Maradona can be conceptualized as a signifier “tendencialmente vacío” (270), “un centro de irradiación equivalencial que, sin embargo, no pierde completamente la particularidad de su contenido original”( 269, La razón populista). As Alabarces expounds: “… Maradona funcionó como “centro luminoso” de la referencialidad patriótica del fútbol argentino, un centro que aglutina toda la serie anterior hasta la hipérbole. Maradona también ofreció la posibilidad de apropiarse de un sentido errante: el de una sociedad que vio derrumbarse sus referencias políticas más elementales. Maradona fue la (¿última?) posibilidad de otorgarle a la patria un sentido (futbolístico), históricamente objeto de disputa. (…) Maradona fue así una suerte de significante vacío, disponible para ser llenado según quién y en qué momento intentara apropiarse” (144; emphasis added). Finally, employing a different terminology but a conception tha closely resembles that of the empty signifier Salazar-Sutil adds: “Maradona is both a neutral meaning and a multiplicity; indeed, he is whatever the public projects onto the public screen of his celebrityhood. Maradona is thus a situated performance shaped by contingent systems of cultural production” (445).

22 Some of them are: “me cortaron las piernas” (after being suspended removed from 1994’s World Cup in the U.S.), “se le escapó la tortuga (renga)” (used to describe the ineffectiveness and lack of smarts of his occasional off-the-field adversaries), “la tenés adentro” (sexual reference to a very critical male journalist after classifying as coach of Argentina to the final stage of 2010’s World Cup in South Africa), etc. For a more complete and updated list, see La Nación’s article: “El cumpleaños de Diego Maradona: 54 frases que quedaron para la historia” http://canchallena.lanacion.com.ar/1739679-el-cumpleanos-de- diego-maradona-en-frases-54-frases-para-el-recuerdo .

23 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8RvuFyDMog (from 01:28 to 01:47).

24 “[Luis] gambeteaba hasta las piedras que había en la canchita. Diego iba con su padre a ver los partidos del Estrella Roja y siempre quería estar cerca de Luis que se había convertido en su ídolo” (64).

25 In this point, Burns’s narration differs from those of Maradona and Olguín as the British writer affirms that his uncle Cirilo (the most skillful football player in Maradona’s family until Diego’s arrival) was the one responsible for giving Diego his first ball on the occasion of his third birthday. The phrase “number one” used to describe the ball refers to its reduced size (a standard professional ball is also known as a “number five”) as Olguín explains in the novel: “No era una pelota como las profesionales, una número cinco, sino una más chica, una número uno. Como a medida de sus pies de enano” (63).

26 “Space is becoming the principal stake of goal-directed actions and struggles. It has of course always been the reservoir of resources, and the medium in which strategies are applied, but it has now become something more than the theatre, the disinterested stage or setting, of action. Space does not eliminate the other materials or resources that play a part in the socio-political arena, be they raw materials or the most finished of products, be they businesses or "culture". Rather, it brings them all together and then in a sense substitutes itself for each factor separately by enveloping it. The result is a vast movement in terms of which space can no longer be looked upon as an "essence", as an object distinct from the point of view of (or as compared with) “subjects", as answering to a logic of its own. Nor can it be treated as result or resultant, as an empirically verifiable effect of a past, a history, or a society. Is space indeed a medium? A milieu? An intermediary? It is doubtless all of these, but its role is less and less neutral, more and more active, both as instrument and as goal, as means and as end. Confining it to so narrow a category as that of "medium" is consequently woefully inadequate” (410-11 Lefebvre)

27 Regarding the slums’ inenarrability, external nature and stark otherness in relation to the city, Hernán Vanoli and Diego Vecino affirm: “Más que una prolongación de la ciudad, el conurbano es narrado como una prolongación del Riachuelo: ese otro territorio liso que es también una frontera, lleno de detritos y de escombros. El barrio, por su parte, se define también por sus fronteras con la villa, que es lo que en efecto no se puede narrar” (266; emphasis added).

28 Julie Hansen revises Bakhtin’s characterization of the chronotope of the road, an indispensable element in a bildungsroman such as El equipo de los sueños: “… Bakhtin identifies the “chronotope of the road” as one of the most enduring in Western literature. In narratives containing the road chronotope, the protagonist undertakes a journey, in which the distance travelled typically stands in stable relation to the

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amount of time elapsed. The protagonist’s travels are often paralleled by a metaphorical inner journey, where the “choice of a real itinerary equals the choice of ‘the path of life’” (Bakhtin 120 as qted in Hansen 19).

29 Ariel explains that even though his uncle’s family was of Armenian descent, everybody in the neighborhood called him “el turco” or the Turk which invariably infuriated him. This sort of generalization and stereotyping is typical in Argentina culture where everybody can be called a Turk, a Russian (“ruso” also applied to Jewish people), an Italian (“tano”) or a Galician (“gallego”) regardless of their exact place of origin. Besides Roberto’s alleged ability for business fits the stereotypical description of Turks in Argentina, giving, in this context, extra validity to his nickname.

30 Argentine anthropologist Nestor García Canclini states—in his book Imaginarios urbanos—that “Hoy nos formamos más bien como personas o como individuos en el consumo” (57).

31 Ariel narrates: “Le propuse ir hasta el Alto Avellaneda. Ella no lo conocía. Me pareció que reaccionaba como si a mí me hubieran invitado al Amazonas: terror y ganas” (80).

32 This is especially true in heavily mediated societies as the mass-media can only conceive of one kind of limited democracy and citizenry. As Alabarces affirms, “La única democracia o noción de ciudadanía que pueden proponer los medios es la de los consumidores de un mismo producto”(115).

33 Martín Latorraca, Hugo Montero and Carlos Rodríguez present some of the alarming figures of police repression in the argentine context in their article “Política y corrupción policial” published in the French magazine Le Monde Diplomatique: “En cuanto a las víctimas del “gatillo fácil”, el último informe de la Coordinadora contra la Represión Policial e Institucional (CORREPI) indica que durante 2002 el número de muertos como consecuencia de la acción policial asciende a 1.292 personas, casi 300 casos más que en 2001” (6).

34 Giardinelli provides data that confirms that negative perception of police force among Argentina’s youth: “Para ellos [los jóvenes] ser llevados a una comisaría es una de las peores cosas que les puede ocurrir: los ven como sitios de arbitrariedad, oscuros, peligrosos e inseguros. Esta no es una opinión: es el impactante resultado de una consulta que hizo la UNICEF en Buenos Aires entre 150.000 chicos de entre 8 y 17 años… el 28,2% de ellos consideró que las comisarias eran los sitios donde se registraban las mayores violaciones a sus derechos”. (423)

35 Pablo Alabarces borrows this concept from Beatriz Sarlo as she introduces it in her book La máquina cultural (1998) and applies it to the case of football and its role as a producer/ of nationality. Sarlo uses the cultural machine metaphor to study and understand the transformations in the country’s culture and society. In her book, she broadly defines the cultural machine as: “… ideas, prácticas, configuraciones de la experiencia, instituciones, argumentos y personajes. No es una máquina perfecta, porque funciona dispendiosamente, gastando muchas veces más de lo necesario, operando transformaciones que no están inscriptas en su programa, sometiéndose a usos imprevistos, manejada por personas no preparadas especialmente para hacerlo” (207). Sarlo and Alabarces also concur on the vital role of the market— through its various products— as producer of identities and receptor of allegiances: “Cuando todos los procesos de identificación han fallado, el mercado parece salvar la única unidad que les quedaba a los pueblos que no tienen otras razones más dignas de pertenencia a una nación (134, Tiempo Presente: notas sobre el cambio de una cultura).

36 The Waldensian Church originated in the XII century in Lyon, France. They opposed the Vatican’s hierarchical centralism and the imposition of Latin as the Bible’s official language. Due to these revolutionary ideas they were excommunicated and persecuted for centuries by the Catholic Church. It was not until June 22nd, 2015 that Francis, the Argentine pope, offered an official and historical apology in the name of this institution. As we can see, Olguín’s inclusion of the Waldensian Church is not fortuitous in the context of this novel and that of XXI century football where both a decentralization and a real democratization are urgently needed.

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37 Migrants from neighboring countries such as Bolivia, Perú, Paraguay and Uruguay become easy targets of discrimination in times of crisis as they are typically blamed for the lack of jobs for Argentine citizens. Carlos Ernesto Motto, following Margulis, describes discrimination in this cases as a staggered phenomenon: “Se discrimina por nacionalidad, primero a los extranjeros, luego a los provincianos y luego a los villeros” (181). Following this idea, the group of foreigners living in the slums are doubly discriminated both inside and outside their vicinity.

38 Pablo Ramos, another writer from the so-called NNA (Nueva Narrativa Argentina or New Argentine Narrative) that also uses Buenos Aires’ outskirts (Sarandí) as his work’s preferred geographical location, presents us with a similar situation when describing the key significance of football in the complicated relationship between Gabriel Reyes (his literary self) and his also taciturn father. In La ley de la ferocidad, Gabriel recalls a conversation he had with his, at that point, defunct father—while having some drinks at the bar of a local social club—in which he told him he was serious about becoming a writer. After hearing this, Gabriel’s father had an unusual act of openness and generosity and decided to symbolically bequeath one “good” story to his son: that of a former friend and mythical (and generous) football crack, Angel Clemente Rojas aka Rojitas. After finishing with it, Gabriel muses “Qué hombre, de qué está hecho que es tan difícil de entender para mí” (88) to then confess “Jamás volvió a contarme algo. Jamás volvió a tomarme del hombro” (89).

39 It is crucial to acknowledge at this point that those in charge of commercializing sports such as football have taken notice of this communal aspect of it and have thus incorporated it into their agendas.As a consequence, the idea that identifies football as an integral part of our most intimate and personal relationships and experiences is found in almost every commercial making reference to this sport (in the Argentine context, those of Quilmes—a brand of beer named after a native tribe of indigenous people— and the sport’s channel TyC Sports being the most relevant in this respect). This is why, they key is to be able to separate the authentic personal and communal experiences connected to this sport from the manufactured ones. In this regard, Whitson intelligently wonders: “Can residual meanings and values, for example, such as those associated with solidarity and multidimensional friendship (including sisterhood as well as brotherhood) be resuscitated and reinforced through experiences in games (traditional games as well as cooperative ones) —experiences which could throw into relief the shallowness of instrumental relationships and manufactured versions of belonging?” (74).

40 As Laclau explains: “La construcción de un “pueblo” require una complejidad interna que está dada por la pluralidad de las demandas que forman la cadena equivalencial. Esta es la dimensión de la heterogeneidad radical, porque nada en esas demandas, consideradas individualmente, anticipa un “destino manifiesto” por el cual deberían tender a fundirse en algún tipo de unidad: nada en ellas anticipa que podrían constituir una cadena. Esto es lo que hace necesario el momento homogeneizante del significante vacío. Sin este momento no existiría una cadena equivalencial. Por lo tanto, la función homogeneizante del significante vacío constituye la cadena y al mismo tiempo la representa” (205).

41 "When a community fights the construction of urban motorways or housing-developments, when it demands `amenities' or empty spaces for play and encounter, we can see how a counter-space can insert itself into spatial reality: against the Eye and the Gaze, against quanitity and homogeneity, against power and the arrogance of power, against the endless expansion of the `private' and industrial profitablility; and against specialized spaces and a narrow localization of function" (381-2, Lefebvre). In the context of Olguín’s novel, the recuperation of Villa Fiorito from the hands of the police and the local gangs and the hope of transforming it into a site where community can grow and expand is one of such ideal and utopian counter-spaces.

42 According to Ariel’s uncle a costume used by the Danish police, available in Argentina thanks to the neoliberal government’s virtual lack of restrictions to the entry of imported products.

43 In relation to this idea, James Scott ties together the concepts of popular imagination, utopia and rebellion as part of allegorical representations as those found in carnivals: “The second historical achievement of popular imagination is to negate the existing social order. Without ever having set foot outside a stratified society, subordinate groups can, and have, imagined the absence of the distinctions they find so onerous. (…) Most traditional utopian beliefs can, in fact, be understood as a more or less 246

systematic negation of an existing pattern of exploitation and status degradation as it is experienced by subordinate groups. (…) Utopian thought of this kind has typically been cast in disguised or allegorical forms in part because its open declaration would be considered revolutionary” (80-81).

44 And also the collective performance of a team becomes more important than the value of individual performances. As we already know, this contradicts a distinctive feature of the Argentine footballing style.

45 Needless to say, as theorists like Babha had repeatedly affirmed, this is something that can be said of every nation and/or culture under the sun. However, this is especially evident in the Argentine case when one stops to think that “Tradition’s Day” (a national holiday every November 10th) commemorates the birth of a fiction writer: significantly, no other than Martin Fierro’s author José Hernández.

46 In his book Espejos: una historia casi universal he attempts to explain people’s fascination for Maradona by affirming: “Diego Armando Maradona fue adorado no sólo por sus prodigiosos malabarismos sino también porque era un dios sucio, pecador, el más humano de los dioses” (298; emphasis added)

47 This horizontality is an integral part of what makes possible the existence of imagined communities. As Benedict Anderson explains: “…the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings" (7).

48 This connection is reinforced throughout the novel and is present from the very beginning in the epigraphs by poet and liberation theologian Ernesto Cardenal and (who else?) Diego Maradona.

49 Patricia’s love is one of the protagonists’ main motivations when initiating this developmental journey but her agency in the novel does not go beyond that point. Despite their contrasting polarities (Pato’s mom being negative and evil mainly due to her association with corrupt officer Chuy) Patricia and Ariel’s moms are housewives whose range of action is clearly limited. Moreover, football is still presented as a predominantly male interest as evidenced by Patricia’s immediate disregard for Maradona’s ball the moment she (and her sister) are given a Barbie doll and become two happy little birdies who cannot resist their own weakening femininity : “Le di la Barbie. Las dos chicas revoloteaban como pájaros felices. Creo que por un rato Patricia se olvidó de la pelota del Diego. Estaba más interesada en la muñeca que en ninguna otra cosa. Yo aproveché ese momento de debilidad femenina para abrir la caja” (198; emphasis added)

50 “No he pedido ni solicitaré cheques en blanco. Vengo, en cambio, a proponerles un sueño: reconstruir nuestra propia identidad como pueblo y como Nación…” (Kirchner 4).

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CHAPTER 5 GOING BACK, GOING FORWARD.ARGENTINE FOOTBALL LITERATURE AS AN EXERCISE IN RESISTANCE

With a little help from my friends: Sacheri and his plan to save our dying football

Spanish writer and football aficionado Javier Marías famously confessed that only through his passion for this sport (in particular for his favorite team, Real Madrid) was/is he able to recapture an exact sense of his former, more savage, self; as he simply put it: football is “la verdadera recuperación semanal de la infancia” (20). In a similar vein, Argentine philosopher and sociologist Pablo Nacach sees football and those who play it (and consume it) as transversed and indelibly marked by childhood.1

Both Marías and Nacach’s words touch and relate to a central idea shared by most football literature Argentine writers: that of the recovery of something seemingly lost or almost extinct in the hyper-professional world of commoditized football, in this case, the joy, passion, freedom and irresponsibility typical of childhood. A clear evidence of this is marked by the abundance of pibe-like figures in the pages of football literature

(regardless of their chronological age) who through their words and actions assume an alternative, amateurish, vision of this sport.As mentioned in the previous chapters, this position is not free of its own internal tensions and contradictions as these figures not only speak of the authors’ traditionalist nostalgia for past, freer times but also denounce the process of de-humanization of post-industrial societies (and football as an integral part of it) as well as the pressing need to propose a paradigm shift able to reclaim and reincorporate these lost characteristics into a more humane version of this sport.

One of the clearest exponents of this position is the Argentine writer Eduardo

Sacheri. Throughout his entire football literature production—from Esperándolo a Tito

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his first collection of short stories to Papeles en el viento his last novel written around this sport—,2 Sacheri’s main goal is to exalt football’s (professional or amateur) human factor/ component, that is, the element that exceeds the cold logic of extreme capitalism as applied to sports and as such is habitually ignored by the mainstream media outlets.

For obvious reasons of length and directionality of this study, it would be impossible to try to analyze the entirety of Sacheri’s work within this literary subgenre (although we have touched on many of his works throughout this study). That is why, we will focus

(chronologically speaking) on the two ends of his vast footballing literary production in order to demonstrate the coherence of his thematic approach to the football universe in the Argentine context

“Esperándolo a Tito”, Sacheri’s chosen title for his first collection of football stories, comprises—in about fifteen pages—the most salient characteristics of this authors’ footballing literary production, serving too as a fitting example of the main themes and approaches shared by the majority of the Argentine writers of football fiction. Carlos, the story’s narrative voice, is a man in his mid-thirties who, at the beginning of the story, is standing on a football field along with nine of his childhood friends anxiously waiting for Tito, the missing one, to arrive so they can start playing their annual match (that started and continues to be seen as primarily a challenge or desafío) against their age-old neighboring rivals.

What is unusual about this situation is that the aforementioned Tito is a successful professional footballer who has been playing in Europe (the highest aspiration for most South American football players) for many years: the only ‘winner’ in

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a band of ‘losers’, the local hero among the anti-heroes. His departure leaves the team at the mercy of their rivals who, from then on, consistently defeat them:

Ahí me di cuenta del verdadero valor de mis amigos. Desde la partida de Tito, perdimos al hilo seis años, empatamos una vez, y perdimos otros tres consecutivos. Tuvimos que ser muy hombres para salir a la cancha año tras año con la canasta llena y estar siempre dispuestos a volver. (14; emphasis added)

Three key elements in Sacheri’s production can be highlighted here. First, the vital relevance of (male) friendship for his characters’ narrative trajectories; second, his predilection for anti-heroes and third, the study and exploration of the art of losing and the embracing of said adversity as a privileged source of inner knowledge and self-

(re)discovery. Moreover, in a similar vein as the character of the gaucho Martín Fierro, interpreted as a privileged symbol of an Argentine construction of hegemonic/traditional masculinity, losing and suffering (the latter one is presented in Hernández’s poem as one of Fierro’s only masters in life) are central defining elements of Sacheri’s male characters (not to mention their propensity towards crying, also present in gauchesca) 3.

Accordingly, for Carlos and the rest of the team, Tito is first and foremost their friend and as such he is expected to honor his childhood allegiance and life-long friendship and keep his recently-made promise to play for them once again after ten years in a new edition of their own derby or clásico. The fact that the professional team who owns his services is playing a decisive match that very same day makes Tito’s choice a much more symbolic and significant one. The final decision, however, is easily foreseeable: in Sacheri’s narrative universe, material interests do not stand a chance against moral or sentimental ones.

Tito’s professional success is a shared by their friends as they feel they are an integral part of it: from the very first moment Carlos invited him to join their childhood

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team (despite Tito’s extremely frail appearance), continuing with Tito’s first trial at a professional club—where three of his friends accompanied him so he would muster up the courage to show up there at the risk of exposing their utter lack of pro-football talent to the coach’s cruel and unforgiving eye—to Carlos’ legal assistance (despite having not yet passed the bar exam) when negotiating his contract with a European team. They can be described as a group of believers; they do not simply believe in Tito and his footballing skills or his moral stature as a person, but fundamentally they believe in the power of words when spoken with honesty. In the background, one can see the phantom of gauchesca’s oral code resisting its disappearance to the point that Tito’s return to the team is defined as a gauchada. Carlos indicates: “…cuando Tito me llamó para mi cumpleaños, me animé a pedirle la gauchada” (15). A gauchada in the context of contemporary Argentina is a favor someone does without expecting anything in return. As explained above, in “Esperándolo a Tito” this term not only responds to its contemporary usage but also reclaims its full gauchesca lineage by describing an instance of prevalence of an oral code over a written one. This is the core and the main secret behind these characters’ intangible bond: a pre-capitalistic logic that emerges in

Sacheri’s work and clashes with the dominant contemporary logic (in football as in life):

Nunca lo hicimos por nada, nos bastó el orgullo de saberlo del barrio, de saberlo amigo, de ver de vez en cuando un gol suyo, de encontrarnos para las fiestas. Lo hicimos por ser amigos, y cuando él, medio emocionado, nos decía muchachos, cómo cuernos se los puedo pagar, nosotros que no, que dejá de hinchar, que para qué somos amigos… (19- 20; emphasis added).

What is more, the honoring of this oral code is not gender exclusive as proven by the role played by the women in Tito’s family who turn out to be key accomplices/instruments in their scheme. His mother Hilda accepts to participate in it by

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feigning a heart attack, a reason sufficiently valid for Tito’s club to give him permission to travel to Argentina after a European Cup’s mid-week match. However, his team wins and as a result they need to play a decisive match that very same Sunday leading his club’s owners to go back on their word (in what would constitute an unforgivable offense in the oral code) and force him to stay and fulfill his contractual obligations instead.4

When all hope seems lost, it is the intervention of another woman—Tito’s aunt, Juanita via telephone—that in the end makes possible the timely return of the neighborhood’s

“prodigal son”. As he explains “… perdoná, Carlos, me tuve que hacer llamar a la concentración por mi tía Juanita, pero conseguí pasaje para la noche, y llegué hace un rato…” (23).

The central participation of these women in the ploy and their adherence to these old pibes’ oral logic of loyalty but also of cunning trickery and deceitfulness should not lead us into believing their actual role is anything more than peripheral within Sacheri’s male universe. They show no agency as they are typically spoken by men; almost everything about them is passive: men make use of them in a very orthodox and conservative way, that is, as delicate tools to obtain the desired result, and they only act when instructed to do so, in this context, fooling others by inspiring pity and compassion. This gender orthodoxy is taken to an extreme when Carlos comments that the only player of his team that arrived a little late was Alberto, the goalkeeper, who had to take his wife to the hospital and convince her to say with her mother so she could deliver their baby while he went to play football with his childhood friends: “ El único que se retrasó un poco fue Alberto, el arquero, que como la mujer estaba empezando el trabajo de parto esa mañana, se demoró entre que la llevó a la clínica y pudo

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convencerla de que se quedara con la vieja de ella”(16). Sacheri’s use of this anecdote is unmistakably humorous although it serves to reinforce the idea of a clear-cut gender- based distribution of tasks (women have to inspire pity and give birth while men need to prove their bravery, courage and dexterity against other men in eminently physical tasks) as well as the notion of football as a sacred and exclusive male circle. In connection to this, women are banned from attending the friends’ annual challenge as their presence only exacerbates the shame and dishonor losing a match like this entails for the participants: “Perder es terrible, pero perder con las minas mirando era intolerable” (14). As we see, in most of Sacheri’s stories, football is presented as an intimate circle where those who participate reveal their innermost feelings, exposing their otherwise guarded frailty, vulnerability and insecurities. Football, a sort of open-air therapy session, becomes a quasi-sacred place where these men can connect with the childhood version of themselves: a hallowed land (in this case, a sort of spiritual potrero) that needs to be guarded and protected against intruders and “infidels”.

Evidently, the fact women (referred to in the story using the highly charged slang word

“minas”5) are banned from this matches has to do with these men’s own gender anxieties, who following one of the most typical characteristics of traditional masculinity need to save face in what they consider a dishonorable situation: “Por lo menos, hace cuatro años, y gracias a un incidente menor entre las nuestras y las de ellos, prohibimos de común acuerdo la presencia de mujeres en el público. Bah, directamente prohibimos el público.” (14).The powerful gaze of women speaks of their power they hold and of how crucial it is for these men (especially for the underachiving team) to perform adequately in front of them. The fact that the winning team agrees to go along

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with this ban, choosing gender solidarity over the satisfaction of solidifying their image of strong achievers in front of women points us back to the weight of football traditional narratives in the Argentine context where potreros were typically seen as spaces that were not suitable for women. Needless to say, this does not exclude the possibility that they do so out of fear as they are also terrified of being “exposed” in front of “their” women. However, this sort of “exposure” is what makes football literature in the

Argentine context a very fruitful resource when approaching the study of masculinities and their evolution through time.

Tito’s arrival, a mere few seconds prior to the start of the match, provokes surprise, awe and incredulity in the members of the opposing team—“… lo que yo veía en las caras de ellos… asombro, mezclado con bronca, mezclado con incredulidad…”

(22)—as well as, to a large extent, in his teammates who cannot believe their eyes and contemplate his friend’s frantic run towards the football field (with the excitement of a pibe) as part of a happy and wonderful dream:

…todavía adivinando sin ver del todo a ese tipo lanzado a la carrera con un bolsito sobre el hombre gritando aguanten, aguanten que ya llego, aguanten que ya vine, y como en un sueño el Tanito gritando de la alegría, y llamándolo a Josesito,6 que vamos que acá llegó, carajo, que quién dijo que no venía. (22-23)

A dream, similar to that of Olguín, of a more humane football and society where economic interests and contracts fade against the power of emotional ones while written

(or electronic) signatures have little or no value when compared to the binding force of oral promises. The same as in gauchesca’s central work, we are privileged witnesses of a clash of contrasting and antagonistic codes and world-views that, regardless of the apparent inequality in terms of power, represent a valid alternative to the dominant, correspond to a legitimate (infra) political domain and constitute a full-fledged act of

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resistance.7 That is the reason why, even though the narrator understands Tito’s return is just a fleeting moment of triumph, a small isolated victory amidst a sea of large everyday defeats, this does not refrain him from celebrating it: “… el mundo haciendo click y volviendo a encastrar justito en su lugar, el cosmos desde el caos, los amigos cumpliendo, cerrando círculos abiertos en la eternidad, cuando uno tiene catorce y dice

‘ta bien, te acompañamos, así no te da miedo” (23). The story ends at the exact moment the game starts in what appears to be the awaited and unmistakable return to a victorious path for Carlos and Tito’s team. However, (once more) Sacheri prefers to leave this to his readers’ imagination as this result is simply an anecdote. The real battle: intimate, microscopic but very meaningful has already been won.

Papeles en el viento: looking for magic in football’s wasteland

Similarly, Sacheri’s Papeles en el viento (his last football novel to date) present us with a group of friends trying to cope with the ultimate of defeats, that is, the untimely death of one of them—Alejandro (aka El mono)—due to an aggressive cancer. This band of brothers (one of them is actually Alejandro’s older brother) will have to take care of their deceased friend’s legacy which basically consist of his young daughter

(Guadalupe), his love for the football club Independiente de Avellaneda (which they will have to pass to his daughter) and Alejandro’s largest (and latest) economic investment: the football rights of a once promising center-forward named Mario Juan Bautista

Pittilanga whose career is quietly but surely withering away in Presidente Mitre, a third division club in the Argentine province of Santiago del Estero. Fittingly, if, according to the media’s traditional football narrative, players grow abundantly in the pampas

(supporting the myth of Argentina as an eminently fecund land) they will necessarily wilt in the hot and arid Santiago del Estero. 8

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The novel explores the conceptualization and implications of defeat from the perspective of each one of the main characters (Alejandro, Fernando, el Ruso and

Mauricio) the latter one being (not coincidentally) both the most materially successful and morally ambivalent of the group. However, the idea of the disconnection between wealth and success is best embodied by the figure of Alejandro who despite his professional and economic prosperity as a systems engineer feels utterly lost and alienated. What is more, the exact moment he is able to reach his professional and economic peak—the day he is offered a tempting regional managerial position at the

Swiss multinational company he works for—Alejandro calls his group of friends to announce them his surprising and indeclinable decision to quit his job as he feels that the higher he climbs in the corporate ladder, the further way he gets from the Alejandro he believes he really is/was. In what can be described as Argentine football literature’s own and modest version of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, Alejandro muses:

Yo “era”, ¿entendés? Cuando estábamos en tercer año. En cuarto año del secundario. Yo… ¿qué era? —Jugador de fútbol. Fernando apenas balbuceó esas palabras, pero no hizo falta repetirlas porque los tres las habían pensado. —Ahí tenés. ¿Viste cómo te salió facilísimo? Yo era jugador. Era número cuatro. Marcador de punta. Jugaba en las inferiores de Vélez. Jugaba en sexta. Jugaba en quinta. Jugaba en cuarta. Yo era eso, Fernando. Jugador. El asunto es que eso no fui más. Desde que esos chotos me dejaron libre, jugador no fui nunca más. La cagada es que eso es lo último que fui. Después no fui más nada (…)…hace casi veinte años que vengo a los tumbos—y lo miró fijo—. Y me importa un carajo si entre tumbo y tumbo me llené de guita. No quiero vivir así el resto de mi vida. Quiero hacer otra cosa. Quiero volver a ser algo. ¿Me entendés? (44; emphasis added)

The author makes use of this character to introduce one of his favorite themes and, at times, a justification for his repeated incursion in the football literature subgenre, that is, the virtual indivisibility of football and social and (most) personal trajectories in this country. In the case of “El Mono” (aka Alejandro) this idea is taken to a literal

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extreme as not only his identity and sense of being are intimately linked to football but also equally are his fortune (or lack thereof) as well as his impending death. In other words, Alejandro is dying (at least, in part) because his favorite club is dying, but most importantly because football in Argentina is also in its late stages:

… yo siento que a Independiente y a mí nos pasa lo mismo (…) Parece una idiotez, pero dejame que te lo explique. ¿Cómo era Independiente cuando nosotros éramos chicos? —¿Qué tiene que ver? —Vos decime. ¿Cómo era? ¿Cómo le iba? —Bárbaro, le iba. Nos cansamos de ganar campeonatos. Pero no… —¡Quieto! Y decime, ahora, en el presente, ¿cómo le va? —Como el culo. —Verdaderamente para el orto. —Para la reverendísima mierda. —Exacto. (48)

As we can see, the notion of childhood as the wildest, purest of stages is once again reaffirmed as is its intimate connection to football. Both Alejandro and his club were not only happier and more successful when they were young but also fundamentally closer to their true self, to their perceived innermost identity, the same identity that they are struggling to recover:

No tenemos esperanza, entendés. No es un mal momento. No es una mala temporada. Es así. Somos un desastre, y vamos a seguir siendo un desastre. Y cada vez nos vamos a parecer menos a los que fuimos, y va a llegar un punto en que no nos vamos a reconocer. Nos va a quedar el nombre. Fotos viejas. ¿No lo entendés, Fernando? (53; emphasis added)

Two ideas that seem fair to point out in connection to this passage; first, Sacheri uses the (old and fairly discredited) notion of football as a mirror of society, subverting it

(de-rationalizing it) and taking it into his preferred microscopic level: in this case, it is not the sport the one that reflects what takes place in society but the single life trajectory of

Alejandro which is profoundly marked by the destiny of his loved football club. Second, the ultimate horror for Alejandro seem not to be death itself, or the disappearance of

Independiente (or that of Argentine football for that matter), but the radical transformation of it under the pretense of normalcy. The familiar turned into the

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unknown, the strangely familiar, that which should have remained hidden but comes to light or following Freud’s terminology, the unheimlich or the uncanny; a concept that will allow us to understand and explain some of football literature’s most critical works.9

Precisely one of the prominent themes of uncanniness is that of “the double”.

Interestingly, Freud recounts one of such experiences of uncanniness in which while traveling on a train he failed to recognize his own image as was suddenly and unexpectedly projected towards him by a mirror on a door that accidentally flung open.Freud then says and wonders: “Instead, therefore, of being terrified by our doubles, both Mach and I simply failed to recognize them as such. Is it not possible, though, that our dislike of them was a vestigial trace of that older reaction which feels the double to be something uncanny?”(17). In the context of Sacheri’s story it is possible to perceive the vestigial uncanniness at the back of the experience of the double, that is, the gradual but mounting horror at Alejandro’s impossibility of recognizing himself, the repetition compulsion of looking back to his childhood in order to find a supposedly more real Mono, that which was traumatically cut short of his dream of becoming a professional player, the one who lived through football and who many years later, miserably fails again, realizing that football and their loved

Independiente are not what they seemed to be, that, under (and along with) the pretence of familiarity resided the incongruity of the uncanny. After that, the end, following Freud’s notion according to which the double appears as the harbinger of death, seems inevitable. From a different but interrelated perspective, if football is an important part of the construction of Argentine masculinity, its transformation and/or disappearance would be equivalent to a symbolic demasculinization, that is, a castration

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of sorts. As we know this repressed fear is one of the origins of the uncanny, which is why, this concept is of great relevance when approaching football literature contemporary narratives.

In the same vein it is possible to affirm that the look towards a better/idealized past, the male-only brotherhood and the resistance to change presents us with a the most regressive and conservative elements within football literature in general and

Sacheri’s work in particular. However, not all in this novel is futile nostalgia, self-pity and regret; there is also space for an uncompromising and critical approach towards the role of sport media, football players’ agents and club officials, main instigators (or at least accomplices) in the process of dehumanization and commodification of this sport.

After Alejandro’s death, Fernando, Mauricio and el Ruso are forced to leave their place as football outsiders as they need to take charge of their late friend’s only asset: the economic rights of a football player. However, right from the start, Sacheri plays with the idea of football players as new kind of (sometimes highly paid) modern slaves: “—

Necesitamos hablar con el señor Bermúdez. Venimos de Buenos Aires. Somos los dueños de Pittilanga. Fernando escucha la presentación del Ruso y se pregunta si está bien anunciarse así. ¿Son los dueños del jugador o de su pase?” (60; emphasis added). Managerial (or inside) football’s pernicious influence is such that six months into their tenure as Pittilanga’s agents, Fernando’s initial reservations about the morality of this task seem to have faded or, in the best of scenarios, they have been suspended for a while in favor of their urgent need for money: “…después de seis meses de fracasar con perfección exquisita, él también ofrece a Pittilanga como si fuera un juego de ollas o una rifa de la Sociedad de Fomento” (72).

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Professional football as in Borges’s “Esse, est, percipi”, is manipulated from off the field and players are nothing but the merchandise that once exposed in the right shop windows will serve to attract hordes of anxious customers/fans. Pittilanga’s original

‘owner’, Ernesto Salvatierra (aka el Polaco) chooses to call himself a businessman or entrepreneur rather than a mere football agent and metaphorically (or maybe not) announces: “Como empresario, la pelota la manejás vos” (68). The ball, or in this case what makes the ball run in professional football, is none other than money, or as

Salvatierra aseptically chooses to put it “the capital” which in this context is translated into human capital, that is, football players:

—Empresario—lo cortó el Polaco—. No es por nada, pero el término que mejor me define es el de empresario (…) Un empresario tiene otras funciones. A veces representa. De hecho, muchos empezamos así. Pero un empresario combina esas funciones de representación con otras de tipo… digamos… patrimonial, diría yo. Compra, vende, coloca jugadores a préstamo, intermedia entre clubes… Es decir: maneja un capital que son los jugadores. Invierte, en una palabra. No sé si soy claro. (69)

Closely linked to the work of football agents and entrepreneurs, and also playing a crucial role in the massive consumption of professional football, is the media. Always trying to shape consumers’ choices, sport media’s presence is felt and acknowledged throughout the novel: from the varied and plentiful 24-hour sport channels invading

Argentine TV screens, trying (mostly unsuccessfully to this point) to transform local sensibilities into global ones, 10 to the every second more visible hand of those holding football matches’ television rights, deciding when and where each match is to take place according to a manifest commercial logic which grants and takes away visibility in equal parts. Alejandro recognizes the imposition of this logic to the arena of football and

(partly) blames it for the shrinkage and gradual disappearance of his club: “¿A Boca y a

River, los hacen jugar los viernes? —No. —¿Ves? Son los dueños del domingo. Los

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señores juegan el domingo a la tarde porque son los reyes, son los dueños. Solamente los boludos juegan cualquier día a cualquier hora” (55). Following this argument, the disproportionate media dominance of big teams over smaller ones and their exclusive ownership of Sundays (traditionally the day reserved for working classes to attend or in this case watch football matches), only exacerbates this condition, increasing only a few clubs’ fan bases while decreasing those of the less privileged, successful, and thus visible ones. Alejandro continues:

¿Cuántos hinchas tiene Independiente? —¿Independiente? Un montón, Mono. Sigue habiendo un montón. —“Sigue.” Pero cada vez hay menos pibes del Rojo. Son todos de Boca, ahora. O de River, como mucho. —¿Y qué querés? Si en la tele están dale que dale con Boca y River… —Más a mi favor, Fernando. —Juegan los domingos, cobran más guita de la tele, todos los programas están meta y meta con… (57)

What is more, Papeles en el viento presents the universe of football media as one that is ripe with characters of questionable integrity; one in which the character of

Armando Prieto is presented as an emblem of the two-facedness, hypocrisy and corruption dominating this area of society. Prieto, a popular and despotic TV and radio host, plays a key role in the scheme el Ruso, Fernando and Mauricio devise in order to sell the rights to Pittilanga to a foreign club so they recover Alejandro’s inversion to keep it for Guadalupe’s future. This football media celebrity has to do what he does best; that is, fill the always menacing emptiness of the 24/7 coverage with fiction: made-up news, pointless polemics and vacuous but spicy rumors; 11 this time centered on a young, unknown and up and coming player from a small provincial team supposedly coveted by an Argentine football giant like River Plate which, in turn, would help give visibility to the player and so attract the interest of ‘gullible’ foreign investors in what could be described

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as a typical product of the distinctive creole cunning or viveza criolla. All of this, needless to say, for a hefty price and strictly undercover. As Prieto explains:

La operación conmigo no puede ir atada a la venta del pibe. Lo siento, pero es algo que tendrán que ver cómo manejarlo. Pero yo no puedo estar a la espera de que lo vendan a la Polinesia o a Desamparados de San Juan. (…)Y otra cosa: ¿cómo harían? ¿Me incluyen en el contrato: “Un diez por ciento para el periodista que nos hizo la propaganda por radio y televisión”? No jodamos, pibe (…) Escuchá y aprendé con los que saben. —Eso hay que hacerlo bajo cuerda, y al toque. (117)

This journalist is also the one in charge of confirming Alejandro’s worst fears;

Argentine football is not simply dying, but, most probably, is already dead and reborn as an utterly different phenomenon: a thriving business operated by cold capitalist logic that shrewdly hides under the warm, irrational mask of love and passion. In this context, fans are the main accomplices of this charade (or this badly-performed magic trick using

Sacheri’s words) by providing their money as consumers and their blind loyalty as passionate, addicted individuals. In spite of its evident impersonal nature as a planned and meticulously articulated spectacle and business enterprise, professional football must retain its wide popular appeal by never abandoning its role as a (warm) privileged area for the unadulterated expression of feelings and passion. Returning to the idea of the charade, professional football is work and as such, it is directed and organized by the same rules and logic, but at the same time, it cannot become completely synonymous with it so as not to estrange and disaffect those who keep the business going strong. This is, as Whitson presents it (following Williams’ theory), one of the key operations that help constitute a hegemonic order and make it so hard to disarticulate and at times, even perceive: “…a hegemonic order must be flexible enough to absorb potentially contradictory phenomena; indeed this is its genius, in contrast to cruder endeavors to secure consent. Indeed only by striving to absorb and domesticate

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conflicting values and definitions of reality does a dominant culture remain effectively dominant...” (73). Hence Alejandro and Fernando’s frustration, disenchantment and horror when looking closely at the two-faced beast that professional football has become. In other words, and once again, that which should have been kept hidden coming furiously to light. Fernando reflects: “Otra vez se acuerda del Mono, amando y sufriendo por Independiente en su lecho de muerte. Qué boludo. Qué boludos los cuatro. Hasta Mauricio, por detrás de su barrera de cinismo” (120).

Prieto, the same as Salvatierra, uses the ball-dribbling/handling metaphor to describe this sport’s current state of affairs: “El fútbol es un espectáculo. Un negocio del espectáculo. La pelota la manejan los dueños del espectáculo” (118; emphasis added).

The journalists closes the door to the theory of a more humane, less corrupted football and attributes this false conception to the secrecy and lack of media coverage of pre- spectacular times: “La época del fervor por los colores ya pasó (…) yo tampoco me la creo esa de que antes las cosas eran más puras, más limpias. Un carajo. Lo que pasa es que no se sabían. No trascendían. Ahora, como tienen un micrófono y una cámara en el orto las veinticuatro horas, todo se termina sabiendo, entendés” (118). In times of football’s panopticism, there seems to be no place for any alternative views not backed up by the rigorous lens of a camera as all narratives collapse and converge into an evident, fool-proof one:

Y la cosa es simple. O te prendés o te quedás afuera. O entendés los códigos del asunto o te pasan a beneficio de inventario. Y cuando hablo de códigos no me refiero a (…) esa cosa de barrio, de taitas, que se las dan de leales, de tener un reglamento de compañerismo de no sé qué mierda. No: yo hablo de entender los códigos de este negocio” (119)

Football’s semantic reconfiguration is not only evident when dealing with the matter of “codes”; what is more, all the creativeness, rebelliousness and romanticism of

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the term pibe is stripped down just to be reduced to its most basic, literal meaning; that is, the word used to describe someone young and inexperienced (exactly the way Prieto employs it to address a puzzled and disillusioned Fernando). Crucially for our study, this is the sort of textual operations that this peripheral literary subgenre is resisting; waging its marginal but valuable war in search of recapturing football’s seemingly lost polysemy and with it its magical allure.

This is also, in short, what Papeles en el viento is all about. Once again,

Alejandro is the one providing the key to everyday life’s rediscovery and reappreciation.

Where most people see trash, he is able to see beauty (a la Ricky Fitts in the movie

American Beauty) and communal magic. Sacheri sets the scene at what could be described as “dead time”, right after the game has already finished and fans (preferably happy after the team’s victory) are waiting for their turn to leave the stadium.12 There and then, as the lights fade, the goal nets are removed, the TV cameras close their vigilant eyes and the electronic advertising billboards surrounding the field are shut down for the day, the phantom of a primal childhood potrero emerges, floating over the field, transfiguring everything on its path. Here is also when Argentine football literature’s dream or plan (nowhere more evident than in Sacheri’s work) is not simply the magical (and unfeasible) recovery of earlier, happier times—which would lead us to simply and categorically define it (as Alabarces and many others have done before) as an exercise in futile, celebratory nostalgia—, but more importantly, and going beyond the football theme, the defiant revalorization of idleness, ‘unproductivity’ and inoperativity as breeding grounds of dreams and fantasy, in other words, one of the last strongholds of humanness in an increasingly cold, mediatized and technicized world. In

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the long quote that follows, Alejandro shares his vision—an epiphanic moment—with his group of friends:

—Se va el sol (…) —Los policías con los perros se plantan cerca del alambrado… no sé para qué, pero se plantan ahí. (…) —La gente comenta el partido… compra un paty… un choripán. Los pibes levantan del piso los vasos de plástico de las gaseosas y los tiran al foso, para verlos flotar en el agua sucia… (…) —Si estás bien arriba te asomás por las galerías de atrás de la tribuna, las que balconean hacia abajo y escupís a ver a qué le das…Y ponele que haya un poquito de viento. ¿Viste los pedazos de papel de diario que la gente tiró al principio, para recibir al equipo? Si hay un poco de viento los papeles se levantan, se mueven un poco, giran en el aire, se vuelven a posar… El que tiene radio escucha el comentario final, las notas a los jugadores, la conferencia de prensa… Sacan los carteles de publicidad… las redes… van apagando las luces… vos seguís ahí, acodado en la baranda. Ahí siguen los papeles. Las marcas de los taponazos en el pasto. Una serpentina… — Yo les pregunto: eso solo… olvídense de todo lo demás. Copas, campeonatos, todo lo demás. Eso solo. Olvídense del negocio, de que todos van detrás de la guita, de que uno es el único gil que lo hace por amor. Eso solo. ¿No vale la pena toda la mufa que te comés el resto del tiempo? ¿No lo vale? (…) —Capaz. —Y, sí. (…) —Sí, Monito. La verdad que sí. (166)

It is as if Sacheri (through the voice of Alejandro) were proposing a way back (or a momentary deviation) from professional sport’s commodified practices and alienation to the much more simple and enjoyable reality of games (for instance, spitting from the stadium’s terraces to hit unaware passerby), or even further away to that primeval and instinctive nature of play (enjoy as an infant would, by seeing the paper cups or the pieces of paper float) were humans are momentarily liberated from the tyranny of language and productivity. According to Giorgio Agamben—following the logic of the cabalistic tradition — this is what magic (and ultimately happiness) is all about; being able to find the secret name of things, that is, return to the sphere of the inexpressible:

“El nombre secreto es, en realidad, el gesto con el cual la criatura es restituida a lo

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inexpresado. En última instancia, la magia no es conocimiento de los nombres, sino gesto: trastorno y desencantamiento del nombre” (24).

When tracing this idea in the context of the novel, we observe that Alejandro is only called by his given name by those who are outside of his inner circle of friends and family with the exception of his former wife who insists in calling him by this name even after his death and for this very reason (among other) is harshly resented by El Mono’s close friends.13 Something similar happens in the case of “El Ruso” whose legal name

(Daniel) is only revealed by his wife Mónica when they argue about their family’s precarious economic situation. As we can see, these nicknames work as a testament to their bond as life-long friends, as incontestable evidence of their complicity and the magical aura surrounding their friendship: a relationship so strong and intimate that is able to go beyond family ties (despite being brothers Alejandro and Fernando are presented as primarily friends) and the constrictive nature of signifiers. As a matter of fact, many of the last “conversations” among all of them (previous to Alejandro’s passing) are dominated and closed by long periods of highly meaningful silence

(conveyed by the author through the use of ellipsis). As Agamben affirms:

… el niño nunca está tan contento como cuando inventa una lengua secreta… su tristeza no proviene tanto de la ignorancia de los nombres mágicos como de su dificultad para deshacerse del nombre que le ha sido impuesto. No bien lo logra, no bien inventa un nuevo nombre, tiene en sus manos el salvoconducto que lo lleva a la felicidad. (24-25)

Therefore, it is clear to see that the equation (male/homosocial) friendship=magic=happiness is at work in Sacheri’s novel, with football and its close connection to childhood functioning as an ideal pre-text for the exploration of these topics.14 The precious imposition/finding of dead time and the communal setting of a group of friends (or at the very least fellow team supporters) provide the ideal context

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for the sighting of this sort of everyday magic, which, in turn, makes all the pain and the frustration of being subjected to the position of passionate football consumers (that is, the willing participants of a global charade) more bearable and seem to lie at the core of their will to continue being so. The implicit message seems evident: despite capitalism’s best efforts, the magic in and around football cannot be, at least not entirely, manufactured nor captured (and consequently, not sold or bought) since it stems from the irreducible humanness at the center of this sport.

This, in turn, is intimately connected to the idea of the recovery not only of childhood but also of its central ludic components and with it, its playful, illogical and liberating nature. However, before continuing with the examination of these topics within the context of the novel it is necessary to explain how the concepts of play and games differ from that of sport. In order to do so, we resort to the words of sport sociologist

Alan Ingham, who illustrates the difference between these terms from a

Marxian/Freudian perspective.

Play, games, sports

Ingham starts by describing play as a “sensori-motor schema involving our emotions and thoughts, the raw material from which systematic game forms emerge”

(14). In the act of playing, Freud’s pleasure principle is not yet repressed by the reality principle which allows play to be “a narcissistic self-indulgence that all children need to develop healthily” (14) and clearly “not work that is in the form of alienated labour” (15) as this “only produces a use-value (pleasure) for the player, which is consumed immediately in the act of production” (15).

Games on the other hand are less random than play and necessitate the creation and adoption of rules and roles that in turn favor its more social nature: “… constitutive

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rules are developed, ordering and guiding social interaction. Habituation and reciprocal typification are necessary for play to become games” (15). However, although evidently more complex and intricate than play, games are still within the pleasurable realm of use-value production: “Games provide for pleasure, but also require the renunciation and/or deflection of instincts to minimize conflicts with the reality principle that the engagement with others produces…” (15). In addition, games are more social and democratic than both play and sport as “Play is too self-centered; sport is too objectified

(reified) for democratic processes to work. In gaming, we know that we create rules to recognize the needs of others, the time and space in which we play, and the number of people present in the game. Games originally were not watered down sports” (15).

Finally, in sports “An athlete’s labour is appropriated to create surplus value.

Games sold as sports require that some people (athletes) produce other people’s

(spectators) pleasure, and other people’s (the owner of the athletes’ labour power) profits, be they egocentric—an exchange-value as a prestige-value—or economic” (17).

Evidently, as we move away from play towards the realm of sports, the libidinal, pleasurable aspects of the former give way to the more rationalized, survivalist, performance-oriented of the latter. In this respect, sports do nothing but contribute to the advancement and naturalization of the hegemonic logic of rationalization and productivity, prevalent in most (if not in all) areas of capitalist societies. The same as for workers in virtually every other field, athletes’ capacity to produce “has become an end in itself in the public consciousness, and men and women are routinely evaluated in terms of what and how much they produce, rather than who they are” (Whitson 69).

Consequently, professional sports, with its highly exclusive feeder system and the

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objectification of the competitive Other debase the athletes’ humanness who become mere cogs in an impersonal and unforgiving system. Echoing these ideas, Juan

Bautista Pittilanga, the novel’s only professional footballer, expresses the distress and the sense of entrapment this profession entails:

Yo no… yo no sé hacer nada más que esto. Hace diez años que estoy dale que dale con esto. (…) Yo dejé la escuela. Por los entrenamientos. Desde los once que entreno. Esto es un trabajo. Siempre fue. (…) capaz que para usted jugar al fútbol es divertido, juega porque le gusta. Para mí es un trabajo. Yo tengo que comer, de acá. Yo no sé hacer nada, si no. (…) De los pibes que arrancamos en Novena división, ¿sabe cuántos quedamos? (…) Tres, quedamos. Tres. (95)

Pittilanga sees himself as a survivor trying to retain his place within professional football’s tight system, fully aware that a steep decrease in performance (or a serious injury) would lead to a cold, unceremonious removal from this “privileged” sphere. In short, as we can see, what was once sheer playfulness turns into dreary, soulless work and—as Ingham concludes—“…our physical practices become commodified. Valorization subsumes our practices and bodies. We are evaluated on our capacities and potentials to do rather than to be. We move from private to socially productive labour. This is a process of alienation” (18-19).

It is worth noticing that Papeles en el viento does not try to escape the harsh reality of professional, commodified football by diverting its attention away from the stadiums’ shining lights like many of this subgenre’s works choose to do. On the contrary, not only are its protagonists aware of their own entrapment (as players and passionate consumers) in football’s capitalist cycle, but also of the imperative need to become experts in the way this system works in order to recover Alejandro’s investment and ultimately be able to reclaim their connection with his only daughter, estranged from his father’s side of the family by her opportunistic, money-driven mother (more on

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Sacheri’s treatment of women later on). However, it is precisely this awareness, the ability to see beyond what is supposed to be natural and accepted what turns this novel into an exercise of resistance to society and football’s dominant paradigms. This novel’s protagonists are thus operating in two different worlds at once, responding to different codes, rules and allegiances in each one of them. Their need to become experts or at least try to appear as such derives from the necessity to be able to play the part in professional sports’ higly instrumental and compartimentalized sphere. Nonetheless, this is clearly nothing more than a façade and, although in different degrees,15 they never really buy into this dominant logic as the only valid alternative to understand the world.

Following James Scott’s theory, we can speak of the existence of a hidden transcript that questions and critiques this dominance offstage while publicly appearing to comply with it. Critics of this theory have argued that these offstage practices only work as substitute of actual resistance or relief-valves in the same way phenomena like carnival are perceived to do so. Scott disagrees with this perception and goes on to affirm that “Far from being a relief-valve taking the place of actual resistance, the discursive practices offstage sustain resistance in the same way in which the informal peer pressure of factory workers discourages any individual worker from exceeding work norms and becoming a rate-buster” (191). It is—as we have seen in the context of this study from gauchesca onwards— a clash between two different codes and value systems in which: “The subordinate moves back and forth, as it were, between two worlds: the world of the master and the offstage world of subordinates. Both of these worlds have sanctioning power” (Scott, 191). In this respect, Papeles en el viento is (as

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most of Sacheri’s work) a clear example of the influence of friendship’s infrapolitcal power, as Mauricio is constantly scrutinized, judged and pressured by their friends for their apparent lack of commitment to their cause and his intimate and dangerous connection to the world of law and business. 16

As part of their strategy to enter professional football’s matrix and far from retreating to their nostalgic caves of yesteryear football purity and lost glory, this novel’s protagonists (in particular El Ruso) embrace some of professional football’s technological by-products (video games and databases) and use them to the group’s advantage.The key once again is simple, they never stop playing.

In the case of football video games, he and his employees at his car wash shop devote long idle mornings and afternoons playing virtual football tournaments in a

Playstation console while they wait for the customers who rarely arrive. El Ruso is aware that there are seven other car-wash shops in his neighborhood but his “strategy” is very clear and determined: he will let his competitors fight for the always proportionally scarce clients and lead one another into bankruptcy and when this finally happens, his business will thrive. After all, he says he has one key advantage over all them, he is accustomed to losing and as such, an expert of dealing with defeat:

“nosotros estamos acostumbrados a la mala. Nos movemos bien ahí, cuando la cosa se pone jodida. Los demás van a capotar uno detrás del otro, no sé si me entendés”

(84).

In the meantime, he audaciously turns work into play and enjoys his “free time” gaming with his employees (who are evidently much more than that).17 Needless to say, this seemingly careless and irresponsible behavior is resented by his wife, in charge of

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dealing with the family’s debt and baffles his friend Fernando who cannot begin to comprehend El Ruso’s particular logic. El Ruso, following Agamben’s concept of inoperosità, is the one character who explores his true potentiality, which, at the same time represents the most distinguishing feature of the human condition, that is, the ability not to operate when being able to.18 In Potentialities the Italian philosopher asserts that this (im) potentiality is at the core of human power:19

[Beings] that exist in the mode of potentiality are capable of their own impotentiality; and only in this way do they become potential. They can be because they are in relation to their own non-Being. Human beings, insofar as they know and produce, are those beings who, more than any other, exist in the mode of potentiality. This is the origin of human power, which is so violent and limitless in relation to other living beings. Other living beings are capable only of their specific potentiality: they can only do this or that. But human beings are the animals that are capable of their own impotentiality. (182)

Agamben connects inoperativeness with the concept of freedom, which he locates “in the abyss of potentiality” (182) as he understands that to be free is not just

“to have the power to do this or other thing, nor is it simply to have the power to refuse to do this or other thing. To be free is to be capable of one’s own impotentiality, to be in relation to one’s own privation… freedom is freedom for both good and evil” (182–3). In a type of capitalist society that rewards and strives for incessant productiveness (both at work and outside of it) under the false pretence that we can all do whatever we wish to,20 El Ruso’s audacity to not be productive, to not look for ways of revitalizing his dying business works as a powerful act of transgression and defiance. What is more, the appropriation of the dead hours at the car wash will prove vital to the story’s development as they become the fertile ground out of which this character’s most original ideas will grow, the first and most important of them all being, struggling’s

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Pittilanga drastic change of position in the football pitch. He realizes Pittilanga would make an excellent defender while playing videogames with his friends: the source to this discovery is none other than his allegiance to his inner eternally playful pibe. El

Ruso is a pibe or a child because he freely chooses not to use commodified objects and/or time in their most “logical”/ utilitarian way, employing what Agamben defines as an inoperative praxis most typically associated to children. He elaborates on this praxis in Profanations: “Children, who play with whatever old thing that falls into their hands, make toys out of things that belong to the spheres of economics, war, laws and other activities that we are used to thinking of as serious” (76).

In the world of sport videogames, the most sought-after characteristic by developers and consumers alike is that of realism; the higher the degree of realism, the most successful and close to life the sport simulation is. Bruno Peláez expands:“El realismo es algo muy importante para este tipo de títulos… y este se entiende como las opciones para controlar un jugador y un equipo, la física del balón, los frames de animación, el grado de interacción con el entorno, la inteligencia artificial, las posibilidades de anotar un gol, entre otros aspectos” (9). In order to do this, companies such as EA Sports, 2K and Konami pay large sums of money to world-famous athletes to scan their faces and capture their movements, provide gamers with day to day updates in order to reflect the changes taking place in real-life sports and allow them take the role and play from the perspective of any player, coach or manager they want.21 Despite all these efforts, the players’ artificial intelligence cannot entirely shed its artificialness and sport electronic simulations still feel more scripted than its real life counterparts.

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However, as we anticipated El Ruso and his employees decide to take some liberties with these sport electronic simulations (obviously football in this case), transforming what is thought of as a private, individualistic and almost autistic activity

(all videogame consoles by default come with only one joystick) into a communal experience, setting their own rules thus bringing it back into the sphere of childhood play/games.22 According to this new set of rules, each one of the participants of the car wash’s electronic football tournaments has the right to include in their team an “edited” player, that is, one who is modified and re-built with the skills his creator decides to endow him with. Not surprisingly, everybody but a handsome new employee called “El

Feo” creates the perfect striker: one that is fast, strong and equally skillful in the use of both feet. However, El Feo defeats them all by building the equivalent of a football

Frankenstein: a tall, slow and brutal defender who infallibly wrecks opposing teams’ attacks, allowing his team to counter-attack and win almost every game by the minimum margin (1-0). It is this pragmatism and its almost monotonous effectiveness added to the close physical resemblance between El Feo’s creation and Pittilanga what provides the key to solve the unsuccessful player’s enigma: “Y es en ese momento, mientras el

Feo le gana uno a cero a su tío, como siempre, que el Ruso… los ve, y lo asalta una certeza rotunda de haber solucionado el enigma que lo obsesiona desde que fue a ver a Pittilanga a Santiago del Estero o desde tanto tiempo antes que no puede precisar cuánto es” (85).

Pittilanga is going to become a central defender (his team’s last man with the exception of the already exceptional goalkeeper)23 for a very practical reason: it is easier to avoid goals than to score them, just as destructing is simpler than creating.24

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However, this is a hard pill to swallow for the player as it clashes not only with his own identity as a striker but also with a national football tradition that privileges creativity and dexterity over pragmatic efficiency and most importantly with the force of a strong paternal mandate: 25 “¿Me está jodiendo? ¿Defensor? ¿Cómo voy a jugar de defensor? Soy delantero, toda la vida, desde chico, siempre delantero—en su voz ahora sí hay impaciencia, orgullo, una creciente indignación—. ¿Qué se cree?” (91).

Accordingly, when Pittilanga is about to finalize his transfer to a Ukrainian team (as a defender) it is none other than his father who erupts into the room and breaks the negotiation motivated in part by financial reasons (he is afraid his son is going to be scammed) but fundamentally by deep sentimental ones: “Porque mi pibe es delantero.

Yo… —se interrumpe, como si por primera vez le faltasen las palabras— yo lo formé ahí, para el área, desde chico. Desde pibe lo formé. ¡Y no para que estos hijos de puta vengan a llenarle la cabeza con pelotudeces!” (133)

Far from talented pibe-like characters such as Fontanarrosa’s highly stereotypical and parodic Oscar Romulo Garfagnoli or even Sacheri’s Tito, Pittilanga is—as he himself acknowledges it—a survivor; the product of a football and a society in crisis. A capitalist society that demands immediate production and results in every area

(sports included) and discards those who cannot meet these requirements. In this context, Pittilanga’s forced conversion saves his professional career—he is transferred to a Saudi team attracted by the reports on the media and a fictitious database built by

El Ruso and his friends at the shop—and distances Sacheri’s novel from an atavistic defense of fixed traditions and identities. It is not about crying over past glories, escaping reality and refusing to accept change (as the character of El Mono does). The

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key to surviving and trying to save football from its complete eradication/transformation needs to be found in the revisiting of the creativeness, irresponsibility and flexibility of childhood, in the recuperation of the lavish management of time and with it the guiltless enjoyment of idleness, in the defense of boundless creativity and intimate and intense human relationships. A relationship like the one Mauricio (a lawyer and the less romantic character of the group) has with his friends, which in turn helps explain his betrayal to his boss—who wanted to steal Pittilanga’s rights through a devious stratagem in order to sell them himself and obtain the profits of this operation— even when this will most definitely go against his professional interests:

—¿Por qué lo hiciste? ¿Por qué te animaste a dar una mano así? Mauricio tarda en contestar. Tanto, que parece que va a irse sin hacerlo. Cuando habla su voz suena trabada, como si le costase salir. —Mirá — arranca, y carraspea, tal vez en un intento de quitarle el falsete a su tono—. Hace unas semanas me pasó algo muy bueno. Algo mío. Algo bueno. —¿Te ascendieron? —pregunta el Ruso. Mauricio niega con la cabeza. —Y me di cuenta de que sin ustedes… sin ustedes no tenía a quién contárselo. (165; emphasis added)

As it can clearly be seen, this is nothing more than the reappearance of that

Argentine tradition, present in gauchesca literature, of honoring (male-homosocial) friendship and privileging oral over written codes or laws. The value of keeping oral promises and honoring moral imperatives, so important for Fierro and Cruz to the point that the latter finds his death for respecting them, bring with the reward of being part of a communal experience, of being recognized as a peer, as an equal, as a friend.

Mauricio realizes—just like El Mono did at the beginning of the story—that betraying his friends in order to achieve economic success would only end up alienating and isolating him from the rest and more importantly from himself. This, above all, is the promise everybody is intent on keeping, not simply recuperating El Mono’s inversion on

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Pittilanga in order to help Guadalupe, but in spite of all changes and transformations

(that of football included), to still be able to recognize themselves, to preserve their precious humanity. Connecting this idea with the novel’s title, spoken words are everything—with the only possible exception of those uttered by media “operators” such as Armando Prieto—: not only what make us distinctly human separating us from animals but also what help us bond, the most intimate fabric of interpersonal relationships, while (written) papers—legal contracts included—are meant to fly away

(exactly like in Argentine football stadiums) aimlessly in the wind.

Considering all these elements, it is possible to affirm that Sacheri’s Papeles en el Viento can be understood as one of the works that best exemplifies the unresolved tension and complex interaction between tradition and resistance in the context of

Argentine football fiction. On the side of tradition and conservatism, we find the homosocial allegiance to el barrio’s friends, the nostalgic fixation of El Mono with his favorite team’s golden years and the futile enterprise of searching and trying to recapture one’s (or one’s nation or football for that matter) true identity. At the same time, it is plain to see how the reappearance and/or intentional rediscovery of some of these conservative (residual) elements contributes to the formation and establishment of this subgenre’s anti-capitalist message. Furthermore, it is encouraging to see how in times of privatized and commodified passion, kidnapped and commercialized TV images,26 football literature responds by offering a return to the most democratic of images: that of imagination. The revisiting and reinstatement of childhood’s freshness, audacity and creativeness takes place both literally—through stories that reflect the role of this phenomenon during childhood/adolescence (i.e. the already analyzed El equipo

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de los sueños)—and figuratively thanks to the leading role of characters (such as El

Ruso) who retain a childlike and/or (pre) adolescent view of the world. Hence, the unflinching hope, the liberating power of dreams, the mordacity, the rebellion and the bitter disappointment.

Papeles en el viento ends leaving some room for cautious optimism, redemption and dreams of new beginnings: although Argentine football (and society) will never be the same, there are ways and (human) resources to resist its complete transformation or, alternatively, start afresh. This is what the book, right from its symbolically potent cover seems to express. On it we see a little girl (presumably Guadalupe) giving her back to the camera, looking towards a football field with a number five ball resting by her side. The potency of the cover is based on the fact that it can be read as the exact opposite of Billiken’s “El campeón de la temporada” (the magazine’s first cover in 1919) which was to be immortalized in the country’s collective unconscious as the representation of the quintessential pibe. Does this mean that women are the future (or at least part of it) of Argentine football? Will they be able to offer their own views and approaches to this sport? Is Argentine football literature a more accepting environment than this country’s football media? Hopefully so. However, the fact that she is not even holding the ball and is sitting by the sides looking onto the field—waiting for her chance to play or simply resigned to the role of spectator?—clouds our initial optimism. What is more, Sacheri’s treatment of female characters does not differ greatly from what he does in the majority of his works27, and little Guadalupe must be ‘initiated’ into football as well as meticulously coached by her group of ‘uncles’. Nonetheless, the fact that the

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heir of Alejandro’s football passion is a she and not a he is a welcome breath (in the worst case scenario, a puff) of fresh air.

How to anhilate our deadly football: Convertini’s third way

It is virtually impossible to approach the study of sports and sports narratives without centering our attention on the examination of the body (bodies), its potentiality and what is inscribed on it. Accordingly, we have already touched upon the process of creation/inscription of Argentineness in football players’ bodies when we analyzed the construction of la nuestra as well as the, for the most part, parodic representation of this idea in the works of Fontanarrosa and Sasturain. This traditional bodily construction is also behind the multiple reincarnations of the mythical pibe in this subgenre’s characters. Ample evidence of this can be found on the multiplicity of narratives featuring Diego Maradona and pibe-like figures (especially prominent in Sacheri’s works), whose indocile bodies work as a place of resistance against the mechanization, militarist rigidity and capitalist distribution of tasks prevailing in professional football.

Lastly, in the first part of this chapter, we explored the idea of football as a privileged vehicle to rediscover childhood (or its phantom) in the character’s entire selves (bodies included) and along with it, the impulsiveness, creativeness and irresponsibility of this stage of our lives.

This is why, in order to close this panoramic study of the connection football-body in the context of this sports’ fictional works, it is necessary to focus on works that deal with the representation of professional footballers’ bodies and the impact that such process of professionalization entails. As we have seen, Sacheri presents professional footballers as fundamentally anguished and alienated individuals, trapped in a vicious system that feeds on their youthful vitality and severely limits their freedom, condemning

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them to—in the best of cases—an opulent but monotonous existence devoid of any possibilities of real choice. A clear example of this is the character of Pittilanga who does not even “own” his body (the thorny issue of the temporary ownership of another human being is problematized in the novel) and “all” he can do is play, this word being thus divested of all remnants of its original connection to pleasure, freedom and joyfulness. On the other hand, Sacheri also present us with a group of characters who dare to escape this golden cage, such as the case of Tito in “Esperándolo a Tito”,

Perlassi in Aráoz y la verdad and Baltasar Quiñones in “La hipotética resurrección de

Baltasar Quiñones”. The latter one, the best player and national football emblem of a small and intensely footballized Central American country,28 takes advantage of an unfortunate/fortuitous plane crash that ends the lives of his teammates in order to feign his own death and this way obtain the long sought-after freedom and anonymity that football stardom had taken away from him:

…Baltasar Quiñones es un hombre triste... Baltasar Quiñones está preso. Preso de su gloria y de su dinero. Preso de la gratitud de cinco millones de compatriotas que siguen esperándolo todo de él. Preso de su decadencia física. Esa decadencia que los demás no conocen aún porque su genialidad le permite ocultarla y porque su entereza le obliga a exigirle a su cuerpo esfuerzos insoportables. (72)

It is hard not to see the ghosts of Maradona and Argentina behind Quiñones and his poor, football-addicted nation.29 A nation that owns his body and is ready to cling to him, adore him and ultimately tear him to pieces in a very traditional sacrificial fashion. It is worth mentioning that this story also presents an unmistakable intertextual reference to Fontanarrosa’s fictitious nation of Congodia in El area 18 and helps affirm the close connection as well as mark the stylistic differences between these two writers (contrary to Alabarces’s opinion who sees Sacheri’s entire work as a futile and worthless imitation

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of that of Fontanarrosa). While both try to capture the nation and its subjects’ idiosyncrasies using football as a major theme, everything that is parodic, ridicule and caricaturized in Fontanarrosa becomes verisimilar, realistic and deeply sentimental in

Sacheri.

Having said this, we would like to focus on a third and critical way of approaching the football universe through literature in the Argentine context, which is that proposed by porteño journalist and writer Horacio Convertini. This author’s innovation derives from the use of a combination of noir, hard-boiled, sci-fi and horror elements in order to explore the sordidness and inhumanity of professional football in two of his novels: El refuerzo (2008) and El ultimo milagro (2013).30 In both works, Convertini adheres to two of this subgenre’s central postulates going above and beyond the lights of media coverage and focusing on the lives of (semi) anonymous and peripheral characters such as El Tanque Millán (a mediocre centerforward close to an inglorious professional retirement) in the former and Jesus Libonatti (a football club’s president) and Lis (a barra brava or hooligan) in the latter. However, in this author’s novels we find no traces of the idyllic and nostalgic patina that some other football writers (Sacheri, Scher,

Bracelli, Roncoli, etc) cast over their approaches to this central area of Argentine culture and society and their own (male) sentimental education. On the contrary, Convertini seems intent on debunking and desacralizing most of Argentine football’s essential truths and myths by showing their darker, uncanny side, providing his readers with a bitter and strabismic look into what is left of this national passion.

Nightmare in Villa Luppi or How to feed the pibe’s dream

In El refuerzo he starts by exposing the negative side of nothing less than el sueño del pibe that is, almost every other Argentinian kid’s dream of becoming a

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famous football player. El Tanque Millán, aging, aching and with a busted knee makes a balance of his life as a footballer and murmurs sadly: “Se suponía que no debía haber sido así” (19). Enticed by an offer from Simaldone,31 from that moment on, his stuttering agent, Millán decides to try his luck in Italy, dreaming of playing for a big squad, of scoring in Roma’s Olympic Stadium (as Maradona did countless times) but crudely awakening as the centerforward of a banker’s semi-amateur team in the Puglia regional league.32 This inauspicious start is only the first step of what Millán describes as an infamous life (“esta vida infame”), a life marked by its fleetingness and emptiness, the life of a survivor and a mercenary, a football vagabond destined to be forgotten:

Después de diez años de dar vueltas por el mundo, Millán se había acostumbrado a todo: a los idiomas que jamás aprendería, al amor pago, a los olores que le golpeaban la nariz, a los sabores que le quemaban el estómago, a la desconfianza de los otros, a la certeza de que se olvidarían de él apenas partiera. Se había acostumbrado a todo porque sabía que su vida estaba edificada sobre la fugacidad. Lo peor y lo mejor no durarían demasiado. Apenas el tiempo fijado por un contrato firmado a las apuradas y a veces ni eso. (12; emphasis added)

The pibe’s dream turns into a nightmare from which Millán wants to escape but, the same as Pittilanga, simply cannot as he needs money to do so and the only way he can obtain it is by the usufruct of his able body: “Estaba harto de esa vida, pero al mismo tiempo no sabía cómo salir. Para salir necesitaba plata y para juntarla tenía que seguir rodando por los peores sitios como un mercenario” (19) . Millán is bonded to a life of strenuous ‘play’ (which in this context is nothing but work) for the enjoyment and the benefit of others, a situation that places him close to that of other liminal subjects such as hitmen, slaves and prostitutes.33 This helps explain the fact that his chief desire once he finally gets out of the transient circus of professional football is to live a modest and quiet life where he can regain his lost sense of agency: “Algun dia, pensó, cuando

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todo esto termine, voy a comprarme una casa y la voy a pintar con mis propias manos, y la voy a llenar de muebles, y voy a elegir las cortinas para las ventanas, y en el jardín voy a plantar un limonero…” (12-13).

Throughout the novel, the protagonist’s simple and mundane aspirations are explained and justified by presenting glimpses of his life as a professional footballer. In order to do so and right from its first pages, El Refuerzo throws its readers into the depths of professional football’s underworld, a world were aspiring stars (typically emerging from so-called developing countries) find themselves face to face with the sordideness and the brutality of the most vicious form of capitalism applied to sports, and tied to their own dreams and especially those of their families cannot help but succumb to it.

One of such cases is that of the Zairean Nsengi Mukanya, one of the protagonist’s teammates during his European odyssey (at that moment they were playing for a second division Lithuanian team). Mukanya, a clear example of professional football’s trafficking of underage bodies and illusions, is a talented eighteen year old midfielder (the narrator describes him as a very competent player who would have probably found success had the context been any different) who is not physically—“flaco como una lombriz” (10)— or (develop)mentally ready for the unforgiving reality his dreams (and the ambitions of others) had led him to: “Le costaba mucho tenerse en pie en las canchas cubiertas de nieve y cada vez que lo golpeaban, y lo golpeaban mucho en esa liga de hacheros mareados por el vodka, se tapaba la cara con las manos enguantadas para que no lo vieran llorar” (10). However, the cold

European winters are not the worst part for this young player who gets incrementally

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more and more homesick and depressed as spring arrives; the exact moment when

“esa tierra despiadada recuperaba los colores” (10), snow ceases to be a valid excuse and those colors only remind him of the ones he had left behind in his land, the same he always kept with him in a bunch a photos “que no le mostraba a nadie salvo a Millán”, a fellow football vagabond from the Third World. In what will become a constant in

Convertini’s football stories, “the ball is stained in blood” as the Zairean player takes his life by hanging himself on a rainy and lonely Lithuanian night.

Unlike Sacheri, who approaches football’s death and/or transformation from a much more metaphorical and symbolic position, this author prefers to take a shorter, more direct route. Consequently, his football fiction will not deal with towns who wither after their name is changed (as it is the case of O’Connor in Araoz y la verdad) or romantic fans who feel their demise is tied to the inevitable destiny of their preferred club and passion (Alejandro in Papeles en el viento); in Convertini’s gritty novels, professional football itself along with its noxious environment and practices appear as being directly responsible for players and fans’ deaths: a monstrous and enormous business and cultural phenomenon that, as Sacheri says, exposes us like no other and by doing so reveals us that this monster is, as expected, a lot more closer and familiar than we want to admit.

A final traumatic and eventful experience that is presented as a justification of

Millán’s state of mind at the beginning of the novel is the protagonist’s short stint in a second division club from Haiti owned by a caricaturesque villain—Antonio López

Galindo, a decorated general from Cuba’s Batista with half his face paralyzed and confined to a wheel chair—who hires him because, in his opinion (and personal

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experience), Argentines are only good for two things: football and revolution. After a promising start in this club, Millán’s chronically-injured knee fails him again and, as a consequence, he stops scoring as he can barely move. However, when he tries to rescind his contract and go back to Argentina, López Galindo stops him cold “Tú no te vas de aquí hasta que no juegues como me han dicho que juegas” (47). Millán finds himself locked in Haiti both factually and figuratively: factually simply because the general would not give him the money he needs to either leave the country or pay a surgeon to fix his knee while on the other hand he is symbolically trapped, somethered by a narrative others (his agent but also crucially Argentine sport journalism) have built around him as a representative of a national tradition.

A recurrent theme in Convertini’s football works, especially relevant in this novel, is that which presents individuals (in this case football players) as prisioners not only of the capitalist system but also of the power of narratives. In this case, the negative of a narrative of freedom, creativeness and indocility, a national myth which subjects those touched by it to the role of puppets or, in the Haitian context, voodoo dolls.

It is precisely a local voodoo priestess called Margot—to whom Millán has to resort as his last and only option given his precarious financial situation— the one who will remove some cartilage from his knee in the hopes of regaining some of his lost mobility and stability. This alternative fix works for some time, allowing the maligned centerforward to finish the tournament in good form and earn back his freedom as the club’s owner in characteristic dictatorial fashion would only pay him when and if he could score. Once again, Fontanarrosa proves his decisive influence over this

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subgenre, as the whole situation and the characters seem extracted from one of his short stories, minus the humor, of course.

On his return to Argentina, Millán is downhearted and lonely as his time in Haiti estranged him from Veronica, a strip dancer he had met in a brothel. Also an inhabitant of the city’s shadowy periphery, Veronica shares with Millán the petite bourgeois dream of owning a house with a garden in the city suburbs—far enough from the neighborhoods where they came from—and wrongly believes (being led by the media’s narrative) that dating a professional footballer will make it possible: “Ella debía de suponer que Millán tenia la fortuna de Maradona y que acumulaba dinero suficiente para todo…” (38).34 This dream is not entirely different from that of the gaucho Martín

Fierro in La vuelta who wants a peaceful place where to rest his bones after a long life of errancy. However, for Millán this is not an easy task as he sees the window of opportunity shrinking as he reaches the last years of his obscure career as a footballer.

That is why, it does not come as a surprise to see him jumping at the possibility of obtaining what at first appears to be some easy and much needed money (ten thousand pesos) by playing one more game (the final of a regional tournament) for a team in the

Argentine countryside.

The town is called Villa Luppi and we are not told exactly where in Argentina this is exactly located (Simaldone guesses this town could be part of the provinces of

Buenos Aires or La Pampa) but the cardinal direction and the intertextuality are clear:

Millán has to go south, to El Sur where he will face and be haunted by a contemporary

“cipher of the South”: in this case not necessarily Borges’s old and almost motionless gaucho but instead the mythical number ten, Diego Maradona or the quintessential

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Argentine pibe. Maradona’s presence is strongly felt from the first pages of the novel (as a sort of beacon leading Millán to Italy and afterwards Verónica to Millán) and Millán’s agent anticipates this phantasmatic encounter when, while trying to convince his representee to sign this contract, he claims: “Va-vas a parecer mejor que Maradona entre tanto paisanito patadura” (23).

After signing the contract, Millán takes the train that will take him to Villa Luppi and the same as Juan Dahlmann (the protagonist of Borges’s “El Sur”), cannot help but feel this journey has an illusory component; that his acts and decisions are not completely his own, as if someone or something were toying with him. What is more, this sensation never leaves him, accompanying him during his long and lonely trip to

Villa Luppi where he falls asleep and has two vivid and strange nightmares that at once seem to confirm his percepcion and foreshadow his final destiny:

Se durmió profundamente y tuvo dos sueños. En el primero corría desesperadamente detrás de una pelota. Cuando estaba por alcanzarla, una fuerza invisible la alejaba. Y cuando estaba a punto de rendirse… las piernas no le respondían y seguían corriendo solas, como si tuvieran voluntad propia (…) Volvió a dormirse y esta vez soñó con la hechicera vudú. Estaba sentada delante de él en el tren. La tunica chorreante de sangre. Un corazón humano latiendo en la mano derecho y un cuchillo limpio en la izquierda. Millán le preguntaba si lo peor había pasado. Y ella abría la boca para contestarle, pero en lugar de palabras derramaba miles de cucarachas negras que le bajaban por el cuerpo y se le trepaban a él por las piernas. (51-52)

However, this feeling of strangeness or uncanniness does not first appear while he is in the train but is especially evident earlier in the story in the exact moment of signing the ultimately fateful contract, where Millán sees himself from an omniscient perspective and cannot completely take responsibility for his actions: “…de golpe sintió que todo era inútil. Que una fuerza externa lo arrastraba. Se oyó preguntar cuando sería el partido. Y se vio agarrar la lapicera y probarla en el borde de una servilleta

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usada” (21; emphasis added). The magical and monotonous pampas—“un desierto de tristeza verde” (53)—will do the rest:35

… fueron pasando los minutos y las horas y Villa Luppi no aparecía. Afuera, todo era campo. Una planicie aburrida, quebrada cada tanto por espejos de agua estancada y por manchas negras de ganado. Por momentos tenía la sospecha de estar moviéndose en círculo, como en un tren de juguete, y que el paisaje del otro lado era siempre el mismo, Las mismas vacas, los mismos pastizales, los mismos riachos amarronados que languidecían consumidos por un sol calcinante. (53)

Once the train reaches its improbable destiny—the same as in Borges’ story and

Sacheri’s Aráoz y la verdad (the other footballing re-writing of El Sur analyzed in this work)—the desolate nature of the station seems to deny the presence of a city, a town or any other form of “civilized” settlement, reinforcing the notion that, for the protagonists, this journey to the Argentine countryside will be much more than a mere southbound geographical movement: “En el rectángulo de la ventanilla aparecieron una plataforma de cemento, dos bancos, un tinglado de madera podrida y de hierro oxidado. Aquello no parecía tener la jerarquía de una estación ferroviaria. Tampoco había pueblo alguno a la vista” (53).

Millán’s perplexity will gradually increase throughout the story, along with the eerie feeling that tells him that in the peaceful and bucolic town of Villa Luppi something is strangely out of place. After meeting mister Beláustegui (the club/town’s owner),36 he is driven to a luxurious house—“una mansion de gente rica’ (57)—in the outskirts of

Villa Luppi where he is welcomed by Beláustegui’s excited and seductive wife (Norma

Arriola de Beláustegui) who inexplicably calls him Maravilla Millán (Millán the Marvel or

Marvelous Millán) and then offers him a succulent homemade breakfast and perhaps something else:

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… tenía hambre y la oferta del desayuno era muy tentadora. Pero había algo que lo incomodaba. La posición de la mujer. Permanecía de pie frente a él, levemente inclinada hacia delante, con las manos apoyadas sobre la mesa. Sus pechos parecían a punto de desbordar toda contención: un aluvión de carne tierna y masticable, la insinuación de un festín urgente. (59)

The idea Villa Luppi as a place of generous plentifulness is also brought up by

Mister Beláustegui who, in the drive home after picking him up from the train station, boasts about the land’s fertility due to the area’s privileged microclimate: “Y la tierra… no sabe lo que es la tierra. Lo que uno tira, crece. El día que tiremos cemento, crecen edificios” (56).37 However, what they grow is not cement but mainly soy, which helps explain the Beláustegui’s opulence (his house is described as a beautiful and luminous mansion filled with delicate furniture of European design) and Millán’s lack of interest in the unchanging and boring scenery: “[Millán] no veía nada más que un cuadro achatado por el sol y la monocromía, la obra de un pintor al que se le había acabado la imaginación o la voluntad” (56-57).

Millán’s dream-like out-of-placeness along with his suspiciousness grow the moment Beláustegui gives him Club Atletico Villa Luppi’s jersey and directs him to change his clothes so he can get ready for his official presentation as the team’s shirt is none other than Real Madrid’s with the Spanish squad’s emblem rudimentarily covered in adhesive tape forming the letters CAVL. Moreover, reality’s illusory feeling increases when he discovers his jersey’s number: football’s magical cipher, the coveted number

10: “Antes de ponerse la camiseta, miró el número. Diez. La cifra mágica del fútbol.

Pelé, Platini, Maradona. ¿Y si se habían confundido de jugador?... Millán sintió que las cosas no encajaban bien. Desajustes” (61). This number was surely the right fit for

Maravilla Millán as Beláustegui’s wife had called him, the problem was that he was

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definitely not it as there was nothing marvelous about his style of play. He was simply

“El tanque” (the tank) a robust center-forward with a powerful right foot, an ailing knee and little else. At this point, the familiar horror of the double reemerges as Millán feels himself vanishing under the pressing desire of Argentine football’s fabricated traditions.

He is to embody Argentine’s mythical number 10 in order to perform adequately (and, unbeknown to him, survive); a pibe in the middle of this country’s fertile pampas, the ultimate traditionalist narrative Frankenstein, and a symbol associated with Argentina’s most atrocious dictatorship: the always menacing pibegaucho.38

To make matters worse, Beláustegui informs him that once he has changed into football clothes, Millán will be formally introduced to the fans (basically the whole town’s population) in a circus-like type of ceremony (a warped criollo version of pro-footballers introductions in Europe) where he will have to juggle the ball for two entire blocks, going through gigantic letters forming his name, until he reaches a stage where he will have to give a short speech. Naturally, he miserably fails to complete the first task (a sort of pibe’s rite of passage) after the ball bounces awkwardly off his right knee (his bad one), and, to the audience’s astonishment, laboriously reaches the stage holding the ball in his hands just like a basketball player. His worn-out footballing body has reached its limit; he is definitely not a pibe and simply cannot do anything to hide it:

Millán siguió como pudo. Entre las dos L la pelota se le fue tres veces. Una antes de llegar a la I. Y en la M se cansó. La agarró con la mano y la hizo girar sobre el dedo índice, como los basquetbolistas, un truco que practicaba desde la escuela primaria y le salía bastante bien. Los aplausos se diluyeron. (64-65)

Unlike Sacheri’s protagonist in “Último hombre”, Millán is unable to find his inner pibe—according to the journalistic myth, present in every Argentine football player’s

DNA— and is essentially a victim of this fictional creation. Maradona’s number ten

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jersey—as the Argentine pibe’s most perfect reincarnation—functions in this story (as it does in the realm of Argentine football, even after Lionel Messi’s arrival) not only as an empty signifier but also as an oppressive symbol, haunting those who try to fill this void, invariably condemning them to the role of failed imposters.

At first, Millán finds the whole situation to be amusing and even has some fun playing the role of the football legend, mimicking Peron’s (another one of Argentina’s empty signifiers) famous salute to an excited crowd and envisioning a stereotypical countryside welcome party in his honor complete with folk dances, kids dressed as gauchos, barbeque and the town’s major presenting him with a sheath knife with his carved initials. However, he soon discovers there is something dark and ferocious pulsating beneath the quiet and bucolic surface; an excitement that only partially masks the much more real anguish:

…por un momento la farsa llegó a parecerle divertida, pero cuando vio que un grupo de muchachos empezaba a golpear ferozmente con pedazos de manguera las letras gigantes tuvo miedo. Esa percusión monótona y elemental parecía encerrar un mensaje oscuro, que como todo ahí se le escapaba. (65-66)

The same as contemporary writers such as Samanta Schweblin in her critically acclaimed novel Distancia de rescate, Convertini proposes a return to the Argentine countryside (“el campo”)—a foundational and recurrent trope in this country’s literary history—that goes beyond shallow early-mid twentieth century costumbrista approaches and reclaims its place as a haunting and fascinating presence in Argentine literature.

This return is not, however, under the traditional guise of the civilization vs barbarism’s dichotomy despite finding remnants of it throughout the story such as Simaldone’s mocking and paternalistic fantasy of footballing paisanitos (little peasants), Millán’s

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reveries of the local cultural performances in his honor as the metropolitan visitor or

Beláustegui’s wife perceived candidness and expansiveness.

In Convertini’s twenty first century Argentinian countryside, the imagined paisanitos have mutated into wealthy sojeros (soy farmers) who watch satellite TV and are obsessed with European football to the point that not only Club Atletico Villa Luppi’s players wear (a slightly modified version of) Real Madrid’s jersey but they also play in a small replica of Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabeu stadium in the middle of the Argentine pampas. It is plain to see—the author seems to imply—that men wearing white are not an exclusive product of the metropolis anymore and that civilization and barbarism (one of twentieth century Argentine literature’s favorite antinomies) have always overlapped.

This overlapping is what Argentine writer and literary critic Elsa Drucaroff has termed civilbarbarie as “barbarie y civilizacion se han fundido, perdió sentido aquel coordinante o que las separaba, ahora son indiscernibles” (477). This civilbarbarie, she continues, is a thematic stain or common theme of post dictatorship Argentine writers, especially those who form part of what she calls NNA (Nueva Narrativa Argentina). Although she does not consider Convertini or any other “football writer” (with the only possible exception of Ariel Magnus) as part of this group, most of them are contemporaries to the

NNA writers and, as we can see, share some of their thematic concerns.

Millán’s official introduction turns more and more absurd when after his failed pibe impersonation, he is taken to CAVL’s mini Bernabeu—“Veinte mil espectadores sentados. Los mismos paneles lumínicos que el Santiago Bernabeu. El estadio más moderno de esta parte del país” (71)— in order to demonstrate his skills as a striker by shooting free-kicks (another one of Maradona’s specialties) to a ridiculously old and

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short goalkeeper introduced by Beláustegui as one of the club’s “legends”. When, after several failed attempts, the striker finally scores, the audience erupts into madness silencing Millán’s own wail of pain after tearing his ligament once again. The stage is finally set and amidst the chaos, Beláustegui’s men take the disconcerted player to a hotel room where they lock him up until the following day’s decisive game.

Alarmed and distressed after realizing he is trapped in his hotel room, Millán looks through the window just to see a group of municipal workers in the process of disassembling the stage, carrying the remains of the wooden letters forming his name, who, after recognizing him, start chanting his name loud and unceasingly: “Cerró la ventana y corrió la cortina. Habría de cambiarse e irse ya, sin importar cómo. No quería permanecer más en ese pueblo de locos, en donde todo parecía lo que no era” (78).

His never-materialized pibe’s dream of fame, glory and popularity shows its ugly nightmarish face and Millán is appalled by it. Still wearing his football uniform, he goes to the bathroom and the mirror gives him one last confirmation of the sheer absurdity of the situation:

Se miró al espejo: las ojeras negras contrastaban con el blanco inmaculado de la camiseta del Real Madrid. El, justo él, con ese uniforme. Nada más absurdo. O sí; las palabras del locutor. Lo había llamado leyenda del futbol, embajador, hombre ejemplar. Maravilla Millán, alargando las a. ¡Dios! Su Carrera era un canto a la mediocridad. El pan ganado a puntinazos. Un tiempo acá, otro allá. Un linyera del fútbol más que una leyenda. (79)

Once again, the oppressive dream/nightmare feeling intensifies Millán’s sense of estrangement and helplessness, and the sensation of lack of control over the situation fills him with an obscure apprehension characteristical of the uncanny. The author’s use of contrasts and dramatic irony continues as Beláustegui goes to the player’s room in

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order to clarify the circumstances surrounding Millán’s arrival to Villa Luppi as well as his sudden and inexplicable football star status.

As part of this conversation, the club’s owner mentions the importance of this final match for the town and the necessity of waging a psychological war with the opposing team, hence the deliberate and calculated enlargement and magnification of their new player’s career and attributes. He also informs Millán of the tragic ending of

Truman Paladino, the Uruguayan player he was hired to replace, who committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree the night prior to the final game (although we later know that he was actually killed by Beláustegui’s people after discovering he was having an affair with the patrón’s wife). Most importantly, Beláustegui comes clean about what is really eating him inside, the force behind his actions, a presence that fills it all and threatens to devour him; the same that according to Sarmiento endangered the development of the Argentine nation: the expansive and monotonous desert, the countryside: “Usted no sabe lo que es vivir en este pueblo… Usted no tiene la menor idea de lo que es estar encerrado en un punto del mapa que ni siquiera es visible con lupa… Puro campo. Adelante, atrás, en el medio. Uno se asfixia de tanto aire” (82; emphasis added).

Beláustegui’s seems to be echoing Sarmiento’s words in Facundo when the latter refers to the “grandes soledades” (great solitudes) of the boundless Argentine plains so ‘naturally’ inclined to fall victim to despotic rulers (like Facundo Quiroga or himself). More than a hundred and fifty years later in the context of still heavily centralist country like today’s Argentina (“God is everywhere but is office is in Buenos Aires” goes a popular Argentine saying) what a traditionally agrarian economy cannot do (no matter

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how successful), professional football may possibly achieve: to bring national/global visibility to an isolated speck on the map. This explains the building of the excessive

Bernabéu-like stadium and the firm resolution—no matter the cost—of winning this regional title so they (in this case the TV and the big teams from Buenos Aires) will finally come:

Queremos ganar esta final para cambiar la historia. Queremos que algún día vengan a jugar Boca, River, San Lorenzo, los grandes del fútbol, y que esto se llene de figuras internacionales, periodistas, cámaras de televisión… No importa el precio. (82; emphasis added)

Beláustegui’s dark ambitions of grandeur and his lack of scruples does nothing but confirm both his own condition of civilbarbarian and Millán’s initial uneasiness about this seemingly peaceful little town in the pampas. Exactly as a nineteenth century lettered man would, Beláustegui looks up to big cities (Buenos Aires and Madrid) as sources of light and inspiration (although in a very literal, superficial way) but, unlike the former, he is not interested in moving to the metropolis to absorb its “civilizing” influence

(equally useless as Millán’s European experience proves) and sacrifice his privileged position and tyrannical rule over the claustrophobic town of Villa Luppi. Following

Drucaroff’s ideas, it is easy to understand Beláustegui’s position and to see his actions as “natural” in the Argentina of civilbarbarism where savage capitalism offers “a los muy pobres y a los muy ricos el delito naturalizado y no ofrece al resto, y mucho menos a los jóvenes, ni un simulacro de objetivos razonables que permitan otorgar sentido a la vida” (484).

After Perla, a young hotel employee, discloses the real end of Truman Paladino and Belaustegui’s plans to do the same to him if he fails to perform, a terrified Millán can see his own grim future (especially considering the sorry state of his knee) and

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decides to escape Villa Luppi before the decisive game.39 However, once out of the hotel and when trying to catch the only train back to Buenos Aires, his knee fails him once again in what can be understood as his body’s quiet revolution and the final realization of his out-of-control limbs’ nightmare, and after ripping his thigh in an orchard’s barbed wire he lets himself fall to the ground from where he will not get up:40

“En un momento, no supo cuándo porque perdió la noción del tiempo, se dejó caer. Los ojos y la boca se le llenaron de tierra. Se preguntó si allí, algún día, crecería una planta con el color de su sangre” (104). In a clever reversal of the idea of Argentina as the granary of the world—and America as a land of excess—, where everything, including footballers abundantly grow (see Sasturain’s “Campitos”), this failed pibe decides to stop and—breaking with the metaphor—literally plant himself down in the pampa’s fertile ground. In Convertini’s last ironic twist, our anti-hero’s tragic flaw (his ailing knee or being a porteño in the middle of the countryside?) is what finally helps him fulfil his

“dream” of settling down:

Lo volvió a invadir la misma sensación (...) Una especie de hartazgo, la certeza de que huir como un loco no solucionaría nada. Que acaso lo que le convenía era quedarse quieto en algún lado, cualquier lado (…) Parar. De eso se trataba, a fin de cuentas. De dejar de rodar sin ton ni son por el mundo detrás de sueños que siempre estaban demasiado lejos para sus piernas maltrechas. Sí, sí, parar.” (104-105)

Millán, as a sort of footballing Bartleby, prefers not to move anymore, to stop forcing his wrecked and abused body in the chase of an ever-elusive dream, and in truly insubordinate and counter-cultural fahion once more placing Agambean politics of inoperativity at work. A dream that on this context is based almost entirely on the pibe/Maradona myth, which promises fame, money, glory and a quick way out of poverty to millions of Argentine hopeful players. Crucially—by focusing on this minimal

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and marginal football stories— Convertini as well as other football literature authors

(Fontanarrosa, Vargas, Sacheri, Scher, etc.) expose what the sport media typically keeps hidden under the overwhelming spectacularization of twenty-first century’s glamorous, commodified and ultra-professional football: the pibe myth is nothing but a voracious monster that feeds off millions of aspiring players’ partially impaired, maimed or dead bodies. Jorge Rinaldi aptly characterizes this vicious and almost anonymous world of crushed dreams and bones:

El mundo de inferiores definitivamente no es lo que tendría que ser. (…) Y encima uno se queda siempre con la realidad del que “llega”. Piensa en los Agüero, los Messi, los Riquelme… Pero en realidad la mayoría queda en el camino. Muchos, incluso, después de haber apostado casi su propia vida para llegar. (…) Y entonces ese chico que era mirado con ansiedad por todos, de pronto se encuentra solo con su alma con la obligación de afrontar nuevos desafíos, muchos de ellos completamente alejados de sus intereses de años. (18)

As part of an exclusive and elusive feeder system, the road to professional success is paved with them and this literary subgenre does its small part to provide some visibility to this largely unexplored side of the football phenomenon. What is more, as we have seen, the works of football literature not only focus on those who do not make it (although they do constitute a large part of this subgenre’s protagonists) but also on the few who do in order to delve into the background of fame and popularity and at the same time question capitalist society’s notion of success.

Looking for football’s last miracle: passion, aguante, failed glory and death

Convertini is responsible for breaking yet with another antinomy in his novel El

último milagro (2013). This time is the one that deals with the division between the natural versus the artificial. The football player’s body, alienated and abused by this professional sport’s demands is, in this case, literally intervened, traversed by

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technology in order to create the first cyborg-striker or, in the Argentine context, cyborg- pibe. However, the question that immediately arises is: is it really first? Definitely not, if, following Donna Haraway’s cyber feminist theories,41 we reflect on the increasingly imperious necessity that the human body and more especially the professional athlete functions as a high performance machine, interacting and continuously feeding on new technological advances. Even without going into the extreme cases of doping among athletes, it is very hard to find an answer to the question that wonders about the boundaries between the natural and the artificial in the contemporary realm of sports.

Moreover, according to Katherine Hayles this is not only a hard question but most probably a pointless one if we embrace the posthuman point of view according to which our consciousness is not the seat of human identity as claimed by Descartes but simply

“an epiphenomenon… an evolutionary upstart trying to claim that it is the whole show when in actuality it is only a minor sideshow” (3) while the body is seen as a prosthesis, our original one, “we all learn to manipulate” (3). Following this conception it is easy to understand that a posthuman configuration of human beings will not see the human/machine conflation as something undesirable or impossible. Quite the contrary, as Hayes states answering our original question “In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals” (3).

It is useful to remember that in the Argentine context this thematic discussion goes back to football’s very origins when it became necessary to create a narrative that rejected the British influence (that is, killing the father) on this area of popular culture.

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This is when the British football style (and by extension that of most European countries) was deemed “mechanical and machine-like” (in Brazil we find something similar with the faceoff between futebol-arte vs futebol- força) in opposition to a more fluid, natural and creative type of performativity by the local players.

What is more, this narrative is still present in contemporary Argentine media and is probably nowhere clearer than in the Maradona vs Messi controversy. While Messi’s exceptional quality as a player is not discussed, Maradona is still perceived by a good number of journalist and fans—specifically those who saw him play at his highest, most brilliant peak—as the last natural miracle Argentine football has produced (especially curious if we consider Maradona’s history of doping and chemical substance abuse).

Messi, on the other hand, is thought of as a laboratory product in two senses: 1) due to the treatment he underwent as a kid in order to deal with his growth hormone disorder

2) because he is not seen as a complete product of Argentine potreros but of

Barcelona’s (thus Europe’s) formative divisions. This is the narrative that explains some of Argentine journalists’ most ludicrous statements about the Barcelona FC’s striker, for instance the one (uttered by Horacio Pagani) that affirms that Messi “does not really dribble (gambetea)” but he’s just exceptionally fast (so he does not need to) and his style of play resembles that of a video-game avatar.

Simultaneously and in connection to this, Convertini returns to the idea of football as a simulation and a dramatic genre run from outside already present in Benedetti’s

“Puntero izquierdo” and even more clearly in Borges and Bioy Casares’ “Esse, est percipi”. Furthermore, this time tackling the always controversial area of the so-called

“essences” and commonly accepted truths, the author examines the notion that

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understands football supporters as the last remnants of purity and representativeness in times of hyper-professionalism to warn us about the proximity of this thought— especially predominant in the current era of aguante—to a fascist and regressive ethics and worldview.

At this point, we could partially coincide with Alabarces and his idea that the football subgenre exhausts itself and reaches its limit in the works of Roberto

Fontanarrosa if we remember that the writer from Rosario had already brilliantly addressed this issue from a parodic register in short stories like "El ocho era Moacyr" or

"Plegarias a la virgen".42 In this sense, Alabarces is right: Convertini brings nothing new to the table. However, as we already mentioned, his distinctive incorporation of some elements of noir and hard-boiled fiction (mainly among them the self-destructive qualities of the protagonists, the important role of sex, the omnipresence of violence and corruption and the appearance of femme-fatale type of characters) along with touches of science-fiction and horror into football literature marks a difference with the majority of his predecessors. The type of dirty, gritty realism this author embraces does nothing but reminds us of the complete transformation of this game into a more than serious life or death type of business, extending its influence into every area of Argentina society.

What is more, while the media and some of the highest national authorities—including former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner—43 continue to celebrate the irrepressible passion of Argentine fans as some sort of national heritage—the most paradigmatic case being the Argentine TV show “El Aguante” (1997-2008) entirely devoted to highlighting Argentine fans’ fervor and originality, football literature takes the

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time to critically explore the background of this seemingly pure, instinctive and hyper- representative feeling. 44

Similar to Papeles en el viento, El último milagro deals with Argentine football’s transformation, final demise and prospective resurrection, although in the case of

Convertini’s novel, this sport’s promise of new beginnings does not lie in the hands of a little girl and a group of romantic and well-intentioned fans but in the feeble mind of Lis

(short for Lisandro) the overzealous head of Racing Club’s hooligan’s group “La academia del aguante”. The concept of aguante permeates almost every area of current

Argentine society going from football (where it was born), to rock and roll (where it continued its growth and development during the 1990’s and the 2000’s) to politics, where not only its jargon but also its ethic and practices are employed. One prominent example of this was Juliana de Tullio’s (from 2013 onwards the head of Kirchnerism’ deputies block) message to the then governor of Buenos Aires Daniel Scioli asking him to show more commitment towards the president’s policies by using the phrase

“aguantar los trapos” (literally “to hold on to the flags”): "A mí me gustaría que [Scioli], más allá de decir «yo soy parte del proyecto», también se sienta en actitudes concretas. También que aguante los trapos" (La Nación June 1st 2013). This phrase has clear football origins and connotations and is directly associated with the concept of aguante, according to which a real fan (in this context also “a real man/macho”) always sacrifices his body and endures the pain (from opposing fans) no matter the odds or the circumstances, hanging on to his club’s flag (or trapo), never betraying his cause by showing cowardice (by running in the football context) and showing a stoic disposition against adversity.

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In Spanish aguantar means to bear or to stand and it can be used and interpreted as a term that designates collective (or individual) resistance against hardship or some form or type of “other” which, in the context of football is typically incarnated by the group of rival fans and in a lesser degree those in charge of applying the law, i.e. the police. As mentioned above, those who show aguante are not afraid of sacrificing their physical integrity in the name of a higher cause (their passion for a desired object) but, it must be made clear, these practices and ethics are not directly linked to those of passive resistance as they also have a much more active and violent component. José Garriga Zucal explains the difference between two types of football aguante:

… en el ámbito del fútbol encontramos dos conceptos de aguante (…) Mientras algunos espectadores, los denominados hinchas militantes [a concept first introduced by Eduardo Archetti], llaman aguante al fervor y a la fidelidad por el club, los ‘pibes’ de la hinchada lo vinculan solo al enfrentamiento corporal. (71)

As we can see, the first use of aguante better fits the unflinchable loyalty of romantic fans such as those described by Sacheri in Papeles en el viento, although some of the characters also show a touch of disillusionment and nostalgia that escapes the true logic of this concept. Meanwhile, in the latter sense of the term aguantar means

…poner el cuerpo (“putting the body in”), that is, in physical violence. Aguante is essentially other-directed. It is through aguante that male football fans can distinguish themselves from the non-machos, who are disqualified as hijos nuestros (non-adults) and putos (homosexuals) and demonstrate to one another that they are ‘real men’, that they are ‘macho’.45 Violence is thus not only a practice that is not rejected, instead, it is deemed legitimate and more or less obliged. (Garriga Zucal qtd. in Spaaij 41)

In Convertini’s novel, the pibes of the “academia del aguante” represent a rare hybrid between these two versions of this concept; on the one hand, they show the

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loyalty of militant fans with the addition of a rigorous puritanical ethics that does not fall for money (as these characterized group of fans typically do) and demands and expects all sorts of sacrifices in the name of their beloved and sacralized Racing Club. On the other, they have no limits when it comes to the exercise of violence. The narrator describes them as:

…pibes que discutían el poder en el corazón de la Guardia Imperial [Racing Club’s better known group of hooligans] aplicando un novedoso código de conducta: no transar con los políticos de siempre, no usar al club para negocios particulares; no venderse a nadie; no comprar a nadie; las cosas se arreglan a las piñas (evitar los fierros mientras se pueda); Racing es todo; el que lo insulta cobra y el que lo traiciona muere. (14; emphasis added)

The use of the term pibes to refer to Racing Club’s hooligans is worth noticing in this fragment—although not entirely surprising given professional football players perceived lack of popular representativity as they are continually portrayed by the media as frivolous superstars and millionaires.This concept’s ambivalence allows it to go from designanting the purest exponent of the Argentine style on the field to become the chosen word to refer to the exemplars of an ‘authentic’ and passionate way of understanding and living this sport, navigating in both cases, the troubled waters of excess. In this context, fans (hinchas) will be the presumed holders of authenticity, the true and only remaining carriers of Argentine football’s ‘legacy’. As Rodriguez and

Conde affirm: “…en los noventa van a ser los aficionados (representados) quienes ocupen el lugar de los jugadores en la épica deportivo-nacional de los medios, 46 aun cuando esa narrativa sobre los hinchas preexistiera aproximadamente desde la década de los cincuenta” (102).47 In connection to this idea, in the year 2010, the organization

Hinchadas Unidas Argentinas (United Argentine Fans/Hooligans) was created by a strongman of Kirchnerism named Marcelo Mallo. This sort of “dream team” of violent

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fans traveled to the World Cup of South Africa in that year and was dissolved just a month before 2014’s World Cup in Brazil, allegedly due to a conflict with the leaders of

AFA (Argentine Football Association) over the distribution of tickets for said event.

Criticized by part of the media and always under the suspicion of being financially supported by the Argentine State, this hooligans’ national team came to represent the ultimate official glorification of violent instrumental passion in the context of this country’s football history, the triumph of the media’s shallow, spectacularized carnival.

Returning to the analysis of the novel’s plot and background, the author’s choice of Racing Club as the primary setting for this dystopic football story is not a fortuitous one, as this institution has always held a central importance not just for Argentine football—this team is considered the first truly Argentine (criollo) champion in 1913, his jersey being almost identical to that of the national team—48 but also for this country’s society. In this respect, this club not only boasts a select group of intensely popular and mythical fans (most notably Carlos Gardel, Juan Doming Perón and the new addition of

Nestor Kirchner) but it also been repeatedly seen as a perfect metaphor of the country as a whole, enjoying a golden era at the beginning of the 20th century and being chronically in the midst of crises from then on.49

Such is the case of the context of El último milagro, where Racing Club seems destined to relegation to the second division (a symbolic death for football clubs, especially big ones) and fans’ only hope for salvation lie on the hands of a newly appointed president (the inexperienced and overwhelmed Jesús Ribonatti), an aged, sad and drunken coach (Carmelo Zazaglia) and a young star about to be transferred to

Europe (Johnny Franzoni), all of them supported and encouraged by the group of young

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radical fans commanded by Lis. This panorama, as depicted by the author, is clearly hopeless and the team’s chances for survival, very slim.

However, if for a second we abandoned the author’s omniscient approach and looked at the same situation through the more superficial lens of Argentine mainstream football media, we would realize that Convertini seemed to have just heard (and answered) many of its incessant daily prayers. Only by looking at the group of main characters we find he has brought together the touted duo of youth and experience—a coach with a life devoted to this sport and plenty of traditional Argentine football pedigree (Zazaglia) added to the talent, freshness and irreverence of a pibe

(Franzoni)—, with a club president who is not well-off—and so by common perception is presumably honest—, has no political ties or ambitions50 (Ribonatti) and topped off by an incorruptible group of fans who have aguante and are ready to make all sort of sacrifices for their beloved colors. Finally, this explosive concoction’s last and crucial ingredient is the much-debated implementation of technology to football. Right from the outskirts of football and literature, Horacio Convertini has gathered all these elements to revisit the football/nation metaphor and provide a lucid and critical reflection on the dangerous nature of extremes, the deceiving power of utopias and the future of ‘the most Argentine’ of all passions.

Following one of the subgenre’s characteristics, there is no necessarily much football played in the novel as the action takes place in the last days of December, that is, summer recess in Argentine football, exactly in the middle of the season. Racing

Club is at the bottom half of the table and needs to obtain more than sixty percent of the points in play in the second part of the league in order to entertain some chances of

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avoiding relegation, nothing short of a miracle considering the team’s latest lackluster performances. To make matters worse, money is running scarce—as evidenced by the coach’s need to resort to an old friend and pawnbroker to finance his vices (whisky and prostitutes in his case)—and patience among fans is running equally low. Racing’s new president comes to the sad conclusion that miracles do not exist in Argentine football and decides the only way to escape this situation is by manufacturing one. That is when he contacts his best friend Petaca (a nickname that refers to his short height), a publicist who was behind his presidential campaign,51 described by the narrator as a sort of kinkier, more sinister version of Papeles en el viento’s character of El Ruso:

“Petaca era audaz, inconsciente, siniestro. Le encantaban los tiros al fleje, oscilar entre la hazaña y la más oprobiosa de las derrotas. Disfrutaba eróticamente del todo o nada, y eso que en su vida habían existido más nadas que todos. Llevaba fundidas tres agencias de publicidad e iba por la cuarta” (20). It is precisely Petaca, more of a jouisseur than a free spirit a la El Ruso, who will, in turn, make the connection between

Ribonatti and Yatsumoto Cyborg Industries, the company holding the key to Racing

Club’s last miracle: a Japanese whiz kid called Takeshi Nakamura.

Nakamura, an expert on applied biotechnology and a two-time Winning Eleven’s world champion, 52 is also sentimentally attached to Racing Club (“Abuelo, Lacing, sentimiento inexplicable” is the first phrase he utters in broken Spanish) as his grandfather was the ‘official’ ironer of the mythical 1967 José’s team (the first Argentine club to win an intercontinental cup). Following the official discourse on football and

Argentineness, Convertini makes sure, passion is interweaved in every decision most of his characters take, with the only possible exception of Lis the hooligan’s leader who

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preaches passion—and eventually falls prey to it—but acts in a very calculated manner

,and his girlfriend Romina. Additionally, although always more inclined to dirty realism and tragic narratives, it is hard not to notice (again) the parodic Fontanarrosean echoes in this passage. True to this author’s legacy of sharp football ethnography, Convertini resorts to the crass stereotyping dominating the Argentine football world (generated by the fans and the sport press alike) according to which a Japanese person cannot be something other than a short and tidy individual in charge of cleaning and ironing other people’s clothes (in the 20th century) or a computer genius (in the 21st century).

Accordingly, Nakamura’s initiative is none other than to create a mechanical crack, a cyborg-pibe of sorts, a technological miracle who will save Racing Club from its impending destiny. To do this in the least suspicious way possible they decide to choose the team’s best and more skillful player (Franzoni) as their guinea pig, so his dramatic improvement can be explained and backed up in part by the well-known and commonly accepted pibe narrative; a young, rebellious and unpredictable player suddenly reaching his peak of performance and inspiration and in doing so carrying an entire team on his shoulders, just as Diego Maradona did (or is believed by some to have done) in 1986. Furthermore, when trying to convince Racing Club’s aging coach to participate in this experiment, Petaca refers to Maradona’s feat in Mexico and reflects on the media’s (and the majority of the western world’s) need to rationalize miracles, finding logical explanations to the seemingly illogical, and in this case also contributing to the potential success of their plan :

¿Se acuerda de Mexico 86? La gente dice que Maradona brilló como brilló porque detrás tenía el respaldo de un equipo diseñado artesanalmente por un obsesivo de la táctica como Bilardo. Quedó instalado que Argentina no habría ganado el Mundial sin las proyecciones

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de Cucciuffo, las coberturas de Brown, el pivoteo de Valdano… La mentira más burda de la historia del fútbol. (133)

If Sacheri concluded that the magic on professional football fields is mostly gone and those involved in carrying this business (officials and journalists in his stories) are like old and slow magicians whose tricks can be easily revealed, Convertini goes a step further into the background and presents his readers with a story that navigates around the peak of inhumanity within this sport. Football has become just another dramatic genre, Borges and Bioy implied back in 1957, and this novel supports that statement by focusing on the transplant of the ethics of show business to this sport, according to which—no matter the personal consequences on those involved—the show must always go on.

Franzoni, the sacrificial lamb, is subjected to a quick operation—under the initial pretense of a sophisticated and complete check-up by a team of Japanese physicians in order to analyze his body’s potentiality for professional stardom—where a chip is inserted on the back of his head through which Nakamura will control and direct his movements with a small joystick as if he were a video game avatar. Papeles en el viento’s metaphor of an “edited” player coming to life becomes a reality in El ultimo milagro, turning Sacheri’s (and Franzoni’s) redemptive dream into a tangible nightmare:53 “… a través de ese dispositivo intervenimos a voluntad en sus mecanismos neuromotores. Nakamura desde un comando especial, va a poder hacer que nuestro hombre gambetee como Messi, patee como Cristiano Ronaldo y cabecee como Palermo” (58). Almost immediately after the procedure, Franzoni notices with a tinge of horror that his body does not feel the same, that, under a veil of familiarity lurks the dark anxiety of what is alien and unknown: “…esa sensación extraña de cuerpo

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ajeno e inmanejable que no se le iba… cuando quiso bajarse los pantalones, las piernas empezaron a temblar solas, epilépticas, dos monstruos alterados por una furia traicionera” (96). In close connection to Franzoni’s dreadful suspicions, in his article

“The uncanny”, Freud mentions epillepsy as one of the possible disquieting sources of the unheimleich as “The ordinary person sees in them the workings of forces hitherto unsuspected in his fellow-man but which at the same time he is dimly aware of in a remote corner of his own being” (636).

The extremes of this subgenre touch; almost sixty years apart two football pibes have their bodies subjected to and driven by the sway and power of narratives. In

“Puntero izquierdo” the protagonist’s body—empowered by the media’s pibe construction—takes over and scores a goal that brings his owner misery and pride in equal parts; meanwhile, Convertini’s cyborg-pibe—interpellated by videogame’s narrative of customized football avatars—feels the deep horror of familiar strangeness but at the same time is hopeful this sudden transformation will lead them to the fulfilment of his (and primarily his mother’s)54 European dream of fame, opulence and success: “Las piernas le hormigueaban, la sensación de ajenidad había reaparecido, pero si ese era el precio a pagar por convertirse en un fuera de serie, bien lo valía”

(129).55 As we can see, these works of football literature not only expose the narrative construction of the pibe’s dream as a cruel and sadistic operation but also put into question pibes’ ownerhip of their own bodies, revealing the sinister side of this beautiful game, the dark side of their perceived “natural” magic.

After going through a period of intense panic and strangeness that almost culminates with him deserting Nakamura’s project, the truth is revealed to Franzoni and

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his own ambition does the rest. He dresses as a player for the first and only time in this novel–all in white the same as Millán in El refuerzo—for an informal practice in the outskirts of Buenos Aires (the countryside and its connection to the ominous reappearing once again) in order to test his newly acquired abilities. The same as in

Millán’s case, the white in Franzoni’s clothes carry some very dark connotations

Franzoni vestía enteramente de blanco (…) Recordó una expresión popular que su madre usaba mucho y que ahora nadie empleaba: mosca blanca. Mosca blanca era la singularidad indeseable, la diferencia perturbadora. Y Franzoni iba en camino a serlo ya no por el color de su ropa, sino por su condición de primer futbolista cyborg de la historia” (110- 111; emphasis added).

To those supposedly ultra-secret facilities also arrive Lis and his sidekick (a strong and loyal guy called “El Oso”) in the hopes of seeing the whole operation fail in order to then take the helm of the sunken ship of Racing Club and finally lead the much awaited revolution with the cyborg-pibe Franzoni and his discombobulated body playing the role of martirs: “El camino de toda revolución, pensó, incluso el de una revolución

ética como la que él pretendía en Racing, estaba plagado de hechos desgraciados y muertes. En las horas previas a la victoria se vierte la sangre de los mártires y los réprobos” (74). The reprobates, whose blood will also need to run, are those who use their beloved football club (never closer to the status of a religion than in this context) to satisfy their own personal ambitions: in this case obviously Petaca and the Japanese firm but also Ribonatti and even the old coach Zazaglia, willing to forgo any personal ethical reservations about the entire operation in favor of a couple more years away from football (and media) oblivion.56

As we indicated above, at the core of Lis’ scheme of destruction and resurgence lies Racing Club’s relegation to the Argentine’s second division—“ el fin último de sus

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acciones, el sismo que no dejaría nada en pie” (48)—but the nodal point of this narrative (and one of its central charcters) is neither Racing Club nor any of the numerous male characters touched by this fatal passion; instead, just like in Sacheri’s

Papeles en el viento, it is a member of the opposite sex. Romina is at the same time Lis’ girlfriend, the hooligan faction’s secret spy within the club in her role of Petaca’s secretary, but also Petaca, Nakamura, Ribonatti and Franzoni’s occasional lover.

Described by Lisandro as “inmutable and distante… una autómata que cumplía órdenes aun las más terribles, sin dejarse traicionar jamás por los sentimientos” (158), she plays the role of sexual goddess with the efficiency and the detachment of the best of machines; a perfect hybrid between football passion and cyber-feminism and true to posthuman times: neither a goddess nor a machine.

In football’s world of sentimental males, blinded by their obsessions of choice, her cold-bloodedness and resolve make her the pole to which these men unsuccessfully try to tie themselves. A femme fatale who, faithful to the literary archetype, exerts her sexual (and intellectual) power towards her victims but is also at the same time, a victim herself, as passionate as her male counterparts although much more skillful and reserved; the Mary Magdalen/Virgin Mary of Lisandro’s (and the academia del aguante) reborn Racing Club:

Cuando el, finalmente, tomara el poder, Romina ya no necesitaría venderse por nada, ya no sería pieza de cambio de nadie. Sería otra vez libre y pura (porque todos sus pecados se borrarían en la nueva era), y quizás virgen, por qué no, la virgen Romina, llena eres de gracia, el Señor es contigo. El señor de Romina soy yo. (98)

However, Lisandro sees his plans begin to crumble when, despite all his fears and anxiety, Franzoni’s body responds wonderfully, marveling everyone at the private football practice and thanks to a mesmerized employee’s cell phone, reaching the

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media which, from that moment on, will not stop disseminating the video of this new prodigy: “¿Pero vos viste el de chilena? Parecía de ballet. Franzoni a ese nivel nos salva del descenso y nos saca campeones. (…) Lis advirtió que la peste se propagaba más rápido de lo pensado” (143). As El Oso clearly puts it, that could only be explained as a miracle “como si nos hubiese nacido un Maradona” (120).57 A miracle that, unlike that of Maradona in Vargas’ story,58 quickly reaches the pupils of millions of witnesses, hungry for some sort of magic in Argentine football’s contemporary wastelands, be it artificial or not:

Veinte, treinta tipos gesticulaban del otro lado como mimos hiperquinéticos. Algunos tenían puesta la camiseta de Racing. Aplaudían, le pegaban palmadas al capot, cerraban los puños, reían, aunque con un brillo en los ojos que no era de alegría, sino de rencor, de revancha (155).

What Franzoni sees from the inside of his car (as fans discover his presence exiting a shopping mall’s parking) fills him with dread and apprehension (almost exactly the same feeling Millán experiences in El refuerzo); the horror of fame and unstoppable popular devotion; the sinister side of the pibe’s dream. Exactly what Maradona, Millán and Baltasar Quiñones witnessed: the mad love, the passion but with it, all the bottled frustration and the unequivocal signs of impending violence; violence that, in the

Argentine context, football channels like few other cultural manifestations. A spiral of violence that from this point in the narration onwards will only grow, engulfing every one of this novel’s major characters, the first victim of which will be the previously mentioned

Oso when he fails to see Lis’ point about the cleansing nature of suffering and defeat:

“Dejate de joder, vos a veces enquilombás las cosas demasiado. Esto es fútbol. Yo quiero salir campeón” (120). At this stage, the hooligan’s leader understand that his best friend is not ready for the new coming era, that his stoicism cannot be matched by

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El Oso’s pragmatic approach, and feels he has no option but to put a bullet through his head. The character of Lisandro believes in similar fashion to Martín Fierro, that suffering is the best master in life but unlike Fierro or any of Sacheri’s characters, puts his goal and ambition first or as he says “the revolution” and decides to ‘sacrifice’ his friend: “…el no lo había traicionado. Lis, en tanto lider, solo lo había sarificado para salvar la revolución. Una decisión altruista… porque con el Oso no solo se había ido su mejor hombre, sino también su hermano de la calle, y a nadie le dolía más esa pérdida que a él” (142).

The killing spree continues, reaching its climax by the end of the novel when

Lis—in order to avoid a possible resurgence of Racing Club that would put a hold on his plans of the club’s destruction and rebirth—is forced to cut short Franzoni’s sueño del pibe by shooting him to death in a dark alley where the player, blinded by prospects of easy and plentiful money and sex, had arranged to meet the coveted Romina.

Interestingly, the cyborg-pibe is ultimately a victim of his human side who leads him to fall into Romina and Lis’ trap.59

In relation to Romina, she is the only surviving character from the hooligan’s faction and is last seen by Zazaglia in the midst of Franzoni’s funeral procession, carrying a gun: “Parecía una loca. Vaciló un segundo y luego reinició su marcha hacia el foco de la violencia. Calzada a la cintura del pantalón, en su espalda, asomaba una

45” (170). In a reversal of Papeles en el viento’s optimistic last image (Guadalupe walking towards Independiente’s stadium holding his uncle’s hand), this female character also seems destined to fulfill a male-figure’s dream (in this case, Lis’s). This would seem to agree with Rodriguez and Conde’s vision of an internal tension between

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female practices and representation in the realm of Argentine football: “mientras que la representación, aun con sus contradicciones, es finalmente inclusiva, la práctica es excluyente y en el interior de esta articulación se reproduce el orden de los géneros”

(105). Nonetheless, it is still important to highlight the possiblity of female agency in contemporary football literature and in this vein, being able to read Convertini’s novel as the most optimistic ending of the two, with “crazy” automaton-Romina ready to destroy and rebuild as opposed to a tame Guadalupe who has little room but to continue with his “uncles” veneered heteronormative tradition.

As shown in the two works analyzed in this study, Convertini’s players are invariably the victims of professional football’s “circus” (Franzoni as Millán); the contemporary gladiators of a game that has become “una pasión desgraciada” (170),

“una máquina de destrucción” (170); a place where dreams and illusions turn sour as

Franzoni reflects in his final moments: “Así que es cierto que acá las ilusiones te traicionan siempre, pensó. Y todo se volvió más negro, más pesado, más lento, más triste” (156). The “acá” (here) in this quote can be interpreted as a reflection and a reinforcement of her mother’s anxiety about the risks of being “someone” in the

Argentine context but also as a sad final glance on the remnants of, what once was,

“the beautiful game”. What once made all Argentines (metonymically speaking) world champions—, being able to experience, if even for a brief moment, that mythical twentieth century narrative that spoke of this country as a world leader—now simply fills them with sadness and despair. In this respect, the cyborg-pibe’s death is not just a personal tragedy but is felt by a mass of silent fans marching towards his funeral as a collective one: the end of Argentine football’s last miracle, the last glimmer of hope, the

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last opportunity of recapturing something as magic and intimate as their first toy, their first passion, their first love: “Miles de personas con la tristeza condensada en los pasos lentos y en el silencio, un silencio que no era el de quien no tiene nada que decir, sino el de alguien que le mete candado a sus palabras porque componen una verdad demasiado dolorosa, intolerable para ser dicha y escuchada” (168).

Franzoni’s end is sad, lonely and not totally unexpected; with the player lying on the ground, his dreams and skull shattered, unable to control his body. What is more, after being shot, Franzoni’s legs continue to move uncontrollably –“un temblor epiléptico en las piernas” (157)—and Lis, in terror and suspecting that the chip might have given the pibe some supernatural resistance decides to shoot him once more to make sure he is finally dead. This thematic element places this writer well within the football literary tradition in Argentina as it offers a sound and harsh critique of this sport’s utter commodification and its impact on the lives of those involved (Benedetti’s inaugural

“Puntero izquierdo” and his protagonist unfortunate ending as an example of this connection) and also presents a deep exploration of his characters motives, dreams and beliefs, that is, that what takes place on the shadows of the media’s lights, and which, in turn, relates his work with that of Fontanarrosa and especially Eduardo

Sacheri. However, unlike Sacheri, Convertini offers almost no room for even the resemblance of hope and no space for a more optimistic/humane approach to this popular passion; this author’s football stories focus and reflect on its characters humanity as a strategy and a device to amplify the sordidness and inhumanity of this sport. Moreover, in what is probably his major contribution to this literary subgenre, he carries on with Fontanarrosa’s task of dissecting media-constructed narratives and

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myths under his (new and unique to this area of literature) unforgiving lense of dirty realism.60

In this regard, Covertini’s characters lack of control over their most precious limbs functions as a metaphor of the current state of professional football, an area of society so commoditized that players have lost not only the pleasure derived from the act of playing but also the power, authority and rights over their own bodies. As we can observe,professional bodies perceived and constructed as highly efficient tools and even personal prisons are profoundly inhuman not due to the incorporation of technology (as football’s purists would want us to believe),but, in truly Agambean sense, due to their complete impossibility of exploring their humaneness and potentiality. In the context of this story, Nakamura and his Japanese troupe of scientists can be read as a flesh-and-bone metaphor of the ominous and stifling hand of the capitalist system as applied to sports. This is why, in the midst of this unfortunate historic coordinates, the unmasking of the pibe’s dream is of crucial importance since this myth of easy glory and social mobility is inexcrupulously abused by clubs, managers, and football agents among others in order to capture aspiring stars.

What is more, the term pibe is also being emptied of meaning as, in the context of Argentina football, the new “real” pibes are those who possess and brandish aguante as their most distinctive social capital and stay (most of the time) off the field (like disciplined soldiers awaiting their superiors’ commands) and not necessarily the short, dexterous and creative picaresque-like figures who perform on the field. To be clear, this is not the same as to affirm that there are no more pibe-like figures in professional football, but to establish a marked distinction between the myth and the reality. In other

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words, professional football clubs still need pibes to win (and they pay exorbitant prices to have them in their squads) but these pibes are forced to be the shells of their former mythical selves, that is, they have to play the role of pibes on the field but control and inhibit all forms of excessiveness in favour of the mandatory and expected professional deportment both on and off the field and true to capitalist freedom be all they want to be as long as this falls within professional sports’ general rules and expectations .61 As

Campodónico, the extravagant and mysterious scout in Sasturain’s “Campitos” affirms, the day football ceases to acknowledge and accept exceptions and only tries to manufacture the products it needs, we will have reached the end of this sport as we know it. Moreover, if we pay attention to Zazaglia’s admonition to Franzoni after he openly expresses his frustration and anger towards Nakamura, it is possible to hear the echoes of Campodónico’s words announcing that the end is nigh:

Mañana saldrá un memorándum destinado a los principales clubes de Europa: “El argentino Johnny Franzoni tiene condiciones físicas y técnicas óptimas pero problemas de conducta, mal temperamento. Desaconsejamos su contratación”. Y ese es el peor diagnóstico, porque un matungo mansito hasta puede ser útil… pero un crack con los pájaros volados es impredecible, una pésima inversión. (111; emphasis added)

Going back to the plot, and continuing with the topic of endings (biological or not), Franzoni’s death is not novel’s the last one as it is followed by Lis’ own demise at the hands of a group of free-lance hooligans (hired by Independiente’s barra brava) who blame the Academia del aguante for stealing all of Independiente’s trophies from its

Avellaneda’s headquarters; a particularly serious offense considering Racing Club archrival’s somber present and their pride in its glorious past (precisely one of the underlying themes of Sacheri’s Papeles en el viento). Fooled by his perceived limitless power and influence and a false sense of immunity in his neighborhood’s streets, Lis

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walks into this gang’s territory, where he is first pinned down to the ground and after being questioned about the trophies’ whereabouts—to which he replies that El Oso has them, and in doing so betrays himself and his late friend for the second time— is quickly and unceremoniously shot: “Lis lo vió llevarse la mano derecha a la espalda, sacar un fierro y apuntarle. También vio un final sin épica, sin revolución, sin poesía. Yo no merezco terminar así, pensó. Y fue lo último” (162).

A miserable, a romantic and a madman, Lis is the author’s excuse to warn his readers and fellow football writers of the dangers the careless and irresponsible enthronement of football passion as argentine fans’ distinctive and essential attribute, refuge and central place of resistance against the world (and football’s) automation.

After all, as Haraway’s and posthuman theory implies, we are all part cyborgs as the world is a hybrid construction of people and machines and in this context, football is obviously no exception.62 The real danger, as shown in this novel, is not the assumption and the acceptance of football’s hybridity (present in the argentine context from the very beginning of its popularization process) but the presumptuous and fascistic return to the idea of complete purity and authenticity in this territory.

To conclude, Convertini’s stories not only function as crude insights into the most inhuman aspects of professional football (a feature they share with many other works within this literary subgenre) but also do so as valid reflections on the perils of embracing extreme, reactionary romanticism, on the fine line that divides this from a type of nostalgic emotional fascism, a characteristic that also permeates certain areas of football literature. Furthermore, he rejects to ascribe to those football narratives

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endorsing a world strictly made of dualisms and essentialisms, and is brave enough to include alternative voices and protagonists.

That is the main reason that validates the choice of his works to close this first academic study on Argentina’s literatura de la pelota; a marginal and uncomfortable subgenre that tackles one of the most central aspects of Argentine culture and is, at the same time, ripe with potentiality, tensions and contradictions. Not surprisingly, a lot like this (still) young and problematic nation itself.

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Notes

1 “El fútbol es probablemente el más eficaz traductor que la infancia nos regala para intentar comprenderla. Mucha de la pasión que general el fútbol en la vida adulta, incluso, o quizás sobre todo, el gran negocio “espectacular” (en el sentido debordiano) que es posible montar sobre este juego se encuentra traspasado por las marcas indelebles que en la infancia y en el cuerpo de la infancia deja el fútbol” (31).

2 Chronologically speaking in 2015— that is, after Papeles en el viento—Sacheri published “Las llaves del reino” a compilation of short stories and chronicles written for the magazine El Gráfico (previously published as Aviones en el cielo by El Gráfico ediciones with a very limited circulation). However, we chose to focus on his last novel written around the topic of football as one of the (partial) ends of his productions as this better represents the entire scope of textual approaches by this author to this moment.

3 For instance when Tito finally arrives, the narrator cannot refrain his tears although he does tries to hide them from his friends: “…perdoname por los nervios que te hice chupar, te juro que no te lo hago más, Carlitos, perdoname, y yo diciéndole calláte, boludo, calláte, con la garganta hecha un nudo, y abrazándolo para que no me viera los ojos, porque llorar, vaya y pase, pero llorar delante de los amigos jamás” (23).

4 Carlos explains: “El martes marchaba todo sobre ruedas. En la radio comentaron que Tito se venía para Buenos Aires por problemas familiares, después del partido que jugaba el miércoles por no sé qué copa. Pero el jueves, y también por la radio, me enteré de que su equipo, como había ganado, volvía a jugar el domingo, así que en el club le habían pedido que se quedara. Ese día hablé con doña Hilda, y me dijo que ella ya no podía hacer nada: si se suponía que estaba en terapia intensiva, no podía llamarlo par recordarle que tomara el avión del viernes” (17).

5 Considerably less charged at this point in time (where it can be informally used in place of the noun woman without necessarily carrying a negative connotation) than in its origin at the beginning of the twentieth century when it was customarily used to refer to prostitutes. However, interestingly enough, something from that origin still remains as, from a male’s perspective, most women can be minas except for their mothers.

6 The use of nicknames and diminutives (Tito, Josesito, Tanito, Carlitos, etc.) serves to indicate the degree of closeness among them while pointing towards childhood as the starting point of their friendship. In this sense too, football can be conceived as the weekly (or in this case, yearly) recuperation of childhood.

7 Tito’s return can seem odd and incongruous if observed through the lenses of capitalist society’s dominant forces but this perspective changes if we take into account the logic dominating his relationship with his friends, under which he is scrutinized and to which he needs to respond. James Scott elaborates on the functioning of this subordinate logic: “While subordinates normally can monitor the public performance of other subordinates, the dominant can rarely monitor fully the hidden transcript. This means that any subordinate who seeks privilege by ingratiating himself to his superior will have to answer for that conduct once he returns to the world of his peers(…) We can, in this respect, view the social side of the hidden transcript as a political domain striving to enforce, against great odds, certain forms of conduct and resistance in relations with the dominant. It would be more accurate, in short, to think of the hidden transcript as a condition of practical resistance rather than a substitute for it” (191).

8 Naturally, it would be an exaggeration to affirm that Sacheri had this idea in mind when choosing Pittilanga’s destination. However, particularly at the time of the release of this novel’s film adaptation— Juan Taratuto’s Papeles en el viento (2015)—, his perceived centralist or porteñocentric stance was noticed and resented to the point that the author had to use his twitter account to dispel the rumors of his supposed antipathy for said province and its football pedigree: “Y lo principal: es un PERSONAJE de una

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PELÍCULA. Nadie de @PapelesViento tiene nada contra Santiago del Estero, ni contra sus clubes” (Twitter, December 29th, 2014)

9 Regarding the ambivalence of this term, Freud elaborates: “Schelling says something which throws quite a new light on the concept of the “uncanny,” one which we had certainly not awaited. According to him everything is uncanny that ought to have remained hidden and secret, and yet comes to light (…) Thus heimlich is a word the meaning of which develops towards an ambivalence, until it finally coincides with its opposite, unheimlich. Unheimlich is in some way or other a sub-species of heimlich. (4)

10 Alabarces explains (partial and temporary) media’s failure to manufacture global fans in Latin America by alluding to this continent’s rich football tradition: “… ese fútbol global aparece desplazado—y es el caso de la mayor parte de nuestro continente—por esas tradiciones locales, que bloquean la constitución del hincha global. Así, la circulación del fútbol europeo en nuestro continente sigue férreamente ordenado por la presencia o ausencia de las estrellas locales, devenidas globales: el espectador sigue a sus estrellas, no a las ajenas” (35; emphasis in the original). In this novel, Sacheri confirms Alabarces’ theory as he shows Fernando zapping through sport channels, stopping at a football match and finally paying attention when he discovers a compatriot is playing: “Enciende el televisor y busca enseguida los canales de deportes. En uno dan tenis. En el siguiente, una carrera de autos. Se pregunta por qué jamás aprendió nada sobre carreras de autos. En el tercero transmiten un partido de fútbol americano. Se propone verlo para tratar de entender las reglas y encontrarle algo de emoción, pero a los cuatro minutos está aburridísimo. Entre eso y el béisbol, mama mía… evidentemente un país puede ser una gran superpotencia aunque los deportes nacionales sean un espanto de aburridos. En el cuarto canal encuentra un partido de fútbol. Por fin. Es un partido europeo, pero no llega a interpretar las siglas del cartel sobreimpreso para entender de qué equipos se trata. Las camisetas tampoco las ubica. Un primer plano le llama la atención: es un jugador argentino. ¿Cómo se llama? Lo tiene visto un montón de veces. De Central o de Newells, el pibe. Pero cómo se llama, caray. Ahora usa el pelo más largo, sujeto en una colita. El partido va cero a cero.” (80; emphasis added)

11 During his meeting with Prieto, Fernando overhears as this journalist plans and discusses with one of his producers his show’s weekly agenda: “A ver, esperá. No: el lunes hablo de los partidos del fin de semana. Ahí no hay problema. El miércoles hay copa. Si pierde River tengo tema para todo el jueves, pero si gana… ¿El viernes? (…) En la casilla correspondiente al martes [Fernando] lee “Especular con la venta de Riquelme otra vez a Europa”. Prieto apoya el lápiz electrónico sobre el miércoles, que figura vacío. —No, lo de Riquelme lo largo el martes, que es un día muerto. El asunto es el miércoles. Con algo de esfuerzo, Fernando alcanza a escuchar la voz estridente del otro, pero no distingue sus palabras. Parece una especie de apuntador, que está sugiriéndole temas para el programa de radio. Seguro que Prieto prefiere denominarlo “productor”. Productor de pelotudeces, piensa Fernando. Es patético pensar en los miles de tipos que, el martes, estarán pendientes de la venta de Juan Román Riquelme vaya uno a saber a dónde. Falta determinar el bolazo del miércoles. —¡No! ¡Lo de la pelota lo hablamos hace poco! Tenés que anotarlo, Nacho… ¿No te acordás que llamamos a un par de arqueros, para que opinasen al aire? (…) Ah, esa es buena —Prieto se incorpora en la silla, como si abruptamente se hubiera entusiasmado y anota en la agenda: “Tamaño de los arcos”—. Sí, eso lo entiendo, pero… Podría ser, yo qué sé. ¿Te parece? (…) Che, me gusta, me gusta. Fernando lo ve agregar en la agenda: “Agrandar los arcos. Debate. Oyentes. ¿Opinión de jugadores?”. —Bueno, Nacho. Misión cumplida” (114). In this fragment Sacheri exposes the fictitious and decadent nature of football journalism as well as the sad and ridiculous role of those who buy into their cheaply manufactured truths. The magic left in this sport will have to be found elsewhere, as football media, as Fernando concludes, could best be described as a mediocre magician “al que se le notan los hechizos” (121).

12 In the context of Argentine football, visitor fans leave the stadium first in order to safeguard their security. At least they did so before June 2013 when AFA (Argentine Football Association) decreed that there would be no more visitor fans due to a spike in the rates of football violence in the country. This measure remains in effect until the moment of writing these words.

13 “¿Nunca en la puta vida le vas a decir Mono, conchuda?, piensa Fernando (…) Como si desde el principio hubiera querido dejar claro que nada de lo que el Mono fuese más allá de ella, por encima, por debajo o por afuera de ella, importaba nada, servía para nada” (130). 321

14 In fact, we may use these exact words to characterize the majority of his published works to date.

15 El Ruso and his friends from the car wash being the most resistant to the capitalist influence, Fernando representing a sort of middle ground (resenting El Ruso’s passivity and also Mauricio’s obsequiousness to his boss and law firm) and Mauricio appearing to be entirely coopted by the system and its values but hiding a partially silent but powerful alternative transcript.

16 Needless to say, the transcript that contains this sort of homosocial male friendship can be thought of as part of the same hegemonic agenda it is trying to resist. Specifically in the case of football, it has been used to marginalize both less homogeneous forms of friendships and the active participation of women in this field. What is more, as Whitson comments the football industry understands people’s powerful need to belong to a group and so promotes and commercializes what he calls “an acceptable facsimile of the group experience” (72), shallow and “safely detached from potentially alternative insights and connections” (72). Always being careful to point out these uncomfortable positions, allegiances and contradictions, it is nonetheless hard to deny that the counter hegemonic tensions that these residual elements present.

17 Once again their closeness is signaled by the use of nicknames among them: El Cristo, el Feo, el Chamaco, etc.

18 Sergei Prozorov explains that “Agamben’s thesis of the constitutive inoperativity of the human being is inspired by his reading of a passage from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. While for Aristotle human beings may have a task or function that arises out of the particular activity in which they are enganged (as sculptors, flute players, shoemakers, etc.) it is difficult to conceive of a task that would apply to humans qua humans, leading to the question of whether man as such is not essentially ‘workless’, without any tasks to achieve” (2).

19 The intimacy between the concepts of power and potentiality can be traced back to language: in Italian, the same as in Spanish, the same word is used to designate power as a noun and the ability (as a verb) to be able to do (or not to do) something (“potere” in Italian and “poder” in Spanish).

20 In his book Nudities, Agamben uses the contrast between dictatorship or authoritarian goverments and capitalist democracies to illustrate the subtle way hegemony operates and to reiterate the crucial value of inoperativity in the search for freedom: “Those who are separated from what they can do can, however, still resist; they can still not do. Those who are separated from their own impotentiality lose, on the other hand, first of all the capacity to resist” (44).

21 Or all of them at once as Peláez explains: “La importancia de un videojuego de fútbol es que si los elementos antes mencionados sumergen a la persona que tiene el control, éste experimentará una nueva forma del fútbol, uno en donde es el todo el equipo, incluyendo al Director Técnico” (9). Although Peláez stops at the coach, it is necessary that we mention the importance and popularity of football management simulations (a new videogame genre in itself) starting with the Football Manager series (launched in 1982, revived in 1992 as Championship Manager and returned to its original name from 2005-2015 by Sports Interactive). In this kind of games, realism is still vital but in a different way as what matters most is the accuracy of the players, clubs, institutions and fans data. Based on this, your job is to adopt a managerial view to this sport and study the data in order to make your decisions leaving almost no room for unpredictability and deviation from the norm. As we all know, the reduction of sports to the analysis of numerical data is a trend that goes beyond the videogame realm and nowadays inform and dictates managers’ decisions throughout the world. Sacheri makes reference to this reality in Papeles en el viento when Pittilanga’s transfer to a Saudi’s team is mainly fueled by this team managers’ interest in the young defender’s numbers which, of course, are completely bogus as another product of El Ruso’s fertile creativity.

22 An by doing so, supporting the view of philosopher and video game designer Ian Bogost who sees sports videogames as “computerized variants of sports” (141) as he understands that “By allowing sports videogames to participate in the ecosystem of sports writ large, we free them from the arbitrary shackles

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of their computational simulated, televisual existence and allow them to interact with the long history and wide variety of sports of all kinds” (141).

23 Goalkeepers’ main tool is the use of their hands in a sport that is played primarily with the feet, they dress and train differently, and spend most of the playing time lonely and secluded in their own 18 yard penalty-area. Their ambivalent condition of outsiders inside the game helps explain their (perceived or real) eccentricity. Philosopher and sociologist Pablo Nacach adds: “Nacimiento y muerte se dan cita en su propio cuerpo, único jugador del campo que no está atado de manos: sólo si mueren en él las jugadas del rival podrán nacer nuevamente (…) Cuando la pelota llega a él, el juego pierde su significado, tiene que perderlo porque él está obligado a detenerla, a poseerla, y es el juego mismo el que se ve interrumpido en su devenir” (67).

24 El Ruso elaborates his pragmatic theorem “El delantero la tiene que embocar en un “rectángulo”, ya que insistís, que tiene siete metros. Nada más. Siete. Y con un arquero parado ahí en el medio. En cambio el marcador, el tipo que todas las semanas te marca a vos, tiene cincuenta metros para cada lado para tirarla a la mierda. ¿Entendés? Si vos sos delantero y le errás al arco la hinchada te caga a puteadas. ¿Digo bien? En cambio, si sos defensor y para evitar el peligro vos le metés al balón una quema furibunda que la saca del universo, te aplaude todo el mundo. ¿Me seguís?” (88).

25 The idea of the position of defender as one perceived as less honorable and desirable than that of strikers/forwards transpire in Pittilanga’s words: “Usted viene, me saca charla, se hace el tonto y me termina diciendo por qué no pruebo de jugar de defensor. Se piensa que soy pelotudo, yo. Eso, y decirme que soy un animal, que no sirvo para una mierda, que soy un desastre, es lo mismo” (90). Nacach confirms this notion and connects it to childhood by explaining that as kids (at least in the Argentine context) everybody wants to be a forward or a number 10 (a creative midfielder) but then “… el nivel de ascendencia de cada uno, asociado… a su destreza y capacidad… definirá las posiciones” (46- 47).

26 In August 2009, AFA (Argentine Football Association) broke the deal gave TyC Sports (a private media conglomerate headed by entrepreneur Carlos Avila) the exclusive rights to football televised transmissions in Argentina in order to concede (to return, actually) the monopoly of this sport broadcasting to the state for the hefty sum of 150 million dollars per year (papers in the wind all over again); especially so if compared to the “meager” 60 million dollars that TyC –whose contract with AFA was not due until 2014— would have paid for the same rights. When signing the new contract, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner indicated that through the creation of Fútbol para Todos (Football for All) her government was in fact (symbolically) liberating the mediatized football images, previously kidnapped by private monopolies, and restoring them to the Argentine society as part of their cultural patrimony. The gesture and the words are particularly strong if we take into consideration this country’s recent history of kidnappings and disappearances under 1976’s military dictatorship, which Kirchner made a point of emphasizing in her speech: ‘Dimos un paso en la democratización de la sociedad. ¿Saben por qué? Porque no es posible que solamente el que pueda pagar mire un partido de fútbol. Que además le secuestren los goles hasta el domingo, aunque pagues igual, como te secuestran la palabra o te secuestran las imágenes, como antes secuestraron y desaparecieron a 30.000 argentinos. Yo no quiero más secuestros’. (‘Para la Presidenta, los goles ya no estarán “secuestrados”’- La Nación http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1165063-para-la-presidenta-los-goles-ya-no-estaran-secuestrados ). While crucially important in establishing football as part of Argentine’s cultural citizenship and guaranteeing the right to its free unrestricted access through air channels broadcasts of matches , the blatant political utilization of this sport via the heavy introduction of pro-government propaganda in the telecasts added to the imposition to channels to broadcast the ideologically skewed official transmissions raises questions about the presumed democratization Kirchner refers to in her speech.

27 Guadalupe’s mom, Lourdes (notice the virginal names) is presented throughout the novel in a predominantly negative light. For instance, Fernando does not save epithets when defines her as: “… una hija de puta fría, calculadora, manipuladora, histérica, mal cogida, neurótica, egoísta, mentirosa…” (92). Her only redeeming quality seems to be her true love for Guadalupe which in turn “qualifies” her as a good mother. A similar treatment receives Mariel (Mauricio’s wife) who is not yet a mother and is simply defined by Fernando (one of the novel’s moral voices) as a visually pleasing but superficial human 323

being/object: “Una mina linda y listo. Superficial. O mejor dicho, hueca. Pura forma y nada de sustancia” (113). On the other hand, the novel’s two other mothers— Alejandro and Fernando’s mom (Margarita) and el Ruso’s wife (Mónica)— are neither victims of Fernando’s harsh criticism nor have truly relevant roles in the story. Ironically (or not), the most positively shown female character in this novel is Celeste, a transvestite working as a hooker, who does Fernando a favor without expecting any compensation (a gauchada) and is presented as an example of the courage and determination necessary to reclaim, or re- construct one’s identity (in the end, the novel’s central theme) : “Fernando la mira. Piensa en el esfuerzo cotidiano que tiene que hacer Celeste para ser Celeste. En la fuerza del deseo. En la voluntad inclaudicable de ser algo que queremos ser” (120).

28 “El nuestro es un país muy pequeño, y aún más pobre. Amamos el fútbol hasta la adicción, hasta la enfermedad, hasta la saturación. Un país pequeño, pobre y casi desconocido, si no fuese precisamente por Baltasar Quiñones, el mejor jugador de fútbol de todos los tiempos. Por lo menos así se piensa aquí” (67).

29 Maradona made explicit reference to his own golden cage when, in the occasion of Lothar Matthaus’s farewell game (5/27/2000), he summarized his life as follows: “Nací en Fiorito, me pegaron una patada en el culo y me mandaron a la cima del mundo. Y cuando miré, estaba solo”. A liminal subject forcibly and suddenly removed from society’s margins discovers that glory and utter loneliness tipically come together.

30 The link between football and noir fiction is not only explored by Horacio Convertini. Other contemporary works that play with this combination outside of Argentine literature are Paz Castelló’s La muerte del 9 (Spain), Giorgio Falleti’s Tre atti e due tempi (Italy) and Santiago Roncagliolo’s La pena máxima (Perú) just to name a few of the most recent ones.

31 The only character to reappear in El ultimo milagro. A third rate football player’s agent, this character bears some similarities with that of Sacheri’s Salvatierra although the former seems more aware of his own marginal condition and the need of a pragmatic approach to life in order to make ends meet for both his clients and himself: “Simaldone tuvo la crudeza de los tipos que han vivido toda la vida del trabajo de los demás. Él era un intermediario a comisión; Millán, la mercadería. Sabía dónde podía ubicarlo y dónde no. En qué mercado había lugar para un jugador con los meniscos al borde del colapso” (37). Simaldone, unlike Fernando, El Ruso and Mauricio, does not stop to consider or question the ethical implications of his job: for him his players are simply the merchandise to be sold and his job is to find the right market for them.

32 Ironically, he does get to play in Roma’s Olympic Stadium when his team travels to the capital to play a friendly against the team of the Vatican’s seminarians but once again, his fate seems sealed: “Perdieron uno a cero. Él tuvo dos chances claras de empatar, pero los tiros pegaron en el palo” (18).

33 The novel reaffirms this idea as it shows Millán and the rest of the characters connected to the football business as inhabitants of the city’s poorly lit edges. For instance, Rafael (Millán’s “discoverer”) is both a football scout and the owner of a cabaret/brothel: “Un tipo raro, Rafael. Había pasado gran parte de su vida representando jugadores de poca monta y bailarinas de cabaret. Iba por los campitos de Buenos Aires detrás del nuevo Maradona y por los prostíbulos, detrás de la nueva Susana Giménez” (25).

34 Veronica strenghtens even more the ties between footballers and cabaret dancers as contemporary dwellers of the city’s “orillas”. What is more, for her dating a footballer is the key to social ascent which will in turn help her leave her poor origins behind: “Estar de novia con un futbolista—Millán lo sabía porque ella misma se lo había confesado—era lo más cercano al sueño de su vida. Encima, un futbolista que había viajado por todo el mundo y que tenía en el banco un ahorro en dólares que le permitía vivir sin trabajar” (35).

35 A more intrepid reader could even be lead to suspect that Millán is actually dying in Haiti while dreaming of a more fitting death in his land. Without completely discarding this interpretation, it is necessary to remember that, as the story demonstrates, Millán is neither a gaucho nor a pibe and he does not identify himself with either figure so this definitely not the death he would have chosen or dreamt.

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36 It is not until the end of the story that Millán questions Beláustegui about his identity to which he simply replies he is “el que manda” (88), that is, ‘the one in charge’ so as readers we have to assume he is at the very least the club’s owner although his figure and his powerful influence resemble more that of a nineteenth century’s pampas landowner/rancher.

37 The idea of a land so generous that will grow anything you can think of is one of Argentina’s foundational and surviving myths. When brought about in daily conversation it is typically in the form of an incredulous lament as people cannot understand how such a “rich” country can still be so poor.

38 As explained in the second chapter of this study, when the Argentine dictatorship had to choose a mascot for Argentina’s 1978 World Cup they went the obvious path of hegemonic masculinity and selected a pibegaucho (created by the Spanish cartoonist Manuel García Ferré), that is a “gauchito” or little gaucho whose name was “Mundialito” and whose attire consisted of a combination of gaucho items (a whip, a hat, a handkerchief) and those typical of a national footballer ( an Argentinian jersey, shorts, cleats and a ball). The macabre utilization of the World Cup to try to distract the public opinion from the atrocities being commited by the dictatorship, charged the figure of Mundialito with a really dark connotation, as an accomplice of those years’ horror and a symbol of a fascist and absolutist agenda (as football itself has many times been characterized).

39 Perla confesses “Anoche lo escuché decir que te iba a pasar lo mismo si te querías escapar. O si en la cancha no ponías lo que hay que poner, porque se le metió en la cabeza que te sobornaron los otros. Que vas a simular una lesión para no correr. ‘Un profesional no puede hacer el papelón que hizo este mediodía’, dijo” (93).

40 Millán’s tragic end immediately reminds of the fate of Horacio Quiroga’s protagonist in the short story “El hombre muerto”.

41 First included in Haraway’s “A cyborg manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century”.

42 What makes Fontanarrosa’s contribution so valuable is not simply the recognition of the underlying fascism in football fans (something already tirelessly pointed out by Argentine intellectuals like Juan José Sebreli) but the clarity to see this as part of a bigger phenomenon (the macho culture in Argentine society) that extends way beyond football stadiums. In other words, Fontanarrosa was not just a football demonizer or an insufferable football romantic (both extensively trodden paths) but instead he had the ability to present football as an exact and unforgiving microscope from which to reveal some of the most telling (and many times embarrassing) features of this country’s idiosincracy and on top of that, to recognize himself as one (the most lucid) of the participants in this cultural phenomenon. That is why he is considered to be not just one of this subgenre’s best writers but also one of this country’s finest literary ethnographers.

43 On July 30th, 2012 when announcing the instauration of SABED (Sistema de Acceso Biométrico a los Espectáculos Deportivos), a biometric identification system in Argentine Football stadiums, Argentina’s president minimized the role of barra bravas (hooligans) in the acts of violence taking place inside and outside football stadiums. In a very controversial speech, she claimed that many times “biased” referees are the ones who instigate this violence even in otherwise calm and civilized fans—going back to Martín Fierro’s distrust of law and those in charge of administering it as well as, laterally, referring to her own project of “democratizing” Argentine justice seen by part of the press as an excuse to try to get rid of a number of “hostile” judges (what she referred to as “el partido judicial”)—and also that this violence can originate anywhere regardless of class or stadium section. While these assertions cannot be entirely denied (violence in the stadiums not only stems from hooligans and many referees are biased) president Fernández de Kirchner’s speech was dangerous and irresponsible as she used passion as a sort of redeeming quality for this fans, celebrating once again the pernicious culture of “aguante”: “…Esos tipos parados en la paravalanchas con las banderas que los cruzan así, arengando... Son una maravilla (…) En la cancha colgado del paravalancha y con la bandera, nunca mirando el partido, porque no miran el partido, arengan y arengan y arengan, la verdad mi respeto para todos ellos (…).Porque la verdad que sentir pasión por algo, sentir pasión por un club, es también, ¿sabés qué?, estar vivo. Yo siempre

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desconfío de los que no tienen pasión por nada. A mí me gusta mucho la gente pasional". (Extracted from http://periodicotribuna.com.ar/12978-son-una-maravilla-violencia-en-el-futbol-y-responsabilidad- oficial.html#sthash.69JiA7cf.dpuf ). The complete video of Cristina Kirchner’s speech can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Sc8o4Unlio.

44 The list of TV shows and movies that celebrate Argentine fans’ passion extends above and beyond “El Aguante” and go as early as Manuel Romero’s 1951 movie “El hincha” and as late as the TV show “Fútbol Permitido” and its opening 15-plus-minute video clips combining Argentine rock barrial and fans carnavalized fervor (the ties between the two are very strong although it is hard to say who imported whose practices).

45 The fans’ notion of homosexuality in the discourse of aguante is not directly related to the individuals’ sexual preferences but to their non-adherence to the groups’ behavioral parameters. If instead of fighting, you run away or escape that sole action defines and turns you into a non-macho regardless of your sexual orientation. Needless to say, this should be understood as part of fans’ (and the football universe in Latin America) very rigid conceptualization of genders, where what is not active or dominant is equaled to the feminine, that is, what is passible to be subjected and dominated.

46 Not just in the 1990’s but more accurately from the 1990’s onwards. As we indicated, this decade will see the the beginning of the mediatized celebration of organized,carnivalesque fandom not only from shows like “El Aguante” but also in part as another consequence of football’s intense process of commoditization. In this case, the imposition of the system of pay-per-view, lead fans who did not have the means to afford the high fees charged to watch their favorite sport on TV to content themselves with what those TV stations that did not own football’s broadcasting rights (among them Fox Sports and AmericaTV) could offer them, which was nothing else than 90 minutes of sound and fury; that is, a narrator that would describe the game’s play-by-play while the cameras focused their exclusive attention on the so called “characterized fans” or football hooligans giving them a visibility and a legitimacy as they have never before experienced.

47 They are referring to 1951’s Argentine movie El hincha as the point of departure of this narrative of disputed passion and authenticity between fans and players.

48 As a matter of fact, in 2015, Pablo Ruiz, marketing manager of Racing Club, posted on twitter (https://twitter.com/pablonruiz/status/563115875075915776) a scanned image of May 30th 1913’s edition of the newspaper “La Mañana” where the Argentine Football Association announces that for its international matches, the national football team is going to wear a jersey with colors identical to that of Racing Club. Ruiz uses this, to affirm that the national team jersey was inspired by that of Racing Club.

49 Reaching its lowest point in July 15th1998 when the club went into bankruptcy and officially, as Liliana Ripoll (the club’s administrator) announced, “ceased to exist as a club and civil association”. Only three years before Argentina’s crisis of 2001—a year where,ironically, Racing Club won the national championship after 35 years (following Sacheri’s logic this could be explained by the club’s lengthy experience in dealing with critical situations and defeat)—the demise of this country’s central cultural symbol announced the upcoming national debacle. Moreover, its cultural significance was demonstrated by the reaction of and the preoccupation of the national political establishement. As Gustavo Veiga remembers: “Carlos Ruckauf… cuando ejercía la vicepresidencia de la Nación pidió que el club fuera declarado de ‘interés histórico’. Y Carlos Menem…cuando estaba al frente del país también comprendió la repercussion que otorga ocuparse de un fenómeno popular y abogó por ‘un gran esfuerzo de conjunto para poner en marcha alguna tarea de salvataje’. Si hasta el ex guerrillero montonero Mario Firmenich envió una carta al diario La Nación como ‘ciudadano damnificado’” (241). Managed for the space of ten years by an anonymous society (Blanquiceleste S.A.) that also went bankrupt in 2008, Racing Club is now, once again, a traditional club (that is, a civil association) patiently waiting (just like Argentina) for its next cycle of crises. Crises from which, according to the myth and popular perception, will necessary emerge stronger and more experience than before: “Racing, ese sentimiento combinado de frustración y fe ciega, logró sobrevivir al efecto dañino de sus ultimas tres presidencias y a cientos de males inoculados en dosis astronómicas. Todo indica que, por eso, tiene garantizada una vida infinita” (Veiga 241). 326

50 Racing’s new president is advertised as the club’s savior due mainly to his name (Jesús) and the parallels with the Christian figure. His past is unknown and pristine (or vice versa) and despite being a merchant, he is perceived as being humble and humane, establishing a personal relation with his life-long clients. Argentine sport newspaper Olé describes him like this: “No tiene apoyo de la Guardia Imperial. Los jugadores no lo conocen. Jamás participó de la política interna del club. No es millonario ni frecuenta el ambiente del fútbol. Vive de su negocio de artículos para el hogar en Villa Echenagucía. Sus clientes son los vecinos de toda la vida a los que les cobra en cuotas sin financiación bancaria” (20).

51 “Acá lo que importa es la fuerza del mensaje. El impacto. ¿Cómo está Racing? Para la mierda. ¿A quién le pide el hincha para salir de la malaria? A Dios. ¿Cómo te llamás vos? Jesús. ¿Quién es Jesús? El hijo de Dios hecho hombre” (20).

52 Konami’s popular football video game, much appreciated by Argentine gamers due to its fluid gameplay that allows for more space and dribbling, and less tactical planning and the possibility of customizing it to the last detail, being able to edit and add numerous teams, players and even entire leagues.

53 Ironically, the promising player— in the midst of a tag of war between Lis’ hooligan fraction that demand that he stays and plays for “the colors”, the club’s urgencies and his mother’s insistence in that he completes his transfer to Europe and gives her life-long desire a happy ending— only finds solace and a space to nurture his dreams by locking himself in his bedroom and playing videogames: “Johnny Franzoni se pasó el resto del día encerrado en su pieza jugando a la PlayStation. Había editado el muñequito del nueve del Anderlech con su nombre, una figura parecida a la suya y todos los atributos de Messi, el mejor jugador del Winning Eleven. Cuando el Franzoni de la Play agarraba la pelota, era imparable (…) La gloria, anticipada en la memoria de una consola y en la pantalla de una tele” (67).

54 When his transfer to a European side seems doomed, she is the most disappointed part and reminds his son of the many sacrifices she has made for him to achieve ‘their’ goal: “¿Para qué te cuidé como una loca? ¿Para qué te metí en la cabeza que no tenías que andar en la joda, que te tenías que acostar temprano, comer bien, entrenar? ¡¿Para que ahora todo mi esfuerzo se vaya a la mierda?!”(66).

55 “Dismembered limbs, a severed head, a hand cut off at the wrist, feet which dance by themselves—all these have something peculiarly uncanny about them, especially when, as in the last instance, they prove able to move of themselves in addition” (Freud 636).

56 Zazaglia is presented as a profoundly alienated individual, someone who can only exist through football: “un tipo en animación suspendida por el receso de diciembre. No tenía esposa, hijos, familia. No tenía intereses fuera del rodar de la pelota. Cada tanto se le enquistaba la misma pregunta: ¿qué será de mi cuando nadie me llame, cuando la suma de fracasos sea tan grande que me haga olvidar mis momentos de gloria?” (23-24)

57 Especially fitting because the story takes place in the lasts days of December, ending (the same as Olguín’s El equipo de los sueños) on a hectic Christmas’s eve.

58 “Bautismos” see chapter 4.

59 Something similar happens to the character of Caleb in Alex Garland’s film Ex Machina (2015) who finds his death after being tricked by the robot’s (Ava) complex love simulation software.

60 Outside of the Argentine literary context, David Trueba’s 2008 novel Saber perder is another contemporary work which explores the most mundane aspects of the football show through the story of a young Argentine football star playing in Spain.

61 Following this logic, Franzoni is seen as one of these new disciplined pibes 2.0, in this case, an improved versión of his father: “Algunos decían que él era una versión mejorada de su padre, un crack callejero que había pasado fugazmente por las inferiores de Racing, pero que había rifado su talento por falta de constancia, de voluntad, del temple indispensable que transforma a un atorrante de barrio en el deportista disciplinado que exige el fútbol profesional” (116-117).

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62 Even in the extreme case of Franzoni in this novel, after a initial period of logical doubt and panic, the young player not only accepts his new condition but also imagines a future in which Nakamura will be able to perfect, update and improve the system that controls him, getting rid in this way of some of his glitches: “Le costó un poco que su pierna derecha acertara a levantarse a la altura justa para salir de la bañadera, pero esta vez no lo tomó como un presagio aterrador de una desgracia. Se trataba, evidentemente, de una cuestión de ajuste. Nakamura, el genio que lo había transformado en un crack, sabría de qué manera solucionarlo. Debía de existir, seguro, un método para ir calibrando el funcionamiento del chip hasta eliminar las distorsiones” (130).

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CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION

Football Literature: much more than literature about football

We started this work with many questions about our object of study—some of those included its name (whether it had one), definition, purpose, audience, place within

Argentine literature, etc.—and although we cannot pretend to have exhausted the possible answers (or questions) about this young literary subgenre, we can confidently affirm that this study breaks new ground not only by trying to offer a hypothesis that contemplates the above mentioned interrogations but also by providing the first extensive and intensive academic analysis to the origins, development and current state of football literature (our name of choice) in the Argentine context. As seen throughout the past four chapters, football literature is much more than literature about football as this sport’s transversality makes it an ideal vehicle to look at (in this case) Argentine society’s history, intra-history, tensions and internal contradictions. In a country where the passing of progressive and forward-thinking legislation awarding and protecting minorities’ rights clashes, for instance, with the still rampant machismo and the horrific and growing numbers of cases of femicide (286 women were killed only in 2015, a staggering average of one every thirty hours1) the study of cultural formations like this one is vital to better understand this sort of discrepancies between what it should be but it is not. In this regard, football fiction’s uncomfortable and very productive place

(somewhere between journalism and literature, the traditional and the disruptive, the central and the eminently peripheral) allows for a much needed reflection on/from one of this society’s focal cultural phenomena. In addition, football’s unique place as a privileged area of male sentimental education (very similar to gauchesca in this regard),

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allows us to penetrate into masculinity’s emotional side, thus being able to explore men’s desires, hopes, anxieties and fears at the start of a new millennium.

One of these fears, as evident in the analysis of the chosen works, is that of the sudden transformation of the habitual and familiar into the unfamiliar and the unknown; in our case, the utter reversal of a game into a cold, strict and professional sport and with it the loss of much more than a pastime or a favorite hobby but an integral part of these characters’ crucial formative period, an essential part of their childhood. Here is when the figure of the pibe as a residual element is brought back into “play”, with all of its cunning trickery, playfulness, rebelliousness and contempt for rules, laws, and authority. The question now is: how to understand the reemergence of this figure in football literature? As part of a nostalgia for something that will never be recovered although always sought for? As a sign of respect and allegiance to a marginal yet central tradition and with it to a fixed and stable way of understanding not only a game or a sport but also life in general including the always changing relationship between genders? Or perhaps could it be the opposite; a tradition of resistance, always finding new ways to challenge culture’s dominant forces? In other words: tradition, resistance or both? And to whom or what?

Following our analysis of this subgenre’s works we arrive at these possible answers: the figure of the pibe, as a residual element par excellence, works as link between the past, the present and the future of football literature and is the central key to understand the conflicting tensions in these narratives. On the one hand, pibes carry with them gauchos’ liminal heritage of creativeness, perceived indolence, and indocility and this makes them ideally suited for the task of advancing some of this subgenre’s

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more countercultural positions. For instance, characters’ reclaiming of their bodily agencies, where the latter function as micro bastions of resistance to the dominant powers (Sacheri’s “Esperándolo a Tito” and “Ultimo hombre” as two examples of this practice) or the recuperation of the lavish and “irresponsible” use of time typical of early childhood as the springboard for blissful enjoyment and creativity (also in Sacheri’s

Papeles en el viento). On the other, their adherence to the narratives from which they originated, lags football literature’s pibes with some very regressive features, such as a clannish approach to life that favors prejudice, discrimination and rejection (or in the best of scenarios, a very condescending attitude) towards those who are perceived as not belonging in their circle: chiefly among them, women.2 This band of sentimental— and for the most part chauvinistic—brothers, find in football a refuge (a cave, even) against the seemingly inexorable dissolution of a world made of essences, certainties and the nostalgic smell of better, brighter, less complicated times.

As we can see, the answers to our initial questions are not at all straightforward.

Unmistakably, tradition is one the most powerful driving forces behind this subgenre as football literature cannot be completely understood without resorting to this sport’s traditional narratives which, as demonstrated in this study, are also strongly linked to this country’s (re) foundational fictions. Whether for or against society’s (and football’s) current dominant order, the weight of residual elements in this area of literature should not be understated. Moreover, it is this very prominent place of the residual within this subgenre which helps us read it as a palimpsest containing traces, residues and intertextual references not only to 19th century Argentine literature (gauchesca) but also to 20th century (especially the earlier Borges of “El Sur” and “El aleph”). Furthermore, by

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virtue of this backward glance towards the origins of this country’s national literature, this movement becomes part of what literary critic Daniel Link considers a tradition in itself in this area of Argentine culture, that of the seemingly inescapable return to gauchesca.3 Finally, crucially linked to the gaucho-footballer connection, another central element of Argentine’s literary history (the desert or the countryside) reemerges in its most ominous fashion, connecting football literature with some of the most lucid exponents of Argentina’s new narrative movement (NNA or Nueva Narrativa Argentina) such as the exquisitely talented Samanta Schweblin (Pajaros en la boca, Distancia de rescate, Siete casas vacias, etc.) and Pedro Mairal (El año del desierto, El gran surubí, etc.) .

However, it would be inexact to affirm that in football literature there is only place for tradition regardless of how anti-establishment and non-conformist this residual elements may be. The works of authors like Roberto Fontanarrosa and Horacio

Convertini prove that this subgenre can also function as an optimal textual space from which to engage in the critique and de-construction of said traditional narratives.

Football literature’s in-betweeness provides this writers—in most cases themselves rich journalist/writer/fan/player hybrids— the proximity to be heard and taken into account at both sides of the media/literature divide and the inestimable freedom and flexibility to play with, contest and sometimes ridicule these selective traditions. What is more, this literary platform also allows for the inclusion of the customarily excluded from the vernacular football universe; that is, women, foreigners, homosexuals, and, of course, intellectuals.

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In the case of women, football literature gives them a way to escape the reductionist roles assigned in the sport media (peripheral at best, restricted to reading the news or providing anecdotal facts but almost never given the chance of commenting or reflecting on the game’s incidences due to their perceived lack of understanding) , and the objectified gaze of the TV broadcasts that only presents them as sexually inciting companions to male fans (if they happen to be good-looking) or freaks and sexually ambiguous (if they are not). Not mentioning those who ascribe to the traditional generic division of roles and knowledge in this area of society (that exist and are still a majority), this subgenre’s works present female characters who range from those shown as the heirs and possible continuators of this male passion in the future (Guadalupe in

Sacheri’s Papeles en el viento) to those capable of being the leaders in a new way of understanding and exercising it (Romina in Convertini’s El último milagro). It is very important to mention than women are not only exclusively portrayed as characters by male writers in their football stories but they also are starting to reclaim a metaphorical

“ball of their own” in the context of football literature (evidence of this are the two exclusively-female football anthologies Mujeres con pelotas and Las dueñas de la pelota), finding and founding avenues of expression previously not available to them and enriching this subgenre’s panorama with fresh, unique and audacious perspectives that, however, never entirely abandon many of its central themes and motifs. A good example of this is Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s short story “La guacha redonda”

(included in Las dueñas de la pelota) where she narrates the story ( in verse as in gauchesca) of a young female pibe (a piba) who the same as Maradona, emerges from a villa (shanty-town) to reach success and glory (in her case she’s awarded a

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scholarship to play football in a U.S. university) only to find football will not save her nor her family from their destiny, marked by their socio-economic status ( her family dies when the river submerges the precarious houses from the villa). Both a diatribe against the pibe’s dream and gender inequality in sports (a male pibe would have made enough money to get their family out of the slums),4 the story’s protagonist (la guacha redonda, fittingly, the personification of a ball) decides to play one last game (supposedly for the glory) but instead wraps her body with explosives and blows herself up in the middle of the game. Similar to Quiroga’s character in “Juan Polti, half-back”, “la guacha redonda” recognizes the fakeness engulfing this sport and its narrative traditions and her solution is as equally drastic but much more spectacular and metaphorically potent than that of

Polti: everything must blow up in order to start afresh.

Sometimes this new start requires nothing more than the audacity to dream of a more inclusive football where nationalities and traditions mean nothing against the overwhelming need of building a new utopia—or rewriting an old one—in times of dry, unimaginative pragmatism (El equipo de los sueños). A dream of continental unity that may (re) appear in football literature to be captured and publicly expressed by politicians sensing the end of the neoliberalism’ era of autistic individualism (Nestor Kirchner’s

“Vengo a proponerles un sueño”); a dream that may be periodically postponed but never entirely dead. This subgenre’s works continually insist on the urgent need to re- humanize sport and by extension, life in general by recapturing the plasticity and freedom of play: a territory where fixed rules do not seem to matter much compared to the priceless and liberating opportunity to express oneself creatively. A territory where losers and antiheroes have the chance of founding their own epic of defeat, a defeat

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that is never completely so and always a partial victory against the monopolization of life’s possible outcomes. 5

A voice, the right to speak and be heard, the room to do it freely, the freedom to play: central elements that characterize literature in general and this subgenre from its very origins. The voice of football players, typically unheard or, at best, carefully scripted to be repeated ad nauseaum in the media, is at the first imagined (“Puntero izquierdo”) then transcribed by journalists and writers (typically the case in player’s autobiographies but also in chronicles such as Soriano’s “El reposo del centrojás”) and nowadays directly produced by players and former players writing their own short stories and grouping them in compilations such as the recently published Pelota de papel –24 short stories exclusively written by football players, each one of them accompanied by a prologue by a writer. Needless to say, within this subgenre the subaltern can speak as virtually everybody can do so as football is such a pervasive cultural phenomenon in

Argentine society that it is certainly harder to remain untouched by it than to relate to it in some way, shape or form. This fact also explains the potential heterogeneity of this subgenre’s readership as our society’s current footballization leads to an increasing familiarity (and, of course, also a hefty dose of contempt) with said sport but also because not knowing about it does not preclude the possibility of enjoying a story centered around it as many readers of Fontanarrosa or Sacheri can attest. Moreover, football literature not only democratizes a space traditionally and tyrannically ruled by the members of one sex (football) but also, at the same time, brings flexibility to another area of Argentine culture characterized by an aura of selectness and exclusivity

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(literature), becoming a platform for the expression of new and original literary voices regardless of their professional and/or academic background (or lack thereof).

Finally before closing this study, and having said so much about it, it is only fair that we propose a new working definition (more of description to be fair) of football literature that builds on the ones we have included and analyzed in our introduction and in a way that better fits this subgenre’s production in the Argentine context. A work of football literature is one which, as McGowan accurately said, presents a significance reliance on football as a substantive element of the narrative but neither attempts to translate the playing experience to the literary medium nor necessarily centers on what takes place on the field. What is more, in most of cases, this sport works merely as the preferred vehicle the writer chooses to approach his characters and from it reflect and tackle on different areas of a given society’s culture, history and idiosyncrasy. Needless to say, some football stories are no more illuminating than kicking a ball against a wall, in other words, not every work of football literature will produce an intelligent reflection that goes above and beyond the sport, but the more sophisticated ones (to avoid saying the better ones) typically will.

In this regard, our modest work should only function as an introduction for many and more fruitful academic studies around this subgenre and group of writers as we have had to leave too many untrodden paths for the sake of closure and directionality.

For instance, there is a great deal to be written about the political implications of football and how this sport has been and still is utilized from the state apparatuses and in which way this is approached from football literature (the novels La pena máxima by Santiago

Roncagliolo and Dos veces junio by Martín Kohan offer unprecedented and enlightened

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approaches to the binomial football/dictatorship during Argentina’s 1978 World Cup) not only in Argentina but also in the rest of the continent and the world. Also worth investigating is the existence of a connection between football narratives and foundational fictions/epics in countries where this subgenre has experienced a considerable growth in the last two decades (for instance Mexico and Spain in the

Spanish speaking world). Finally, it is vital to keep a very attentive eye on female writers’ future contributions to this subgenre to elucidate first, if they are the product of publishing houses’ marketing strategies (one book every four years coinciding with the

World Cup) and second, if we can find some sort of continuity in their football works.

To a certain extent, these are some of the questions readers may have about the subgenre as a whole: Is there a reason to believe this type of fictional works will continue to gather public interest and be published? Is it more than an editorial fad? Will football literature ever produce a timeless classic work? Does it need to? How will this fiction pass the test of time? We are obviously in no position to answer these questions at the moment and anything we affirmed would be nothing more than mere speculation.

However, we do expect to have shown along this study how fundamentally wrong it is

(and will always be) to dismiss a literary genre of subgenre based on its perceived lack of seriousness and depth, its popular origin or chosen thematic area of interest

(gauchesca literature suffered from a similar critical prejudice and short-sightedness and we all know the end of the story), especially so when these cultural formations originate in peripheral and/or liminal areas pregnant of an immense potentiality.

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Notes

1 Data gathered and provided by the civil association La casa del encuentro which undertook the task of collecting this information and presenting an annual report on femicide cases mainly due to the lack of official statistical data in Argentina up to this point. These reports along with additional data and information can be found at http://www.lacasadelencuentro.org.

2 Interestingly, pibe’s conservative side emerges even in the context of gay football as shown in Facundo Soto’s Juego de chicos: crónicas de fútbol gay where in “Turquesa” the short story that opens the book, a group of gay players argues against the inclusion of a transvestite from Jujuy (Turquesa) in their team as she scratches other players with nails that are “largas, filosas y puntiagudas como las de una bruja” (9) and has “tetas” (boobs) that need to be protected.

3 Link explains that every new aesthetic movement in the context of Argentine literature will necessary first ignore the canonical writer to then return to gauchesca. In the case of football literature, the Borges references could be interpreted as a bow to the canonical master which would then contradict our previous assertion that locates football literature within this vernacular literary tradition. However, before jumping to conclusions, it is imperative that we do not forget the public role of Borges as one of the most prominent national football vilifiers, which does not lessen his importance or his probability as source of inspiration but also brings into the mix the figure of the preferred Other, which in this area of culture the blind writer indubitably was. As such many football writers, among them Roberto Santoro, Hernán Casciari and particularly Rodolfo Bracelli, have presented a (for the most part) sardonic homage to Borges by reading his works from a footballing perspective (the aleph as the ball in Maradona’s second goal against England) or even including him as a typically derided character in their football stories.

4 A clear case of football literature ability of addressing culture’s emerging and even pre-emerging elements as demonstrated by the current (June 2016) dispute between the U.S. soccer association and the national women’s team over the right of the latter to receive equal pay.

5 As is typically the case, following Williams’ theory, the dominant cultural forces of the media and the multinational firms took notice of the emergence of this football narratives that presented an epic of defeat and proceeded to incorporate it and turn it into a product (or the narrative bait they used to sell their products). A clear example of this is 2001 Coca-Cola’s series of commercials (by Agulla y Bacetti) around Yupanqui, the, supposedly, smallest and most inglorious club in Argentina’s fourth division. Never having won a championship and having the less numerous fan base of all Argentine clubs, Yupanqui’s fans and players were the perfect exemplars of Argentine passion and aguante, two specially significant qualities in the critical and sadly eventful 2001. Not curiously, Atlas (the only other team from the same fourth division without any championships) has from the year 2006 to this day its own reality-show called Atlas: la otra pasión broadcasted to the entire continent by Fox Sports. Less focused on the aguante and the fans’ mad passion than Agulla y Bacetti’s commercials, this TV show does an interesting job revealing the unglamorous side of football although many times being prey of an excess of romantic costumbrismo.

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LIST OF REFERENCES

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Carlos Andrés Bertoglio was born in 1978 in the city of Villa María, Argentina. In

2005, he got a bachelor’s degree in the teaching of English as a foreign language from

Universidad Nacional de Villa María. In the U.S., he continued his academic formation obtaining a master’s of arts in Spanish literature from the University of Arkansas in 2011 and a doctorate in philosophy with a specialization in romance languages from the

University of Florida in 2016.

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