Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Football and Literature in South America

South America is a region that enjoys an unusually high profile as the origin of some of the world’s greatest writers and most celebrated footballers. This is the first book to undertake a systematic study of the relationship between football and literature across South America. Beginning with the first football poem, published in 1899, it surveys a range of texts that address key issues in the region’s social and political history. Drawing on a substantial corpus of short stories, novels and poems, each chapter considers the shifting relationship between football and literature in South America across more than a century of writing. The way in which authors combine football and literature to challenge – or conform to – the dominant narratives of their time suggests that this sport can be seen as a recurring theme through which matters of identity, nationhood, race, gender, violence, politics and aesthetics are played out. This book is fascinating reading for any student, scholar or serious fan of football, as well as for all those interested in the relationship between sports history, literature and society.

David Wood is Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Shefﬁeld, UK, where his teaching and research centre on various aspects of literary and non- literary culture across Latin America. He has published widely in Europe and Latin America, and has previously written on the cultural history of football in Peru and on sport in Mexican and Cuban cinema. Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Routledge Research in Sports History

The Routledge Research in Sports History series presents leading research in the development and historical signiﬁcance of modern sport through a collection of historiographical, regional and thematic studies which span a variety of periods, sports and geographical areas. Showcasing ground- breaking, cross-disciplinary work from established and emerging sport his- torians, the series provides a crucial contribution to the wider study of sport and society.

Available in this series: 1 Representing the Sporting 5 A Social History of Tennis in Past in Museums and Halls of Britain Fame Robert Lake Edited by Murray G. Phillips 6 Association Football 2 Physical Culture and Sport in A Study in Figurational Sociology Soviet Society Graham Curry and Eric Dunning Propaganda, Acculturation, and Transformation in the 1920s and 7 Taekwondo 1930s From a Martial Art to a Martial Susan Grant Sport Udo Moenig 3 A Contemporary History of

Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Women’s Sport, Part One 8 The Black Press and Black Sporting Women, 1850–1960 Baseball, 1915–1955 Jean Williams A Devil’s Bargain Brian Carroll 4 Making Sport History Disciplines, Identities and the 9 Football and Literature in Historiography of Sport South America Edited by Pascal Delheye David Wood Football and Literature in South America

David Wood Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 David Wood The right of David Wood to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-138-88560-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-71535-3 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 To Nashy, Marco, Lucía and Mariana – always my favourite team Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 pageThis intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Contents

Acknowledgements viii

1 Football and Literature in South America: Issues and Origins 1

2 Taking the Field (First Half ): Early Writings in Spanish 16

3 Taking the Field (Second Half ): Early Writings in Brazil 45

4 Writing the National Game: Beauty in Brazil 64

5 Playing Dirty (First Half ): Football, Politics and Writing in Chile 95

6 Playing Dirty (Second Half ): Writing, Football and Dictatorship in the River Plate 122

7 Argentina Beyond El Proceso: Narratives of National Reconstruction 145

8 Narratives of Nation- building in Ecuador and Peru 165 Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017

9 Offside? Women Writers Creating Space 192

10 Conclusions: 100 Years of Golitude 215

Index 221 Acknowledgements

The origins of this book go back to my doctoral thesis on the work of Alfredo Bryce Echenique, whose short stories and novels variously include football as a practice for characters, as a means of constructing identity and as a form of literary discourse. As an author of the post- Boom, whose first major novel, Un mundo para Julius, dates from 1970, Bryce Eche- nique was not alone in drawing on football as part of his exploration of contemporary society. However, while cinema, music and food all received critical attention within Latin American literature of the period, football (and sport more generally) did not. The reasons for this were unclear at the time, but I felt they needed addressing, especially given the growth in the study of football in South America from other disciplinary perspectives, notably history, sociology and anthropology. The study of sports literature in the United States also provided a useful spur, the pioneering work of Michael Oriard and Christian Messenger serving in particular to encourage me to believe that sports literature in Latin America was a field worth developing. The late Joe Arbena’s annotated bibliographies of Latin Amer- ican sport were also invaluable in helping to identify where to look as starting points. Initial plans for a book that would devote a chapter each to a series of sports and their literary representation changed as football emerged in an increasing number of texts and became the sole focus; indeed, it eventually became necessary to omit numerous football- related texts as the size of the largely uncharted corpus became apparent. Since work began on this Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 project over a decade ago, the volume of football literature produced in South America has increased enormously, making it all but impossible to keep track of new works being published, let alone provide analysis of them. This study provides a first account of the development of football literature in the key centres of production across South America since the first texts appeared over a century ago, exploring how the use of football in the texts studied engages with a series of social and political issues. Given that many of the texts are not well known, I have included the original Spanish or Portuguese as well as a translation when quoting from Acknowledgements ix

primary sources; all translations are my own. In the process of selection that has led to this work, some important authors and several countries are absent, and await the attention of others who are now also studying football literature in the region. There remains much still to do, and countries such as Colombia and Bolivia – not to mention Mexico – will provide rich material to future research, while the crónica (chronicle) as a genre offers hundreds of texts not discussed in this study, for reasons discussed in Chapter 1. A project of this scope is inevitably the result of more than one person’s efforts, and I acknowledge the studies that have helped me in my endeavours, and especially the authors of the many poems, plays, short stories and novels that I have had the pleasure to read over recent years. I thank my colleagues for their support, and am especially grateful to Matthew Brown, César Ferreira, Louise Johnson, Phil Swanson, Christian Schwartz, Carmen Ramos Villar, Paul Jordan and Peter Beardsell for their encourage- ment and suggestions. An award from the University of Shefﬁeld’s Library Fund enabled the acquisition of key primary and secondary materials, without which this project would not have been possible, or would at least have been very different. Finally, I thank Nashy for listening, supporting and helping me ﬁnd ways to get through it all, as always.

Versions of extracts from Chapters 2 and 5 previously appeared in ‘Playing by the Book: Football in Latin American Literature’ Soccer and Society 12:1 (January 2011), 27–41.

Versions of extracts from Chapters 8 and 9 previously appeared in ‘Reading the Game: the Role of Football in Peruvian Literature’ Inter- national Journal of the History of Sport, 22:2 (March 2005), 266–84. Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 pageThis intentionally left blank Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Chapter 1 Football and Literature in South America Issues and Origins

Football and Literature: A Striking Partnership? Prior to the turn of the millennium, studies of football in the context of South American literature could be counted on one hand (Morales, 1969; Pedrosa, 1978; Arbena, 1987; Rocca, 1991; Torres Caballero, 1991), but, on reading the work of many of the continent’s most successful and popular authors since the early twentieth century, it soon becomes apparent that the theme is far more significant than might appear from its presence in academic publications to date. Into the twenty-first century, a number of publications have recognised this convergence in relation to the national literatures of Argentina, Brazil and Peru (Wood, 2005; Wisnik, 2008; Morgado, 2009; Cornelsen, 2013; Alabarces, 2014), but this study represents the first monograph to explore the topic at a continental level. In contrast with the situation in relation to Latin America (the lack of attention is even more evident in Mexico and Central America), the study of sports literature is well established in the United States, and monographs have also been published that consider football alongside other sports in the context of Spanish, French and German literature (Gallego Morell, 1969; Charreton, 1985; Leis, 2000). The reasons that may account for this lack of consideration for football (and sport more widely) as a feature of the region’s literary production will be discussed below. Modern sport, as it is generally understood today in terms of a com- petitive and participatory athletic practice, re-emerged as a European lit- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 erary theme in the wake of archaeological excavations in the mid- nineteenth century that rediscovered the classical Greek tradition. Its emergence in Latin America as a concept that soon came to enjoy influential support among local elites, and subsequently become a mass-based phenomenon, is associated with visions of sporting practice as a means of improving the health of nations in physical and moral terms, views that were especially prevalent in the early decades of the twentieth century (Muñoz Cabrejo, 2001; Góis Junior, 2014). Football first became established in numerous Latin American countries during the latter decades of 2 Issues and Origins

the nineteenth century, typically through the founding of sports and social clubs by members of the European (especially British) immigrant and expatriate communities (Mason, 1995; Wood, 2003; Elsey, 2011; Goldblatt, 2014). Also imported from Europe in the early decades of the twentieth century as part of the drive towards modernity were literary trends such as futurism and avant-garde poetics, which gave rise to poems such as ‘Elogio lírico del fútbol’ (Lyrical Eulogy of Football) and ‘Polirritmo dinámico a Gradín, jugador de fútbol’ (Dynamic Polyrhythm to Gradín, Football Player), written by the Peruvian Juan Parra del Riego in Uruguay on either side of 1920. More significant, however, than the use of football as a quintessentially modern reference in poets of this period is its incorporation as literary motif and symbol in the work of internationally celebrated authors of the so-called Boom and, especially, of the more recent post- Boom. The latter’s postmodern characteristics tie in with Michael Oriard’s assertion that ‘our contemporary “postmodernism” is distinctly the culture of play: of play with conventional forms in the arts, of play with the products of our economic prosperity in everyday life’ (Oriard, 1991: 484). While the application of the second half of this US-based view to the impoverished sectors of Latin American society is problematic, football and literature may both be seen as manifestations of Johan Huizinga’s more universal Homo Ludens (1938), and the manner in which authors combine football and literature to challenge dominant narratives of their time and place will provide a significant focus for the exploration of the subject in this work. However, before moving in the chapters that follow to analyse a wealth of football poetry and prose fiction published in South America since the early twentieth century, it is worth considering briefly the nature of the relationship between football and literature in Latin America. In his article on Latin American sports literature, Benjamín Torres Caballero expresses the widely held view that ‘despite the marked popularity of sports in Latin America, they have played, proportionately, a tiny role in our literature’ (1991: 401). This may be true, especially when we compare football’s presence in literature with the pervasive role it enjoys in everyday life, but there is nevertheless a very substantial corpus of short stories, novels and poems that draws heavily on football (and a range of other sporting prac- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 tices) for a variety of purposes. In 1989, before a marked increase in the publication of football literature in the region had begun to be noticed, Joseph Arbena identified in his Annotated Bibliography of Latin Ameri- can Sport a total of 55 sports literature texts, including 19 novels and 18 works of poetry. Yet when one considers that Arbena’s bibliography includes almost 1,400 references, Torres Caballero’s affirmation does not seem unjustified, even if Arbena’s study omits more works of literature than it includes (his primary interest is as a sports historian) and the rate of production of literary texts that draw on sports has accelerated Issues and Origins 3

significantly since the publication of his bibliography. Arbena himself recognises in a supplementary volume that ‘this bibliography is far from exhaustive. [. . .] This is just the beginning’ (1999: x), but it nevertheless provides us with a corpus of studies that allow for some conclusions to be drawn: as might be expected, football dominates publications around sport in Latin America, accounting for some 500 entries in Arbena’s initial study, with baseball and boxing the next most significant, with some 130 and 60 items respectively. As might also be expected, Argentina (190), Brazil (172) and Mexico (154) are the countries which enjoy the highest number of studies devoted to sporting practices in their national context, partly as a result of their levels of sporting success in the international arena, partly because of the strength of their educational institutions and publishing industries. For similar reasons Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela constitute a second tier in terms of published studies. This general picture is also reflected in sports literature, with football easily the sport most frequently included by Latin American authors, either as a primary theme used symbolically, or simply as an element in the recre- ation of a convincing reality, especially since the 1950s, when this reality has been overwhelmingly urban. There are, however, variations, and Mex- ico’s position near the top of a league table for sport-related studies is taken instead by Uruguay, Peru and Chile when literary texts are the primary consideration, the result of particularly strong local literary traditions (Peru and Uruguay) or the combination of specific social, cultural and political factors (Chile). There is also variation in the sports that appear in Latin American literature in a manner that reflects the practices of the region: football is far and away the most ubiquitous point of reference, but boxing and cycling are also often used by authors from countries in which these sports are commonly practised (such as Argentina, Mexico and Chile), while baseball features above all in texts by authors from Mexico and other countries of the Caribbean basin, with athletics an occasional presence in works in the Southern Cone. In his ground-breaking study, Christian Messenger offers some consideration to the issues and narratives to which different sports lend themselves, at least in the US context: Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017

[American] Football’s field structure and resultant symbolism dictate to a large extent what authors see on the field and what sort of fiction they create in response. Football’s spatial conception is relentlessly linear and chronological, traversing the field back and forth, always moving in acquisition and defense of territory. [. . .] Baseball, in contrast, fits easily into myths of return and regeneration, while basketball has ‘upward space’, transcendence and flight. (1990: 258) 4 Issues and Origins

The use here of the term ‘football’ serves as a timely reminder of the dangers of transporting models from the north of the continent to the south of it, and throughout this work ‘football’ will be used to refer to what is known in the United States and Canada as ‘soccer’. Notwith- standing terminological variance, this recognition of the differences implicit in various sports, in conjunction with speciﬁcities that pertain to local society, history and politics, suggests that sport and literature may be combined in a range of ways, and to explore quite different issues, across South America. As we shall see, this is certainly the case with football, through which matters of identity, nationhood, race, gender, violence, politics, scientiﬁc debate and aesthetics are all played out.

From Bust to Boom? Latin American authors of the 1960s Boom, and of the post-Boom that is seen to begin from roughly 1970, have enjoyed high levels of critical study across Europe and the Americas, much of which recognises this literature’s ability to harness features of popular culture and postmodernism, and considers the incorporation of elements such as cinema, music and even cookery (Swanson, 1995; Shaw, 1999). This same period saw the development of a significant corpus of literary works that included football as part of their background and, in some cases, their foreground, and football (and other sports) clearly emerges during this period as a means of exploring key issues of social and political conditions as well as the upsurge in interest in youth and popular culture. Against this background, it is worth asking why football has not been an even stronger presence in Latin American literature of recent decades, and why its presence, which is increasingly manifest, has been largely overlooked. Pablo Alabarces suggests that the presence of sport in Latin American academic and intellectual circles may have been inhibited by a combination of three factors: its importance, paradoxically, in the construction of individual identity and subjectivity; the role of what he terms ‘cultural populism’ in the 1960s that bound sport up with left- wing political agendas; and, finally, concern at the manner in which the ubiquitous presence of sport and its accompanying everyday discourse may lead to the production of ‘banalities’ (Ala- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 barces, 2000: 12–16). In the decade preceding Alabarces’s study, Arbena describes how ‘an impressive amount of new material has appeared on aspects of Latin American sport’ (1999: ix), and this rapidly growing body of publications on a range of aspects of sport, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, has led to the development of an increasingly sophisticated and widely used discourse for their discussion, meaning that the obstacles identified by Alabarces – especially the third of these – have been largely overcome. At the same time, the consolidation of such discourses, in Latin America and Issues and Origins 5

beyond, together with the creation of a solid corpus of literary texts that deal with football, facilitates the work of the literary scholar, while the possibilities for exploration of identity and subjectivity lend themselves precisely to the consideration of key themes in literature of the post- Boom in particular. This said, the Dionysian spirit, the physical enjoyment of bodily practices and the emotion experienced in the midst of this sporting contest all present significant challenges to literary representations of sports: we may accept Messenger’s view that ‘free exercise of the imagination in and through language is ultimately the category that links play and sport most closely to aesthetics’ (1990: 2), but, as he also recognises, ‘much of sport and play is “flow” experience, essentially physical and non- verbal, and thus difficult to retrieve in narrative’ (1990: 20). In concrete terms, how then does one convey the skill of Pelé or the trickery of Diego Mara- dona via narrative description? How can the physicality of Obdulio Varela or the perfection of a volley by James Rodríguez be captured or represented by a poem? How can the joy of victory in a clásico, the delight (or despair) of a nation during the football World Cup, be expressed in words? Authors increasingly draw here on the experiences and practices of sports journalism and the visual arts as boundaries between traditional cultural hierarchies are increasingly challenged and hybridity is seen in more positive terms. In Production of Presence, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht proposes an alternative approach to the predominantly meaning- based textual interpretations that are typical of a substantial proportion of Latin American literary criticism. Gumbrecht reminds us that our lived experience is ‘an oscillation between presence effects and meaning effects’ (2004: 107), which a narrative text, inherently bound up with the latter, finds difficult to resolve. He forcefully suggests that a pursuit of meaning may be beside the point in some texts, and that we might focus instead on what he terms the ‘eventness of aesthetic epiphany’ and how a beautiful play in sport, which, he suggests, can epitomise this notion, is inherently fleeting for ‘it undoes itself, quite literally, as it emerges’ (2004: 114). For the writer of prose narrative, the textual form that has been at the forefront of the Boom and post- Boom, how to formulate a consciously created discourse capable of conveying that physicality of being, that fleeting quality, is a considerable Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 challenge. Poetry, with its allusion, its primacy of formal aspects, and its ability suddenly to create beauty from nothing, seems to be the literary form best suited to expressing the ‘eventness of aesthetic epiphany’, and poets such as Parra del Riego make little attempt at mimesis, capturing instead the metaphysical response of and to the football player via a series of metaphors and allusive connections. Regardless of poetry’s potential to capture the vital moment of sublime action, all literary representations of football find themselves in tension with the extensive visual discourses that have surrounded the sport in the printed and electronic media since the 6 Issues and Origins

late nineteenth century. While this applies to all literary genres, with the partial exception of theatre,1 prose narrative in particular must wrestle with its shortcomings in overflowing the boundaries of its own meaning- based conventions to give effective expression to sporting practice. Another key consideration in relation to the traditionally weak relationship between sport and literature in South America is the way in which these areas map onto one of the most influential and lasting dualities in the region, namely civilisation/barbarism. The opposition between these two historically irreconcilable forces was to be found behind a great number of the philosophical, political and economic debates in Latin America through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the former was considered the natural ally of progress, science and development. Oriard also acknowledges the importance of such dualities, referring to ‘the relationship of work and play as a cultural dichotomy whose importance is as fundamental as the more widely studied conflicts between nature and civilization, individual and society, self and other’ (1991: xiii). Significantly, the rise of football in South America during the early decades of the twentieth century coincides with a crisis in the nature of work, as nascent labour movements questioned established working practices against a background of growing industrialisation that also saw rising political agency for the urban working classes. In the cultural field, this dichotomy assumed the form of an association between (white) civilisation and the mind, the fine arts and reason, while (indigenous and black) barbarism found expression via the emotions and, above all, the body. This division can be seen to express the privileged position enjoyed by the mind over the body in western culture since at least the period of the Enlightenment, encapsulated by Descartes in his famously rationalist ‘Cogito, ergo sum’. Having come from elite origins in the nineteenth century, football has, since the early twentieth century, had as its primary actors (in terms of both participation and consumption) sectors of society traditionally associated in South America with barbarism. The division of bodily and intellectual activities corresponds to the social and ethnic cleavages that have characterised many nations of the region, and the coming together of intellectual and bodily practices implicit in the production of sports literature signifies an important development towards a resolution of the tensions Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 inherent in such bi- polar views. At the same time, this convergence is symptomatic of changing socio-political structures and shifts in subjects of study within academic disciplines in the region as in western academia, through which traditional divisions are being questioned and challenged. In an essay from 1995, Gorn and Oriard address precisely such issues when they ask: ‘Are we, as intellectuals, just uncomfortable with physicality, because our own bailiwick is the life of the mind?’ (1995: A2). It may be easy to respond affirmatively to such a question, but the stereotypes implicit in it should be questioned, and the increased focus on the body as Issues and Origins 7

subject of critical analysis within the humanities and social sciences indicates that the realms of the body and the mind need not be conceived in oppositional terms. In the introduction to his anthology of sporting texts from Latin American literature, Edgar Montiel explicitly affirms as much when he describes a poem by Nicolás Guillén as the synthesis of ‘the playing out of Latin American man, who moves comfortably between the intellectual and the corporal, between a passion for baseball and the poems of Rubén Darío’ (1998: 9). Such a generalisation as to the continental convergence of the physical and intellectual realms may be seen, in part at least, as wishful thinking that serves to present his collection of texts in alignment with the ideology of the Cuban Revolution, but it cannot be dis- missed entirely. Sports literature is, of course, a field in which these spheres of physical and mental activity, of presence and meaning, are fundamentally complementary, and the remainder of this study will be devoted to the consideration of the largest part of this field in a South American – and indeed global – context: texts that focus on football. This represents the first book- length study to devote itself to the subject in South America, but even in a study of this scope there is a necessary process of selection, and the works that make it onto this particular field enable us to explore the manner in which ‘the study of sport can take us to the very heart of critical issues in the study of culture and society’ (Gorn and Oriard, 1995: A2). As a result of that selection, and of the desire to focus on the field of sports literature, the works examined here are primarily fictional, even though some of them feature well- known football stars and teams from the last 100 years. Consequently, the crónica, a major mode of football writing across South America (and in Mexico) that consists of short prose narratives sparked by ‘real’ events or characters, and usually published in newspapers and magazines before often being collected in anthologies, does not feature. These chronicles provide a substantial corpus of material in their own right, including the work of celebrated authors such as Eduardo Galeano, Nelson Rodrigues, Mario Vargas Llosa, Osvaldo Soriano and Juan Villoro, some of whom will be discussed in the following chapters in the context of their fictional narratives.

Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 The Birth of Football Literature in Latin America By the end of the nineteenth century (and into the early decades of the twentieth), sport in general and football in particular were closely linked to concepts of modernity and positivism as local elites drew on ideas and ideals from Great Britain and France. The perceived need for new (Euro- pean) models was inspired by a desire to distinguish the still relatively new republics from what were increasingly seen as traditional and outmoded practices associated with the ex-colonial powers. At the same time, the turn of the century constituted a convenient spur to mark a new beginning 8 Issues and Origins

as the continent left behind the century that had seen all of the nations of Latin America gain their independence. It is against this background that the first football literature emerged, in the form of a poem published in the Lima journal El Sport. In Peru, a sense of renewal came to be felt particularly acutely following the catastrophic defeat by Chile in the War of the Pacific, blamed in large part on the physical weakness and lack of vigour of Peruvian men and the widespread malaise of molicie (softness) that was much lamented in Lima’s society around the turn of the century (Muñoz Cabrejo, 2001: 199–211). In the wake of this national crisis, physical exercise was identified as a key means of instilling in Peruvian men the physical and moral characteristics that the country needed, and physical improvement of the individual body was allied to the improvement of the body of the nation through the ideas of Herbert Spencer and Lamarck. At a time when Darwin’s theory of natural selection as an evolutionary process driven by random genetic mutation was becoming widely accepted in Europe and elsewhere, the ideas of Spencer and Lamarck were equally influential in Latin America. The appropriation of their discourses allowed for the passing of acquired characteristics from one generation to the next, a possibility that mapped neatly onto the positivist ideal of constant progress and of mejorar la raza (improving racial stock) that would allow elites in Peru and elsewhere in Latin America to oversee improvements to the nation without having to relinquish power. As Anne Maxwell states, when faced with the theory of evolution: ‘Many scientists reacted by reframing Darwin’s theory to readmit the idea of progressive evolution, improvement of the race, and society’s upward development on the evolutionary scale’ (1999: 15). Political recognition of such considerations came in Peru with the new ‘Government of Reconstruction’ headed by Nicolás de Piérola, who in 1896 decreed that physical instruction should be com- pulsory in all schools, typically taking the form of gymnastic exercises that required minimal equipment, although some schools also developed shooting practice among the range of their activities as a robust response to the recent military defeat (Muñoz Cabrejo, 2001: 203). Alongside the scientific and educational developments that typified notions of positivism from the late nineteenth century, another factor played an important role in drawing together the body and sporting prac- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 tice as part of an emerging modernist discourse in Peru and elsewhere across Latin America. Various studies of visual culture point up the role of photography in this process, described by Deborah Poole in a material sense as ‘the allure of modernity ascribed to photography as an industrial and, above all, imported technology’ (1997: 172). Beyond the merely tech- nical developments that bore witness to rapid scientific progress, photography was also the representational manifestation of a post- Enlightenment shift in values, making it possible to view the human body – and its movements – in ways that had previously not been possible. Some of these uses Issues and Origins 9

gave rise to discourses that were deeply problematic, such as the classifica- tion of embodied racial differences in biology, comparative anatomy and criminology, but, alongside personal portraits, photographs of sports events and sportsmen became a widespread public use of the new technology. The arrival of the moving image in Latin America during the final years of the nineteenth century heralded another means by which the presence (as opposed to meaning) of football could be represented, although an early film of a football match in Lima on 28 July 1924 (the day that marked the centenary of the country’s independence) indicates that this was far from being devoid of meaning. By the end of the nineteenth century, literature in Republican Peru had already developed a tradition of keen engagement with social issues, despite only breaking free from Spanish norms governing literary production after independence in 1824.2 Works such as Clorinda Matto de Turner’s 1895 novel Herencia (Inherit- ance) established clear parallels between the individual body and the body of the nation, drawing on contemporary European concepts, notably Lamarck’s concept of acquired characteristics, to propose solutions to the country’s social problems. Photography and cinema were obvious manifestations of the new technological era that swept across Latin America at the turn of the twentieth century, but they were not the only media through which European modernity, and all it entailed in terms of ideas around scientific progress, were apparent. Literature was itself another imported mode of representation, and since the written word’s arrival in Latin America with the Spanish several centuries earlier, Lima’s condition as capital of the viceroyalty had resulted in a concentration of the technologies associated with printing and a long- standing tradition of published media. In the final decade of the nineteenth century, new techniques resulting from technological advances reached Lima that made possible the convergence of written and photographic materials in newspapers and magazines (Gargurevich, 2006: 141), paving the way for publications spe- cialising in sports. El Sport, a magazine that ran from 1899 to 1900 and devoted itself to the reporting and discussion of a range of sporting practices, was one such publication and in August 1899 published South Amer- ica’s first – untitled – football poem. The anonymous author of this pioneering text takes inspiration from a match between the crew of the Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 HMS Leander, at the time visiting El Callao,3 and a team drawn from the established local clubs of Lima Cricket and Football Club, frequented by the British expatriate community, and Club Unión Cricket, founded in 1893 by members of the local elite (Stein, 2002: 12). The poem, which runs to 88 verses of between five and seven syllables with no discernible rhyme pattern, is fairly rudimentary in terms of its literary aesthetics, but nonetheless constitutes a significant moment that extends beyond the obvious observation that the author and the editors of El Sport alike felt that football was a subject worthy of poetic inspiration 10 Issues and Origins

and representation, a ‘gran concierto’ (great concert) of artistry to be enjoyed by all. As an expression of turn-of-the- century optimism, it projects and locates local practices within wider debates that seek in northern European scientific models a future for Latin America.4 That future is envisioned as distinctive from the colonial regimes that had been formally over- thrown earlier that century, although their enduring influences were still keenly felt in many areas of public and private life. Latin American independence had been a military struggle, but more pertinent to the minds of late nineteenth-century Peruvians was the War of the Pacific (1879–83), lost in alliance with Bolivia against Chile. One of the primary factors adduced to explain the humiliating defeat experienced by Peru was the white elite’s lack of the vigour, vitality and virility necessary to defend ‘their’ nation. Against this backdrop, the eventual defeat – despite resistance – of the ‘limeños/ que dormían tranquilos/ sobre sus laureles’ (people of Lima/ who were resting peacefully/ on their laurels) assumes a far greater resonance, amplified by the fact that the defeat is inflicted by opponents that have come ashore from a superior maritime force, as had the Chileans. Football is widely used as a metaphor for ritualised warfare and here this is expressed via the use of military discourse (‘lucharon/ con el buen eléven’ – they fought/ with the fine eleven), as well as the close association between the members of the British navy from the HMS Leander and their victories at sea and on the pitch alike. Their close association in the poem establishes a connection between these respective successes: the victories won by the men from the Leander drive them forward, confident of further success (‘siempre triunfante/ les dá más aliento/ para ir adelante’ – that, always victorious/ encourages them/ to go ahead). These triumphs are attributed to a combination of physical prowess and skill, but also to characteristics that are of a more moral nature, namely ‘jugar con mucho orden/ prestarse auxilio siempre’ (to play with order/ always help each other) and the players’ ‘valor’ (courage). The combination of all of these means that the British sailors are not only prepared to move forward but are ready to mount a direct attack on their opponents’ defences, confident of reaching their goal as a cohesive unit. The complacent limeños, then, need to emulate the British in terms of their physical prowess, discipline and preparedness, and not be deterred by Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 hardship or adversity in pursuit of their objectives (‘y patadas van/ y patadas vienen/ ellos meten goal’ – kicks they come/ kicks they go/ they score goals). This, however, is only part of what the poem conveys to its audience, for in addition to developing their physical attributes, evident in the call for daily exercise with which the piece opens and closes, they also need to adopt new attitudes and values. For the writer of the poem, and the editors of El Sport, football is a means of achieving both ends simultaneously, and if football provides a new means of expressing the convergence of these issues, it also signifies the adoption of a new language (un goal, un eléven, un full back) Issues and Origins 11

that marks a further departure from the Spanish colonial influence in favour of an approximation to Anglophone modernity. However, given that the poem was published in a fortnightly Lima journal that cost 30 céntimos per issue, it would appear at this stage that such benefits were envisaged primarily for members of the criollo elites. Interestingly, in neighbouring Chile, victorious in the War of the Pacific, football was the subject of a similar discourse among influential sectors of society in Santiago and Valparaíso, the latter an important staging post on oceanic trade routes between the Pacific and the Atlantic before the opening of the Panama Canal. For example, the Leander had spent some time at Valparaíso before going to Callao in 1899, and the origins of football in Chile were – as in Peru – closely associated with British business- men and merchants, who formed the first Chilean football clubs in Valparaíso in the 1880s. In her study of the relationship between politics and football in Chile, Brenda Elsey goes on to note that the ‘British origins of football bolstered its reputation among Chileans who embraced “refined” European imports’ (2011: 17), and that early rivalries between clubs from Santiago and Valparaíso were framed in terms of competing mestizo and Anglo- Saxon values respectively. In addition to thus helping to define the Chilean national character in late nineteenth century, football, as a mediator of notions around physical fitness and hygiene, was at the heart of efforts to bring scientific solutions to bear on the social problems of its rapidly changing major cities (Elsey, 2011: 18–27). As in Peru, football matches were reported in local newspapers, but the emergence of the first Chilean football literature would come later.

A Front Two: Uruguayan Debates At almost exactly the same time that the ideas discussed above were being promoted in Lima via El Sport, Dr Alfredo Vásquez Acevedo, then Dean at the University of Montevideo, gave an enthusiastic speech to celebrate the inaugural football match at the renovated University Gymnasium. In it, he talked of the high inscription levels in the university’s new Football Club, and of football as the means to overcome the inferiority of the ‘raza latina’ (Latin race) vis- à-vis the ‘raza anglo- sajona’ (Anglo- Saxon race). He Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 ascribed this inferiority to the fact that ‘our education is not virile as it is in northern Europe and North America’, but saw in football ‘one of the forms of exercise that most favours the development of physical strength, and one of the most animated and stimulating bodily games’. He closed his speech with the following exhortation: ‘Tomad pues, jóvenes amigos, con amor y entusiasmo los ejercicios físicos, en la seguridad de que alcanzaréis con ellos un provecho verdadero, y lograréis, además, colocaros en condi- ciones de ser más útiles para la sociedad y para la patria’ (My young friends, take physical exercise with love and enthusiasm, in the certain 12 Issues and Origins

knowledge that through it you will gain true benefit, and will moreover attain conditions that will allow you to be more useful to society and the nation) (June 1898, reproduced in Rocca, p. 9). The degree to which the discourses in Lima, Santiago and Montevideo coincide is striking, and owes much to the common origins of football in expatriate communities and local elites across the continent, and to the influence of translations of key texts by authors such as Spencer, Darwin and Lamarck. Studies of football in Ecuador similarly identify the importance of trade, major ports (Guayaquil) and a desire to associate with concepts of European modernity as key features in the origin of football in that country. The year 1899 also emerges as the founding date of football in Ecuador, with the importing of the first footballs in Guayaquil, quickly leading to the reporting of the first matches in the local press and the establishment of Club Deportivo Guayaquil (1900) and Club Deportivo Ecuador (1902) (Carrión, 2006: 24; Bustamante, 2006: 45). The faith in football as the means of bringing Western European modernity to the nations of Latin America was not held universally, and the sharply divided opinions as to the merits of football that characterise certain contemporary debates were evident well over a century ago. On the same Sunday that saw the Leander’s crew beat a team that brought together the best players of Lima’s two established clubs, and one day prior to the writing of the poem discussed above, the Uruguayan modernist poet Julio Herrera y Reissig published a less enthusiastic response to the presence of football in turn-of-the- century South America. On 20 August 1899, in the opening editorial text for the first number of La Revista, a fortnightly literary journal that lasted less than a year, he bemoaned the rise of football at the expense of intellectual activity:

Pero de todos modos y en cualquier época los literatos han sido con- siderados y estimulados honrosamente y, aquellos tiempos, no lejanos, en que los triunfos del orador y del poeta llenaban de aplausos las salas en que se veriﬁcan los certámenes, forman raro contraste con estos días de enervamiento y frivolidad, en que no existen centros liter- arios, y en que se fundan footballs, presenciándose, al revés del triunfo de la cabeza, el triunfo de los pies. Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017

(But in any case and in any era writers have been honourably considered and stimulated, and those not distant times, in which the triumphs of the orator and the poet ﬁlled with applause the halls in which readings took place, mark a strange contrast with these days of nervousness and frivolity, in which there are no literary centres, and in which football clubs are founded, witnessing, instead of the triumph of the head, the triumph of the feet.) (Cited in Rocca, p. 11) Issues and Origins 13

By the start of the twentieth century, then, clear differences had emerged between those who saw in football, on the one hand, a means to take forward the drive for potential moral and physical progress and its practice as the embodiment of western modernity, and on the other those who saw intellectual and physical activities as fundamentally incompatible, the growing popularity of football depicted as a threat to civilising efforts. Such a divergence of views set the parameters for debates around the sport that would continue to mark the attitudes of many who wrote on football throughout the twentieth century, and indeed into the twenty- ﬁrst.

Notes 1 Despite the potential for bodily presence and physical action, there are very few plays that feature football as a practice. A notable recent exception is Alfredo Bushby’s Historia de un gol peruano (History of a Peruvian Goal, 2003). 2 The publication of novels was, for example, prohibited in the Spanish colonies because of fears for the damage they would cause to the moral well-being of the region. 3 The HMS Leander visited Callao on several occasions between 1897 and 1901, during service in the Pacific. The ship’s log is held at the British National Archives at Kew (http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/; accessed 26 October 2012). While in Callao in August 1899 the Leander saved a British ship that had run aground at the mouth of the River Rímac, a scene resonant of the Peruvian vessels lost during the War of the Pacific (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/ sn85066387/1899-09-27/ed- 1/seq- 3/;words=Peru+1899+Leander; accessed 26 October 2012). 4 It is worth noting here that Darwin spent seven weeks in Callao- Lima in July– September 1835 during his voyage on the Beagle, prefiguring the route of the HMS Leander and the playing out of this very literal celebration of Social Dar- winism’s victory of the fittest.

Bibliography Alabarces, Pablo (ed.). Peligro de gol. Estudios sobre deporte y sociedad en América Latina (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2000). Alabarces, Pablo. Héroes, machos y patriotas: el fútbol entre la violencia y los

Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 medios (Buenos Aires: Aguilar, 2014). Arbena, Joseph L. ‘Sport and Sport Themes in Latin American Literature: A Sampler’ Arete: The Journal of Sport Literature, V:1 (Fall 1987), 143–59. Arbena, Joseph. An Annotated Bibliography of Latin American Sport: Pre- Conquest to the Present (New York: Greenwood, 1989). Arbena, Joseph L. Latin American Sport: An Annotated Bibliography 1988–1998 (Westport, CT / London: Greenwood Press, 1999). Bushby, Alfredo. Historia de un gol peruano (Lima: Pontiﬁcia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2003). Bustamante, Fernando. ‘Esbozos para una historia social del fútbol ecuatoriano’ in 14 Issues and Origins

Fernando Carrión M. (ed.) Quema de tiempo y área chica: Fútbol e historia (Quito: FLACSO, 2006), 37–63. Carrión M., Fernando. ‘La historia y la geografía del fútbol’ in Fernando Carrión M. (ed.) Quema de tiempo y área chica: Fútbol e historia (Quito: FLACSO, 2006), 21–33. Charreton, Pierre. Les fêtes du corps: histoire et tendances de la littérature à thème sportif en France, 1870–1970 (Saint- Etienne: Université de Saint- Etienne, 1985). Cornelsen, Elcio L. ‘O “futebol de poesia” na literatura e na música popular brasileira’ Esporte e Sociedade 8:22 (2013), 1–23. Elsey, Brenda. Citizens and Sportsmen: Fútbol and Politics in Twentieth-Century Chile (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011). Gallego Morell, Antonio. Literatura de tema deportivo (Madrid: Editorial Prensa Española, 1969). Gargurevich Regal, Juan. ‘Del grabado a la fotografía. Las ilustraciones en el periodismo peruano’ San Marcos (journal published by the rector’s ofﬁce of the Uni- versidad Nacional Mayor San Marcos) 24 (2006), 133–50. Góis Junior, Edivaldo. ‘Gymnastics, Hygiene and Eugenics in Brazil at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’ The International Journal of the History of Sport 31:10 (2014), 1219–31. Goldblatt, David. Futebol Nation: A Footballing History of Brazil (London: Penguin, 2014). Gorn, Elliott J. and Michael Oriard. ‘Taking Sports Seriously’ Chronicle of Higher Education March 24, 1995, A2. Reproduced in Steven A. Reiss (ed.) Major Problems in American Sport History (Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin, 1997), 3–5. Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play- Element in Culture (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949 [1938]). Leis, Mario. Sport in der Literatur. Einblicke in das 20.Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2000). Mason, Tony. Passion of the People? Football in South America (London: Verso, 1995). Matto de Turner, Clorinda. Herencia (Lima: Imp. Masías, 1895). Maxwell, Anne. Colonial Photography and Exhibitions: Representations of the ‘Native’ and the Making of European Identities (London/New York: Leicester University Press, 1999). Messenger, Christian K. Sport and the Spirit of Play in Contemporary American Fiction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Montiel, Edgar. Hombres en juego. El deporte en las letras (Havana: Editorial Gente Nueva, 1998). Morales, Franklin, Literatura y fútbol, No. 42 in the series Capítulo oriental. La historia de la literatura uruguaya (Montevideo: Centro Editora de América Latina, 1969), 657–72. Morgado, Andrêya Garcia da Paixão, ‘Um batebola entre futebol e história da literatura brasileira’ Celli – Colóquio De Estudos Linguísticos E Literários 3 (2009), 179–87. Muñoz Cabrejo, Fanni. Diversiones públicas en Lima 1890–1920: la experiencia de la modernidad (Lima: Red para el Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales, 2001). Issues and Origins 15

Oriard, Michael. Sporting with the Gods. The Rhetoric of Play and Game in American Culture (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Parra del Riego, Juan. Polirritmos (Montevideo: n.p., 1922). Pedrosa, Milton. ‘Presencia del fútbol en la literatura brasileña’ Revista de Cultura Brasileña, 46 (June 1978), 53–88. Poole, Deborah. Vision, Race and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). Rocca, Pablo. Literatura y fútbol en el Uruguay (1899–1990). La polémica y el encuentro (Montevideo: Arca, 1991). Shaw, Donald L. Nueva narrativa hispanoamericana. Boom. Posboom. Posmod- ernismo. (Madrid: Cátedra, 1999). Stein, Steve. ‘The Case of Soccer in Early Twentieth-Century Lima’ in Joseph L. Arbena and David G. LaFrance (eds) Sport in Latin America and the Caribbean (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc, 2002), 9–31. Swanson, Philip. The New Novel in Latin America. Politics and Popular Culture after the Boom (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995). Torres Caballero, Benjamín. ‘Apuntes sobre la función del deporte en la narrativa latinoamericana’ Hispanic Review, 59 (1991), 401–20. Wisnik, José Miguel. Veneno remédio: o futebol e o Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2008). Wood, David. ‘From Right Wing to Midﬁeld: A Study of Soccer in Peru’ Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 22 (2003), 103–14. Wood, David. ‘Reading the Game: The Role of Football in Peruvian Literature’ The International Journal of the History of Sport 22:2 (March 2005), 266–84. Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Chapter 2 Taking the Field (First Half ) Early Writings in Spanish

The opposition to the practice of football expressed by Herrera y Reissig at the close of the nineteenth century, discussed towards the end of the previous chapter, was echoed by a group of like-minded literary figures in his home city a few years later. When, in 1910, a reader of the Monte- video literary journal Bohemia asked if notes on football matches could not be included in the publication, their response, via an editorial, proclaimed simply that ‘la poesía y las patadas son incompatibles’ (poetry and football are incompatible) (cited in Rocca, 1991: 17). In the two decades that followed, however, it was not just poetry that incorporated football as a significant part of its subject matter, and short stories, essays and short plays inspired by players, teams and the practice of the sport itself also appeared. Such was the presence of these publications by 1930 that Rocca suggests that ‘by then, poetry and football were com- patible. They were almost tied’ (1991: 39). This chapter will explore the early development and sudden flourishing of football literature in Latin America up to around 1930, giving consideration to a selection of key texts from different genres.

Horacio Quiroga, ‘Juan Polti, half- back’ (1918) The European origins of football in South America are well established, but it was not the only cultural import to cross the Atlantic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and in the literary ﬁeld many Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 writers looked to – and went to – Europe, and to France in particular, for inspiration during this time. Indeed, the two founding ﬁgures of football literature in Latin America, the Uruguayan Horacio Quiroga (1878–1937) and the Peruvian Juan Parra del Riego (1894–1925), both spent time in Paris as an important part of their respective intellectual journeys and literary development. On his return to Montevideo, Quiroga founded the literary group El Consistorio del Gay Saber, which engaged in heated debates with the aforementioned Herrera y Reissig, and in 1902 he moved to Buenos Aires, where he started to publish short Early Writings in Spanish 17

stories in local magazines such as Caras y Caretas. On 16 May 1918, the eleventh edition of the Buenos Aires magazine Atlántida (which at the time enjoyed a circulation of 45,000 copies) published a short text by Quiroga entitled ‘Juan Polti, half- back’,1 since included in numerous anthologies of football stories.2 Notwithstanding the publication of football poems dating back to 1899, explored in the previous chapter, Quiroga’s story is widely heralded as the first football literature produced in Latin America, and is without doubt the most well- known early text of its kind. The story tells of the sudden rise to fame of Polti, picked out from ‘un ignorado club de quinta categoría’ (an unknown fifth- division team) by a scout for Uruguay’s Nacional because of his heading ability. After four years at the top of his game, the star player begins to lose his ability and the club decides to replace him, prompting Polti to commit suicide. His body is found on the pitch the following morning, a revolver in one hand and, in the other, a note addressed to the president of the Club Nacional, followed by a simple poem in which he dedicates his spilled blood to his team- mates and to Nacional. Because of its brevity and its preoccupation with mental trauma and death, ‘Juan Polti, half- back’ fits comfortably alongside Quiroga’s Cuentos de amor, de locura y de muerte (Stories of Love, Madness and Death), published as a collection in 1917, the stories having typically been previously published in Buenos Aires magazines. At the same time, the story engages with debates around the social and intellectual status of football, addressed by Herrera y Reissig at the turn of the century, as well as with the sport’s popularity in the River Plate, firmly established in the wake of the 1916 and 1917 South American Championships (Campeonato Suda- mericano de Football, the precursor of the Copa América), hosted by Buenos Aires and Montevideo respectively.3 Indeed, Quiroga describes how Polti ‘cabeceaba toda una tarde de internacional’ (headed during a whole afternoon as an international player), and his funeral was so well attended that Montevideo had only ever been witness to two similar events before. However, the picture with which we are presented is not uniformly positive, and Quiroga makes fun of the manner in which Polti confuses words (‘baldón’ for ‘blasón’; ‘disgrace’ for ‘coat of arms’) in an attempt to adopt a more refined mode of expression. This may be offset by the sub- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 sequent comment that ‘lo mismo daba, dado que el muchacho valía en la cancha lo que una o dos docenas de profesores en sus respectivas cátedras’ (it did not matter, for the boy was worth on the pitch as much as one or two dozen professors in their respective fields), but the reader is then informed that ‘sabía apenas escribir’ (he barely knew how to write), mocking his basic literacy through a sinecure as an archivist. Most tell- ingly, Quiroga makes an explicit connection between the heading ability that brought about his rise to footballing prominence and his equally sudden decline. 18 Early Writings in Spanish

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. Hay pequeñas roturas, pequeñas congestiones y el resto.

(A head that thinks little, and is used, in contrast, like the tip of a bil- liard cue to receive and send back a football that arrives like a bullet, can turn into a hollow shell, in which the thunder of applause rings more loudly than it should. There are small ruptures, small blockages and the rest.) (Rocca, 1991: 94)

Having opened the story with the observation that when a boy suddenly experiences glory, ‘pierde la cabeza irremisiblemente’ (he irremissibly loses his head), Quiroga closes it with the image of the body of Juan Polti lying on the pitch, a revolver on his heart. The clear implication is that football is what has caused the protagonist to lose his head, and that it is his aban- donment to the realm of emotion, as evident in his engagement to a local girl as in the acclaim he enjoyed from the crowd, that leads to his down- fall. Although Quiroga was on the opposite side of various debates with Herrera y Reissig in turn-of-the- century Montevideo, here their views overlap considerably, and Quiroga’s observation that Polti’s heading ability meant that his main advantage over other players was that ‘tenía tres pies’ (he had three feet) unwittingly echoes Herrera y Reissig’s view that he was witnessing ‘al revés del triunfo de la cabeza, el triunfo de los pies’ (contrary to the triumph of the head, the triumph of the feet) (1899: 5). Quiroga’s text, while undoubtedly marking a milestone in terms of football as a literary presence, in South America and beyond, is at best ambivalent in its view of football as a practice, and of footballers as contemporary icons, revealing itself to be bound by dominant discourses surrounding the division – and hierarchy – of the mental and physical realms. In the context of a discussion of Quiroga’s story as a literary construct, it is worth noting that it is closely based around the suicide of Abdón Porte, captain of Club Nacional and member of the Uruguay team that Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 won the South American Championship in 1917. Porte committed suicide in the centre circle of the pitch at Montevideo’s Parque Central on 5 March 1918 after playing his ﬁnal game for the club the previous day. On his person were two letters, one addressed to the club president, Dr José María Delgado (included in Quiroga’s version) and one to a relative, which is not mentioned in the story.4 The letter to Delgado asked him to take care of his family and his mother, and closed with a short poem, a structure followed in Quiroga’s story, although he introduces the image of spilled blood to the poem to heighten the tragic effect. Subsequent memorialisation Early Writings in Spanish 19

of Porte blurs events and contents of the letter with Quiroga’s representation: his suicide (and one letter) is portrayed by Eduardo Galeano as ‘Muerte en la cancha’ (Death on the Pitch) in El fútbol a sol y sombra (Football in Sun and Shadow) (1995), and remembered in banners at Nacional’s stadium that draw on the image of the blood he spilled for the club.5 Rocca’s discussion of the story similarly mentions only one letter, and suggests that Quiroga was not interested in the ‘physicality of the game, nor the conditions in which the footballer lived’, rather in ‘the tragic fate of the character’ (1991: 20). Regardless of what the story fails to do, through it football emerges as a means of considering the human condition and the struggle with our limitations, as well as debates around physical and intellectual activities as variants on the civilisation/barbarism dichotomy in early twentieth- century Latin America. The initial publication of the text in a news magazine, and its closeness in time and detail to the events that inspired it, raises questions as to the status of Quiroga’s story as the ﬁrst example of South American football literature, showing as it does characteristics of both literary creation and journalism. What is in no doubt, however, is that it stands as the precursor of an extensive corpus of football texts that relate events, from the everyday to the extraordinary, across the history of football in the region.

Juan Parra del Riego’s ‘Lyrical Eulogy for Football’ (1918) Given the vigorous efforts to promote football as a positive force in Lima, as discussed in the previous chapter, it is striking that the ﬁrst serious challenger to the widely held notion among Uruguay’s literary elites that football and poetry, as symbols of the mental and physical domains, were antagonistic should have been a Peruvian. Juan Parra del Riego was an avant- garde poet who travelled from Lima to Chile in 1917, and arrived in Montevideo in 1918 via Tucumán and Buenos Aires, the year after the latter city saw Uruguay triumph as host nation in the second edition of the South American football championship. Parra del Riego was to live in Montevideo, travelling from there to other cities in the Southern Cone, until his early death in 1925, caused by tuberculosis apparently contracted Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 during his visit to Europe in 1922–23. He drew on diverse inﬂuences in his poetry, including Peruvian poet Juan Santos Chocano and Walt Whitman, but his major contribution in the context of Latin American poetry was the introduction of futurism to the continent, after he had been enthused by Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, published in Bologna and Paris in February 1909. Much of Parra del Riego’s poetry is futuristic and takes as its subject machinery, with an emphasis on movement and speed, but he also recognised football’s potential as another modern practice that could exemplify these features. On 14 November 1918 he published ‘Elogio lírico del 20 Early Writings in Spanish

fútbol’ (Lyrical Eulogy for Football) in the journal La Semana (Arequipa, Peru), the poem having been written in Tucumán in July of that year (Gianuzzi, 2016: 644). Subsequently published in Montevideo in La Revista Nacional (August 1919), the publication of Club Nacional, and as ‘Loa del fútbol’ (In Praise of Football) (Parra del Riego, 1925), it is far less readily available than his subsequent ‘Polirritmo dinámico a Gradín, jugador de fútbol’ (Dynamic Polyrhythm to Gradín, Football Player), to be discussed below.6 In the lengthy ‘Elogio’ the poet depicts the scene surrounding a match, full of colour, joy and excitement, but the focus is primarily upon the ball itself and its journey across the pitch, between players and ultimately into the goal. The poem’s 72 verses are arranged into six stanzas of unequal length, adhering – to a degree – to conventions of versification through the use of rhyme and metre. The opening and closing stanzas, with six and four verses respectively, are easily the shortest, serving as frames, and while the former immediately locates the reader in medias res with its excited ‘¡La pelota ríe y canta!/ ¡La pelota zumba y vuela!’ (The ball laughs and sings!/ The ball hums and flies!), the latter offers a summative reflection that explicitly locates the poem in the context of Rubén Darío’s Latin American literary modernity. Of the remaining four stanzas (of 14, 12, 23 and 13 verses), the first three capture the keen pre-match anticipation in the crowd and the on- pitch action, culminating in the scoring of a goal that stands out as the key point of the action via the shortest verse of the poem (just four syllables – ‘y es un ¡gol!’ – and it’s a goal!). The fourth, for its part, provides an exposition on the importance of football as a mode of artistry. The futuristic qualities of the poem are evident in the prevalence of verbs and dynamic adjectives to convey successfully the movement and speed of the action on the pitch: at once allusive and evocative, Parra del Riego draws on a poetic mode of expression to capture what Gumbrecht would identify almost a century later as the ‘eventness of aesthetic epiphany’ (2004: 116). Football’s status in early twentieth- century South America as a marker of modernity is reinforced here by the use of Anglicisms associated with the practice of the sport (‘opsay’, ‘golquiper’, ‘bac’, ‘futbol’ and ‘gol’) and terms such as ‘cohete volador’ (flying rocket) and – twice – ‘eléc- trico’ (electric). The discourse of science is also present via anatomical Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 terms (‘muslo’, ‘tórax’ and ‘músculo’ – ‘thigh’, ‘thorax’ and ‘muscle’) and the presence of a doctor to emphasise the players’ physicality, but the seriousness of futurism is undercut by the sheer enjoyment of the spectacle that is ‘la fiesta popular’ (the popular festival). Following Uruguay’s triumph in the 1916 and 1917 South American Championships,7 the latter of which was hosted in Montevideo, football enjoyed tremendous public popularity there; indeed, the editors of La Revista Nacional preface the poem by describing it as the ‘viril y hermoso deporte de que hemos hecho un culto’ (virile and beautiful sport of which we have made a cult). Parra Early Writings in Spanish 21

del Riego acknowledges the development of a language particular to football via the Anglicisms mentioned above, but also includes, via ‘se la lleva, se la lleva, se la lleva’ (he’s going through, he’s going through, he’s going through), the breathless excitement of a commentary, and uses onomato- poeia to describe an attack: ‘zig-zaguea jubiloso la gran Z/ de un ataque combinado’ (he zig-zags jubilantly the great Z/ of a team attack). This description also suggests the passing of the ball between players as they move forward, reinforced by the repeated ‘z’, and constitutes one of the earliest Latin American examples of the incorporation of visual poetry, also favoured in the form of calligrams by Marinetti and other futurist poets (Bohn, 1986).8 Parra del Riego’s concern with the players’ efforts to transcend the limitations of their human physicality, and the ball’s repeated success in doing so, is apparent through the repeated use of lexical items that denote elevation. There are numerous instances of verbs such as ‘vuela’, ‘escapar’, ‘se levanta’ and ‘eleva’ (fly, escape, rise up and elevates) prominently located at either the opening or close of verses; and of nouns such as ‘aires’, ‘sol’, ‘arco- iris’, ‘astro’, ‘altura’ and ‘luna’ (air, sun, rainbow, star, height and moon) that describe or allude to celestial bodies, whose cumulative effect is to evoke a strong sense of transcendence. In line with futurism’s anti- clericalism, there is no place for religion in this process of elevation, rather it is human physicality and the ability to achieve or enjoy footballing excellence that enable us to transcend our earthbound condition. This is not to say, however, that religious references are absent from the poem: indeed, the penultimate stanza closes with: ‘Es la América que hoy dice ¡Anunci- ación!/ con su gran trompeta de oro ante el crepúsculo/ de esa Europa roja y negra de la Cruz y del Cañón’ (It is America that today says Annuncia- tion!/ with its great golden trumpet before the dusk/ of that Europe that is red and black of the Cross and the Cannon). The two key Catholic images of ‘¡Anunciación!’ and ‘Cruz’ are used here in a highly unorthodox manner to indicate a break from tradition and another kind of transcendental escape. Against the background of Parra del Riego’s experience of Europe in 1916–17, the references to Europe’s ‘dusk’, the use of red and black, and the capitalised ‘Cannon’ all evoke the ravages of the First World War, and while Montherlant’s wing- half in Les Olympiques describes football Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 as an ‘intermediary activity between the great physical lyricism of war and the bureaucracy of peace’ (1924: 373), others sought to recover mankind’s humanity from the horrors of trench warfare, as Parra del Riego does here. The image of the dusk of a Europe emerging from the First World War calls to mind Spengler’s Decline of the West, the first volume of which was published, in German only, in 1918. Despite this, and the fact that translations into Spanish, English and French were published in 1923, 1926 and 1931 respectively (Foxlee, 2010: 172), it is quite possible that the Peruvian poet’s stay in Paris in 1922–23 and the flow of ideas between Europe and 22 Early Writings in Spanish

Latin America, and particularly between Paris and the River Plate, brought to his attention the ideas of Spengler, which quickly gained currency among intellectual circles. Of particular interest here is Spengler’s concern at spending on sport for entertainment as a symptom of the inevitable (and negative) move from what he terms culture to civilisation, as part of what many see as his broader cultural pessimism, for Parra del Riego’s Annunci- ation of the birth of a vigorous new America is exempliﬁed in this poem precisely by such sporting spectacle. For Parra del Riego, Europe has declined under the weight of religion and warfare, and America seizes the opportunity to emerge as a space of difference, with the place of football offering a distinctive feature of this new- found assertion. In their study of Uruguayan football and national identity, Marrera and Piñeyrúa suggest that in the wake of the First World War, when the government was limited in its ability to respond to challenges in the economic and political ﬁelds, football rose to prominence:

as an element that could integrate the various waves of immigrants; as the provider of tales, myths, heroes and triumphs; as the generator of milestones and topographical markers that give order, sequence and orientation to the individual biographies of the average inhabitant. (2009: 138)

In neighbouring Argentina, the crowning of Racing Club de Buenos Aires as 1913 league champions, with no players of British origins, was seen to mark the birth of fútbol criollo that could be considered a truly Argentin- ian form of the game: in his study of the period, Archetti concludes that ‘In the decade of the 1920s Buenos Aires is the city of tango and football’ (1995: 247), and by 1928 El Gráfico affirmed in the Argentinian capital that ‘Football is the collective sport of the criollo’ (16 June 1928: 8, cited in Archetti, 2003: 219). The sense of Latin America taking a route divergent from Western Europe is part of the ongoing process of self- affirmation and self- determination that started formally with independence in the early nineteenth century. As such it engages not only with ideas that were in vogue in Europe, but also with those of the region’s leading political thinkers, Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 notably José Martí’s seminal essay ‘Nuestra América’ (1891) and José Enrique Rodó’s equally influential ‘Ariel’ (1900). Martí warns in ‘Nuestra América’, written after the first Pan- American Conference, which sought to develop relations between the United States and Latin American nations, of the growing hemispheric power of the United States and the danger that this presents for the nations of ‘our’ (Latin) America. Rather than falling under the influence of the United States, Martí exhorts his readers to recognise their commonalities and come together to forge a new identity that is the result of the region’s confluent Early Writings in Spanish 23

European and indigenous influences. As part of his long- running campaign to achieve independence from Spain for his native Cuba, Martí thus locates Latin America beyond and in opposition to both the Euro- pean colonial powers and the neo- colonial potential of the United States. Rodó’s lengthy essay was written after the US intervention in the Spanish–American War had frustrated Martí’s vision for Cuban independence, thus confirming the latter’s fears regarding the dangers of US regional power. Rodó draws on Shakespeare’s The Tempest to present his ideas in the form of a debate between Ariel and Caliban, who can be seen to represent Latin America and the United States respectively. Through this work, considered to constitute ‘an interpretative key to the period’ (Osaba, 2014: 257), he champions the influence of the Greek classical tradition of artistic beauty as a model for the development of Latin America’s youth. A significant component of this Greek tradition, rediscovered by archaeological excavation in the mid- nineteenth century, was sport in the form of athletic competition and its artistic representation via art, sculpture and literature. The founding of the modern Olympic Games was a direct result of these discoveries, and, after the initial football tournaments had been contested by a handful of nations, the inclusion of teams from Latin America saw Uruguay win the gold medal in 1924 and 1928. Football, then, offers the point of convergence around which a new identity that is at once distinctive from the United States and Europe can be constructed: a sport not widely practised in Martí’s ‘colossus of the North’ and appropriated as distinctively criollo following its British origins, it fused a mode of expression for ‘Nuestra América’ with a classical aesthetic that could validate it in terms that transcended contemporary Western European models that were seen to be in decline. In its penultimate stanza, the ‘Elogio’ makes an explicit case for football’s beauty: it opens with ‘En el fútbol todo es clara poesía’ (In football everything is clear poetry) and goes on to describe it as ‘drama’, ‘música’, ‘geometría’ and ‘pintura’ (drama, music, geometry and painting), culminating with a euphoric affirmation that it is ‘¡Fiesta mágica del Músculo!’ (Magical festival of Muscle!). The 1920s were to see the publication of football poems in various European countries, but Parra del Riego’s Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 daring in depicting the sporting action through the medium of futurist poetics in a society that had embraced football as a means of affirming its sense of distinction meant that America’s self-Annunciation in blowing its own trumpet was entirely justified. The poem effectively proposes a place for South American culture as different to the Western European culture that Spengler argued had been in decline since the nineteenth century, with football a distinctive cultural practice, and its place in society a key feature of the new national identities that were under construction. 24 Early Writings in Spanish

Juan Parra del Riego, ‘Polirritmo dinámico a Gradín, jugador de fútbol’ (1922) ‘Elogio lírico del fútbol’ constitutes the first football poem to be published by a recognised author in Latin America, and indeed outside the British Isles,9 but far more well known is a subsequent poem by Parra del Riego that also explores the tensions between European modernity, seen by many as marking the future path for Latin America, and more locally based cultural practices. These differences, crystallised around concepts of civilisation and barbarism, were central to political and cultural debates across Latin America from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, and can be clearly seen at play in ‘Polirritmo dinámico a Gradín, jugador de fútbol’ (Dynamic Polyrhythm to Gradín, Football Player), first published in the Montevideo journal Calibán in March 1922. Isabelino Gradín (1897–1944), subject of the eponymous poem, was one of the very first black footballing stars, featuring in the Uruguay team that won the inaugural South American Cham- pionship in 1916, in which he finished as top scorer. In Uruguay’s first match of the tournament, against Chile, Gradín became the first black player (alongside team-mate Juan Delgado) to play in an international football match (Campomar, 2014: 78), and his two goals in the 4–0 victory led to protests from the Chilean camp that Uruguay had fielded African players. The protests were groundless, but reveal the prejudices in relation to issues of civilisation and barbarism that were being vigorously played out in political and cultural debates at the time. Following a successful playing career with Peñarol between 1915 and 1921, during the amateur era, Gradín was involved in the founding of Olimpia FC in Montevideo and played for a team that represented the Federación Uruguaya de Fútbol, rather than the Uruguay Football Association, an allegiance that deprived him of a place in the team that won gold in the 1924 Olympic Games. In addition to his outstanding footballing ability, Gradín was South American champion at both 200 m and 400 m in 1919 and 1920, and is credited with demonstrating to the Brazilian public in the 1919 South American Championship that football was a game in which blacks could excel at a time when considerable efforts were being made in that country to maintain white hegemony in the sport (Blixen, 2000). Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Parra del Riego’s poem, perhaps the first published anywhere devoted to the achievements of an outstanding player, is a fairly lengthy piece (72 verses, as ‘Elogio lírico del fútbol’) that locates the poet in a crowd that admires and cheers Gradín’s skill and a goal born of his individual brilliance. Continuities with ‘Elogio lírico del football’ are evident in the references to a joyous crowd, and in the ebullient opening, ‘Palpitante y jubiloso’ (Pounding and jubilant), which proceeds immediately to comparing the footballer to an aviator, an image that typifies the vision of modernity and futurism that the poet strives to capture. The opening stanza, of Early Writings in Spanish 25

five verses that follow a fairly conventional poetic structure (verses are of 8, 15, 8, 13 and 15 syllables with a rhyme pattern of ABAAB), also makes it clear that what has brought the poet to a state of heightened emotion and artistic expression is not in this case the ball or the match, but this ‘jugador maravilloso’ (marvellous player). Following the initial sense of uplifting, both emotional and physical, with references to the skies, the second stanza breaks to a free structure with a series of adjectives that describe aviator and striker alike: ‘Ágil,/ fino,/ alado,/ eléctrico,/ repentino,/ delicado,/ fulminante,/ yo te vi en la tarde olímpica jugar’ (agile,/ refined,/ winged,/ electric,/ sudden,/ delicate,/ devastating,/ I saw you play in the Olympic afternoon). It is tempting to see in the mention of ‘Olympic’ a reference to Uruguay’s successes in the Games of 1924 and 1928, where they won the gold medal in the football tournament on both occasions, but the poem predates these events and, in any case, Gradín was not part of the team that travelled to the Olympic Games, following his allegiance to a rival Uruguayan federation. Another interpretation could derive from Olimpia FC, the club that Gradín helped to found in the early 1920s, although Parra del Riego’s arrival in Montevideo in 1917 and the original publication of the poem in 1922 make it more likely that the poet watched Gradín play for Peñarol, where he starred from 1915 to 1921. Instead, it would seem that the reference here harks back to classical antiquity and figures of Greek mythology favoured by Rodó, linking in to the previous reference to ‘alado’ (winged), the subsequent description of the footballer as a ‘bronce vivo’ (live bronze) and his movements as ‘líneas griegas’ (Greek lines). As a counterpoint to these classical images, the footballer is likened to items such as a piston, a scalpel, a balloon and a submarine, which clearly develop the poet’s futurism, evident in this emphasis on technology as in the opening comparison to the emblematic figure of the aviator. Alongside the aviator, the metaphor of a ‘ruido seco y sordo de metralla’ (dry and deafening sound of the machine gun) to capture the movement of the ball is the clearest allusion to the recently ended war. Football as cultural practice, and in particular Gradín as an outstanding player, allow the poet to draw together the futurist vision of modernity and the classical tradition of celebrating athleticism through art, simultaneously reappropriating the human body and its flesh from the images of Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 cannon fodder and bodily destruction. The footballer’s body is able to transcend not only time, but also space: after opening with references to the skies, the poem moves to the earth as Gradín’s ability on the pitch dazzles, before moving back to the skies as Gradín heads the ball upwards and is himself a balloon, then back to earth as he dribbles past opponents and scores at the heart of the poem. In the later stanzas we move to the seas as Gradín is ‘¡Pez acróbata que al ímpetu del ataque más violento/ se escabulle, arquea, flota/ no lo ve nadie un momento,/ pero como un submarino sale allá con la pelota . . .!’ (Acrobat 26 Early Writings in Spanish

fish that from the impetus of the most violent attack/ slips away, arches, floats/ nobody sees it for a moment,/ but like a submarine it emerges over there with the ball . . .!) before finally moving into space as Gradín’s name is proclaimed to the moon by ‘una salva luminosa de sombreros’ (a luminous salvo of hats). The notion of Gradín reaching the moon is clearly part of the futurist discourse espoused by Parra del Riego, and if football is yet to be practised there, the poet prefigures the ubiquitous popularity of the sport that stretches to all corners of the earth. Mention has already been made of some of the socio- political issues that arose as a result of Gradín’s ethnicity, and attention is drawn to this area by a series of references to colour that are to be found throughout the poem. The majority of these refer to black/white, or to darkness/light, but do not always coincide with the expectations that would be raised by the dominant politico- cultural views of the River Plate (and the continent more widely) at the time. As has been mentioned, political and intellectual debates of the period revolved around civilisation, associated with western, urban modernity on the one hand, and barbarism, linked to racial others and rural traditions on the other. Gradín’s African descent places him firmly in the ‘barbarous’ camp, and such racism underlies Chile’s protests against the presence of Gradín and Juan Delgado in the Uruguayan team that defeated them in 1916, but Parra del Riego repeatedly defies expectations: it is the white poet whose soul is ‘dark’ in the second stanza, while it is the skills of the black footballer that lift him from this darkness into a state of enlightenment. Similarly, in the poem’s final stanza the crowd, which would have been overwhelmingly white,10 is suffused by the emotion of Gradín’s goal to become a ‘ronco oleaje negro’ (hoarse black swell), while Gradín himself is illuminated by the aforementioned ‘luminous salvo of hats’ and the moon. In addition to these inversions, there are four occasions on which the use of colours goes beyond dark and light: three of these refer to the colours of the shirts of the players on the pitch, suggesting that to the colours of club or nation the shade of a player’s skin is of no consequence, and offering an early optimism as to the racial egalit- arianism to which modern sport may aspire.11 The final example conflates colour and form as it refers to Gradín as ‘bronce vivo de la múltiple actitud’ (live bronze of multiple attitude), a metaphor that not only denies Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 racial connotations in his representation but also connects again to the classical Greek references flagged above: in stark contradiction of what debates of the time would have us believe, a black football player is worthy of – and indeed embodies – poetry, celebration and artistic imagination. Perhaps of significance here is Parra del Riego’s position as an outsider, whose place of origin (the small city of Huancayo in the central Peruvian Andes) was dominated by discourses of race that revolved around the white urban minority and the rural indigenous majority. As a result, it may be that he was able to realise the mediatory capacity of football to occupy Early Writings in Spanish 27

spaces between – or beyond – conventional views, in terms of both his futurist expression and his celebration of a sport, and a sportsman, not traditionally considered to be an appropriate artistic subject. A further dimension to questions of the body and race is to be found in the representation of Gradín as erotic object. In the aftermath of the goal, the poet exclaims: ‘¡Yo vi tres mujeres de esas con caderas como altares/ palpitar estremecidas de emoción!’ (I saw three of those women with hips like altars/ throb shuddering with emotion!), a clear expression of the allure of the elite athlete to the opposite sex. Given Uruguay’s population dynamic and patterns of attendance at football matches, which were a social event for the middle classes, it might be assumed with some safety that the women were white, engaging head-on with the contentious topic of sexual attraction and relations across class and racial divides. Challeng- ing as this is in the context of the time, even more daring is the homo- erotic depiction that follows immediately after this, according to which that poet implores: ‘¡Gradín! róbale al relámpago de tu cuerpo incandescente,/ que hoy me ha roto en mil cometas de una loca elevación,/ otra azul velocidad para mi frente/ y otra mecha de colores que me vuele el corazón’ (Gradín! steal from the lightning bolt of your incandescent body/ that has today broken me into a thousand comets by a mad uplifting,/ another blue speed for my brow/ and another wick to blow up my heart). The excitement caused by the scoring of the goal is clearly widely shared in the crowd, male and female alike, but to establish a direct connection between the footballer’s ‘cuerpo incandescente’ (incandescent body) and the poet’s heart suggests that through football both the individual and the collective can transcend the normative discourses of contemporary society in relation to race, gender relations and masculinity. The poem’s structure and form are also worth considering brieﬂy in terms of their correspondence with the overarching themes discussed above. The poem’s 72 verses are divided into nine stanzas of 5, 11, 8, 11, 5, 15, 5, 6 and 6 verses respectively, and verses range from two syllables to 20. Despite this lack of strict adherence to patterns of versiﬁcation, as in ‘Elogio lírico del fútbol’ there is a preponderance of conventional Hispanic metres, of eight syllables (11 verses), 12 syllables (15 verses) and 16 syllables (11 verses). Further poetic convention is evident in the poem’s rhyme Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 pattern, which works both within and across stanzas, although only to a degree, as there are also a handful of blank verses, which highlight the expression in these verses of key moments of the poem. In this vein, it is not surprising that the verse at the heart of the poem – in which Gradín’s shot hits the net – is not only free in terms of rhyme, but is also the longest verse of the poem at 20 syllables. The prime example of this is the stanza that precedes the scoring of the goal: ‘Y discóbolo volante,/ pasas uno . . ./ dos . . ./ tres . . . cuatro . . ./ siete jugadores . . .’ (And discus- throwing winger,12/ you pass one . . ./ two . . ./ three . . . four . . ./ seven players . . .). It 28 Early Writings in Spanish

is clear that there is no pattern here, either of metre or rhyme, and a strong sense that Gradín’s footballing ability breaks free both from the opposing players and from the poetic convention that had strained to contain the preceding action. The poem, like Gradín, is not entirely free, nor is it completely subject to conventions either, and this temporary rupturing of structural constraints ably conveys the tensions between Gradín’s position on the football pitch as a national hero and within society as a member of a subaltern minority. The celebration of athleticism in poetic form dates back to at least the fifth century bc, when Pindar wrote his victory odes to celebrate triumphs in Olympian Games. The discovery of this tradition via nineteenth-century classical archaeology provided a bridge to a classical tradition that proved influential for various Latin American thinkers in their search for cultural models that would mark their independence from ex-colonial and neo- colonial powers. Parra del Riego’s poems can be located in relation to the work of figures of continental significance, such as Sarmiento, Martí and Rodó, but they clearly also engage with the latest literary trends of modernism and futurism. At the same time, by centring on the practice of football, they are part of contemporary public and political debates around public health, hygiene and the body, while the focus on a black football hero challenges the normative racial discourses of the time. What allows all of these aspects to converge in a single text is football, distinctively positioned in a number of ways: played on both sides of the River Plate by the 1870s, it became popular in Argentina and Uruguay well before the first club in Spain was established. At the same time, its absence from the range of sports that were celebrated in a developing national identity in the United States, and which were being introduced to Latin America through the early decades of the twentieth century, made it a marker of distinction from Martí’s ‘colossus of the North’. In terms of the public visibility of football as a public spectacle, the presence of black players set the game apart from its place in Europe. Moreover, Latin America’s position on the periphery in relation to the First World War meant that cultural production was able to continue largely unaffected, and in the case of football – in literary expression, as subsequently in international competition – it became the centre, Parra del Riego’s work providing the foundations of Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 a trend that would see the publication of numerous football texts over the course of the following years.

Bernardo Canal Feijóo, Penúltimo poema del fútbol (1924) Just two years after Parra del Riego’s celebration of Gradín in Montevideo, Bernardo Canal Feijóo published the ﬁrst Argentinian football literature, his 1924 collection of poems Penúltimo poema del fútbol – the ﬁrst book Early Writings in Spanish 29

in Latin America explicitly to draw on football for its title, and also the first work of creative writing devoted entirely to the sport.13 Parra del Riego corresponded with Canal Feijóo on a regular basis and wrote in a letter that: ‘en la poesía, en la pintura y en la escultura modernas, el deporte tiene ahora una acción preponderante: se está forjando una novísima estética maravillosa, en la que se combinan la gracia y la fuerza en una aleación perfecta’ (in modern poetry, painting and sculpture, sport now has a predominant effect: a marvellous and entirely new aesthetics is being forged, in which grace and strength are combined in perfect alloy) (Parra del Riego, 1943: 215, cited in Díaz Zuluaga, 2014: 218). Such correspondence hints at the networks by which football came to figure as a literary motif in the 1920s, an element of the flow and exchange of ideas and practices that included football itself. As was the case with Quiroga and Parra del Riego, Canal Feijóo was from the provinces and Penúltimo poema del fútbol, his first work, was published in his home city of San- tiago del Estero in the north of the country. By the early 1920s he had moved to Buenos Aires to study Law, and there he came into contact with the influential Grupo Martín Fierro (which included Jorge Luis Borges, whose disdain for football was to become legendary). Despite his studies and participation in the capital’s literary circles, he maintained strong links with his home town, evident in his position as president of the Club Atlético Santiago, as recorded in the 1923 annual review of the local newspaper El Liberal (Juárez Aldazábal, 2005). Subsequently celebrated as a dramatist and essayist, Canal Feijóo was awarded the prestigious prize of the Sociedad Argentina de Escritores (SADE) in 1963 and was a member of the Academia Argentina de Letras from 1972 until his death in 1982, serving as elected president of the organisation from June 1980 to October 1982.14 Penúltimo poema del fútbol comprises 63 short texts (the longest runs to three pages) that combine poetry, free verse and poetic narrative, illustrated with vignettes drawn by Canal Feijóo, to convey events over the course of an afternoon that centres on a football match. From the opening ‘Invo- cación (para el tono de la tarde)’ (Invocation (for the tone of the afternoon)) to the final ‘Epílogo’ that sees the crowd disperse into the evening, the collection builds a fascinating picture of a match- day afternoon in early 1920s Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Argentina, when provincial leagues were major players in the national game.15 There is one use of the adjective ‘santiagueño’ (p. 29) that connects the work to the author’s native Santiago de Estero, but the general absence of such references provides the reader with a sense of universal experience that reflects the widespread popularity of the sport in Argentina – and indeed Latin America – by this time. Instead, the titles of the short texts that make up the work draw on a series of nouns that evoke events or features of the match. The first dozen portray the build-up to the game and include ‘Preparaciones’ (Preparations), ‘Horizontes’ (Horizons), ‘Patas’ 30 Early Writings in Spanish

(Legs), ‘Uniformes’ (Football Kits), ‘Instantáneas’ (Snapshots), ‘Una pose’ (A Pose) and ‘Muchedumbre’ (Crowd), bringing together geography, spectators and footballers as the essential components of what emerges as a performance that is played out between the various actors. The first three texts, ‘Invocación’ (Invocation), ‘Paréntesis’ (Parenthesis) and ‘Patada libre’ (Free Kick), undertake a consideration and validation of the patada, the action of kicking, which is favourably compared with a punch and variously described as ‘siempre algo que abre una puerta a un más allá inesperado’ (something that always opens the door to an unexpected beyond) (p. 11), ‘perfecta y cancelatoria’ (perfect and cancelling) (p. 12) and ‘patrimonio del filósofo y del artista’ (patrimony of the philosopher and artist) (p. 12). The extent to which Canal Feijóo’s time in Buenos Aires, and his involvement with the Grupo Martín Fierro, had brought him into contact with the work of Herrera y Reissig is unclear, but regardless of this he clearly engages here with the key debates around the place of football in the social and cultural life of the era. Football as a practice underwent significant and rapid expansion in much of South America during the early decades of the twentieth century, and its growing popularity is evident in the manner in which it became increasingly present in literature and national culture more widely. As has already been discussed, Herrera y Reissig lamented in 1899 what he saw as ‘al revés del triunfo de la cabeza, el triunfo de los pies’ (contrary to the triumph of the head, the triumph of the feet); while for Quiroga, Polti’s heading ability meant that ‘tenía tres pies’ (he had three feet), a dubious advantage that contributed to his suicide. Canal Feijóo is unequivocal in comparing the use of the foot and the head in positive terms, describing a header as ‘algo como patear con la cabeza . . . Una quinta pata . . ./ Una quinta pata que sin embargo daba una razón/ redonda y parabolar’ (something like kicking with your head. . . . A fifth leg. . . ./ A fifth leg that nonetheless gave a reason/ round and parabolic) (p. 41). The use of reason as part of football stands in marked contrast to those, such as Herrera y Reissig, who denounced football’s barbaric connotations, and Penúltimo poema del fútbol not only foregrounds the literary credentials of the sport through its title but also draws on several philosophers to construct an innovative depiction of what the author sees as the game’s intrinsic qualities. Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 References to what might tentatively be described as a philosophy of football tend to come in the latter texts of the collection, once Canal Feijóo has fully developed his vision of the nature of the sport as a practice worthy of serious consideration. One of the most influential philosophers in Latin America of the early twentieth century was Nietzsche, whose work was discussed in Spanish periodicals from as early as 1893, when the article ‘Por ambos mundos’ was published in La ilustración española y americana on 15 June, the title of piece and periodical alike indicating the transatlantic scope of the German’s work. Así hablaba Zaratustra was Early Writings in Spanish 31

available in Spanish translation from 1899, and all of Nietzsche’s major writings had been translated into Spanish by 1902 (Ilie, 1964). By describing a shot in terms of ‘Así hubiese pateado Zarathustra’ (Thus should have kicked Zarathustra) (p. 35), Canal Feijóo simultaneously references Nietzsche’s critique of morality, classical representations of Zarathustra as a magician and the central Zoroastrian tenet of free will. Indeed, the very form of Penúltimo poema del fútbol could be seen to have been influenced by the poetic prose of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), while the physical excellence of the footballer allows for associations with the ubermensch, the overman or super-human who would become the creator of new values and move beyond the ‘herd conscience’ identified in Beyond Good and Evil (1886). A further significant level of engagement with Nietzsche’s ideas is apparent in the use of the Apollonian–Dionysian duality that he explored in The Birth of Tragedy (1872), whereby the art deities of ancient Greek civilisation represent respectively the worlds of dreams and of intox- ication. Apollonian art might be seen to be characterised by a measured restraint that keeps in check the darker forces of the unconscious mind, but Nietzsche argued that Dionysian art saw these wilder forces break free in a state of ecstasy. The rapturous enjoyment of football, evident in the match portrayed in Penúltimo poema del fútbol, provides an equivalent for the Dionysian experience, celebrated by Canal Feijóo as an experience that is both liberating and foundational. Furthermore, Nietzsche’s view that ‘Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and man reaffirmed, but nature which has become alienated, hostile, or subjugated, celebrates once more her reconciliation with her lost son, man’ (2000: 37) enables Canal Feijóo to shift the terms of reference in the enduring civilización–barbarie debate. The celebration of human physicality alongside a series of references to nature during the course of the football match, such as flocks of birds on and over the pitch, builds a picture of football as a mediatory practice able to synthe- sise diverse traditions and experiences to produce a new experience that takes players, crowd and reader alike in new directions. In the context of Argentina’s desire to draw on northern Europe in the construction of a sense of nationhood, the appropriation of Nietzsche through football represents an important moment in attempts to establish a distinctive cultural Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 space. In the text ‘La silueta del jugador C’ (The Silhouette of Player C), Canal Feijóo describes a black player as ‘un Apolo/Negro’ (p. 27), drawing explicit attention to the Apollonian–Dionysian tension, although comparing a black footballer to a Greek deity undercuts traditional notions of barbarous physicality and mirrors Parra del Riego’s treatment of Gradín, published two years earlier. After repeatedly highlighting such tensions through descriptions of the black footballer as ‘zancajo sereno’ (serene stride) and ‘Certero y peligroso’ (Sure and dangerous), the poem ends with ‘Y en la danza/ Y en la inspiración/ Un refilón de biela/ negra’ (And in the 32 Early Writings in Spanish

dance/ And in inspiration/ A glance of black/ connecting rod). These images of dance, inspiration and connecting rod establish a clear link to Nietzsche’s view of the Dionysian released through dance and to the ubermensch (overman). Football, as an inspiring dance, and especially via the gambeta, a piece of skilful trickery described as ‘Filosofía profunda!’ (profound philosophy!) (p. 41), allows us to glimpse the future of Argentina envisioned by avant-garde poets, in which man will have overcome his current state, defined by race, barbarism and civilisation, and will transcend the limitations of contemporary cultural debates. By drawing on classical Greece for images and concepts, be this directly or through the ideas of Nietzsche, Canal Feijóo follows in the line established by Martí and Rodó that looked to European antiquity as a source of inspiration for the cultural development of Latin America. When discussing the merits of different sports, he says of football that there is ‘ninguno que pueda merecer como éste el epíteto de olímpico’ (none as worthy of the title of Olympic) (p. 13), establishing a bridge between 1920s Argen- tina and sporting practices of the classical era, as well as offering a nod to Uruguay’s triumph in the football tournament of the 1924 Olympic Games. Connections to foundational practices are not only cultural, but also ontological. In a clear challenge to Christian beliefs, the second text of the collection, ‘Paréntesis’, opens by stating that ‘Está ya dicho que en el principio fue la acción, no el verbo,-y hay que agregar: que la acción inicial fue indudablemente la patada, según se induce del modo como andan las cosas’ (It has already been said that in the beginning came the action, not the word, and we must add that the first action was undoubtedly a kick, as can be induced by the way things are going) (p. 10). This bold affirmation is followed soon after by the suggestion that ‘La gran patada ensaya la introducción de un nuevo astro en el sistema de Dios!’ (The great kick rehearses the introduction of a new star in God’s system!) (p. 14) and that the oranges consumed in the stadium are ‘las verdaderas manzanas de oro del jardín inviolable’ (the true golden apples of the inviolable garden) (p. 17). Football is presented here as a means of establishing and expressing an alternative set of values, beliefs and practices in a society that was seeking a move away from tradition and a distinctive basis for nationhood. Penúltimo poema del fútbol is also noteworthy for providing early Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 reflections on the relationship between football and literature, expressing exasperation – ‘Y véngase usted con la literatura!’ (And you keep going on about literature!) (p. 21) – that a literary text should be asked to capture the tumultuous action on the pitch. Eighty years before Gumbrecht reflected on the considerable challenges in recreating what he described as ‘presence effects’, these were being explored in Latin America’s nascent football literature, and when Canal Feijóo deems ‘Dos gambetas hábiles’ an ‘Arabesco irreconstruible e inenarrable’ (Two skilful tricks, an unrecon- structible and unnarratable arabesque) (p. 38) he similarly concludes that Early Writings in Spanish 33

the written word cannot adequately capture the sporting moment or movement. The ambivalence of intellectuals is also apparent as the text entitled ‘Obstrucción’ (Obstruction) features a literary critic in the crowd whose pleasure is derived from ‘soltar el dogo colmilludo y garronero del calam- bre, a la caza de los jugadores’ (setting loose the fanged and scrounging mastiff of cramp, to chase the players) (p. 32), the desire to subject the players to literary analysis resulting in the loss of movement. Literature’s relationship with football emerges as a troubled one on various fronts, but it is not the only means of providing a cultural representation of the game, and the presence of both film cameras and still cameras is notable at various points, especially as highlighted in the texts ‘Una pose’ (p. 23) and ‘Fotos’ (p. 33). Through his description of ‘el breve guiño de la instantánea, que sobrecoge en un infraganti muscular’ (the brief wink of the camera, which catches by surprise a muscular in flagrante) (p. 21), the author acknowledges the camera’s advantages as a means of capturing the action. The subsequent observation that ‘La cámara fotográfica nos llevaba la ventaja de no saber/ filosofar’ (The camera had the advantage of not knowing how to/ philosophise) (p. 31) appears to support this, but in the context of the manner in which Canal Feijóo has drawn on the ideas of various thinkers, notably Nietzsche as discussed above, the benefits are less clear. As symbols of modernity, the cameras are embraced, but literature is more able to explore ideas and make connections across time and space, making it the author’s preferred vehicle for the depiction of the football match, despite the shortcomings he himself identifies. A final aspect of this collection of note is that it reveals the presence in the early twentieth century of discourses that continue to be a feature of writing about football a century later, namely the manner in which the sport is associated with masculinity, typically expressed in sexual terms. From the opening page, the midday setting of the game is ‘violatorio’ as it ‘desnudó las espaldas del cielo’ (violatory as it laid naked the back of the sky) (p. 9), while ‘en la apoteosis de la tarde gloriosa, la victoria ofrenderá en cada naranja al beso del labio reseco de los jugadores, un seno virginal y pletórico!’ (at the height of the glorious afternoon, victory will offer in the kiss of each orange on the dry lips of the players, a virginal breast full of expectation) (p. 17). The sexual imagery is taken to Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 its climax in what has over the intervening decades become a hackneyed image of penetration: ‘El Gol del Triunfo!/ El foco! – El sexo!/ La tarde violada/ En plena fragilidad!’ (The Winning Goal!/ The focus! – Sex!/ The afternoon raped/ At the height of its fragility!) (p. 42). Notions of hegemonic masculinity also apply to those who not do conform to its demands, and the football pitch as the arena in which a man ‘da y se afirma el taconazo de su señorío’ (gives and affirms the stamp of his manliness) (p. 19) is opposed to ‘la botita frívola y lustrosa,/ buena para un asunto de maricas’ (the frivolous and shiny boot,/ good for an affair 34 Early Writings in Spanish

of queers) (p. 19). This, however, is not the only alternative to normative masculinity expressed through football, and one of the greatest surprises in Penúltimo poema del fútbol is the penultimate section (followed only by the epilogue), which is entitled ‘Fútbol de mujeres’. This apparently follows the men’s match that has been explored in preceding pages, offering a tantalising glimpse of women’s football in Latin America during the early decades of the twentieth century. In a text that challenges established discourses and notions in various ways, it is disappointing to see that the depiction of women’s football conforms to highly conventional gender roles. From the opening line, which states that ‘No podía prosperar el partido’ (The match could not prosper) (p. 42), the match is depicted negatively as an unnatural spectacle in which the ball takes advantage of the opportunity to dwell on and stick to the women’s thighs, breasts, hips and stomachs. The ball and masculine gaze alike seek to neutralise the women’s challenge to the positioning of their bodies through the expression of physicality in football, and the subsequent description of tackles and collisions that ‘trababan a las jugadoras en un abrazo lésbico inaceptable’ (entangle the players in an unacceptable lesbian embrace) makes it clear that any such challenge will be framed in ways that question not the men, but the women themselves. The affirmation of football as a man’s game in 1924 provides a further dimension to Archetti’s findings in his study of masculinity in Argentin- ian football through its representation in El Gráfico from the late 1920s (Archetti, 1995), and prefigures debates explored in Chapter 9. The highly traditional depiction of women notwithstanding, Canal Feijóo presents football as a revolutionary force capable of unsettling established cultural norms: ‘Y la patada que introduzca en el orden pru- dente del/ mundo, una maciza sinrazón!’ (And may the kick introduce to the prudent order of the/ world, a solid wrong!) (p. 10). This recurring use of reason is significant in that it allows the author to engage not only with enduring local debates around civilisation and barbarism, but with classical antiquity and contemporary European philosophy. By these means he makes a case for football as a foundational practice that makes an important contribution to the search for national identity in the River Plate at a time when lo criollo became increasingly influential Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 as a means of fusing the region’s diverse cultural influences. Interest- ingly, and contrary to what is suggested by the collection’s title, football was never to reappear as a significant feature of Canal Feijóo’s literary career, which was long and productive. Nonetheless, Penúltimo poema del fútbol sits alongside the work of Parra del Riego as testimony to the manner in which avant-garde poetry saw football as a key means of referencing and drawing together the threads of modernity on both sides of the River Plate. Early Writings in Spanish 35

José María Delgado and Uruguayan Commemorations Among numerous examples of football poems published in Latin America from the mid- 1920s onwards, ‘Sol verdadero’ (True Sun) (1924) and ‘La nueva hazaña’ (The New Feat) (1930), both by Uruguayan José María Delgado, are notable as the first literary expressions of football nationalism in the region, responses to Uruguay’s triumphs in the Olympic Games and World Cup of those years. Delgado was a long- standing friend of Horacio Quiroga and, moreover, the president of Club Nacional de Fútbol from 1911 to 1921 who had been the recipient of Abdón Porte’s suicide note (Osaba, 2014: 254). There is little doubt that he was the channel though which Quiroga learned of the episode that would inspire ‘Juan Polti, half- back’, and Delgado went on to play an administrative role in Uruguay’s triumphant participation at the 1924 Olympic Games, as well as in the organisation of the inaugural World Cup, hosted by Uruguay in 1930. A fellow member of Quiroga’s literary circle, El Consistorio del Gay Saber, he was also a poet who had published various poems in the magazine ¡Nacional! Organo Oficial del Club Nacional de Fútbol under the pseudonym ODAGLED (Rocca, 1991: 21, 37). Given its date of publication, ‘Sol verdadero’, which celebrates Uruguay’s gold medal in the football tournament at the Paris Olympic Games of that year, is the first piece of football literature anywhere to make the sport a clear symbol of nationalism and to celebrate success in an international tournament. The poem, which consists of six stanzas, opens: ‘Con oro arrancado a las minas de la quimera/ Habíamos bordado un sol en la bandera’ (With gold torn from the mines of the chimera/ Had we embroidered the sun on our flag), and closes with a return to the image of the sun as the victorious team receive their gold medals in front of the national flag: ‘Y sobre ese raso profundo/ Vimos que nuestro sol como el sol verdadero/ Comenzaba a rodar por encima del mundo’ (And against that deep background/ We saw that our sun as the true sun/ Began to circle above the world).16 Delgado’s trium- phalism is understandable in the circumstances and conveys a strong sense of pride in a nation that has just affirmed itself in the heart of Europe, Olympic success providing a direct connection to a classical past that many Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 intellectuals sought as a basis for nations that were establishing their identity in the wake of massive European immigration. In contrast with Parra del Riego, there is no attempt to capture the action on the pitch, and Rocca describes the style as ‘un lenguaje poético ya caduco, con todo el mayestático fulgor neoclásico, muy poco adaptable a los brincos histéricos de la pelota’ (a poetic language that was already outmoded, full of majestic neo- classical splendour, scarcely adaptable to the hysterical leaps of the ball) (Rocca, 1991: 49–50). Similar features are evident in ‘La nueva hazaña’ (The New Feat), a lengthy poem to mark Uruguay’s victory in the 36 Early Writings in Spanish

1930 World Cup, although the inﬂuence of Parra del Riego can be detected in the attempt to convey the excitement in the stands and the movement on the pitch, employing some of the techniques and terms (‘oleaje’, ‘bronce’, ‘ímpetu’; meaning ‘wave’, ‘bronze’, ‘impetus’) that featured in his celebration of Gradín. The success with which they are incorporated is limited, however, and the poem maintains an emphasis on the patriotic value of football, closing: ‘A los pasmados orbes proclamando/ que otra vez, y de modo más rotundo,/ el Uruguay era Campeón del Mundo’ (To the stunned planets proclaiming/ that once again, and even more convincingly,/ Uruguay was Champion of the World). Whatever the literary merits of Delgado’s poems, the two discussed here stand out as the earliest known celebrations of Olympic and World Cup football success respectively, again placing South America at the vanguard of football literature – and of performances on the pitch – in the early decades of the twentieth century.

The Birth of the Football Essay In addition to his poetic output, Parra del Riego also wrote ‘Aspectos psi- cológicos del foot-ball’ (Psychological Aspects of Football), one of the earliest essays on football. Apparently written in response to Uruguay’s 2–0 home loss to Argentina on 30 September 1923 for the Uruguayan Honour Cup,17 it evokes the drama of the occasion as crowds listen to the match relayed by megaphone from the packed stadium. On the ﬁnal whistle the faces of Uruguayans are described as hanging jaws, the pain of defeat worse than the emotional charge of Beethoven’s funeral march or the burial of Isolde: ‘Es algo más dilacerador de una calidad catastróﬁca más visceral e integralizadora. Es un gol que ha caído en el bulbo raquídeo del país’ (It is more heart- rending and of a more deeply- felt catastrophic quality. It is a goal that has fallen on the nation’s medulla oblongata).18 Reminiscent of Montherlant’s preoccupation for an exploration of human psychology in the football- related texts of Les Olympiques (1924), Parra del Riego’s essay marks an important step in the development of an intellectual framework within which to discuss football in South America. Rather than the commonplace of football chatter that was already lamented by some intellectuals, ‘Aspectos psicológicos del foot-ball’ closes Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 with a self- consciously artistic discourse, inviting the reader to join the author in celebrating ‘la espantosa «Elegía de la desolación de la man- díbula»’ (the terrible ‘Eulogy to the desolation of the jaw’). By the end of the 1920s, further essays had appeared in the River Plate, which remained a centre for the production of football literature, including some by notable authors writing in local newspapers. José Gabriel’s ‘El jugador de football. Ejemplo de arte’ (The Football Player. Example of Art) was published on 6 January 1929 in La Nación, the Buenos Aires daily that enjoyed the largest readership in Latin America at the time and received regular contributions Early Writings in Spanish 37

from many of the continent’s leading writers. This lengthy essay (which runs to six pages in Santoro’s Literatura de la pelota) takes as its starting point a ballet performance, to which the author compares football favourably, seeing in football a higher level of beauty, skill and agility, as well as greater evidence of virility. After taking his reader on an imagined journey to a match and sharing his appreciation of the footballers’ actions, he closes with an afﬁrmation of football as, moreover, being a national creation that makes it all the more worthy of celebration:

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

(All essential acts of culture are the product of teachings that have been converted into a creative force. This is why our university stu- dents go to master Europe and only give rise to courtesy, and our football players go there and enrapture people. They take with them what Europe knew, but they take it in a form that has been improved.) (Santoro, 2007: 89)

Another distinguished author who published on football at this time was Argentine Roberto Arlt, whose essay ‘Ayer vi ganar a los argentinos’ (Yesterday I Watched the Argentines Win) appeared in the Buenos Aires daily El Mundo on 18 November 1929, subsequently included in his Nuevas aguafuertes porteñas (New Buenos Aires Etchings) (Buenos Aires, 1960). Arlt’s aguafuertes, which appeared on a regular basis in El Mundo between 1928 and his death in 1942, explored a wide range of events, episodes and idiosyncrasies, initially in Buenos Aires, but subsequently in relation to the author’s periods as a correspondent in Brazil, Spain and North Africa. In an interesting parallel with Parra del Riego’s essay discussed above, Arlt was also moved to write as a result of a 2–0 victory for Argen- tina over their fierce rivals Uruguay. By contrast, however, Arlt makes it apparent from the outset that he is the antithesis of an expert, stating that Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 he had just gone to his first football match at the age of 29, something he himself recognises as being highly unusual. Although he celebrates the excellence of Ferreyra and Evaristo (the two goalscorers), most of the essay presents a highly disapproving portrayal of the people and practices he witnessed in the stadium, largely couched in terms of being on the wrong side – for him – of the civilisation and barbarism debate. On leaving the stadium before the second goal has been scored, he finds himself among the more agreeable surroundings of Avenida la Plata, lined with beautiful girls who provide a marked contrast to the ‘regimiento de mujercitas de 38 Early Writings in Spanish

aspecto poco ediﬁcante’ (regiment of lesser women of barely edifying appearance) he had noted in the packed stands. Despite such negative representations of the match, and an acknowledgement that ‘Los uruguayos dieron la impresión de desarrollar un juego más armónico que el de los argentinos’ (The Uruguayans gave the impression of having a more harmonious style of play than the Argentinians), Arlt is still able to take a positive lesson from the game, which Argentina won as a result of ‘lo único que da el éxito en la vida: el entusiasmo’ (the only thing that brings success in life: enthusiasm). There is a strong sense that in the face of overwhelming public interest in football, Arlt feels obliged to overcome his obvious distaste for what he saw in the stands and on the pitch and conclude on a positive note that avoids entirely echoing his initial description of himself as an oddity.

Football Takes to the Stage In addition to witnessing the flourishing of poems, short stories and essays about football, the 1920s also saw the first plays to deal with the sport. An indication of the pervasive cultural presence of football in many areas of South America during this era, as well as the cross-fertilisation between literary forms, comes from the performance of Parra del Riego’s ‘Polirritmo dinámico a Gradín, jugador de fútbol’ by the Russian- born Argentine artiste Berta Singerman in Montevideo’s Teatro Solís on 28 July 1924.19 The date is significant in that it marked Peru’s fiestas patrias in the year that the country celebrated the centenary of its victory in the Battle of Ayacucho, the definitive conflict against the Spanish royalist army in the continent’s struggle for independence. The inclusion of the poem in that evening’s performance was no doubt also due to the presence of Gradín in the audience, invited by Singerman herself, and it also captured the excitement of Uruguay’s victory in the football tournament at the Paris Olympic Games, winning the gold medal by beating Switzerland 3–0 in the final just a few weeks earlier on 9 June 1924 (Blixen, 2000: 99–101). Football acted here as a means of celebrating Uruguay’s triumph in the international arena, and at the same time established connections to the continent’s foundational moments while recognising the contribution of diverse eth- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 nicities to developing notions of identity. This was not, however, football’s first appearance on stage in the region, as the short play ‘Avanti Foot-ball Club’, by Juan Fernando Camilo Darthés y Carlos Santiago Daniel, had been performed in Buenos Aires as early as 1918 by the Muiño-Alippi Company, and subsequently published in 1922 in Bambalinas: Revista teatral (Bambalinas: Theatre Review) (Santoro, 2007: 71–5). The play centres around a football match that takes place in front of a sizeable crowd, and incorporates various humorous features that reveal significant details that were commonplace enough for an audience to recognise them Early Writings in Spanish 39

as typical components of a football match: the presence of a reporter, a referee (in this case Brazilian), the eating of oranges at half- time (also a feature of Penúltimo poema del fútbol) and the practice of dressing in the club’s colours to show support. Again of note is the manner in which football is depicted as an arena in which people of diverse origins can come together: in addition to the Brazilian referee, one of the players (don Luigi) appears from his broken Spanish to be a ﬁrst- generation Italian immigrant, as is Mamá Lucía, the mother of one of the protagonists. Indeed, football is explicitly associated with Argentina’s most prevalent nineteenth-century icon of national identity, the gaucho, when the reporter asks a boy to give him a call to tell him the result of the match, describing this act as a ‘gauchada’ (a gaucho act). It would, of course, be simplistic to see football as a site of harmonious unity around which diverse sectors of the country’s population could come together, and football is simultaneously problematised as a site of violence, corruption and gender divisions. Crowd violence also featured prominently in Clemente and Chiappetti’s short play ‘Los campeones del football’, published in 1927, and the growing importance of fans is evident in another early play, Robles and Cortazzo’s ‘Los hinchas (Triunvirato Foot- ball club)’, published in 1929.

Concluding Reflections Commensurate with their domination on the field of play, at continental and international level alike, Argentina and Uruguay without doubt constituted a centre for the production of football literature in the early decades of the twentieth century, but it was also beginning to be produced elsewhere. In La Paz, for example, Fernando Diez de Medina wrote an essay in 1930 (published in 1932) entitled ‘Interpretación lírica del fútbol’ (Lyrical Interpretation of Football), which bore marked similarities to the lyricism of Parra del Riego’s poetic homage to Gradín, and the emergence of football literature in Brazil at this time will be considered separately in the following chapter. However, the blossoming that had characterised the 1920s was reversed in the 1930s, and the following two decades witnessed a marked decline in the publication of football literature in South America. In reference to the Uruguayan context, Rocca suggests that this decline Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 might be explained by a combination of factors: the end of the Latin American avant- garde; the Wall Street Crash; association with the Spanish Republican cause and its defeat in the Spanish Civil War; and pressing political matters at home (Rocca, 1991: 45–6). Connections between Spain and Latin America were certainly strong, and events such as the first transatlantic flight between Spain and South America in 1926, in the flying boat Plus Ultra, were much celebrated for bringing the two regions closer together, while Argentina (and Mexico) in particular received many high- profile Spanish exiles from the mid- to-late 1930s. Indeed, among the tens 40 Early Writings in Spanish

of thousands of Spanish Republicans who went into exile in Latin America was Rafael Alberti, whose ‘Oda a Platko’ (1928) is heralded as Spain’s first great football poem.20 The factors identified by Rocca are equally applicable, in greater or lesser degree, throughout the continent, and to these Morelli adds that the spirit of optimism and play that led to the presence of sport in literary works of the early decades of the twentieth century was interrupted by WWII as well as the Spanish Civil War (Morelli, 2000: 13). From the 1930s, the avant- garde was largely supplanted in South America by social realism and indigenismo as the dominant literary movements, reflecting the rise of international socialism that led to the founding of several communist parties in Latin America before most European countries (Caballero, 2002: 8). Consequently, attention shifted to the exploration and denunciation of socio- political issues, such as racial cleavages and the uneven distribution of resources, most notably in countries of the Andean region. Moreover, the use of eugenics by fascist regimes in the 1930s meant that ideas linking physical activity and attributes to moral improvement, highly influential in the region through the early decades of the twentieth century (Stepan, 1991), had been discredited and football’s usefulness as a tool to ‘mejorar la raza’ (improve the race) was no longer palatable. Another factor that may have played a key role in the decline of literary representations of football in the 1930s is the simultaneous rise of cinema, radio and the recording industry, all of which soon began to include football as part of their subject matter. In 1922, the documentary film Terra encantada (Enchanted Land), produced as part of Brazil’s centenary celebrations, featured a football match at Fluminense’s Laranjeiras stadium (Goldblatt, 2014: 42), the documentary Campeonato Sudamericano de Fútbol captured the 1927 South American Championship in Lima (Bedoya, 1997: 52), and a match also featured in a short film that documented Peru’s fiestas patrias in July 1928, foreshadowing the convergence of football, nation and mass visual media. In 1931, the first fictional football film was released in Brazil, featuring Arthur Friedenreich and several other noted players of the period (Goldblatt, 2014: 38), and football was – along with tango and cinema – one of the three porteño pastimes at the heart of Susini’s 1933 film Los tres berretines (The Three Whims), the second Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 ‘talking picture’ made in Argentina. Just three years later, Romero’s comedy El cañonero de Giles starred Bernabé Ferreyra of River Plate as a goalscorer from the provinces signed by one of the leading clubs in Buenos Aires (Castañón Rodríguez, 1991: 200). Football commentaries became a regular feature of radio broadcasting in the region during the 1930s, and by the end of the decade were widely available in various countries, including Argentina, Brazil and Peru. Several of the early stars of popular musical genres, whose songs were widely played on the region’s rapidly expanding radio networks, were inspired by football and the exploits of the best Early Writings in Spanish 41

players in their compositions. Felipe Pinglo, Peru’s most celebrated singer of the era, wrote his polka ‘Alianza Lima’ in 1930, and went on to write a series of popular songs about the club’s outstanding players over the next few years,21 while in Argentina Carlos Gardel recorded the tango ‘Mi primer gol’ (My First Goal) in 1933, drawing on the discourse of football to develop a series of metaphors that led him to predict that the female object of his attentions will swoon ‘cuando te esté peloteando/ al arco del corazón’ (when I am shooting/ at the goal of your heart).22 It would appear that the rise of electronic technologies as a means of mediating cultural representations of football took over the mantle of modernity that the avant- garde had so effectively captured in their poems and plays in the 1920s. This set of circumstances combined with the geo- political and socio-economic factors described above to bring about an abrupt downturn in the amount of literature that featured football as a creative aspect. Football and the avant-garde were both cultural imports that arrived from Europe, but they came together in Latin America before they did in Britain, France, Spain or Italy, only to go into sudden decline. Nonetheless, by this time a signiﬁcant corpus of texts – in terms of quality and quantity alike – had been produced that would serve as the substantial foundations of a tradition that was ‘discovered’ and developed across the continent from the 1960s in particular. Literary movements such as the Boom (and especially the post- Boom) drew signiﬁcantly on popular culture, and many authors of the 1970s onwards highlighted the political, social and cultural agency of the masses, whose ongoing fascination with football led to its re-emergence as a central theme for poets, short-story writers and novelists.

Notes 1 Atlántida (1918–70) counted leading literary figures such as Leopoldo Lugones and Gabriela Mistral among its regular contributors. Editorial Atlántida founded the sports weekly El Gráfico in 1919; this has remained in print ever since and is the longest-running magazine in Argentina, though since 2002 it has switched to monthly publication. 2 It is also reproduced in Rocca (1991), 93–5. 3 The inaugural South American Championship was held in Buenos Aires in Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 1916, in which Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay participated. Following the founding of the Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol (CONMEBOL) in 1917, the Championship played out in Montevideo was the first to be organised by the new Confederation. Uruguay won both and remained unbeaten throughout the 1916 and 1917 tournaments. 4 Various biographies of Porte can be consulted online: see, for example, www. taringa.net/posts/info/10648893/Biografia_-Abdon- Porte-y- Atilio-Garcia_-_-C_N_ deF__.html (accessed 12 May 2016). 5 An example can be seen at www.decano.com/noticias/3364/por- la-sangre- de- abdon (accessed 12 May 2016). 6 Both poems are included in Gianuzzi’s definitive edition of the poet’s work. 42 Early Writings in Spanish

7 The tournament was cancelled in 1918 because of a flu epidemic in Brazil, where it was to be played. This went ahead in 1919, Brazil beating Uruguay 1–0 in a final play-off match. Uruguay were champions again in 1920, when the tournament was hosted by Chile. 8 One of the first football poems to be published in Spain was Carles Sindreu’s calligram ‘Futbol’ (1928). 9 Seddon (1999: 534–6) details ‘A Match at Foot- ball: a Poem, in Three Cantos’ (Matthew Concanen The Elder, 1720) and The Ettricke Garland (Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg, 1815) as early poems that are based on football matches. 10 The black population of Uruguay has always been small, and through the twentieth century it constituted roughly 5 per cent of the national population. As a key component of national pride, football matches were very popular with white middle and working classes alike. 11 As the Luis Suárez – Patrice Evra incident forcefully demonstrated in late 2011, the disappearance of race as an issue in football, in Uruguay as elsewhere, has been far more difficult to achieve than the optimistic expression found here. 12 The Spanish ‘volante’ translates as ‘winger’ but also conveys a strong sense of flying (from the infinitive ‘volar’). This again harks back to the futuristic figure of the aviator found in the poem’s opening as well as the winged figures of classical Greek mythology, a connection highlighted by the reference to the discus thrower. The ideal translation here would conflate ‘winged’ and ‘winger’. 13 The collection was reprinted in 2007 by Editorial el suri porfiado (Buenos Aires). 14 For details of the SADE prizes, see www.creadoresargentinos.com.ar/literatura/ sade.html (accessed 5 August 2013); for further information on the Academia Argentina de Letras, see www.aal.edu.ar/?q=node/182 (accessed 5 August 2013). 15 The Liga Santiagueña was crowned national champion in 1927 after beating the Liga Paranaense. 16 The poem is reproduced in full in Rocca (1991), pp. 99–100. 17 For results of every match played by Uruguay, see www.rsssf.com/tablesu/ uru- intres.html (accessed 19 May 2016). 18 Juan Parra del Riego, Prosa (Montevideo: Ministerio de Educación Pública, 1943). The essay is also included in Rocca (1991), pp. 95–8, and in Jorge Eslava (ed.) Bien jugado. Las patadas de una ilusión (Lima: Aguilar, 2011), pp. 25–8. 19 Singerman made a recording of the poem in Spain in 1932, which can be played back at http://poeticasonorauruguaya.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/polirritmo-dinamico- gradin-jugador-de.html (accessed 19 May 2016). 20 The poem was published a week after Platko, the Barcelona goalkeeper, had been knocked out by a kick to the head during a match against Real Sociedad, but played on with a bandage covering six stitches. Alberti moved from Paris to Buenos Aires in 1940, returning to Spain in 1977. 21 Further examples include the polkas ‘Viva el Alianza’ (1931) and ‘Juan Rosta- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 ing’ (1931), the vals ‘Alejandro Villanueva’ (1932) and the polka ‘Juan Valdivieso’ (1932). 22 Gardel was a close friend of Alippi, whose theatre company had first staged the short play ‘Avanti Foot- ball Club’ in Buenos Aires in 1918.

Bibliography Alberti, Rafael. ‘Oda a Platko’ La Voz de Cantabria (Santander) 27 May 1928, 1. Archetti, Eduardo P. ‘Estilo y virtudes masculinos en El Gráﬁco: la creación del imaginario del fútbol argentino’ Pretextos (Lima) 7 (July 1995), 239–71. Early Writings in Spanish 43

Archetti, Eduardo P. ‘Playing Football and Dancing Tango: Embodying Argentina in Movement, Style and Identity’ in Noel Dyck and Eduardo P. Archetti (eds), Sport, Dance and Embodied Identities (Oxford / New York: Berg, 2003), 217–29. Bedoya, Ricardo. Un cine reecontrado. Diccionario ilustrado de las películas perua- nas (Lima: Universidad de Lima, Fondo de Desarrollo Editorial, 1997). Blixen, Carina. Isabelino Gradín. Testimonio de una vida (Montevideo: Caballo Perdido, 2000). Bohn, Willard. The Aesthetics of Visual Poetry, 1914–1928 (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1986). Caballero, Manuel. Latin America and the Comintern, 1919–1943 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Campomar, Andreas. ¡Golazo! A History of Latin American Football (London: Quercus, 2014). Canal Feijóo, Bernardo. Penúltimo poema del fútbol (Buenos Aires: Editorial El Suri Porﬁado, 2007 [1924]). Castañón Rodríguez, Jesús. Creación literaria y fútbol (Valladolid: n.p., 1991). Clemente, Miguel and José María Chiappetti, ‘Los campeones de football’ Bam- balinas. Revista teatral (Buenos Aires) no. 506, 21 December 1927. Díaz Zuluaga, Luis Alejandro. Literatura y fútbol: otros horizontes de la literatura en España e Hispanoamérica. Unpublished PhD thesis, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, 2014. Diez de Medina, Fernando. ‘Interpretación lírica del fútbol’ Cruz del Sur (Montevi- deo) no. 33–34 (January–February 1932), 19–20. Eslava, Jorge (ed.). Bien jugado. Las patadas de una ilusión (Lima: Aguilar, 2011). Foxlee, Neil. Albert Camus’s ‘The New Mediterranean Culture’: A Text and its Contexts (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010). Galeano, Eduardo. El fútbol a sol y sombra (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1995). Gianuzzi, Valentino. Juan Parra del Riego. Obra reunida (Lima: Biblioteca Abraham Valdelomar / Academia Peruana de la Lengua, 2016). Goldblatt, David. Futebol Nation: A Footballing History of Brazil (London: Penguin, 2014). Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). Herrera y Reissig, Julio. Editorial to La Revista (Montevideo) 20 August 1899, 5. Ilie, Paul. ‘Nietzsche in Spain, 1890–1910’ PMLA 79:1 (March 1964), 80–96. Juárez Aldazábal, Carlos. ‘Poesía y deporte: la originalidad de Bernardo Canal Feijóo’ Feria de la Palabra. Consulted online at http://feriadelapalabra.blogspot.co. uk/2005/06/viernes-9-de- julio-de- 2004-poesa- y.html (2005; accessed 19 May 2016). Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Marrera, Adriana and Ricardo Piñeyrúa. ‘«Ora pro nobis». Fútbol, mística e identidad nacional en el Uruguay moderno’ in Ramón Llopis Goig (ed.) Fútbol postnacional. Tranformaciones socials y culturales del «deporte global» en Europa y América Latina (Barcelona: Anthropos, 2009), 129–39. Martí, José. ‘Nuestra América’ Revista Ilustrada (New York) 1 January 1891. Montherlant, Henry de. Les Olympiques (Paris: Grasset, 1924). Morelli, Gabriele (ed.). Ludus. Cine, arte y deporte en la literatura de vanguardia (Valencia: Pre- textos, 2000). Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008 [1872]). 44 Early Writings in Spanish

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006 [1883]). Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1973 [1886]). Nietzsche, Friedrich. Basic Writings of Nietzsche/Introduction by Peter Gay; Translated and Edited by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 2000). Osaba, Julio. ‘El football según José María Delgado’ Cuaderno de Historia (A romper la red: miradas sobre fútbol, cultura y sociedad) 14 (2014), 253–65. Parra del Riego, Juan. ‘Elogio lírico del fútbol’ La Semana (Arequipa, Peru) 28 (14 November 1918), 15–16. Parra del Riego, Juan. ‘Loa del fútbol’ in Himnos del cielo y de los ferrocarriles (Montevideo: Tipografía Morales, 1925). Parra del Riego, Juan. Prosa (Montevideo: Biblioteca de Cultura Uruguaya, 1943). Parra del Riego, Juan. Polirritmos y otros poemas (Lima: Instituto Nacional de Cultura, 1987). Quiroga, Horacio. ‘Juan Polti, half-back’ Atlántida (Montevideo) 11, 16 May 1918. Robles, José and Alberto Cortazzo, ‘Los hinchas (Triunvirato Foot- ball club)’ La Escena. Revista teatral (Buenos Aires) no. 554, 7 February 1929. Rocca, Pablo. Literatura y fútbol en el Uruguay (1899–1990). La polémica y el encuentro (Montevideo: Arca, 1991). Rodó, José Enrique. Ariel y proteo selecto (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1993 [1900]). Santoro, Roberto Jorge. Literatura de la pelota (Buenos Aires: Ediciones LEA, 2007). Seddon, Peter. A Football Compendium. An Expert Guide to the Books, Films and Music of Association Football (Boston Spa: The British Library, 1999). Spengler, Oswald. Decline of the West (New York: Alfred Knopf Inc, 1926). Stepan, Nancy. The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Chapter 3 Taking the Field (Second Half ) Early Writings in Brazil

There is no doubt that the River Plate, with its rivalry between Argentina and Uruguay in international tournaments and in the construction of their emerging national identities (Morales, 2014), constituted a centre for the production of football literature in the early decades of the twentieth century, but it also began to emerge in Brazil during this same period. Evidence for the interest of writers in football can be traced to 26 June 1905, when João do Rio published a lengthy article entitled ‘O football’ in Rio de Janeiro’s Gazeta de Noticias, in which he extolled the virtues of the newly popular sport and its positive impact on young men.1 The first work of Brazilian literature to include the sport as a significant feature, Henrique Maximiano Coelho Neto’s 1908 novel Esphinge (Sphinx), centres on the residents of Miss Barkley’s boarding house in Rio de Janeiro’s Paysandú district. One of the boarders is James Marian, a wealthy young English immigrant, whose muscular physique contrasts with his delicate features, as hinted at by his name; indeed, it is the lack of any trace of masculinity in his face that gives rise to the title of the novel, as other – Brazilian – residents of the boarding house conclude that he has a ‘rosto de esphinge’ (face of a sphinx) (p. 29). Among the habits that lead to him being considered ‘eccentric’ is his Sunday routine of leaving the house dressed in white to play tennis or football, and notions of sport and masculinity converge in the aftermath of a football match at the Fluminense ground, when Marian throws a local who mocks his feminine appearance against a wall. When later that evening the boarders Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 comment on the episode, one of them engages in ‘gestos capoeirosos’ (capoeira- esque movements) (p. 40),2 thus providing the first example of connections between football and Afro-Brazilian cultural practices, developed in subsequent decades as one of the distinguishing features of a national style. For the most part, however, such influences are portrayed negatively, and Marian’s lack of social graces provokes outraged comments from his fellow lodgers, who feel that his treatment of them would be appropriate if dealing with Africans, but not with members of Rio’s social elites. 46 Early Writings in Brazil

The depiction of James Marian reveals the tensions between physical prowess and the civilised values that modern European sports were felt to exemplify, as well as the desire to adapt football to Brazilian norms of behaviour that members of local elites sought to develop as the basis for the young republic. At the same time, the portrayal of Marian’s activities as an eccentricity suggests that football was far from normalised in Brazil at the time the novel was published, although the reference to Fluminense football club, founded in 1902, foreshadows the prominent role it came to acquire in the life of Coelho Neto over the following years. Described in a journal of the time as ‘um intermediário entre as letras e o sport’ (an intermediary between the world of letters and sport) (Vida Sportiva, 16 March 1918), Coelho Neto was a key figure in early debates around the role of the sport in the formation of the nation’s youth, but his involvement in football was not purely intellectual. An avid supporter of Fluminense, in 1915 he wrote the club’s anthem and was involved in the first recorded pitch invasion (October 1916), in protest at a retaken penalty during a derby match against Flamengo. Moreover, two of his sons were outstanding Fluminense players: João (better known as Preguinho) became a club legend, scoring 184 goals and captaining Brazil in the 1930 World Cup, where he scored the country’s first ever goal in the tournament. Less felici- tously, the sudden death of Emmanuel (Mano) following abdominal injuries received in a match in 1922 was the inspiration for his father’s celebrated Mano, livro da saudade (Mano, A Book of Emotional Longing, 1924), a novel that recounts the final days of his son’s life. As elsewhere in the continent, physical exercise was the subject of intense debate among medical, political and intellectual circles in Brazil at the turn of the twentieth century, although the fact that the country had only become a republic in 1889 meant that the search for a sense of nationhood had a particular urgency. Haberly describes the period between 1890 and 1930 as ‘perhaps the most difficult of all for educated Brazilians interested in their nation and its future’ (1983: 123), for the country’s fundamental problems, blamed primarily on slavery and the Portuguese monarchy, remained unresolved. As Skidmore and Smith note, ‘Neither the abolition of slavery [which definitively ended in 1888] nor the overthrow of the Empire in themselves brought structural change in Brazil’ (1989: Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 148), and in the absence of a desire to bring about social and political restructuring, physical exercise and other corporal practices became a key way of addressing shortcomings in the body of the nation. By the first decade of the twentieth century, in keeping with positivist thinking, influential figures in medical-intellectual debates were encouraging the new republican state to introduce physical exercise to schools and military institutions to improve the physical health of individuals (Góis Junior, 2014), and thereby of the nation. One such figure, who supported Coelho Neto’s position, was the writer and doctor Afrânio Peixoto, whose opinion carried Early Writings in Brazil 47

particular weight: Peixoto had been the Inspector of Public Health in Rio de Janeiro (1902–04) before being elected to the Academia Brasileira das Letras (1910). He was subsequently appointed Director of Rio’s Escola Normal (1915) and then became Director of Public Education in what was at the time the country’s capital (1916). Peixoto made public his enthusiasm for football in a speech in 1918, in which he made clear that he saw it as a means of combining physical and moral benefits for the nation’s inhabitants: ‘that game of football, those sports that give health and strength, teach discipline and order, bring about cooperation and solidarity, are dear to me, for they are great schools in which the Brazilian character is being remade’ (cited in Rosso, 2010: 48). This difficult period of searching for a national character and identity in the wake of full independence from Portugal coincided precisely with the introduction of football to Brazil, its adoption by local elites and its subsequent appropriation by the popular classes. According to the generally accepted version of Brazilian football history, the sport first arrived in São Paulo in 1894 and Rio de Janeiro in 1897 as young men from elite families (Charles Miller and Oscar Cox: the latter would subsequently found Flu- minense) brought the game with them when they returned from studying in Britain and Switzerland respectively. The first match in Rio to involve a team, which comprised members of the local elite, took place in 1901 and attracted a crowd smaller in number than the players on the pitch, but a similar encounter five years later at Fluminense’s ground drew some 1,500 spectators; while Miller informed his old school in Southampton that by 1904 there were at least 60 football clubs in São Paulo, where some 2,000 footballs had been sold in the previous 12 months and crowds of 2,000–3,000 were the norm at league matches (Mason, 1995; Bellos, 2002; Damo and Oliven, 2009; Rosso, 2010; Campomar, 2014; Goldblatt, 2014). The entry of non-white or working- class players into teams and leagues began before 1910, but came to prominence in 1916 when Carlos Alberto, a mulatto son of a Rio photographer, whitened his face with rice powder before playing for Fluminense,3 and again in 1919 when the mulatto Arthur Friedenreich from São Paulo was acclaimed as a national hero for scoring the goal that secured the country’s first South American Championship. The uncomfortable relationship between Brazil’s white Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 elites and the millions of inhabitants descended from black slaves continued to be evident in football through the 1920s: in 1921, President Epitácio Pessoa decreed that no non- whites should be included in the squad about to travel to Buenos Aires to play in the South American Championship; in 1924, Rio’s elite clubs created a new league in response to Vasco da Gama winning the 1923 Carioca league with a team that included four black star players; and the first match between black and white teams in São Paulo took place only in 1927. Following an increasingly grey era of payment to players at this time, the formal introduction 48 Early Writings in Brazil

of professionalism in Rio and São Paulo in 1933 paved the way for a far greater presence of black and working- class players, although some clubs – notably Fluminense and Grêmio – resisted fielding black players until the 1950s (Mason, 1995; Bellos, 2002; Goldblatt, 2014). Just six years after Coelho Neto had included the football-playing Eng- lishman James Marian in his novel Esphinge (Sphinx), the first Brazilian literary text devoted entirely to football appeared in the form of Ivan Ney’s enthusiastic poem ‘Schootando . . . (Ás cariocas footballers)’ (Shooting . . . (To Rio’s Footballers)).4 Published on 23 May 1914 in the first number of the short- lived Rio journal O Football: Semanario dos Sports (Football: Sports Weekly), ‘Schootando’ echoes the untitled work published in Lima’s El Sport in 1899, both in the nature of its publication outlet and in its celebration of the value of the team. However, through the use of the neologism in the poem’s title and by dedicating the piece to Rio’s footballers, Ney (who played for Olympico FC) attests to the rapid appropriation of the game among the citizens of what was then the capital city and to the incipient Brazilianisation of the sport’s terminology. The poem, which consists of seven stanzas of four verses each, is written from the perspective of one of the players, who expresses the team through the use of a first-person plural, and at its heart is an acute awareness of the interplay between the players on the pitch and the passionate support of the watching fans. Notable among the crowd are young women, whose cries of encourage- ment and ‘seus olhos, brejeiros . . ./ Torcem por nós com fervor!’ (brazen eyes . . ./ Give us their fervent support) spur the players on to greater endeavour. The poem opens and closes by affirming that football ‘É ele- gante e é chic/ É distincto, é de escól’ (It’s elegant and it’s chic/ It’s distinguished, it’s the best), part of a campaign to ensure that Brazil benefited from the sport’s perceived physical and moral attributes. In marked counterpoint to Ney’s highly positive depiction of football stands the 1916 poem ‘Match de Football’ by Apparício Fernando de Brinkerhoff Torelly. Also known as Apporelly, and later as the self- appointed Baron of Itararé, Torelly was a political satirist in the 1920s and 1930s for Rio’s leading newspapers O Globo and A Manhã, where he published humorous sonnets that poked fun at the establishment. Written when he was a medical student, ‘Match de Football’ provides ample evid- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 ence of the use of literature to deliver social satire as its eight rhyming couplets recount the action of a game on a lovely day that is ruined by violence both on the pitch and in the crowd. A player kicks the ball ‘feroz’ (fero- ciously), and when it knocks off the top hat of someone in the crowd the contrast with Ney’s text and the simultaneous juxtaposition between barbarism and civilisation is established. However, in a twist on the conventional presentation of these traditional poles of thought in Latin American intellectual circles, it is the modern and urban European practice that is barbarous in its assault on a good Brazilian family man. In an inversion of Early Writings in Brazil 49

the vision for the civilising role of football on Brazilian society espoused by Coelho Neto and others, here it is the violence of the sport that is con- tagious, spreading to ‘a louca multidão, bruta e malcriada’ (the mad crowd, brutish and rude). Following further people being knocked to the ground, and booing from the crowd, the poet concludes in the penultimate couplet that ‘Parecia aquilo, em meu pensar profundo,/ Vinte e duas furias, perseguindo o mundo’ (All of this seemed, in my considered opinion,/ Twenty- two furies, chasing the world). The ﬁnal two lines point up the ultimate futility of so much running around and violence: ‘E, depois da hora e meia de combate,/ o juiz apitou./ O jogo estava empate’ (And after an hour and a half of ﬁghting,/ the referee blew his whistle./ The game was a draw). As was the case in Uruguay, discussed in the opening chapter, the opposing sides in debates as to the role of football in Brazilian society took their positions early and used literary texts as a means of giving voice to their respective views.

Coelho Neto and Lima Barreto: A Football Rivalry Coelho Neto was one of the leading figures in Rio’s literary circles during the first two decades of the twentieth century, his prolific work characterised by a highly refined and ornate style in which references to classical mythology and European ideas were to the fore. His enthusiastic support for football was based on his vision of it as a modern version of the values expressed in sporting contests in classical antiquity, and he consistently championed the sport via speeches and articles as a benefit to the nation’s development, able to ‘criar no país uma “nova raça” que deixasse definiti- vamente para trás a sua malfadada herança cultural’ (breed in our country a ‘new race’ that will definitively leave behind its unhappy cultural inheritance) (interview in Época Sportiva, 1919, cited in Rosso, 2010: 51). This cultural heritage that he hoped football would enable the country to leave behind was, of course, the Afro- Brazilian influence, and the hope of like- minded figures such as Peixoto was that the whitening of society through miscegenation and cultural-corporal practices would improve the body of the nation rather than bring about degeneracy (Góis Junior, 2014: 1221). After becoming a member of Fluminense in 1912, when it still functioned Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 as a social club for local elites, Coelho Neto effectively emerged as the club’s public orator and brought together nation and football in the speech he gave to open the 1919 South American Championship, for which all matches were played at Fluminense’s new Laranjeiras stadium, completed in 1917 with ornate neo- classical features. Following his public prominence at the 1919 South American Champi- onship, Coelho Neto was the figurehead for a group of writers and intellectuals who embraced the civilising function of football, and in 1920 he became director- editor of Athletica, a new magazine that defended 50 Early Writings in Brazil

eugenics and the moral beneﬁts of practising football and other sports. In an early editorial he stated that what the magazine sought was:

an energetic and healthy young man, ﬁrm in body and soul, who, in the same manner as he overcomes an arrogant opponent, rescues a weakling from humiliation and takes him under his wing, protects and guides the elderly, defends a child, gives prestige to a woman’s virtue and always keeps alive, like a burning faith in his heart, love for his country. (6 February 1920)

Sport was seen as the means of developing model citizens, whose combination of physical health and moral rectitude, echoing the mens sana in corpore sano of Juvenal and John Locke, drew together notions from classical antiquity and the positivism of the European Enlightenment. By the early 1920s, Coelho Neto was convinced of the philosophical and civic value of football, and his influential circle of writers and intellectuals envisioned for it a key role in the creation of the new republic’s sense of self. At this time, ‘sport and nation, patriotism and football were inseparable concepts and elements’ (Rosso, 2010: 55), and the period undoubtedly marks the beginning of efforts to connect football with Brazilian national identity, and of writing’s role as the means of representing and mediating the accompanying debates. The death of Coelho Neto’s son Mano as a result of internal bleeding following a kick to the abdomen suffered in a Fluminense match on 30 September 1922 marked the end of the author’s public campaign in favour of football. He made occasional reference to sports in speeches up to his death in 1934, and was involved in a campaign against professionalism in 1933, but his final article on football – a reflection on the neo-classical grandeur of the Fluminense stadium – was published in the journal A Noite on 3 September 1922 (Rosso, 2010: 188). Rapid appropriation of football by Rio’s predominantly non-white working classes undermined Coelho Neto’s vision of football as a game of civilised gentlemen, while his vision of the nation – and of the role of literature within it – was under attack on several fronts. In Rio de Janeiro, the main adversary of Coelho Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Neto was the mulatto novelist and journalist Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto, who wrote numerous articles in the capital’s newspapers, journals and magazines that served to air and steer public debates on key ideas of the day. Lima Barreto had been taking Coelho Neto to task for the content and style of his writing since at least 1904, when he published an article in Correio da Noite (31 December) that challenged Coelho Neto by name for his inspiration in Greek models that Lima Barreto considered to be out of place in contemporary Brazil. Convinced of the political and social duty of literature, and resolutely opposed to the influence of foreign practices and Early Writings in Brazil 51

ideologies in the newly republican Brazil, Lima Barreto declared in 1907 that ‘o futebol é coisa inglesa que nos chegou pelos arrogantes e rubicun- dos caxeiros da rua da Candelária e arrededores’ (football is an English affair that reached us via the arrogant and ruddy clerks in Candelaria Street and the surrounding area) (cited in Rosso, 2010: 44). During the period 1918–22, football became a convenient battleground for their conflicting political and literary ideologies. Taking the diametrically opposed view to Coelho Neto, between 1918 and 1922 Lima Barreto published numerous articles about football in Rio de Janeiro magazines and newspapers (notably Careta and ABC),5 in which he denounced the sport as a violent social ill. These debates, played out in public exchanges in the written media, mirror what happened in neighbouring Uruguay at around the same time, and the articles in both countries confirm that influential European thinkers (particularly Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer) were read and cited in Portuguese as well as Spanish to support the authors’ respective views (Graham, 1972: 232–51; Eakin, 1998: 35). As in the case of Brinkerhoff Torelly’s 1916 poem ‘Match de Football’, Lima Barreto’s opposition to football was also due in part to the violence associated with the game, and to the physical clashes inherent to its practice. In an article entitled ‘Não quería, mas . . .’ (I Didn’t Want To, But . . .) (Careta, 3 June 1922: 49), he states that ‘O football é uma escola de violencia e brutalidade’ (football is a school for violence and brutality), a view formed over the preceding years through a series of texts that give details of innumerable injuries, instances of violent conduct, and even deaths, all drawn from local newspaper reports that he collated in an archive. In the article ‘Vantajens do futebol’ (Advantages of Football) (Careta, 19 June 1920: 20–1), he recounts how infection of a broken leg led to gangrene and the death of a player, while in the lengthy ‘Uma conferencia esportiva’ (A Sporting Lecture) (Careta, 1 January 1921: 15–16), which satirises the pro- football speeches delivered by Coelho Neto, he describes a series of violent episodes that had resulted from football. These include the attempted suicide of a woman whose husband refused to stop going to football matches (previously reported in the Jornal do Commer- cio, having taken place in March 1920); women injured by fighting between men at a match (reported in the Correio da Manhã on 14 Decem- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 ber 1920); and a player returning to the pitch with a revolver to threaten the opposition after a violent incident between Club Malta and Clube de Futebol Guanabara, Niterói (reported in A Noite, 5 August 1920). Lima Barreto also marshalled medical evidence to support his argument, drawing on Carlos Sussekind de Mendonça’s 1921 book O sport está deseducando a mocidade brasileira (Sport is Uneducating Brazil’s Youth) (‘Como reposta’ (In Response), Careta, 8 April 1922) and the concerns of Dr Nicolau Ciancio and the German Dr Herxheimer in relation to heart lesions caused by violent sports such as football, as well as citing the 52 Early Writings in Brazil

Stokes–Adams effect that may produce epileptic attacks when the pulse reaches its maximum rate (‘Ainda e sempre’ (Still and Always) (Careta, 6 May 1922: 37)). Elitism and racism continued to be a feature of Brazilian football throughout the 1920s, and Lima Barreto was outraged at the president’s decision to exclude black players from the national team for the 1921 South American Championship, expressing his virulent opposition to the measure in the text ‘Futebol: para o Campeonato sul- americano – o Presi- dente da República não quer “homens de cor” no nosso scratch’ (Football: For the South American Championship the President of the Republic Does Not Want ‘Men of Colour’ in Our Team) (Correio da Manhã, 17 Septem- ber 1921). A related criticism was that football was anti- nationalist, not only because of its foreign origins and the partial vision of the nation that the national team projected, but because of the bitter rivalry between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo that matches routinely expressed, with the elites that played in such matches seen as being just as foreign to Brazil as the game itself. His attempts to bring together a critical mass of like- minded opponents of the game led to Lima Barreto creating, together with Dr Mário de Lima Valverde (who had pointed out various ways in which football was harmful to health), the journalist Antonio Noronho Santos and the writer Coelho Cavalcanti, the Liga Contra o Futebol. The formation of the League was announced in the Rio- Jornal of 12 March 1919, and the following day’s edition carried an apparent interview in which Lima Barreto discusses (with himself ) the ills of football, including the medical evidence provided by Dr Lima and the game’s divisive nature: ‘longe de tal jogo contribuir para o congraçamento, para uma mais forte coesão moral entre as divisões políticas da União, separava- as’ (far from the game contributing to better relations, to a stronger moral cohesion amid the nation’s political divisions, it has separated them). Campaigning against football was at the heart of Lima Barreto’s journalistic essays and articles from 1919 onwards, but he also included it as the feature that drove the plot in several of his short stories. ‘O Haroldo’ (Careta, 4 December 1920: 16), for example, is a cautionary tale that relates the story of a wealthy man whose son successfully completed a degree in law but whose disinclination to work led to the failure of his law Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 studio before he eventually became a famous football player, while ‘Quase ela deu a “sim”; mas . . .’ (She Nearly Said ‘Yes’, But . . .) (Careta, 29 October 1919) has as its protagonist the lazy and football- mad João Cazu. ‘Um moço suburubano, forte e saudável, mas pouco ativo e amigo do tra- balho’ (A suburban youth, strong and healthy, but not very active and no friend of work), Cazu spends most of the day ‘com outros companheiros, em dar loucos pontapés numa bola, tendo por arena um terreno baldio das vizinhanças da residencia dele, ou mehor: dos seus tios e padrinhos’ (with other friends, madly kicking a ball, using for a pitch a patch of wasteland Early Writings in Brazil 53

in the vicinity of his home, or rather that of his uncle and aunt). The negative portrayal of a football player speaks for itself, but it is worth noting that the story apparently takes as suburban normality the presence of rough pitches and enough players among the working classes for daily impromptu matches. On encountering a young widow who has her own house (and two young children), Cazu decides to marry her to ensure his future, and to allow him to move out from his straitened circumstances with his uncle and aunt, only to find himself forced to pull out of the relationship because of his lack of income and unwillingness to work, epito- mised by his love of football. Representations of football players as being lazy, unintelligent and unproductive became a recurrent theme in Lima Barreto’s texts, exemplified by his final story, ‘Herói!’ (Hero!), published shortly after his death at the age of 41 (Careta, 18 November 1922). The story features two friends, one a doctor and the other an engineer, both with sons for whom they struggle to find gainful employment. The doctor says of his oldest son that ‘não dera para nada. Tudo estudara e nada aprendera’ (he didn’t come to anything. He studied everything but learned nothing), and is frustrated by the fact that he earns no income and just wants to play football. The engineer reveals that his son is similarly useless and eventually secures him a job as a guard in the docks. When the men meet some considerable time later, one son has moved up to position of clerk in the docks and the other has become a national hero, having been in the team that won the South American Championship. The story closes with the doctor proclaiming ‘E dizer que ele não dava para nada!’ (And to think I said he was good for nothing!). For Lima Barreto, indignant at the public acclaim for football players, the story’s closing words are charged with irony as the doctor fails to realise that success in football confirms – rather than contradicts – his sense that footballers are good-for-nothings. By taking a doctor and engineer as the protagonists of the story, Lima Barreto gives expression to his positivist vision of Brazilian society, in which science and technology will enable the country to develop. At the same time, the story is given social and political immediacy via Brazil’s triumph in the 1922 South American Championship, hosted again at Fluminense’s Estadio das Laranjeiras and won by the host nation in the month prior to the publication of this text. Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 The staging of the 1922 tournament in Rio de Janeiro (it was to have been held in Chile) was part of the country’s celebrations of the centenary of independence from Portugal, a clear marker of football’s position as an element of Brazilian national identity for local and regional audiences, to which Lima Barreto was vehemently opposed. Rosso considers ‘Herói!’ to be emblematic of Lima Barreto’s criticism of football for its failure to cultivate the intellectual dimension of the nation, as well as its institutional racism that prevented non-whites from finding a place in national society (2010: 192–3). Almost a century later, it is clear 54 Early Writings in Brazil

that the issues that lay at the heart of the very public debates about football between Coelho Neto and Lima Barreto (violence, national identity, racism, corruption and relations with Europe) have continued to shape discourses around the game in Brazil since that time. Things have undoubtedly changed significantly in terms of how football is perceived, but the series of texts discussed above marked a decisive moment in football’s emergence as a symbol, as a means of addressing broader political and social concerns through literary texts and through written narratives more widely. The deaths of Lima Barreto and Coelho Neto’s son brought the debate to an abrupt end in Rio de Janeiro in 1922, but not before the two protagonists had constructed a series of foundational oppositions that would underpin discussion of the subject to the present day. Rosso frames his study of the two authors as a Fla–Flu, alluding to Flamengo’s status as the first club to win the league with black players and Fluminense’s role as the club of the traditional white elite, and concludes that Lima Barreto understood far better than Coelho Neto the sociological, political and cultural implications of the sport’s transformation into a national phenomenon (2010: 197). Mendes Capraro, by contrast, locates the two authors in a broader national context and places his emphasis on Coelho Neto being more in tune with the dominant discourse of the time, enjoying the support of medical hygienists, politicians and influential institutions (2007). Perhaps their rivalry has to go down in history as a score draw.

Graciliano Ramos: Getting It Wrong? Rio de Janeiro was not alone in witnessing the engagement of major writers with football, and in 1921 the great novelist Graciliano Ramos, who would later chart the life of inhabitants of the arid sertão hinterlands in some of Brazil’s outstanding regionalist novels, published ‘Traços a Esmo’ (Random Traits) (1921) in the regional newspaper O Índio (Palmeira dos Índios). This piece was much reproduced in printed media and contained the often- cited afﬁrmation that ‘O futebol não pega, tenham a certeza’ (Football won’t catch on, you can be sure of it). As the title suggests, the article constitutes a critique of the importation of cultural models from overseas, and while the author laments the weakness of local youths Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 and acknowledges that physical exercise is to be welcomed, acceptance of foreign practices is not. Ramos’s depiction of football as ‘um entusiasmo de fogo de palha capaz de durar bem um mês’ (a passing fad that will last about a month) is, with hindsight, misguided, but what is of lasting interest is the manner in which he draws on football as a means of exploring Brazil’s pervasive violence as well as tensions between the cities of the coast and the country’s interior. For those in search of sporting activities he suggests that ‘não é necessário ir longe, em procura de esquisitices que têm nomes que vocês nem sabem pronunciar’ (it is not necessary to go far, Early Writings in Brazil 55

in search of niceties that have names you cannot even pronounce), recom- mending instead sports that are ‘propriamente nossos, batizados patrioti- camente com bons nomes em língua de preto, de cunho regional’ (properly ours, patriotically baptised with good names in the language of the black man, of regional birth). The apparent nationalism is offset, however, when he goes on to list as ‘jogos nacionais, sem mescla de estrangeirismo, o murro, o cacete, a faca de ponta’ (national games, with no hint of foreign influence, fisticuffs, cudgels, knife fighting), before concluding that the national sport par excellence is ‘a rasteira’, or tripping people up. As Soares and Lovisolo point out, football here provides Ramos with a convenient rhetorical device (2001: 124), a point of entry to broader socio- political considerations. The real meat of his argument comes when Ramos juxtaposes the intellectual capacity of the brain and the physical power of the body:

Consolidar o cérebro é bom, embora isto seja um órgão a que, de ordinário, não temos necessidade de recorrer. Consolidar o muque é ótimo. Convencer um adversário com argumentos de substância não é mau. Poder convencê-lo com um grosso punho cerrado diante do nariz, cabeludo e ameaçador, é magníﬁco.

(Strengthening the brain is good, even if it is an organ to which we do not normally need to resort. Strengthening muscles is best. Persuading an adversary with solid arguments is not bad. Being able to convince him with a big ﬁst in front of his nose, hairy and threatening, is magniﬁcent.)

Ramos here draws on the polarities of civilisation and barbarism to voice his frustration with the country’s political and administrative processes, in which force overcomes ideas and those who attempt to move forward are tripped in their endeavours. In line with his later novels, Ramos also asserts the distinctiveness of the sertão and resists the ‘civilising’ influence of the cities of the coast (where he claims people take opium, cocaine and morphine), mediated here through the introduction of football and other British sports: Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 ‘Estrangeirices não entram facilmente na terra do espinho. O futebol, o boxe, o turfe, nada pega’ (Foreign ways cannot easily enter the land of thorns. Football, boxing, horse racing, nothing takes root). By associating cultural practices with the landscape, Ramos portrays a Romantic vision that seeks to affirm the power of the traditional sertão to resist the advance of a modernity that is based on western ways and ideas that have permeated the cities of the country’s eastern seaboard, which ‘regurgitam de gente de outras raças ou que pretende ser de outras raças’ (overflow with people of other races, or who pretend to be of other races). For Ramos, the 56 Early Writings in Brazil

arrival of football is a means of exploring the national character and rejecting a model of national identity that sought unity through racial miscegenation: ‘não somos mais ou menos botocudos, com laivos de sangue cabinda ou galego’ (we are not some sort of Amazonian tribe with spots of Congolese or Galician blood). Ramos was spectacularly wrong in afﬁrming that football would not take hold, but what is of lasting interest it that he too identiﬁed the capacity of the sport to mediate a number of key issues – race and national identity; relations between the cities of the coast and those of the interior – that continued to inform debates around the 2014 World Cup.

São Paulo and Football as Modernist Art In São Paulo, the first Brazilian city to witness the arrival and development of football, the writer Monteiro Lobato (subsequently owner and director of the influential journal Revista do Brasil) was an enthusiastic player and advocate of the game as early as 1904 (Rosso, 2010: 209), but it was in the 1920s that football began to feature in literary works by Paulista authors. The staging of São Paulo’s 1922 Week of Modern Art, another event that celebrated the centenary of independence from Portugal and has proved to be a touchstone for subsequent cultural debates and practices in Brazil, marked a conscious rupture with the country’s conservative past that was based on the continuation of elitist colonial structures and values. As a cultural revolution against the influence of neo- classical European models, Brazil’s modernists sought inspiration instead in primitivism and the rapid rise of urbanisation, industrialisation and technology that was especially evident in São Paulo at the time. Mário de Andrade, one of the leading figures of the 1922 Modern Art Week, published in the same year the founding text of Brazilian modernism, his epic poem Paulicéia Des- vairada (Hallucinated São Paulo City), in which ‘the heart of the cultural and industrial revolution emerges as a gloomy landscape of grey drizzle, economic booms and busts, foreign-owned railways and disillusioned farmers, watched over by the indifferent gaze of an uncaring motherland’ (Gonzalez and Treece, 1992: 71). The work consists of a series of scenes of daily life in the city, with football the subject of ‘Domingo’ (Sunday): ‘Hoje Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 quem joga? O Paulistano./ Para o Jardim América das rosas e dos ponta- pés!/ Friedenreich fez gol! Corner! Que juiz!/ Gostar de Bianco? Adoro. Qual Bartô/ E o meu xará maravilhoso!/ —Futilidade, civilização . . .’ (Who is playing today? Paulistano./ Let’s go to America Gardens with its roses and kicks!/ Friedenreich scored a goal! Corner! What a referee!/ Do you like Bianco? I love him. Which Bartô./ He is my favourite namesake./ —Futility, civilisation . . .). Football is presented as an established feature of the weekly routine, but despite admiration of the star players of the day, including the poet’s (near) namesake Mário Andrada, the game’s European Early Writings in Brazil 57

origins and its associations with local elites meant that it was not embraced as part of the modernist cause for cultural regeneration and a new national identity. Indeed, by concluding the description of the match with the leit- motif ‘Futilidade, civilização . . .’, de Andrade marks football as another pointless frivolity imported from Europe in the supposed search for civilising influences in republican Brazil, even if the presence of the mulatto Friedenreich hints at the mixed-race society that would later be championed. Mário de Andrade incorporated brief descriptions of football in other poems of the period, notably in the 1926 collection O losango cáqui (The Khaki Lozenge), in which the poet celebrates victory in a match against a team from Rio de Janeiro amid the opening lines of the first poem. In poem XI, football’s violent practice is highlighted via a reference to the sergeant on the pitch, while the flow of attack and defence is depicted in terms of a battle between Paulistas and Uruguayans, in which the former ‘Vencemos facilmente/ como sempre’ (We win easily/ as always). In addition to noting the use of football as a proxy for national sentiment and military conflict, it is interesting to note the location of this football poem as number 11 in the collection: this was similarly the case with ‘Domingo’ in Paulicéia Desvairada and exemplifies the modernists’ search for poetic expression in unconventional sources of inspiration as well as their desire to experiment with poetic structures. Also in São Paulo, Oswald de Andrade – no relation to Mário but another leading figure among the modernists who had organised the 1922 Modern Art Week – published in 1924 ‘Bungalow das rosas e dos pontapés’ (Bungalow of Roses and Kicks), the title echoing the words of ‘Domingo’ cited above.6 This short poem depicts football as part of the cosmopolitan lifestyle of São Paulo’s elites, alongside electric trams, tennis and afternoon entertainments, while the title’s inclusion of bungalow, roses and kicks pokes fun at the incongruous coming together of elegance and violence through a practice that was still characterised by its use of Angli- cisms. Author of the hugely influential 1924 Manifesto Pau- Brasil (Brazil Wood Manifesto) and 1928 Manifesto Antropófago (Cannibalist Mani- festo), Oswald de Andrade sought to free Brazil from its dependence on European cultural models and to project a new basis for the country’s national identity via a series of rapid snapshots of everyday life. In 1925 he Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 published Pau- Brasil, a collection of poems that brought to literary form the principles of the previous year’s Manifesto, including a defence of popular cultures that had previously been shunned. Football is the subject of ‘E a Europa curvou- se ante o Brasil’ (Europe bows before Brazil), a visual poem that presents the results of matches from Paulistano’s tour of Europe in March–April 1925 (the first ever by a Brazilian team), during which they lost just one game. The sole defeat suffered by Paulistano, the amateur club of São Paulo’s elites, came with ‘A injustiça de Cette’ (The injustice of Sète), while the final match of the tour brought a resounding 58 Early Writings in Brazil

6–0 victory against a combined Portuguese team in Lisbon, a result that was granted particular significance in the modernists’ attempts to forge a Brazilian culture independent of influences from the colonial power. The title of the poem, which inverts the traditional relationship of subservient deference between Brazil and Europe, is a verse from a popular 1903 song ‘A Conquista do Ar’ (The Conquest of the Air) that celebrated the first successful powered flight by Brazilian aviation pioneer Santos Dumont (Astréia Soares, 2002: 114–15). Wisnik sees in this a parodic mocking of the provincial boasting at European triumphs by members of Brazil’s elites (2008: 224), but Brazil’s early successes in international competition hinted that football could constitute a means whereby the country could transcend its inferiority complex in the face of Europe and construct a sense of national pride. At the same time, it revealed that figures such as the mixed- race Friedenreich (who scored 11 goals on the tour) had the potential to enjoy the acclaim as national actors previously afforded to those from privileged backgrounds, such as Santos Dumont. Another modernist writer, Antônio de Alcântara Machado, published the short story ‘Corinthians (2) vs Palestra (1)’ in the collection Brás, Bexiga e Barra Funda (1927; also included in Contos paulistanos (2012)), which focused on the daily lives and experiences of Italian immigrant communities in the São Paulo districts that gave the work its name. Football is also present in the story ‘Gaetaninho’, in which a game on the street leads to the death of the protagonist, run over by a streetcar, but is at the heart of ‘Corinthians (2) vs Palestra (1)’, which centres on Miquelina, whose former boyfriend Biagio plays for Corinthians and whose attentions have been transferred to Rocco, who plays for Palestra.7 Alongside these players, mentions of Heitor and Neco, early idols of Palestra and Corinthians respectively, lend the story an air of undisputable realism in keeping with the desire to engage literary production with social issues of the day. This is enhanced by further references to contemporary football reality, such as describing Corinthians as ‘campeão do Centenário’ (champions of the Cen- tenary) in allusion to their triumph in the São Paulo Championship of 1922 and their subsequent victory over América (Rio’s champions) to be declared Brazilian champions of that year. Alcântara Machado’s familiar- ity with football in São Paulo is evident in the details he provides, and the Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Corinthians victory in the story is in keeping with his own involvement with the club: he had played a significant role in securing their first stadium from the local council, which they still occupied at the time the story was published (Folha de São Paulo, 5 December 1976). Through a narrative that largely takes the form of a match commentary, punctuated by interjec- tions from an enthusiastic working-class crowd, the portrayal of the action from the stands effectively captures the excitement of a derby match and simultaneously displays the modernists’ penchant for unorthodox modes of expression. Miquelina’s pleas for Rocco to kick Biagio, which lead to Early Writings in Brazil 59

the penalty that allows Corinthians to score a last-minute winner, together with the insults that rain from the crowd onto players and referee alike, serve only to reinforce depictions by Lima Barreto and others of football as a violent and brutalising sport. While the derby match emphasises the passions of the spectators, it also demonstrates football’s capacity to bring together a crowd of 20,000, in which the presence of men and women, whites, blacks and mulattos, as well as Brazilians of Italian, German and Portuguese descent, symbolises a cultural practice with which all Brazilians can uniquely identify. In 1928, São Paulo modernists published two works that sought to draw on a combination of historical, anthropological and folkloric sources to re- invent Brazil as a fusion of indigenous, European and African inﬂu- ences. Mário de Andrade’s novel Macunaíma (1928) is a foundational text of modern Brazilian literature that follows the journey of the eponymous protagonist from the jungle of his birth to the modern cities of twentieth- century Brazil, defeating along the way a European giant. After arriving in a São Paulo of radios, motorcycles and telephones, Macunaíma invents football: in revenge for pranks he plays on his brothers Maanape and Jiguê, involving bugs and weevils that bite Maanape’s tongue and suck Jiguê’s blood respectively, they make a brick into a ball of hard leather, which Maanape kicks at Macunaíma, whose nose is crushed. He in turn kicks the ball far away but the three incidents have far- reaching consequences for the nation: ‘O bichincho caiu em Campinas. A tatorana caiu por aí. A bola caiu no campo. E foi assim que Maanape inventou o bicho- do-café, Jiguê a lagarta- rosada e Macunaíma o futebol, três pragas’ (The bug fell in Campinas. The caterpillar fell somewhere. The ball fell on the [football] ﬁeld. And that was how Maanape invented the coffee- bug, Jiguê the cotton weevil and Macunaíma football, three plagues) (pp. 64–5). The plague of football clearly spreads quickly, for in the following chapter, in which the hero travels to Rio de Janeiro, among those who attend an Afro- Brazilian magico- religious ceremony are ‘Os ladrões os senadores os jecas os negros as senhoras os futebóleres’ (thieves and senators and hicks and blacks and women and footballers) (pp. 79–80). Such a cast indicates that football was by then not only geographically spread, at least between the country’s major cities, but also that its practitioners were embedded as part Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 of the national culture that Macunaíma sought to construct. By contrast, Cassiano Ricardo Leite’s epic poem Martim Cererê: O Brasil dos meninos, dos poetas e dos heróis (Martim Cererê: The Brazil of Little Boys, Poets and Heroes), also published in 1928 as part of the modernists’ nation-building endeavours, portrays football in a far more positive light, notably in the section ‘Martim Cererê – Jogador de Futebol’ (Martim Cererê – Football Player). In this representation of Brazil, which draws on a blend of historical and folkloric sources as part of efforts to give greater prominence to popular culture, a beautiful indigenous woman is courted 60 Early Writings in Brazil

by a Portuguese sailor, but before she will marry him she insists that he brings to Brazil the dark of night in the form of African slaves. In the Brazil that emerges from these beginnings, football is the favourite pastime of Martim Cererê as a young urchin, playing in the street by day and dreaming about the game at night, imagining the full moon to be God’s ball kicked across the sky, to be replaced by a red ball kicked from behind the hill in the morning. Such metaphors contribute to Ricardo Leite’s depiction of football in what might be considered conventionally poetic terms, and for poet and protagonist alike the sport provides a route to intellectual creativity as well as physical practice. Playing football is not, however, without its problems, and almost all of the windows on the street are broken as a result of Martim’s shots, resulting in his ball being confis- cated by a policeman who thinks that boys should be in school. While the positivist ideals of public education were well established – at least in prin- ciple – by the end of the 1920s, there is implicit criticism of the restrictive and over- bearing presence of state institutions, here represented by a policeman who is ‘o homem mais barrigudo deste mundo’ (the most rotund man in the world). The juxtaposition of the lithe young footballer and the obese public official also points up football’s capacity to achieve the public health goals championed by leading medical figures and widely embraced in the early decades of the century through the introduction of physical exercises to the schools. Moreover, the fact that Martim is described as wearing a green and yellow shirt as he plays football establishes a further symbolic connection between the sport and the concept of the more widely inclusive Brazil whose roots the modernists sought to create.

Concluding Reflections As is evident from the numerous examples discussed in this chapter, Brazil- ian authors have drawn on football for over a century to explore national issues and the nation’s sense of self. In the first period of Brazilian football literature, which might be seen to cover the period between 1914 and 1922, several of the country’s most influential authors saw in football a foreign and decidedly un-Brazilian practice to which they were vehemently Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 opposed. At the same time, writers who championed football as a model of civilising and gentlemanly European modernity, a means of combating the supposed degeneracy of miscegenation and improving the physical condition of the nation, became disillusioned with the sport as it was rapidly appropriated by the working classes and underwent a growing profession- alisation of players through the 1920s. In the wake of the Modern Art Week organised by the São Paulo modernists in 1922, several of the city’s leading literary figures drew on football in their literary creations as they sought to develop a new model of brasilidade, but on the whole they failed Early Writings in Brazil 61

to see it as an example of the cannibalistic culture that was imagined in Oswald de Andrade’s Manifesto Antropófago. Despite football’s significant presence in texts that undertook a re-evaluation of the dynamic relationships between European and Brazilian cultures through the 1920s, especially in the context of the São Paulo modernists, the authors discussed above did not promote the sport as an example of an anthropophagous cultural practice. The Manifesto Antropófago (Cannibalist Manifesto), published in 1928 by Oswald de Andrade, provided arguably the most influential model for an independently Brazilian culture since the country had become a republic, and has continued to enjoy traction in cultural discourses. In this Manifesto, de Andrade argued for the assimilation and mediation of oppressive foreign culture(s) via ‘a critical act of “devouring”, consuming and totemizing the taboo’ (Gonzalez and Treece, 1992: 100) that would, in turn, enable the production of new and originally Brazilian forms of these cultural practices. Wisnik asserts that ‘it was the football created outside clubs, or tangential to them, that became the informal lab- oratory for the original and anthropophagous appropriation of the English game’ (2008: 207). The reading of Martim Cererê undertaken here certainly suggests that this early modernist text conformed to such practice, and this work, together with the others discussed above, served to embed football as a distinctively Brazilian cultural practice as local elites and intellectuals sought to create a new sense of nationhood. In addition to the numerous football texts produced in Rio de Janeiro in the 1920s, a wave of football-related plays further contributed to the game featuring in the capital’s public sphere (Bocketti, 2016: 177–9), as was the case in Buenos Aires in the same decade. There is little evidence of contact between those who were including football as a central part of their literary creations in Brazil and those who were doing likewise in Spanish America, but their mutual interest in exploring new modes of national identity that would mark a break from their respective colonial influences led them all to draw on football. Added to this was the manner in which football crystallised contemporary debates around modernity, social Darwinism, eugenics, public health and physical education. The opposing sides taken in these debates by Coelho Neto and Lima Barreto in Rio de Janeiro around 1920 established several of the parameters within which discourses around foot- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 ball would be expressed over the following decade (and beyond). However, the São Paulo modernists brought a significant new creative dimension through their self-consciously innovative practices in the 1920s, establishing in the process a connection between football and a newly imagined conception of the nation that drew on popular practices as the basis of Brazil. As the following chapter will explore, these features have served as the foundations for the position of football in the country into the twenty- first century, and for many of its literary (and other) representations in the intervening decades. 62 Early Writings in Brazil

Notes 1 João do Rio was the pseudonym of João Paulo Emílio Cristóvão dos Santos Coelho Barreto, a controversial literary ﬁgure in early twentieth- century Rio de Janeiro. I am grateful to Ana Lessa-Schmidt for drawing this reference to my attention. 2 Capoeira is a martial art of Afro-Brazilian origins that involves kicks, body swerves and movements to avoid contact. Its practice was illegal at the time of Esphinge following a ban in late nineteenth- century Brazil. 3 This incident gave rise to Fluminense’s mocking – and enduring – nickname of ‘pó de arroz’ (rice powder) among rival fans. 4 I am grateful to Gregg Bocketti for facilitating my access to this poem. 5 Materials from Careta are available online at http://objdigital.bn.br/acervo_ digital/div_periodicos/careta/careta_anos.htm (accessed 12 September 2016). 6 The works by Oswald de Andrade cited here can be found in Obras completas (1971). 7 The club’s use of ‘Italiana’ in its full name would result in a forced change of name to Palmeiras in 1942.

Bibliography Alcântara Machado, Antônio de. ‘Corinthians (2) vs Palestra (1)’ and ‘Gaetaninho’ in Contos paulistanos (São Paulo: Editora UNESP, 2012 [1927]), 41–7, 17–20. Andrade, Mário de. Paulicéia Desvairada (São Paulo: Edição do Autor, 1922). Andrade, Mário de. O losango cáqui (São Paulo: Edição do Autor, 1926). Andrade, Mário de. Macunaíma. O herói sem nenhum caráter (Lisbon: Edições Antígona, 1998 [1928]). Andrade, Oswald de. Obras completas (11 vols) (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1971). Bellos, Alex. Futebol. The Brazilian Way of Life (London: Bloomsbury, 2002). Bocketti, Gregg. The Invention of the Beautiful Game: Football and the Making of Modern Brazil (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016). Brinkerhoff Torelly, Apparício Fernando de (Barão de Pindaré). ‘Match de football’ in Milton Pedrosa, Gol de letra: o futebol na literatura brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Gol, 1968), 112. Campomar, Andreas. ¡Golazo! A History of Latin American Football (London: Quercus, 2014). Coelho Neto, Henrique Maximiano. Esphinge (Porto: Livraria Chardron, 1920 [1908]). Coelho Neto, Henrique Maximiano. Mano, livro da saudade (Rio de Janeiro: Ed.

Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Empreza Graphica, 1924). Damo, Arlei and Rubén Oliven. ‘Fútbol made in Brasil: blanco en las reglas, negro en el estilo’ in Ramón Llopis Goig (ed.) Fútbol postnacional. Transformaciones sociales y culturales del ‘deporte global’ en Europa y América Latina (Barcelona: Anthropos, 2009), 107–27. Eakin, Marshall C. Brazil: The Once and Future Country (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998). Góis Junior, Edivaldo. ‘Gymnastics, Hygiene and Eugenics in Brazil at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’ International Journal of the History of Sport 31:10 (2014), 1219–31. Early Writings in Brazil 63

Goldblatt, David. Futebol Nation: A Footballing History of Brazil (London: Penguin, 2014). Gonzalez, Mike and David Treece. The Gathering of Voices. The Twentieth- Century Poetry of Latin America (London: Verso, 1992). Graham, Richard. Britain and the Onset of Modernization in Brazil, 1850–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). Haberly, David T. Three Sad Races. Racial Identity and National Consciousness in Brazilian Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Lima Barreto, Afonso Henriques de. ‘Quase ela deu a “sim”; mas . . .’ Careta 29 October 1919. Lima Barreto, Afonso Henriques de. ‘Vantajens do futebol’ Careta 19 June 1920, 20–1. Lima Barreto, Afonso Henriques de. ‘O Haroldo’ Careta 4 December 1920: 16) Lima Barreto, Afonso Henriques de. ‘Uma conferencia esportiva’ Careta 1 January 1921, 15–16. Lima Barreto, Afonso Henriques de. ‘Futebol: para o Campeonato sul-americano – o Presidente da República não quer “homens de cor” no nosso scratch’ Correio da Manhã, 17 September 1921. Lima Barreto, Afonso Henriques de. ‘Como reposta’ Careta 8 April 1922, 8. Lima Barreto, Afonso Henriques de. ‘Ainda e sempre’ Careta 6 May 1922: 37. Lima Barreto, Afonso Henriques de. ‘Não quería, mas. . .’ Careta 3 June 1922, 49. Lima Barreto, Afonso Henriques de. ‘Herói!’ Careta 18 November 1922. Mason, Tony. Passion of the People? Football in South America (London: Verso, 1995). Morales, Andrés. ‘La identidad rioplatense y el fútbol. Confraternidad y violencia en el clásico del Río de la Plata’ Cuaderno de historia (A romper la red: miradas sobre fútbol, cultura y sociedad) 14 (2014), 31–46. Ramos, Graciliano. ‘Traços a Esmo’ O Índio (Palmeira dos Índios), 1921 (exact date unknown). Ricardo Leite, Cassiano. Martim Cererê: o Brasil dos meninos, dos poetas e dos heróis (São Paulo: Editorial Helios, 1928). Rosso, Mauro. Lima Barreto versus Coelho Neto: Um Fla–Flu literário (Rio de Janeiro: DIFEL, 2010). Skidmore, Thomas E. and Peter H. Smith. Modern Latin America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). Soares, Antonio Jorge and Hugo Lovisolo. ‘O Futebol é Fogo de Palha: A “Profe- cia” de Graciliano Ramos’ in Rolando Helal, Antonio Jorge Soares and Hugo Lovisolo (eds) A invenção do país do futebol: mídia, raça e idolatría (Rio de Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Janeiro: MAUAD, 2001), 123–33. Soares, Astréia. Outras conversas sobre os jeitos do Brasil: o nacionalismo na música popular (São Paulo: Anna Blume Editora, 2002). Sussekind de Mendonça, Carlos. O sport está deseducando a mocidade brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Empreza Brasil Editora, 1921). Wisnik, José Miguel. Veneno remédio: o futebol e o Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2008). Chapter 4 Writing the National Game Beauty in Brazil

Synonymous worldwide with the Dionysian spirit of football as stylish expression, Brazil can legitimately claim to have dominated the cultural imagination of global football since the mid-twentieth century. In the process the country has produced what is widely held to be the best team (1970), many of the world’s outstanding players (such as Pelé, Garrincha and Ronaldo) and some of the most memorable goals (and near misses), as well as generating a series of meanings and values around the game. The hosting of the 2014 World Cup signified a cause for reflection on what the sport means to the country, as well as an opportunity for redemption for the national trauma of the Maracanaço, brought about by the loss to Uruguay in the final match of the 1950 World Cup. Needless to say, the 7–1 semi-final humiliation at the hands of Germany served not only to reopen long-standing schisms and self-doubt in relation to the country’s place on the world stage, but also to give rise to the use of football as a metaphor towards a questioning of the country itself. As in 1950, issues of race were not far below the surface, and while the Maracanaço came to be blamed primarily on the team’s three black players (the goalkeeper Barbosa and the defenders Bigode and Juvenal), accounts of the 2014 defeat highlighted the defensive naivety and indiscipline of Marcelo, as well as the absence of Thiago Silva (through suspension) and Neymar, who suffered a broken vertebra in the quarter- final following a heavy tackle by the Afro- Colombian defender Juan Zúñiga. Once again, the illusion of a Brazilian racial democracy was unable to withstand the stresses of critical examina- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 tion, and the indiscipline of non-white members of the national team (or its opponents) was again depicted as a key factor in its shortcomings. Unlike in 1950, however, when the vast majority of Brazilians listened to the final via national radio or learned of the result from the local press, the ubiquitous presence of television cameras, big screens and social media comment confirmed Brazil’s place in western (post-)modernity, meaning that the process of negotiating the implications of the match – and of football as a central component in brasilidade, or a sense of Brazilianness – was felt across the world. As Kevin Foster persuasively argues in his essay Writing the National Game in Brazil 65

‘Dreaming of Pelé’, the creation of Brazil as a football utopia owed as much to interpretations of the game outside the country as inside it: ‘for British critics, it is not the objective accuracy of accounts of Brazilian football that matter but the uses to which they might be put’ (2009: 171). Fos- ter’s focus is on Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, when Brazil established itself as the dominant force in world football by winning consecutive World Cups in 1958 and 1962, but already by this time Brazilian writers and thinkers had been putting football to their own uses for over half a century, and continue to do so today.

The Epiphany of 1938 The military coup that brought Getûlio Vargas to power in 1930 marked what Skidmore and Smith describe as a ‘watershed in modern Brazilian history’ (1989: 160). Over the course of the next 15 years, President Vargas would seek to harness popular culture as the basis of a national identity, and his Estado Novo would absorb the São Paulo modernists into this project after the city’s frustrations with central government led to an armed rebellion against the Brazilian state in the 1932 Constitutionalist Revolution. Published a year later, Gilberto Freyre’s analysis of plantation society in Casa- grande & senzala (The Masters and the Slaves) was a turning point in re- evaluating the contribution of black culture to Brazil and offered a positive interpretation of the country’s mestiço character. Freyre’s text refuted the view that miscegenation led to degeneracy, and introduced the notion of Brazil as a racial democracy, which has in time come to be regarded as equally problematic. Nonetheless, during the 1930s the Estado Novo of President Vargas came under the sway of Freyre’s ideas and promoted mestiçagem as the model of brasilidade (Lehmann, 2008). In 1936, Freyre published Sobrados e mucambos (The Mansions and the Shanties), which took as its subject the decline in Brazil’s rural patriarchy following the abolition of slavery and the subsequent processes of modernisation, also explored by the São Paulo modernists. In this work, Freyre outlines a distinctively Brazilian style of football, characterised by the manner in which the ‘Apollonian British game’ is converted into a ‘Dionysian dance’ as a result of ‘the more delicate and graceful foot’ that is Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 expert in capoeira and samba (cited in Wisnik, 2008: 195). By representing Brazilian football as both an example of anthropophagy and a product of mestiçagem, simultaneously linked to Brazilian popular music and corporal practices, Freyre provided a powerful image that would serve from that point onwards as one of the most commonly recurring bases for projecting Brazilian identity at home and abroad. The 1938 World Cup in France provided Freyre with the opportunity to develop these ideas, as for the ﬁrst time Brazil sent a team that could be considered to represent the nation: the geographical feuds between Rio de 66 Writing the National Game in Brazil

Janeiro and São Paulo that had marked previous team selections were overcome and – for the first time – the team contained a significant number of black players, whose incorporation to the highest levels of the national game had become largely normalised following the adoption of profession- alisation. President Vargas, who had dissolved Congress the year before, was keen to exploit the potential of the team as a symbol of his populist Brazil: radio speakers were placed in the streets so that the live broadcasts of matches could be heard by a wide audience, and his daughter Alzira was made madrina (godmother) of the national team. As a long-standing correspondent for several influential newspapers, Freyre wrote a series of articles on Brazil’s participation in the tournament in which he reflected on the key role of the team’s black players. After the team’s victory over Czechoslova- kia in their replayed quarter-final, Freyre wrote a piece that appeared in Rio’s Correio da Manhã on 15 June 1938 entitled ‘Um team afro brasileiro’, in which he stated his belief that ‘uma das condições de vitória dos brasileiros nos encontros europeus prende- se ao fato de termos tido a coragem de mandar à Europa desta vez um time francamente afro- brasileiro. Tomem os arianistas nota disto’ (one of the conditions that has brought the Brazilians victory in the European matches stems from the fact that this time we have had the courage to send to Europe a frankly Afro- Brazilian team. The Aryanists should take note). Two days later, Freyre developed his ideas in relation to the contribution of Afro- Brazilian players to the game in the article ‘Foot-ball mulato’, published in the Diário de Pernambuco and subsequently reproduced in his 1945 Sociologia and elsewhere.

Acaba de se deﬁnir de maneira inconfundivel um estylo brasileiro de foot-ball; e esse estylo é mais uma expressão do nosso mulatismo agil em assimilar, dominar, amollecer em dansa, em curvas ou em músicas technicas européas ou norte-americanas mais angulosas para o nosso gosto: sejam ellas de jogo ou de architectura. Porque é um mulatismo, o nosso – psychologicamente, ser brasileiro é ser mulato – inimigo do formalismo apolineo [. . .] e dyonisiaco a seu geito – o grande geitão mulato. Inimigo do formalismo apolineo e amigo das variações; deliciando-se em manhas molleronas, mineiras à que Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 se sucedem surprezas de agilidade. A arte do songa- monga. . . . O mulato brasileiro deseuropeisou o foot-ball dando- lhe curvas, arredondados e graças de dansa.

(An indisputably Brazilian style of football has just been deﬁned; and that style is mainly an expression of our mulattism that is so agile when it comes to assimilating, dominating, and softening through dance, through curves or through music European and North American techniques that are too angular for our taste: be they of play Writing the National Game in Brazil 67

or of architecture. Because our mulattism – psychologically, to be Bra- zilian is to be mulatto – is an enemy of Apollonian formalism [. . .] and is Dionysian in its ways – the great mulatto ability. An enemy of Apol- lonian formalism and a friend of variations; taking delight in soothing tricks that are followed by surprising moments of agility. The art of deception. The Brazilian mulatto has de- Europeanised football by giving it curves, rounded edges and the graces of a dance.)

Brazil’s third place in the tournament, the country’s best performance to that point, and the widespread acceptance that the stars of the team were black defender Domingos da Guia and striker Leônidas, who was the tournament’s top scorer, gave weight to Freyre’s ideas and marked a definitive turning point in the nation’s relationship with football. Henceforth, the sport was no longer associated with white elites in the national imaginary and instead served to mediate the country’s racial diversity, often providing a means of celebrating the contribution of Brazil’s non- whites. The outstanding literary expression of this World Cup campaign was provided by Gilka Machado, whose poem ‘Aos heróis do futebol brasileiro’ (To the Heroes of Brazilian Football) is discussed in Chapter 9. On 22 January 1939, the day of the second leg of the Copa Roca against Argentina, Mário de Andrade published in O Estado de São Paulo the text ‘Brasil–Argentina’, in which he describes the painful experience of watching the first leg, won convincingly by Argentina. His reflections on the game give voice to a recognition of football as anthropophagic practice:

eu senti a Grécia, a Grécia arcaica, no tempo em que se fazia a futura grande Grécia. Dezenas de tribos diferentes se organizando, se entro- sando, recebendo mil e uma inﬂuências estranhas, mas aceitando dos outros apenas o que era realmente assimilável e imediatamente confor- mando o elemento importado em ﬁbra nacional.

(I felt as if in ancient Greece, in the time when Greece’s great future was being built. Dozens of different tribes organising themselves, meshing, receiving a thousand and one foreign inﬂuences, but accept- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 ing only those that could really be assimilated and immediately turning the imported aspect into national ﬁbre.)

Despite the loss, Mário is captivated by the beauty of the players’ movements, declaring ‘Que coisa lindíssima, que bailado miríﬁco um jogo de futebol!’ (What a beautiful thing, what a marvellous dance a football match is!) Although Argentina won, he ﬁnds little to admire in the func- tionality of the Argentinian team, but of the Brazilian players acclaims ‘Que saltos, que corridas elásticas! Havia umas rasteiras sutis, uns jeitos 68 Writing the National Game in Brazil

sambísticos de enganar’ (What leaps, what elastic runs! There were some subtle trips, some deceptive samba moves), thus echoing not only Anna Amélia de Queiroz’s leaps and Graciliano Ramos’s trips, both discussed elsewhere, as elements of the national sport but also Freyre’s vision of football as a fusion of music and dance as the basis of national grandeur. By the end of the 1930s, a range of writers had created a place for football at the heart of the country’s national culture and football, in turn, provided writers with a powerful element of symbolic representation and a reper- toire of terms and images through which it could be expressed as a distinctively Brazilian practice. It is perhaps this consolidation in 1938–39 that accounts for the significant appearance of football in Brazilian novels for the first time: José Lins do Rego’s Água-mãe (The Water- Mother, 1941) has as a central character Joca, a young football player who moves from Cabo Frio to Rio de Janeiro in the hope of becoming a star with Flumin- ense; and journalist Thomas Mazzoni’s Flô, o melhor goleiro do mundo (Flô, the Best Goalkeeper in the World, 1940) was described by Pedrosa in 1978 as the only novel devoted entirely to football published in Brazil. However, the challenging relationship between football and longer forms of literature at this time is illustrated by the fact that Mazzoni’s novel was published by the author himself and had no means of distribution (Pedrosa, 1978: 54). Gilberto Freyre’s central role in the development of ideas and discourses surrounding football in modern Brazil continued with the publication of Mário Rodrigues Filho’s seminal work O negro no football do brasileiro (Blacks in Brazilian Football, 1947), for which Freyre wrote a lengthy prologue. Rodrigues Filho (commonly known as Mário Filho) developed the ideas set out by Freyre in Casa-grande & senzala and the articles around the 1938 World Cup and applied them to a series of episodes and figures from the game in Brazil to highlight to contribution of black football players to what had by then been embraced by state and public alike as the national sport. The status of this text as a foundational document in shaping opinion in relation to football accounts for Wisnik’s description of Filho as ‘O Homero do Maracanã’ (The Homer of the Maracanã) (2008: 232), an allusion to his role as a founding father of football writing and to the fact that the national stadium bears Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 his name in its official title. Described in the first edition by both Filho and Freyre as a work of history, it has recently come under scrutiny for its methods, which draw extensively on oral histories, press articles and interviews with club directors, fans and players. Much of this re- evaluation can be attributed to the work of Antonio Soares, who sees in Filho’s text a ‘mythical history that that goes on being updated to meet the demands of identity construction’, again facilitating comparisons with Homer’s Iliad, arguing that it should be read not as a work of history but as ‘a type of chronicle-novel that is an epic tale of blacks in Writing the National Game in Brazil 69

Brazilian football’ (Soares, 2001: 14, 16). In this sense, it is fitting to see the representation of football and black footballers in O negro no football brasileiro as part of a continuum that includes the chronicles that were a prominent feature of sports journalism from the 1920s. Taking a recent match or an outstanding player as a starting point for wider reflections on social, political or cultural issues, the brothers Mário Filho and Nelson Rodrigues, along with José Lins do Rego (author of the 1941 novel Água-mãe), dominated the football chronicle for decades. At a time when the convergence of popular and erudite culture, initiated by the São Paulo modernists in the 1920s and continued by the Vargas regime into the 1940s, had become an established norm, the football chronicle served as the most visible means of mediating the two domains of bodily practice and the written word. And while Mário Filho’s style may have represented ‘a blow against elitist football discourse’ (Wisnik, 2008: 234), the depiction of football as a practice of black Brazilians was carried out by white writers who belonged to the traditional socio- economic elites: Mário Rodrigues Sr was owner of Rio newspapers A Manhã and Crítica, while Lins do Rego’s family owned a sugar mill. The protagonism of black footballers in the chronicles of the time may be seen to serve as a proxy for black people’s absence in many other areas of Brazilian public life – music and carnival aside – and their exclusion from other forms of power, be they symbolic or actual: for Wisnik, the notion of a racial democracy in football in the 1940s and 1950s ‘prescribes (in the medical sense, of indicating a cure) but does not describe Brazil. Or, even, that it describes possibilities that have taken place and are significant but are not completed systematically’ (2008: 240). Indeed, assigning symbolic hegemony to Afro-Brazilians in an area that had come to constitute one of the pillars of brasilidade could be seen to have ensured that other domains – including literature – would remain overwhelmingly white. It is important to recall that the development of a notion of a Brazilian style of play, dependent on the contribution of black players in the 1930s and 1940s, was not the result of interpretations by those players themselves, but by white intellectuals who placed black bodily practices at the centre of a socio-cultural project. As Maranhão notes, echoing the words of Spivak (1988), ‘The black does not speak, he is spoken’ (2006: 449), Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 although such a view reveals the logo-centric perspective that characterises the academy, overlooking the possibilities of bodily expression and non- verbal codes as creative resources. Notwithstanding the challenges to interpretations of football put forward by Freyre and Filho, which have emerged since the turn of the millennium, their texts discussed above established the parameters of discourses around football for the second half of the twentieth century and constituted the major influence on ways of writing about the sport, from genre to subject matter, from ideology to language. 70 Writing the National Game in Brazil

Motion in Poetry The emergence of the crónica as the dominant form of prose through which the narrative of football – and more particularly the issues surrounding it – would be explored and created through the second half of the twentieth century may have inhibited the production of short stories and novels about the national sport, but poetry was less constrained by the normative conventions that appear to have restricted other literary genres. Poetry’s constant interplay with – or reaction against – established traditions of features such as form, structure, metre, rhyme and language is evident in the work of the modernists such as Mário and Oswald de Andrade discussed in the previous chapter, and in the poems of Anna Amélia de Queiroz and Gilka Machado examined in Chapter 9, and continued to allow for poetic representations of football. In 1980, Edilberto Coutinho (1980a: 111) suggested that football and poetry in Brazil came together ‘mainly in the big moments – of victory or defeat – in which a whole nation becomes fixated with supporting the team’ and this certainly appears to hold true from the second half of the twentieth century through to the present day. Not all poets, however, aligned themselves with the dominant discourse, as is evident from the manner in which Francisco Firmino de Paula celebrated the 1958 victory in his lengthy poetic work O Brasil, campeão do mundo (Brazil, World Champion). Firmino de Paula was a renowned author of literatura de cordel, a form of popular literature associated with the north-east of Brazil that takes its name from the manner in which the cheaply produced texts were hung over (or pegged onto) string lines for sale. As a text produced outside the metropolitan centres, and within a tradition that was an important means whereby Afro-Brazilian self- representation could be achieved in textual form, Firmino de Paula’s poem offers an interesting alternative to the dominant metropolitan discourses around football at the time. The poem’s first stanza celebrates the team’s heroic efforts to bring back the Cup and opens with references to colour and questions of race: ‘Os canários do Brasil/ Dessa vez mostraram raça’ (The canaries of Brazil/ This time showed their race). However, by using the team’s yellow shirts as the point of identification the author avoids Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 repeating the tropes of blackness seen in the examples discussed above, instead depicting the team as being of a colour that encompasses all of its members without prioritising any of the elements within it. The second half of the poem does not proceed simply to name the members of the squad, as did various other commemorative poems, but rather shifts the focus to the north- eastern city of Recife, where people celebrated with a carnival in another assertion of the region’s strongly Afro- Brazilian culture. The poem, however, is not entirely celebratory, and the second stanza draws attention to the material shortages suffered by the people in Recife, Writing the National Game in Brazil 71

who are described as not having eaten for a month (1958 saw one of the periodic droughts for which the region is infamous). That they forget their hunger in the excitement of the victory carries a critical charge and implies that football is distracting attention from pressing social needs among Afro- Brazilians, needs that are not resolved by the elevation of Pelé, Garrincha and Didi to the status of national heroes. Firmino de Paula’s focus on ‘o povo’ (the people) also finds expression in the poem’s structure, which takes the rhyming stanzas typical of improvised cordel verse, ensuring that ‘La Copa de 1958’ marks a distinctive representation of the nation’s footballing success steeped in an alternative cultural tradition. Brazil’s victory in the 1962 World Cup similarly resulted in poetic celebrations, a number of them focusing on the contribution of Garrincha, who emerged as the star player following an injury to Pelé and scored twice in both the quarter- final and semi- final victories over England and Chile respectively. Of the various poems that mark his achievements, perhaps the outstanding example is ‘O anjo das pernas tortas’ (The Angel with Crooked Legs) by Vinícius de Moraes, included in his collection Para viver um grande amor (To Live a Great Love), published a few months after the victory in Chile. By the time that this collection appeared, Moraes had become established as one of the key figures of bossa nova, the new musical style that proved hugely popular with Brazilians over the following decades, but as a poet he favoured the traditional sonnet and practised strict adherence to its formal conventions. ‘O anjo de pernas tortas’ consists of two quatrains and two tercets, following the Italian form favoured by Brazilian poets, and conforms to the sonnet’s norms in relation to metre and rhyme. Less conventional is the subject matter, which follows Garrincha as he dribbles up the pitch to score a goal, football acting as an effective bridge between the subject matter of popular song and the medium of a traditional poetic form. In the 1960s Garrincha became a national icon, celebrated not only in literary representations but also in Joaquim Pedro de Andrade’s 1963 film Garrincha, alegria do povo (Garrincha, Joy of the People). His irreverent style of play was seen as an extension of his lifestyle, part of a habitus characterised by non-conformity with organised labour and the norms of Brazil’s emerging capitalist society (Damo and Oliven, 2009: 111), and while Pelé was respected as the rei or king, it was with Garrincha that Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 people identified more closely as the man of the people. His ethnicity, his origins and his famously bent legs, referenced in the title of the poem, tapped into figures from folk culture, notably the saci-pererê and curupira of indigenous tales, both of which stand out because of their unusual legs and their crafty agility (Bellos, 2002: 96). Such features, allied to Garrin- cha’s ability to deceive and defeat larger and stronger opponents, have also led to comparisons with Mário de Andrade’s foundational hero Macunaíma (Wisnik, 2008: 285), who similarly overcomes his rival, the giant, through a mixture of daring and cunning. 72 Writing the National Game in Brazil

Moraes had discussed Garrincha’s dribbling and shooting skills in a prose text written in the aftermath of Brazil’s victory over Spain earlier in the tournament, also included in Para viver um grande amor, but the exclusive focus on Garrincha in ‘O anjo de pernas tortas’ reflects the interest in him as a cultural icon able to mediate various aspects of Brazil- ian life and, at the same time, contributes to that valorisation. The poem expresses the blend of the divine in his play and the thoroughly human imperfections of his physique (and behaviour) while capturing the flow of movement and emotion typical of his play. It is in the final stanza that Moraes stretches the constraints of the sonnet’s form as the poem reaches its climax with a goal: ‘Garrincha, o anjo, escuta e atende: Gôooool!/ É pura imagem: um G que chuta um O/ Dentro da meta, um L. É pura dança’ (Garrincha, the angel, listens and takes note: Goooool!/ It is pure image: a G that shoots an O/ Into the goal, an L. It is pure dance). In taking the letters of ‘gol’ and using them as symbols of Garrincha, the ball and the goalposts respectively, Moraes engages with the Concretism that had by the start of the 1960s become sterile, infusing Brazilian poetry with an imaginative force that combined tradition and innovation. ‘O anjo de pernas tortas’ is both image and dance, sonnet and popular music, heav- enly yet profoundly human. Another heavyweight of Brazilian poetry to have made a substantial contribution to the country’s football literature was Carlos Drummond de Andrade, who wrote a series of crónicas for the Folha de São Paulo around every World Cup between 1958 and 1986, collected in the posthumous Quando é dia de futebol (When It’s a Day of Football, 2002).1 Drummond also produced one of the most significant bodies of football poetry of any Brazilian writer, beginning in the 1960s with ‘A Seleção’ (1964), in which he imagines a third consecutive World Cup victory in England, and ‘Aos atletas’ (1966), in which he salutes the efforts of the players after they had been eliminated at that tournament’s group stages. A fan of Pelé, Drum- mond published the poem ‘Pelé 1.000’ in the Jornal do Brasil on 28 October 1969 to celebrate the player’s achievement in scoring his one thousandth goal: ‘O difícil, o extraordinário, não é fazer mil gols, como Pelé./ É fazer um gol como Pelé’ (The difficult, the extraordinary, is not to score a thousand goals, like Pelé./ It is to score one goal like Pelé). Between Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 1969 and 1984, Drummond contributed regular articles to the centre- left Jornal do Brasil, in which he was often critical of the military dictatorship as he rediscovered the ability of writing to communicate a collective experience that had been a feature of his earlier period of social(ist) poetry. Among his regular contributions to Jornal do Brasil, he published two poems around the 1970 World Cup on 9 and 20 June 1970, the latter date coming on the day before Brazil would play Italy in the final. In the first part of the poem, published two days after Brazil had beaten England in their second group game, Drummond’s heart flies to Mexico of its own Writing the National Game in Brazil 73

accord, and becomes the heart of a fan in a bar, cheering the team on with a final cry of national unity ‘Brasil! Com fúria e com amor’ (Brazil! With fury and with love). In the second instalment of the poem, Drummond is no longer among the fans, but feels himself to be one of the players: ‘Sou Rivelino, a lâmina do nome’ (I am Rivelino, on the blade of the name), while Pelé is ‘o povo feito atleta na poesia/ do jogo mágico’ (the people made athlete in the poetry/ of the magical game). Underlying the positive depiction of the team that represents the people, however, is criticism of the military regime that had appropriated the national football team to bolster its scant support: ‘De repente o Brasil ficou unido/ contente de existir, trocando a morte/ o ódio, a pobreza, a doença, o atraso triste/ por um momento puro de grandeza/ e afirmação no esporte’ (Suddenly Brazil was united/ happy to exist, exchanging death/ hatred, poverty, sorrow, sad backwardness/ for a pure moment of grandeur/ and affirmation in sport). At a time when the harshly repressive dictatorship was employing the systematic use of censorship and torture of political opponents (National Truth Commission, 2014), writing became an important mode through which to challenge the regime: by publishing a poem that celebrated football while giving it a political function, Drummond was playing the military at its own game. The regime maintained its strong interest in the national football team through the 1970s, seeing in it an important means of connecting with the public at home and of projecting a positive image of the nation on the international stage. To that end, Captain Cláudio Coutinho was appointed manager for the 1978 World Cup, having been fitness coach to the team in 1970 after a career in military physical education. Following Brazil’s failure to reach the final in Buenos Aires, Drummond published ‘Foi- se a Copa?’ (Has the Cup Gone?) in Jornal do Brasil on 24 June 1978, a poem of three stanzas of four verses each with perfect rhyme written in octo- syllables. In marked contrast to the enthusiasm for the sport evident in his other football poems, ‘Foi- se a Copa?’ expresses profound disillusionment for the tournament in Argentina, opening with ‘Foi-se a Copa? Não faz mal’ (Has the Cup gone? It doesn’t matter). The reason for the change in attitude soon becomes apparent, as he goes on to state that, with Brazil out of the tournament, ‘A gente pode, afinal,/ cuidar de nossos problemas’ Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 (People can, finally,/ look after our problems). Any vagueness as to the identity of the people who should be dealing with the country’s problems is dispelled in the second stanza, in which the lack of inflation in the points the team secured is contrasted with the very real inflation that Brazil continued to suffer as the ‘economic miracle’ of the late 1960s and early 1970s unravelled. In the final stanza, the criticism becomes more intense as football continues to be a metaphor for politics: ‘O povo, noutro torneio,/ havendo tenacidade,/ ganhará, rijo, e de cheio,/ a Copa da Liberdade’ (The people, in another tournament,/ having tenacity,/ will win, fierce, and 74 Writing the National Game in Brazil

fully,/ The Freedom Cup). Drummond here is clearly advocating the end of the military regime, a change that was becoming increasingly possible under the abertura and gradual political liberalisation of the second half of the 1970s, which saw elections later in 1978. The freedom that is sought in the political arena is paradoxically emphasised by the rigid structure of the poem, which in turn apes the military’s desire for systems and drills to prevail in the national team over individual flair and style. Using to good advantage his status as the country’s greatest living writer of the time, Drummond drew on his previous extensive involvement with football as a literary theme to challenge the military dictatorship’s use of it, effectively accusing it of taking its eye off the ball at home in its preparations of the team for the 1978 World Cup and undermining the very authority of the regime as representatives of the nation. João Cabral de Melo Neto, winner of the 1990 Camões Prize and 1994 Reina Sofía Prize, was a further poet of international stature to include football in his work during the period when public celebration of the sport as a national practice became blurred with the military’s substantial involvement in it through the 1970s. Cabral’s 1975 work Museu de todo (Museum of Everything), a collection written between 1966 and 1974, contained four poems that centred on football. Three of these explore aspects of the national game: ‘O torcedor do América FC’ (The Fan of América FC) portrays the experience of a fan of one of Rio’s less successful teams; ‘Ademir da Guia’ expresses the ability of the outstanding Palmeiras playmaker (and son of Domingos da Guia) to slow the game and opponents to his tempo; and ‘Ademir de Meneses’ captures the sudden changes of pace and direction for which the top scorer at the 1950 World Cup was renowned via the juxtaposition of ecosystems and of rhythms found in his native Recife. While these three poems superficially champion football as a Brazilian cultural icon, they share a more profound sense of frustration and even despair: América FC embodied unrealised potential, having won six Rio championships to 1935, but only one since then; Ademir da Guia was widely acclaimed as one of the best players of his generation, but represented Brazil just nine times (only one of which was at a World Cup); and the feats of Ademir de Meneses were overshadowed by the team’s loss to Uruguay in the 1950 final match. The fourth football poem of the col- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 lection, ‘O futebol brasileiro evocado da Europa’ (Brazilian Football Evoked from Europe), conforms more closely to the dominant narratives surrounding football at the time, portraying the game as having been domesticated in Brazil and imbued with a different set of values, thus mirroring Freyre and Filho’s depictions of Brazilian football as a distinctively national practice. The use of rhyming couplets often found in improvised verse enhances the sense of this being an expression of Brazil’s popular classes. Opening with ‘A bola não é a inimiga/ como o touro, numa corrida’ (The ball is not the enemy/ as the bull in a bullfight), Cabral uses Writing the National Game in Brazil 75

the metaphor of a domestic utensil that can be used by Brazilians without any risk, though this does not make it impersonal, tame, or habitual in its use. Instead it is ‘um utensílio semivivo,/ de reações próprias como bicho’ (a half-alive utensil,/ with its own animal-like reactions), which must be treated shrewdly and carefully, ‘dando aos pés astúcias de mão’ (giving the feet the cunning of hands). The clear sense that Brazilians have made football their own in a way that Europe has not, enjoying a dynamic and highly personal relationship with the ball in which the prowess of feet has become equal to manual dexterity, provides another echo of Oswald de Andrade’s cultural cannibalism. At the same time, however, it hints at the exploitation of players within the capitalist ‘economic miracle’ of the time, in which traditional forms of manual labour have been substituted rather than replaced, while the notion that validation of this style from Europe is worthy of mention hints at an ongoing colonial wound that football may in part address. A career diplomat, Cabral had been accused of fomenting a communist cell in 1952 and sacked during the (elected) presidency of Getúlio Vargas, and his politics find their most strident expression through football in the poem ‘Brasil 4 x Argentina 0’, published in the 1987 collection Crime na Calle Relator (Crime on Relator Street). Written in Ecuador in 1981, where Cabral was at the time Brazilian ambassador, it offers a scathing criticism of the lack of freedom under the Brazilian and Argentinian military regimes, which were both entering their final stages. Via a series of references to cages, gratings, prisoners and fugitives, it alludes to the routine imprisonment and ill- treatment of citizens, and as the prisoners break out of one cage they are watched by ‘dos técnicos mudos, mas sur- presos,/ brancos, no banco, com medo’ (two coaches, silent but surprised,/ white, on the bench, with fear). Seemingly inspired by the Brazil–Argentina match in January 1981 at the Mundialito staged by the Uruguayan military regime, the emphasis on the whiteness of the coaches, symbolic representatives of the Brazilian and Argentinian dictatorships, undercut in their ethnic homogeneity the myth of Brazil’s racial democracy. As the escaping prisoners begin to enjoy their freedom, the figures on the bench ask indig- nantly if ‘Voltamos ao futebol de ontem? Voltou a ser um jogo dos onze?’ (Are we returning to the football of yesterday? Has it gone back to being a Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 game of eleven?). Suggestions that the game is returning to the players challenge the military’s appropriation of the game in both countries, while the idea that this represents a retrograde move points up the irony of the notion of progress explicit in ‘Pra frente Brasil’ (Forward, Brazil), adopted by the military as the slogan and song for the 1970 World Cup. Following the triumph in Mexico, achieved despite the military’s involvement with the squad rather than because of it, attempts to instil discipline to the team and reduce the reliance on individual brilliance were widely held to have seen Brazilian football go backwards through the 1970s. In further 76 Writing the National Game in Brazil

criticism of the intimate linkage between football and the region’s dictatorships, while simultaneously mocking the degree to which subversion was found in Brazil and elsewhere, the ‘coaches’ go on to ask if ‘Chegou até cá a subversão?’ (Has subversion reached even here?). The poem closes with a final question that connotes a profound lack of understanding as they wonder ‘Como é possível haver xadrez/ Sem gramática, bispos, reis?’ (How is it possible to have chess/ Without grammar, bishops, kings?). Using chess as a metaphor for football underscores the way in which the teams and players were pawns of the military regimes, but at the same time hints again at the prioritisation of tactics and strategies by the regime’s coaches over the inspiration and spontaneity that had been codified by Freyre as the basis of the national game. The comfortable victory implicit in the title ‘Brasil 4 x Argentina 0’ conveys the sense that while Brazil may not have been able to defeat Argentina in the Mundialito (their match ended in a 1–1 draw) she has outdone her southern neighbour in the military appropriation of the game. However, the poem itself constitutes a moment of resignification as football escapes the clutches of the dictatorship and recaptures its ability to express meaning as a ‘gramática’ – a language system – independent of the regime. Sensitivities around such issues at the time that Cabral wrote this poem were amply demonstrated the following year, when the regime banned the film Pra frente Brasil (Roberto Farias, 1982) for the manner in which it harnessed the military’s theme tune to explore the arrest and torture of civilians against the backdrop of preparations for the 1970 World Cup.

Short and Sour Pedrosa states that up to the end of the 1970s fewer than 50 Brazilian short stories included football, and that in most of these it was not central to the narrative (1978: 55), the short story apparently a victim of the crónica’s hegemony as football’s preferred mode of short narrative. In 1980, however, Edilberto Coutinho published Maracanã adeus (Goodbye Maracanã, 1980b), a collection of 11 short stories that won that year’s prestigious Casa de las Américas prize, making him the first Brazilian author to do so. That the prize was part of the Cuban government’s Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 attempts to develop cultural relations with the rest of Latin America gives an indication of the political inclination of the stories, which are consistently critical of what is portrayed as the corrosive social influence of football as a capitalist practice. The story ‘O Fim de uma agonia’ (The End of Agony), for example, portrays a star football player whose close links with the Minister of Culture and Sports, along with the substantial financial benefits these bring, lead to the player reflecting on the similarities between himself and a prostitute. That the player should be called Leleco suggests an inspiration in the figure of Pelé, whose nickname was seemingly the Writing the National Game in Brazil 77

result of his mispronunciation, as a child, of the name of goalkeeper Bile. By the time that Maracanã adeus was written, Pelé had retired from football and turned his attention to his commercial interests and product endorsements, notably Café Pelé, which is served to the player by the Minister in the story with the words ‘Para mim, o melhor’ (For me, the best), a direct mimic of the product’s commercial slogan. The name ‘Leleco’ appears, then, to represent a criticism of the corporate capitalism embraced by a player whose status as a national icon had resulted in his exploitation by the military to distract from the country’s economic problems at home while also travelling as a Special Ambassador to promote the regime’s image abroad. The apparent criticism of Pelé’s complicity with the military regime is biting, but the most negative depictions are of the Minister of Culture and Sports, whose preoccupation with appearances and admiration of Hitler’s Mein Kampf leads to a wholly unflattering portrayal as representative of the military government. Coutinho’s vehement opposition to the military’s appropriation of football is made abundantly clear in the course of the Minister’s interior monologue, in which he reflects on football’s role in ensuring that workers in factories and elsewhere do not use their free time towards political activities that might oppose the regime. The Minister also considers how connections between capitalism and football have led to the mercantilisation of players, which has in turn perpetuated a form of slavery as effective as that of the nineteenth century, even if Leleco is bound by ‘cadeias de ouro e plata que o manterão aqui’ (chains of gold and silver that will keep him here). Slavery is also the subject of the story ‘Navio negreiro’ (Slave Ship), in which Paulinho, a young black football star, follows in the footsteps of his father and uncle in the professional clubs of Rio de Janeiro. Uncle Edson (echoes again of Pelé cannot be overlooked) had been born to a slave mother but became the first black player at América FC, a controversy that led to 60 members of the club leaving for the staunchly traditional – read exclusively white – Fluminense in the 1920s. A generation later, the son of one of those who abandoned América FC is now President of Fluminense and sells the promising Paulinho, against the player’s wishes, to a minor club in Ribeirão Preto, an opportunistic move to cash in on his potential after he scored a hat- trick in the final of the World Youth Championship. Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Despite his brilliance, Paulinho’s uncle Edson had never been included in the national team back in the 1920s, but any sense that the institutional- ised racism of football from that era has been eliminated is undone when the well-educated Paulinho reflects on his dream of being a great player: ‘o sonho, mas tou sabendo que desde o tempo do meu pai, desde o tempo mais atrás do tio Edson não aconteceu nenhuma transformação verda- deira’ (the dream, but I know that since my father’s time, since further back in uncle Edson’s time there hasn’t been any real change). When Dr Lira’s car comes to pick him up from the family home, his father’s anger at 78 Writing the National Game in Brazil

his son’s treatment is channelled towards the black car of the club Pres- ident, driven by a mulatto chauffeur and described as ‘o navio negreiro’ (the slave ship). The explicit connections to the slavery from which uncle Edson emerged to play for América moves Paulinho to ask himself why there is no Lei Áurea for footballers, in a reference to the 1888 law that marked the definitive abolition of slavery in Brazil. The story closes with Paulinho’s realisation that the Director of the Fluminense Football Club is selling ‘esta mercadoria que sou eu, eu extremamente preto polidamente filho’ (this merchandise that is me, me, extremely black and politely a son), the accentuated colour a marker of his ongoing subordination and inability to break out of the rigid social and economic structures that continue to determine the lives of Afro- Brazilians. In a collection in which the exploitation of players is consistently highlighted, alongside the way in which football serves to construct a series of stereotypical images of violence and sexual conquest, the story ‘Mulher na jogada’ (Woman in Play) stands out for adopting a female perspective on the national game. Adopting a two- column layout that brings to mind the format of a newspaper, the story offers a comparison of the lives of Elsa Soares (singer and second wife of Garrincha) and Anna Amélia de Queiroz (poetess and wife of 1920s goalkeeper Marcos de Mendonça) through a series of responses to identical questions in parallel interviews. Over the course of the story, what emerges is a picture of football as a sport that has been embraced by the working classes as a key aspect of the nation’s popular culture between the 1920s and 1950s: alongside the header ‘Samba e futebol’ in Elsa’s interview, Anna Amélia’s corresponding reference is ‘Soneto e futebol’. However, in other ways football is shown to have changed little, particularly around issues of racism and social class, and under the subtitle ‘Muito em comum’ (A Lot in Common) it is revealed that the two women have nothing in common with each other, but that they married someone of their own colour and social class: while Anna Amélia felt ‘grávida de emoção’ (pregnant with emotion) on meeting her future husband, Elsa was ‘grávida do Mané’ (pregnant by Mané) when she married for the second time. In a similar vein to ‘Navio negreiro’, ‘Mulher na jogada’ portrays football as a sphere in which superficial changes over the course Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 of the twentieth century mask more fundamental continuities that express ongoing structural divisions that are managed through the mass media. The story closes as the journalist discusses the interviews with the editor of the newspaper in which they will be published, and while Elsa’s story is edited to polish her coarse language and remove discussion of racism, Anna Amélia’s interview requires no cutting, and indeed the editor adds a snippet at the request of the owner, confirming the alignment of their views. That the owner of the newspaper has written a book in support of the notion of Brazil’s racial democracy appears to be a Writing the National Game in Brazil 79

thinly veiled criticism of Mário Filho’s O negro no foot-ball brasileiro and of the manner in which football chronicles in various newspapers shaped the discourse around the sport. Through the stories of Maracanã adeus, Coutinho provides trenchant criticism of the military’s exploitation of football as a tool of nationalism, and envisages a farewell to an era in which football plays such a central role in the nation’s fortunes. Although he went on to publish O jogo terminado (The Game Over, 1983), a collection of short texts around football, and the anthology Amor na boca do túnel (Love in the Mouth of the Tunnel, 1992), neither enjoyed the resonance of his earlier work, which drew on football to contest the position of the military as representatives of the nation and capture the sense of frustration of the period. Brazil’s slow transition to democracy through the first half of the 1980s coincided with a nadir in the nation’s fortunes in international football that saw the country fail to progress beyond the quarter- final stages of the World Cup between 1982 and 1990. At the same time, the domestic game fell into disrepute as a series of corruption scandals plagued the sport, which became another arena for corporatism and commercialisation, resulting in increasing numbers of the best players being sold to clubs in European leagues. By the time of the 1994 World Cup, won by Brazil for the first time since 1970, manager Carlos Alberto Parreira declared halfway through the tournament that ‘Magic and dreams are finished in football’ (New York Times, 1 July 1994, cited in Goldblatt, 2014: 160), and the style of the team certainly appeared to reflect that belief, providing a series of displays that were widely considered a betrayal of the national game. Disillusionment with the military regime’s use of football to further its political agenda, and a resulting sense that the long-established bond between the sport and the people had been broken, accompanied the disappointing results – and style of play – making football a far less appealing symbol of the nation and its ongoing issues. Consequently, the 1980s and 1990s saw very little football literature produced in Brazil, the notable exception being the 1986 anthology Onze em campo (Eleven on the Pitch), featuring short texts by 11 different authors. Publication of the anthology in the year following the return to civilian rule suggests a symbolic recuperation of the Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 national game as an interpretative practice, but any optimism that football would return to its previous position of pre-eminence after the years of military interference was to prove short- lived on the pitch as on the page. A review of the collection in Placar looked forward to the imminent publication of another collection (Duarte, 1986: 53), but it was not until 1998 that a second edition was published as Onze em campo e um banco de primeira (Eleven on the Pitch and a First- Class Bench, edited by Flávio Moreira da Costa), with just a handful of additional texts. 80 Writing the National Game in Brazil

The Stories of Sérgio Sant’Anna The author of the review in Placar singles out as one of the anthology’s highlights Sérgio Sant’Anna’s short story ‘Na boca do túnel’ (In the Mouth of the Tunnel). Sant’Anna has drawn more consistently on football than any other major Brazilian author since the 1970s, having published ﬁc- tional texts in which football features as a central element of the narrative in every decade since then, notably with the short stories ‘No último minuto’ (In the Last Minute, 1973), ‘No boca do túnel’ (1982), ‘As cartas não mentem jamais’ (The Cards Never Lie, 1994),2 ‘Invocações’ (Invoca- tions, 2003),3 and the novel Páginas sem glória (Pages without Glory, 2012). The texts exemplify variations on the focus on the urban experience of daily life, as well as the narrative and formal experimentalism for which Sant’Anna is known, but have in common the way in which football serves as a means of mediating the relationship between the past and the present. In ‘No último minuto’, perhaps the most well known of his football stories, a goalkeeper relives the last minute of a match to decide the national championship in which a basic mistake results in the goal that deprives his team of the title. As the ball is crossed, he imagines himself diving on it to the applause of the crowd, but instead the ball slips under his body and squirms across the line in a ‘gol do frango’ (a goalkeeping howler) that transforms him from hero to villain in a fraction of a second. The narrative is constructed in six sections that show the action leading up to the goal from three perspectives that are framed as belonging to Canal 5, Canal 3 and Canal 8, the description by each television station followed by a slow- motion replay by videotape that exploits the new mode of experiencing reality that had been introduced to Brazilian television a year before the story was published. However, although the action is presented via three television channels that had their origins in São Paulo, Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro respectively, the narrative and outcome are the same in each case, hinting at the nationwide uniformity of the media during the period of the military regime, which silenced dissenting discourses through censorship of printed and electronic media alike.4 At the same time, the use of a series of football clichés to describe the action of the game suggests that the language used to discuss football Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 has become mundane, incapable of expressing any more transcendent meaning. Precisely by drawing attention to the consensus around football’s discourse and the uniformity of mediatised perspectives in relation to the game at the time of the military dictatorship, Sant’Anna challenges such features and encourages an alternative reading. What the television replays fail to show is the passage of play that led to the goal, in which the forwards of the unnamed goalkeeper’s team failed to score a winning goal, a midﬁeld player mis-controlled the ball and gave it away to the opponents, while two defenders assumed that a subsequent long pass Writing the National Game in Brazil 81

would go out of play and made little effort to close down the winger whose hopeful cross won the match. The outcome of the television’s repeated slow- motion replays is to attribute the goal, and thus the defeat, to an individual error rather than as a result of collective responsibility, highlighting the fracturing of social cohesion under the military dictatorship and the role of television in the normalisation of capitalism and a focus on the individual. Towards the end of the story, Sant’Anna provides a glimpse of the impact that the homogenous media discourse of the era has on people when the goalkeeper covers his face with his hands as he sits at home watching a replay of himself covering his face with his hands when the ball has crept into the goal: actions become imitations of actions, behaviours conform to mediatised expectations. While watching the replays of the goal at home on television, the goalkeeper considers the other possible courses of action he could have taken, but is unable to escape a past that is constantly played back to him, both on screen and in his mind. The goalkeeper’s unique status on the pitch has resulted in numerous depictions of the position as marking a difference, and the sense of isolation and culpability felt by the protagonist here strongly echoes the situation of goalkeeper Barbosa in the aftermath of the 1950 World Cup. Sant’Anna focuses, however, not on the inevitability of a future based on this single error, but on the broader existential issue of self- determination through one’s actions as the goalkeeper reflects on how quickly joy can become sadness: ‘Eu penso, também, como a vida se decide às vezes num centímetro de espaço ou numa fração de segundo’ (I think, too, how life can sometimes be decided in a centimetre of space or the fraction of a second, p. 75). Despite the influence of the mass media, Sant’Anna here encourages his readers to assume responsibility for their actions, past and future, reaf- firming ‘a sensação de poder modificar um destino já cumprido, fazer tudo diferente’ (the sensation of being able to change a destiny that has been fulfilled, to do everything differently, p. 75). In this regard, it may be significant that the apparently desperate attack that leads to defeat for the complacent goalkeeper’s team comes down the left wing and that the feeble cross that becomes a goal comes from the boot of Canhotinho, roughly translated as ‘little Leftie’. At a time when the military dictator- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 ship’s repression of the country’s left- wing opposition was at its most brutal, ‘No último minuto’ may be read as an inspiration not to give up on causes that appear to be lost, and to believe that such efforts can be rewarded with a victory that may appear unlikely. Through his emphasis on the emptiness of football discourse in Brazil by the mid-1970s and the uniformity of its representation to the public, Sant’Anna foregrounds the change in the sport’s relationship with the nation and provides a timely reminder that there are alternative voices able to challenge the hegemonic language of football and re- inscribe it with symbolic value. 82 Writing the National Game in Brazil

‘Na boca do túnel’, from the 1982 collection O concerto de João Gilberto no Rio de Janeiro (João Gilberto’s Concert in Rio de Janeiro), is narrated by an ageing manager who remains true to his principles throughout his career, but at the end of the story loses what may be his last job following a 7–1 defeat at the Maracanã, providing an eerie foreshadowing of the 2014 World Cup defeat to Germany. The text has several features in common with ‘No último minuto’, notably an interest in the language of football and a symbolic value as a means of political contestation, although here the latter aspect is developed more fully and more explicitly. A defining characteristic of the manager’s career has been ‘a tática dos pontos entrando em diagonal’ (the tactic of two wingers coming in diagonally), constructing an imaginary arrowhead, an attacking philosophy that has proved effective over the years, even bringing a consolation goal in the final heavy defeat with ten men against one of Rio’s big clubs. The politico-military metaphor is explored further when, during his time as a manager for an Arabian team, he gives a talk on his theory of two wingers to the nation’s Escola Superior de Guerra (Military Academy), describing them as ‘como guerrilheros se infiltrando nos flancos do inimigo’ (like guerrilla fighters penetrating the enemy’s flanks, p. 224). That his team won the local championship and a popular revolution swept to power by adopting his tactics highlights the political implications of the style of play and of its potential for the Brazil in which he now applies his ideology. In his discussion of Sócrates, star of Cor- inthians and the national team, he reflects on the player’s habit of discussing politics in his interviews and suggests that as a result, ‘Talvez algo de novo – para bem ou para mal – tenha começado a surgir no futebol brasileiro’ (perhaps something new – for better or for worse – has started to emerge in Brazilian football, p. 219). As has been well documented (Shirts, 1988; Bellos, 2002; Goldblatt, 2014), Sócrates and Corinthians played an active and highly visible role in promoting democracy as a subversive practice during the final years of the military regime. By choosing Sócrates as the symbol of Brazilian football’s new direction, while simultaneously reaffirm- ing the role of individual brilliance through dribbling and feinting, Sant’Anna ascribes football with a sense of transformative agency that lies well outside the confines of the military’s appropriation of the national game. Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Sérgio Rodrigues and the Search for the Grande Romance do Futebol Brasileiro Sant’Anna’s short story ‘Invocações’ and the novel Páginas sem glória, both published in the twenty-first century, draw on football to establish connections between the narrative present and the 1920s and 1950s respectively, periods that saw the consolidation of notions that had dominated the public imaginary around Brazilian football prior to the military’s intervention in the game. In these texts, football functions as a means of establishing bridges Writing the National Game in Brazil 83

to a Brazil that lies outside the period of the dictatorship, which is thus placed in parentheses rather than defining public perceptions of the sport and of the country’s history more widely. Publication of Páginas sem glória in 2012 can be viewed as part of a significant upsurge in the appearance of football literature in the years leading up to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, which had been formally declared as host in 2007. Several of these works represented anthologies of previously published short texts from various genres, but while poetry, short story and chronicle all have outstanding exponents in relation to football, as discussed throughout this chapter, the publication of a number of novels centred around the sport appeared to provide a response to the lack hitherto of a ‘grande romance do futebol brasileiro’ (great novel of Brazilian football). The novel that has received most of the incipient critical attention and public acclaim is Sérgio Rod- rigues’s O drible (The Dummy, 2013), winner of the 2014 Prêmio Portugal Telecom de Literatura for best novel and for book of the year. In this work, the imminent death of Murilo Filho, a renowned writer of football chronicles (note the obvious similarities to Mário Filho, who appears in the novel), leads to an exploration of figures from Brazil’s footballing past, and by extension major social and political developments, thus echoing the emphasis evident in the work of Sant’Anna. The novel is narrated from the perspective of the dying man’s son, who receives an education in the history of Brazilian football alongside the reader as his father seeks to make sense of his life, and of Brazil, through constant references and metaphors that are based in the national game from the 1920s through to the 1970s, when the father had published a series of football texts as part of the military government’s education programme. By choosing to give the novel the title of O drible, Rodrigues flags from the outset the contested symbolic value of football in Brazil: the term retains a close linguistic connection to the English origins of the game, but has undergone a shift in meaning to express a ‘dummy’, while at the same time it encapsulates one of the fundamental characteristics of what Passo- lini described as the ‘poetic football’ played by Brazil in the 1970 World Cup. Wisnik takes this distinction between the linear predictability of ‘futebol de prosa’ and the non-linear unpredictability of ‘futebol de poesia’ as the starting point for his study (2008: 13–14), and describes at the heart Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 of this aesthetic:

the dummy as feint, negation, suggestion of a path that is not taken and that immediately explores the resulting effect of surprise, the promise of movement that is not given as it is given and is given as it is not given, an allusion to movements that are hinted at and omitted in a fraction of a second, so as to take advantage of the disturbance of the expectation aroused. (2008: 311) 84 Writing the National Game in Brazil

Damo and Oliven also emphasise the importance of the dribble as a distinguishing feature of Brazilian football, stressing connections with other Afro- Brazilian cultural practices, notably capoeira, to explain the avoidance of physical contact and deception through corporal practice (2009: 117). What both of these examples demonstrate is an assumption that a distinctively Brazilian style of play exists and can be identified, and that it derives from a fusion of cultural influences, thus continuing to draw directly on the concepts developed in Freyre’s article ‘Foot-ball mulato’, first published in 1938. The novel opens with Murilo Filho and his son Neto watching a video recording of Pelé’s most famous non-goal, in the 1970 World Cup semi- final against Uruguay: instead of controlling a long pass and taking it around the goalkeeper, he let the ball run in an extravagant dummy on the edge of the penalty area and then narrowly failed to convert the goal after gathering the ball at an acute angle. Describing Pelé’s act as ‘refinou o futebol à sua essência mais rarefeita’ (refining football to its most rarefied essence, p. 12), the narrator concurs with the consensual view of Pelé’s position as a symbol of Brazilian football and employs the episode as a framing device for the narrative structure as a whole. At the same time, while going on to state that through this act ‘O futebol virou ideia pura e de repente homens, bola, ninguém mais se comportava como seria de esperar que se comportasse’ (football became pure idea and suddenly men, ball, nobody behaved as they would be expected to behave, p. 12), the narrative enters a dialogue with studies of Brazilian football, notably that of Wisnik cited above, in which the significance of the dummy as an element of surprise is highlighted. Wisnik’s other key image in the depiction of Brazilian football is the ‘elipse’ (which in Portuguese refers both to ellipse and ellipsis), seeing in the term’s capacity to combine visual geometry and discursive rhetoric a means of discussing within one concept both the practice of football and of writing, expressing it as ‘a disturbance of linearity that produces a poetic effect’ (2008: 270). When, in the novel’s opening pages, the pass from Tostão that leads to Pelé’s moment of brilliance is delivered ‘numa linha diagonal de desenhista de Brasília, a mais leve cur- vatura’ (in a diagonal line drawn by one of Brasilia’s designers, the slight- est bend, p. 10), we have an image of the ellipse as the ball bends to allow Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 the unhinging of expectation. At the same time, the reference to the new capital simultaneously evokes Freyre’s aforementioned definition of Brazil’s mulatto football as adding curves to ‘European or North American techniques that are too angular for our taste: be they in play or in architecture’. The six pages of the novel’s opening chapter serve, then, to locate the work within the complementary traditions of Brazilian football and writing about football, both historical and fictional. And when, towards the end of this framing episode, the narrator describes Pelé’s dummy as ‘desses momentos em que tudo parece acontecer ao mesmo tempo, passado e Writing the National Game in Brazil 85

futuro achatados em presente’ (one of those moments in which everything seems to happen at the same time, past and future flattened into the present, p. 14), it is clear that football is being presented as a metaphor that enables an exploration of Brazil’s past and future through one of the country’s most powerful collective symbols. As well as engaging with the ongoing negotiation of meaning around Brazilian football, the pre- eminence of which was rudely debunked in the Mineirazo of the July 2014 World Cup semi- final at the feet of Germany, Rodrigues explicitly locates his novel as part of a national tradition of football literature. On his literary blog Todo prosa, Rodrigues recognises that O drible is nourished by a rich tradition of football writing (Sérgio Rodrigues, 17 May 2014): ‘Some of them are non- fiction, such as the monumental “Blacks in Brazilian Football” by Mário Filho. Others are pure workings of the imagination, such as the remarkable short story “In the Last Minute” by Sérgio Sant’Anna’. The connections with Filho’s work, which has stood alongside Freyre’s articles as a foundational text in the construction of Brazilian football as an Afro- Brazilian practice, permeate the novel throughout, while the use of a video to watch back the key moment of a match appears to owe its inspiration to Sant’Anna’s story, discussed above. In addition, the conversations between father and son revolve at different times around Passolini’s notions of ‘futebol-poesia’ and ‘futebol- prosa’ that underpin Wisnik’s work; Coelho Neto’s views on football in the 1920s; Anna Amélia de Queiroz’s poem ‘O Salto’, which is partially reproduced; and the story of Manteiga’s arrival at América FC in the 1920s that replicates the plot of Coutinho’s ‘Navio negreiro’, all discussed elsewhere in this study. The intertextual reference that permeates O drible most deeply, however, is Ricardo Leite’s Martim Cererê: O Brasil dos meninos, dos poetas e dos heróis (Martim Cererê: the Brazil of Little Boys, Poets and Heroes), discussed in the previous chapter. The protagonist’s father, Murilo Filho, has withdrawn to the jungle in his attempts to make sense of Brazil’s history in a move that recalls the São Paulo modernists of the 1920s, and has taken as his lover the beautiful indigenous woman Uiara, who shares her name and physical description with the central female character in Martim Cererê. When we learn that she is married to the black Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 labourer Josué, the coming together of indigenous, white and black that gives rise to modern Brazil in Ricardo Leite’s 1928 work is complete. Murilo Filho, for his part, reworks the foundational fiction of Martim Cererê in his final text, which seeks to explain Brazilian history and society through the story of Peralvo, an extraordinarily gifted mulatto footballer whose supernatural powers enabled him to foretell events on the pitch. However, his career was cut short by violent fans and he was killed by the military during the dictatorship, his death coinciding with the country’s triumph in the 1970 World Cup final in another condemnation of the 86 Writing the National Game in Brazil

military’s exploitation of the game. The manuscript that Murilo Filho gives to his son constitutes in many ways an updating of Mário Filho’s O negro no foot-ball brasileiro as an exploration of Brazil through football, especially its black players, but Neto repeatedly rejects his father’s attempts to use football as a metaphor for wider social issues or as a means of producing a unifying national symbol. As a member of the first generation of Brazilians to grow up in front of the television, Neto sees his father’s attempts to rewrite the ‘foundational myth’ of Martim Cererê as outdated. Neto is not a football fan and instead draws on US film characters and British music as his cultural references: he thinks that while his father must see Iracema (the eponymous indigenous heroine of José de Alencar’s 1865 novel) when he looks at Uiara, he sees Pocahontas (p. 153). In the novel’s final pages it emerges that it is not Murilo Filho but Neto who is out of touch: his final realisation that he is the result of an affair between Peralvo and the woman who was at the time the wife of Murilo expresses his igno- rance at his origins and the hypocrisy of his attitudes in his relationships with a series of darker, lower-class women. The novel closes as he meets the son that one of these women has borne him and sees in the boy that he refused to accept as his own the striking physical characteristics that had defined Peralvo, suggesting that the turbulent convergence of issues around race, gender relations and football continues to define the nature of the country into the twenty-first century. Brazil cannot escape the significance of the country’s past greatness in football and the meanings to which that gave rise, but must continue to negotiate this important factor in the nation’s history alongside other cultural inputs. In doing precisely this, O drible is a work that engages with – and to some degree demythifies – texts that had previously been key to the signification of football in Brazil, and contributes to that process of reconsidering the relationship between the national sport, history and the written word.

The 2014 World Cup and the Poetics of Disillusionment Among the many authors who produced literary texts around the World Cup were a signiﬁcant number of poets, many of whom used their work to Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 express a predominantly negative attitude towards the hosting of the event and, subsequently, in relation to Brazil’s performance on the pitch. Out- standing among these is Augusto de Campos, whose 2014 reworking of his ‘Brazilian Football’, originally published in 1964, offers what he terms ‘a de- homage to the military coup of 1964’ (Freitas, 2015). A leading expo- nent of concrete poetry since the 1950s, de Campos plays on the similarities between ‘goal’ and ‘gaol’ to juxtapose Brazil’s World Cup triumphs in 1958 and 1962 with the coup of 1964 and highlight the problematic celebration of football within the nation exactly 50 years later. The visual effect Writing the National Game in Brazil 87

of the poem is similarly striking: when turned through 90 degrees, the title and three verses of the poem assume the form of bars on a prison cell.5 Another renowned poet to have drawn on football around the time of the World Cup is Pedro José Ferreira da Silva, better known as Glauco Mattoso in reference to the glaucoma that he suffered from childhood and which left him blind from 1995. A polemic figure who explores topics such as bisexualism, sado-masochism and podolatry, Mattoso’s interest in sexuality and feet has found a poetic outlet in numerous poems that explore aspects of football in Brazil through a satirical and critical tone. He has shown a particular interest in the violence that accompanies the game on and off the pitch, and this aspect features in many of the football poems to be found among those produced between 1999 and 2004 in the project ‘1,100 Sonnets in Five Years’. Others are critical of the influence of football agents (‘Da Porcentagem’, Sonnet 844, 2003), the reductive exclusivity of brasilidade around football, beaches and samba (‘Brasileiro’, Sonnet 27, 1999a), or the machismo of football that precludes the expression of alternative forms of sexuality, such as his foot fetishism or sado- masochism (notably ‘Futebolístico’, Sonnet 50, 1999b). Mattoso continued to produce sonnets following completion of this project, and has to date written well over 4,000, making him the most prolific producer of sonnets anywhere, and he has continued to find in football a source of inspiration for the exploration of violence and sexuality, as well as the ongoing bitter rivalry between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (‘Espírito Esportivo’, Sonnet 4177, c.2011). The emphasis on violence and the divisive nature of fandom strongly recall the denunciation of football by Lima Barreto in the early 1920s, and are exemplified in Glauco Mattoso’s ‘Soneto para o Jogo Bruto’ (Sonnet for the Brutal Game), published in one of the anthologies of football texts that was published ahead of the World Cup (de Gabriel, 2010). The poem focuses from the opening line on the figure of a ‘zagueiro violento’ (violent defender) who throughout the opening quatrains pushes, punches and kicks the attacker he is marking to ensure that the score remains 0–0. His physical domination of the centre forward continues in the final six verses, but is simultaneously challenged by the author’s portrayal of their encounter as a sado- masochistic one that gives free rein to podolatry: the defender puts his foot in the attacker’s face and keeps him Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 in check as if with a leather strap, finally raising his defiant sole high in the air. The violence of the action and the futility implicit in the lack of goals echo Torelly’s 1916 ‘Match de Football’ as well as Barreto’s texts, suggesting a high degree of continuity across a century of football literature in Brazil, but at the same time Mattoso’s indulgence of transgressive sexuality through the national game highlights the sport’s ability to explore new meanings and offer innovative avenues of interpretative practice. Alongside the mini- boom of football texts that appeared in the years preceding the World Cup as publishing houses sought to capitalise on the 88 Writing the National Game in Brazil

renewed prominence of football as a public discourse, widespread access to the internet and social media opened up creative possibilities to sectors of the population that extend far beyond the traditional literary elite. This scope for the production of football literature outside the publishing industry was evident around the 2014 World Cup as a range of new voices wrote poetry that appeared on blogs and Facebook pages, drawing perhaps on the extensive use of social media as the focus for agency during the previous year’s protests (the so- called Vinegar Revolution) around the Confederations Cup. Among the many poems published online that reflected on the Brazilian team’s performance on the pitch during the course of the World Cup itself, several were published online by the self- styled Barão de Pindaré Jr, a pseudonym of poet Antonio Miranda that pays homage to Apparício Fernando de Brinkerhoff Torelly, the Barão de Itararé whose poem ‘Match de football’ was discussed in the preceding chapter. In ‘Seleção (prognostico de final feliz)’ (National Team (Prediction of a Happy Ending)), posted before the start of the tournament, he mocked Felipão’s inability to settle on his best team and marked the manager as being characterised by a ‘Pragmatismo e realismo’ (pragmatism and realism) that echo the successful – but unloved – team of the 1994 World Cup. In the end, he imagines that he will play two different teams in the first and second halves as the best way to unsettle the opposition and guar- antee that the team secures its sixth World Cup in the ‘Hexa’. After reflecting in ‘Isto não é futebol’ (This Is Not Football) on Colombian midfielder Zúñiga’s foul on Neymar in the quarter-final, which marked the end of the tournament for Brazil’s star forward, the poet revisits the fantasy of the ‘Hexa’ after the semi- final against Germany in ‘Hexagero, afinal’ (I Hexag- gerate, Finally). Here, the Barão de Pindaré Jr evokes the satirical tone of his namesake’s treatment of football to claim that, despite the ‘vergonha, vertigem, voragem’ (shame, vertigo, vortex) of the game, in losing by six goals the Brazilian team has improbably achieved the ‘Hexa’ after all.

No Ultimo Minuto: Concluding Thoughts Following the emergence of a significant corpus of football literature in the 1920s, discussed in the previous chapter, the increasingly dictatorial regime Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 of President Vargas embraced football through the 1930s as part of its nationalist and populist project, absorbing modernist writers and artists and encouraging them to develop a national culture within the framework of his Estado Novo. Despite opposition from influential figures from Rio’s cultural elites, such as Coelho Neto, Brazilian football was formally professionalised in the 1933–34 season, by which time it attracted mass audiences. Radio had become established as the principal means of experiencing football for Brazilians, following the first live match commentary in São Paulo in 1931 (Goldblatt, 2014: 46), and in the same year, the first Writing the National Game in Brazil 89

Brazilian football- themed feature film (Arruda’s Campeão de futebol) was released in São Paulo. Rodrigues engages with such issues in O drible through a discussion between Murilo Filho and his son Neto, in which the former explains what he sees as the central importance of radio commentators from the 1930s in developing a series of public expectations around a style of play that is often a fantasy. This was significant in that the written word, notably the short stories and crónicas through which football had been discussed in the press prior to the 1930s, lost its monopoly as the means by which football would be interpreted and given meaning in relation to broader social issues and intellectual trends. As a result, the production of Brazilian football literature during the 1930s was negligible, although the country’s performance in the 1938 World Cup – enthusiasti- cally acclaimed by Vargas – led to Gilka Machado’s fine poem ‘Aos heróis do futebol brasileiro’ (1938), discussed in Chapter 9, and the country’s first football novels, published in 1940 and 1941 respectively. This process of constructing literary texts on the basis of football, at the same time as generating a dominant narrative that owed as much to fantasy as to fact, can be considered to represent what we might term the fictionalisation of football. Despite the landmark publication of two novels that featured football, the football landscape of the 1940s would be dominated by Mário Filho’s O negro no foot-ball brasileiro (1947), prefaced by Gilberto Freyre, whose essays on the Brazilian team’s performances at the 1938 World Cup proved decisive in reconfiguring the national sport (and the nation more widely) as being defined by its fundamentally mulatto character. The use of the seleção as a powerful symbol of national unity, and a highly visible expression of notions of racial democracy, held sway through the 1950s and 1960s, bolstered by consecutive World Cup triumphs in 1958 and 1962 that redeemed the Maracanaço of 1950, a manifestation of another dimension of the fictionalisation of football. The late 1950s and 1960s saw an upturn in the production of Brazilian football literature, especially in poetry, where associations with the blossoming music scene were nowhere more evident than in the case of Vinícius de Moraes, whose celebratory sonnet ‘O anjo das pernas tortas’ (included in Para viver um grande amor, 1962) remains an outstanding example of the creative synergies of music Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 and poetry. By contrast, short stories, novels and plays remained almost invisible as the numerous crónicas of Nelson Rodrigues, Mário Filho, Armando Nogueira and others maintained their hegemony as the preferred form of football narrative through to the 1970s at least. Rodrigues suggests that the manner in which the crónica occupied a space between journalism and creative writing, embellishing the events of matches and the lives of players to produce a semi- fictional format, rendered obsolete the need for a literary imagining of football. Moreover, the nature of football as a series of closed events, in which outcomes, events and details have 90 Writing the National Game in Brazil

already been played out and are widely known, means that writers of fiction may be discouraged from seeking to infuse representations of the game with drama, tragedy or comedy (Sérgio Rodrigues, 17 May 2014). The well-established patterns around football writing were disturbed in the 1970s as the military government that ruled the country following a coup in 1964 had become a repressive dictatorship by the time of the 1970 World Cup victory in Mexico and sought to court public support through an appropriation of the national game. While a handful of influential poets continued to explore the creative possibilities of football and exploit the form’s greater scope for allusion and interpretation, notably in the work of Carlos Drummond de Andrade and João Cabral de Melo Neto, the 1970s constituted something of a void in relation to football narratives short or long. After constituting the focal point of considerable consensus during the previous three decades, football in Brazil during the 1970s saw a marked distancing between writers and intellectuals on the one hand and the state and its institutions on the other. As André Capraro notes, those who did continue to write about football or afford it symbolic value within the framework of the military government’s control of the game, such as Nelson Rodrigues, were classed as reactionaries (Moser, 2013). As the military’s grip on power weakened into the 1980s, a reappropriation of football took place as writers turned again to the sport as a means of exploring the country’s past and present, although the publication of Coutinho’s short story collection in Cuba in 1980 is indicative of the limitations inherent to this process, at least until the return to democracy in 1985. Since this time, the situation prior to 1970 has essentially been reinstated as a number of authors have produced football literature in poetry and short fiction, most notably Sergio Sant’Anna and Glauco Mattosa, although the hegemonic narrative established by Freyre and Filho of football as a privileged arena for the witnessing of racial democracy appears to have been debunked, with recent emphasis on the exploration of more personal subjectivities. In the light of such consideration, Rodrigues’s O drible is particularly interesting in that it fuses the search for what might be termed a national narrative through football with a highly personal search for origins and meaning, while explicitly (and implicitly) referencing a series of key texts in the nation’s historical and ongoing relationship with football. Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 O drible is part of a major upturn in the number of football texts – literary and non- literary – published in Brazil since the turn of the millennium, much of which can undoubtedly be attributed to the announcement in 2007 that Brazil would host the 2014 World Cup. While previous ebbs and flows in the amount of football literature produced in the country may primarily be explained in terms of political and socio-cultural phenomena, the driving force behind the most recent boom appears to have been overwhelmingly commercial, as the publishing industry has seized an opportunity to benefit from the uniquely high-profile event. This is not to say, Writing the National Game in Brazil 91

however, that the World Cup has not also enjoyed traction among literary and intellectual circles: the Academia Brasileira das Letras held a seminar entitled ‘Brasil brasis: Literatura e futebol’ on 8 April 2010 to honour Armando Nogueira; Rio de Janeiro’s Cultural Centre held a series of events during March 2014 in which writers discussed the relationship between football and literature; and in May 2014 São Paulo’s Football Museum hosted a major academic conference on football studies. Irrespective of the achievements of the Brazilian team in the 2014 World Cup, and of the considerable controversy in the build- up to the tournament, it is clear that football has again returned to a central position in the nation’s social and political discourses in a manner that had not been seen since before the military dictatorship that ended in 1985. What has changed, however, is that there is now a far greater plurality of voices around the meanings that are attributed to the sport, and that while Brazil’s tradition of footballing excellence continues to inform current debates, alternative readings of the game are also evident. Gonzalez and Treece noted at the end of the twentieth century that ‘In Brazil, perhaps more than anywhere else in Latin America, poetry lies at the heart of the debates and practices that have shaped the country’s cultural history this century’ (1992: 65), a view that is readily applicable to the key national symbol of football. Into the twenty- ﬁrst century, the rapid expansion of the internet and the widespread use of social media and blogs have opened such interpretative practices to a wider range of social actors, whose sense of self and daily experiences may connect more closely to the sport than was the case for some members of traditional literary elites. Poetry looks set to retain its position as an important medium for the negotiation of meanings around football in the country, but the wave of publications ahead of the World Cup and recently created opportunities for online publishing and for globalised interactions indicate that football literature in Brazil could now be entering its most dynamic and heterogeneous phase. On the evidence of the recent upsurge in both the production of football literature and its critical reception, the sport’s depiction as a unifying practice that had hitherto been primarily determined by elites in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo looks set to enter into an increasingly dialectic relationship with previously marginal regions of the Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 country and sectors of society as they assert their own readings – and writings – of the national game.

Note 1 The works by Carlos Drummond de Andrade cited here can be found in Reunião: 10 livros de poesía (1969). 2 Page numbers for these three stories refer to the 1997 editions included in Contos e novelas reunidos. 3 Page numbers for this story refer to O vôo da madrugada (2003). 92 Writing the National Game in Brazil

4 It is worth noting that this story was ﬁrst published in the collection Notas de Manfredo Rangel, repórter (Notes by Manfredo Rangel, Reporter), a title that draws attention from the outset to the role of the media and the relationship between events and their depiction. 5 I am grateful to Viviane Carvalho da Anunciação for drawing this text to my attention.

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Farias, Roberto. Pra frente Brasil (Produções cinematográficas R.F. Farias, Brazil, 1982). Firmino de Paula, Francisco. O Brasil, campeão do mundo (n.p., 1958). Foster, Kevin. Lost Worlds. Latin America and the Imagining of Empire (London / New York: Pluto Press, 2009). Freitas, Guilherme. ‘Aos 84 anos, Augusto de Campos lança livro inédito e fala sobre trajetória da poesia concreta’ O Globo 18 July 2015. Consulted online at http:// oglobo.globo.com/cultura/livros/aos-84-anos- augusto-de- campos-lanca- livro- inedito- fala-sobre- trajetoria-da- poesia-concreta-16807757 (accessed 20 September 2016). Freyre, Gilberto. Casa- grande & senzala (São Paulo: Global, 2003 [1933]). Freyre, Gilberto. Sobrados e mucambos (São Paulo: Global Editora: 2003 [1936]). Freyre, Gilberto. ‘Um team afro brasileiro’ Correio da Manhã 15 June 1938. Freyre, Gilberto. ‘Foot- ball mulato’ Diário de Pernambuco 17 June 1938. Freyre, Gilberto. Sociologia (Rio de Janeiro: Livraria José Olympio, 1945). Glauco Mattoso (Ferreira da Silva, Pedro José). ‘Brasileiro’, Sonnet 27 (1999a). Glauco Mattoso (Ferreira da Silva, Pedro José). ‘Futebolístico’, Sonnet 50 (1999b). Glauco Mattoso (Ferreira da Silva, Pedro José). ‘Da Porcentagem’, Sonnet 844 (2003). Glauco Mattoso (Ferreira da Silva, Pedro José). ‘Soneto para o Jogo Bruto’ in João Gabriel de Lima (ed.) Livro Bravo! – Literatura e futebol (São Paulo: Editora Abril, 2010). Glauco Mattoso (Ferreira da Silva, Pedro José). ‘Espírito Esportivo’, Sonnet 4177 (c.2011). Goldblatt, David. Futebol Nation: A Footballing History of Brazil (London: Penguin, 2014). Gonzalez, Mike and David Treece. The Gathering of Voices. The Twentieth- Century Poetry of Latin America (London: Verso, 1992). Lehmann, David. ‘Gilberto Freyre: The Reassessment Continues’ Latin American Research Review 43: 1 (2008), 208–18. Lins do Rego, José. Água-mãe (Rio de Janeiro: Livraria José Olympio, 1941). Machado, Gilka. Sublimação (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. Baptista de Souza, 1938). Maranhão, Tiago. ‘«Apolíneos e dionisíacos» – o papel do futebol no pensamento de Gilberto Freyre a respeito do «povo brasileiro»’ Análise Social XLI (2006), 435–50. Mazzoni, Thomas. Flô, o melhor goleiro do mundo (São Paulo: Edição do Autor, 1940). Melo Neto, João Cabral de. Museu de todo (1966–74) (Rio de Janeiro: Livraria José Olympio, 1975). Melo Neto, João Cabral de. Crimen na Calle Relator (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fron- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 teira, 1987). Miranda, Antonio (Barão de Pindaré Jr). ‘Hexagero, afinal’, published online at www.antoniomiranda.com.br/poesia_brasis/rio_de_janeiro/futebol_e_poesia. html (2014, accessed 24 June 2016). Miranda, Antonio (Barão de Pindaré Jr). ‘Isto não é futebol’, published online at www.antoniomiranda.com.br/poesia_brasis/rio_de_janeiro/futebol_e_poesia. html (2014, accessed 24 June 2016). Miranda, Antonio (Barão de Pindaré Jr). ‘Seleção (prognostico de final feliz)’, published online at www.antoniomiranda.com.br/poesia_brasis/rio_de_janeiro/ futebol_e_poesia.html (2014, accessed 24 June 2016). 94 Writing the National Game in Brazil

Moraes, Vinícius de. Para viver um grande amor (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2010 [1962]). Moser, Sandro. ‘Relação entre futebol e literatura vira tese de doutorado. Entre- vista com André Mendes Capraro’ www.gazetadopovo.com.br/cadernog/ conteudo.phtml?id=1419947 (26 October 2013; accessed 21 June 2016) National Truth Commission (Relatório da Comissão Nacional da Verdade), www. cnv.gov.br/ (10 December 2014; accessed 25 June 2016). Nogueira, Armando. Bola na rede (Rio de Janeiro: Livraria José Olympio, 1974). Pedroza, Milton. ‘Presencia del fútbol en la literatura brasileña’ Revista de Cultura Brasileña 46 (June 1978), 53–88. Rodrigues Filho, Mário. O negro no foot-ball brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro: Irmãos Pongetti Editores, 1947). Rodrigues, Nelson. A sombra das chuteiras inmortais (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1993). Rodrigues, Sérgio. O drible (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2013). Rodrigues, Sérgio. ‘Por que o futebol é pouco presente na literatura brasileira’ http://todoprosa.com.br/por-que-o- futebol-e- pouco-presente- na-literatura- brasileira/ (17 May 2014; accessed 21 June 2016). Sant’Anna, Sérgio. O concerto de João Gilberto no Rio de Janeiro (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2014 [1982]). Sant’Anna, Sérgio. Contos e novelas reunidos (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1997). Sant’Anna, Sérgio. O vôo da madrugada (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2003). Sant’Anna, Sérgio. Páginas sem glória (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2012). Shirts, Matthew. ‘Sócrates, Corinthians, and Questions of Democracy and Citizen- ship’ in Joseph Arbena (ed.) Sport and Society in Latin America: Diffusion, Depend- ency and the Rise of Mass Culture (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1988), 97–112. Skidmore, Thomas E. and Peter H. Smith. Modern Latin America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). Soares, Antonio J. ‘História e a invenção de tradições no futebol brasileiro’ in Ronaldo Helal, Antonio Soares and Hugo Lovisolo (eds) A invenção do país do futebol. Midia, raça e idolatria (Rio de Janeiro: MAUAD, 2001), 13–50. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in (eds) C. Nelson and L. Grossberg Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1988), 271–313. Wisnik, José Miguel. Veneno remédio. O futebol e o Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2008). Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Chapter 5 Playing Dirty (First Half ) Football, Politics and Writing in Chile

Context: The Historical Relationship between Football and Politics As elsewhere in Latin America, football arrived in Chile with the British, whose substantial involvement in maritime trade led to them settling primarily in the port city of Valparaíso. By the 1880s, British immigrants in Valparaíso had formed the country’s first football clubs, many of which were associated with banks and mining offices. English- speaking schools were another important institution in the expansion of football, and constituted one of the first points of entry to the sport for local elites, some of whom also came into contact with the sport during periods of education abroad (Elsey, 2011: 19). The Valparaíso Football Club (VFC) was the first to be founded in the country, by players of British descent who created a formal separation from the Valparaíso Cricket Club on 10 April 1892, with Santiago Wanderers founded in the city on 15 August that year. In contrast to VFC, the Wanderers team was made up of local Chileans and played to rules written in Spanish (other clubs used rules in English), factors which have led to it being known as ‘El Decano del fútbol chileno’, the oldest surviving Chilean club (Marín, 1995; Edmundson, 2009: 217–18). The first match with a team made up of players from Santiago (no club had yet been founded there) took place in August 1893, when Valparaíso Football Club accepted a challenge from a group of players who called themselves Santiago Club and travelled to play in Santiago’s Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Parque Cousiño, where the visitors won 7–2. The ongoing dominance of the British influence on the game was evident when the Football Associ- ation of Chile (named in English and by the end of 1895 affiliated to the English FA) was founded in Valparaíso on 19 June 1895. The Association was renamed Asociación de Football de Chile in the early twentieth century and became fully affiliated to FIFA in 1914, becoming a founder member of CONMEBOL (the South American confederation) in 1916 at the time of playing in the first South American Championship. Rivalries for control of the national game between the Asociación de Football de 96 Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile

Chile and the Santiago- based Federación de Football de Chile, founded in 1923, led to Chile being ejected by FIFA in 1925. In response to this, January 1926 saw an agreement between the leaders of the two organisations that resulted in their unification under the name Federación de Foot- ball de Chile (Los sports, 1926: 1). In her detailed study of the long- standing associations between football and politics in Chile, Elsey suggests that ‘Footballers commonly framed the rivalry between Valparaíso and Santiago as a competition between Anglo- Saxons and mestizos, respectively’ (2011: 23). The politics of language and identity were not entirely resolved, however, with the merger of the Asociación and the Federación, and continue to be evident in the names of professional clubs such as Everton, Rangers, Santiago Morning and Santiago Wanderers. Notwithstanding the ongoing role of football in mediating British and Chilean heritage in the country, the sport has also been the focal point through which international interest has centred on Chile, notably in relation to the World Cup in 1962 and 1974. The award of the 1962 World Cup finals to Chile was something of a surprise, given the country’s lack of both international football success and the infra- structure necessary to host such an event. Many expected Argentina to be awarded the 1962 tournament finals after East Germany withdrew its candidature, leaving only Chile and Argentina as candidates. However, the Chilean delegation at the 1956 FIFA Congress held in Lisbon, where the two remaining nations with aspirations to host the finals were to present their cases, played on the country’s tradition of amateur and barrio football, portraying a vision of Chilean sports as located among the popular classes. In the context of the Cold War of that period, and the need to secure votes from the Soviet bloc, the Chilean delegation made much of the strong connections between amateur football clubs and left- wing political participation, while also emphasising the country’s political and racial tolerance, as well as its democratic credentials and institutional stability. They may also have benefited from Argentina’s anti-US stance under Perón and made much of the anti-communist position of Peronists (Elsey, 2011: 194–206). Carlos Dittborn, the leader of the Chilean delegation, club director of Universidad Católica and then president of CON- MEBOL, closed his presentation with the words ‘As we have nothing, we Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 will do everything’, a response to the Argentinian delegation’s triumphant final statement ‘We can hold the World Cup tomorrow. We have everything’ (Aro Geraldes, 2010). In the end, Chile won the vote comfortably (32–10, with 14 abstentions) and Dittborn was celebrated as a national hero, a status apparent in one of the country’s earliest literary texts devoted entirely to football, Julio Barrenechea’s 1962 poem ‘Homenaje al Mundial’ (Homage to the World Cup). Unlike other countries of the Southern Cone, Chile did not develop a tradition of football literature in the early decades of the twentieth century. Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile 97

The lack of international football success and the absence of substantial immigration resulted in a scenario that was markedly different to that in Argentina and Uruguay, where football provided a discourse of success that bound together disparate elements of the nations under construction. The sport was, however, not entirely absent from Chilean literature before the 1962 World Cup, and Pablo Neruda, arguably Chile’s greatest writer and among the most widely read of all Latin American poets, included football as a point of reference in ‘Colección nocturna’, first published in the Mexican avant-garde journal Contemporáneos in 1931 and subsequently in Neruda’s 1933 volume Residencia en la tierra 1925–1931 (Residence on Earth 1925–1931). In this poem, football is part of a fantasy night- time dreamscape through which the poet passes on horseback, ‘sobre lechos de niñas desnudas, entre jugadores de foot-ball,/ del viento ceñido pasamos’ (over beds of naked girls, amid football players,/ we pass over the snug breeze). Jason Wilson suggests that the poem is an ‘attempt to interpret the primal sounds of the cosmos and “being” through sleep and dreaming’ (2008: 130), and it is striking that Neruda includes football as part of that essential human experience mediated through avant- garde poetics. Neruda’s poem ‘Los jugadores’ (The Players or The Gamblers), from the 1923 collection Crepusculario, with its depiction of European immigrants against a smoke- laden backdrop, is also widely hailed as one of the continent’s earliest football poems (Alcaide Hernandez, 2009; Brienza, n.d.; Sánchez Hernani, 2011). Such interpretations are, however, misguided, and apparently result from the ambiguity of the poem’s title rather than a reading of the poem itself, which refers to the men as ‘agachados, arruga- dos, decrépitos’ (bent over, wrinkled, decrepit) and to one of them as ‘de la mano en la frente’ (with his forehead resting on his hand). The poem is, in fact, about gambling, engaging with Dostoevsky’s short novel The Gambler (1867), translated into Spanish as El jugador, and presumably part of Neruda’s literary formation under the influence of Mistral, who encouraged him to read Russian novelists (Schidlowsky, 2008: 79). Neruda did also include football in the opening lines of ‘El Miedo’ (The Fear), from the collection Estravagario (1958), where it constitutes one of a range of sporting practices that the author is encouraged to undertake: ‘Todos Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 me piden que dé saltos,/ que tonifique y que futbolée,/ que corra, que nade y que vuele./ Muy bien’ (Everyone asks me to jump,/ to tone up and play football,/ to run, to swim and to fly./ Very well). This is consistent with the collection’s sense of playfulness and entertainment, but also constitutes part of a world of advice and criticism that he resolves to ignore, concluding that he will henceforth answer only to himself. Despite this scant presence of football in an extensive poetic production that often addressed social and political issues, Neruda was keenly aware of the symbolic value of football, and in particular football stadia, as 98 Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile

spaces in which to engage a mass public. After receiving the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature, Neruda resigned his post as Ambassador to France and returned to Chile in November 1972. On 5 December of that year he was the subject of a major event in the Estadio Nacional (National Stadium) in Santiago, organised by the Unidad Popular government and hosted by Vice- President General Carlos Prats (President Salvador Allende was abroad) to celebrate the poet’s life and work. An audience of 70,000 had gathered to celebrate Neruda’s return to Chile, marked by the poet reading his poem ‘Cuando de Chile’ (When from Chile) (Schidlowsky, 2008: 1348). This was not the first time that the poet had sought to draw on the established connections between politics and football in Chile: in September 1946 he had taken a central role in a public celebration held in the Estadio Nacional to mark the victory of radical candidate González Videla in that year’s presidential elections (Schidlowsky, 2008: 1458), and in July of the previous year he had read a poem to a crowd of some 100,000 people at Pacaembú Stadium in São Paulo, in an event that hon- oured the Brazilian Communist leader Luís Carlos Prestes, who had recently been released from prison (Neruda, 1950: 436). Although it is not, then, the first Chilean literary text to deal with football, ‘Homenaje al Mundial’ by Julio Barrenechea (1996 [1962]) marks a significant moment nationally in the convergence of football and literature, continuing the continental practice of celebratory World Cup poems started by Delgado in Uruguay in 1930, discussed in Chapter 2. Barrenechea was a politician and diplomat, serving as Chile’s ambassador to Colombia from 1945 to 1952, but by 1954 he had also published seven collections of poems, which earned him Chile’s Premio Nacional de Literatura in 1960. The award was not universally popular, dissenting voices typified by Juan Pablo Sosa’s highly critical article published in El Siglo, which concluded that ‘the prize won by Barrenechea is the triumph of a lesser poetry’ (Sosa, 1960). Despite such limitations, ‘Homenaje al Mundial’ has been included in various anthologies of football literature in more recent times, but the author’s open support for the Pinochet regime after 1973 has perhaps contributed to his oeuvre being largely lost from public view. Barrenechea’s poetry is usually intimate and often baroque in nature, his sole football poem standing out as an exception that is not included in anthologies of his Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 work or mentioned in his extensive biography (Barrenechea, 1997; Laborde, 2002). A review of the collection Un balón envenenado. Poesía y fútbol (A Poisoned Ball. Poetry and Football) (García Montero and García Sánchez, 2012) described ‘Homenaje al Mundial’ as ‘hung- over nineteenth-century rhetoric’, an assessment that calls to mind Delgado’s use of language in ‘Sol verdadero’ and ‘La nueva hazaña’. ‘Homenaje al Mundial’ is rigidly divided into five stanzas of four verses, each verse containing ten syllables with assonant pairs of rhymes on alternate verses. This decasyllabic quatrain, also known as the ‘heroic Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile 99

quatrain’, has been popular since the seventeenth century, but the bombas- tic and heavily patriotic tone, as well as the uniform structure, is very different to the rest of Barrenechea’s considerable poetic production, corresponding to a vision of this poem as fulfilling a public and ceremonial function. As well as the similarities with José María Delgado’s celebratory poems from 1924 and 1930, it is also worth noting that in 1942 Bar- renechea won an open competition to write the ‘Anthem of the Universidad de Chile’, part of a series of events to mark the centenary of the university’s founding. His winning ‘Himno’ also has five stanzas of four verses, with ten syllables per verse, and is accompanied by decidedly martial music by René Amengual. As a poem, then, ‘Homenaje al Mundial’ is unremarkable, but as a rousing public celebration of patriotic endeavour it engages with a quite different tradition, and its nineteenth- century features become recog- nisable in the prototype of such texts, the national anthem. The Chilean national anthem dates back to 1820, but the current version is the result of changes made to the music in 1828, while the lyrics were updated in 1847 to replace the strongly anti-Spanish sentiment of the original. Official practice is to sing only the fifth of the six verses, plus the chorus,1 resulting in a total of 21 verses that use the same decasyllablic pattern as both ‘Homenaje al Mundial’ and ‘Anthem of la Universidad de Chile’. In addition to these similarities of form, ‘Homenaje al Mundial’ shares various features with the national anthem in terms of content, drawing on imagery that foregrounds defence of the nation, militarism, natural geography and national colours. Associations between the football team and the nation are evident throughout the first and fourth stanzas, with repeated use of the first-person plural enhancing the sense of collective endeavour that mirrors the team’s efforts. By locating the Chilean ‘pueblo’ alongside the team’s goalkeeper to ‘para los tiros’ (stop the shots) in the fourth stanza, notions of national defence are to the fore, as they are in the chorus of the national anthem, while the presence of the ‘raza’ (race) on the pitch in verse five references long- standing debates around ‘la raza chilena’ (the Chilean race) as a means of creating a national type that drew on Hispanic and indigenous heritage distinct from the Anglo- Saxon origins of the founders of football in the country (Elsey, 2011: 22–7). It also, of course, resonates with the supposed racial tolerance that Dittborn had used Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 as part of his appeal to the FIFA Congress to secure the World Cup in 1956. References to Chile’s best- known natural resources, concentrated in the Andes (copper) and the north (saltpetre), as well as to the forests of the south and the sea, function as shorthand for the geographical boundaries of the nation, and for the national team as part of a natural order around which the nation is constructed. Mention of the red, white and blue – the colours of the national team and flag – echoes the national anthem, which also makes explicit mention of these same three colours, while the closing verse of the poem, in envisioning World Cup glory, reflects the promise of 100 Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile

‘futuro esplendor’ (future splendour) of verse five of the national anthem. The manner in which the final stanza invokes Dittborn by name as inspiration for the nation’s participation was taken up by the team, who wore black strips on their shirts under the national badge in his honour on their way to securing their best ever World Cup results,2 finishing third after losing to eventual winners Brazil in the semi- final. ‘Homenaje al Mundial’, then, foreshadowed the outstanding convergence – to that date – of football and nation, but was an exception as a piece of football literature, in terms both of Barrenechea’s poetic production and of Chile’s literary landscape of the time. As we shall see, however, this was soon to change.

The Estadio Nacional, Football and the Pinochet Dictatorship Just over a decade after Chile hosted the World Cup finals, and only nine months after the ‘gran acto de masas’ that had paid homage to Neruda, connections between the nation’s politics and football became infamously evident. The same stadium that had witnessed Chile’s greatest football moment and a celebration of Neruda’s life – and which had been the venue for the newly elected President Allende’s first address of the nation on 5 November 1970 – was used as a detention camp and torture centre in the aftermath of the coup that brought to power the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The assault on La Moneda, the presidential palace, on 11 Septem- ber 1973 resulted in the death of President Salvador Allende and the overthrow of the government that had been democratically elected in 1970. In the immediate aftermath of what has been described as ‘the most violent military coup in twentieth century South American history’ (Skidmore and Smith, 1989: 136), a brutal crackdown on supporters of the Allende government led to the arrest of tens of thousands of Chileans, many of whom were held in football stadia that became detention and torture centres. The Pinochet regime remained in power until 11 March 1990, when Patricio Aylwin was sworn in as president, having won elections in December 1989 that were made possible by a referendum in October 1988 that rejected Pinochet’s attempt to secure an additional eight years as president. Six weeks later, Aylwin created Chile’s Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 (National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation), which in February 1991 published the results of its extremely thorough investigations in what is commonly known as the Rettig Report.3 This report provided, among other things, details of deaths and disappearances as a result of political violence and human rights abuses. The Appendix records 2,298 victims in total, an additional 634 cases in which the commission was unable to reach a conclusion, and a further 988 cases for which there was insufficient information to proceed or the case was considered to lie outside the commission’s mandate (Informe Rettig, 1991: 1364). Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile 101

The role of the Estadio Nacional and the Estadio Chile as detention and torture centres in the aftermath of the coup is well known, and the Rettig Report describes them as ‘the most notorious detention centres in the capital, even in international terms’ (Informe Rettig, 1991: 97). Following the coup on 11 September, the Estadio Chile was used from the morning of 12 September as a detention centre, with systematic torture of detainees, including singer-songwriter and theatre director Víctor Jara, who was mur- dered after several days of beatings and torture.4 During 12–13 September the Estadio Nacional was prepared for use as a detention centre, and on 14 September the military carried out a ‘massive transfer of detained people from the Estadio Chile to the National Stadium’. Eight days later, the International Red Cross estimated that the Estadio held 7,000 detainees, of whom 200 to 300 were foreigners (Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación, 1991: 115–16). In stark contrast to the use of the Estadio Nacional as a space for the celebration of national culture and democratic politics, it became synonymous with the systematic and brutal abuse of human rights, with some 40,000 held there in total over the following months. The international dimension identified by the Rettig Report came about when the Estadio Nacional’s status as a detention and torture centre was highlighted by its supposed use as a venue for a football match that would determine Chile’s participation at the 1974 World Cup finals. On 26 Sep- tember 1973, a fortnight after the coup, Chile and the USSR played out a goalless draw in Moscow in the first leg of a home-and-away tie that would secure the final berth at the finals in West Germany the following summer. The return leg was due to take place on 21 November in the Estadio Nacional, but the Soviet Union protested to FIFA at the use of the Estadio as a detention centre and asked that the match be played in a third country. In response to the mounting international outcry, FIFA sent a high- level delegation, including FIFA Vice- President Abilio d’Almeida and General Secretary Helmuth Käser, to Chile to undertake an inspection of the facilities. After visiting the Estadio with a military escort on 24 October, when the numerous prisoners were kept out of sight of the pitch, the FIFA delegation concluded that ‘based on what [the delegates] saw and heard in Santiago, life is back to normal’ (Heimann, 1976: 23, cited in Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Campomar, 2014: 338). Faced with FIFA’s insistence that the game should go ahead in Chile, and the military regime’s refusal to move it to another stadium, the USSR team did not travel to Santiago in November. The game went ahead nonetheless, the Chilean team kicking off unopposed to score a goal that resulted in their qualification for the finals.5 Chile’s participation at the World Cup finals in June 1974 was not without controversy, as football continued the national tradition of constituting a means of political expression. Within Chile, still under the harsh- est period of the military dictatorship, opportunities for opposition of any 102 Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile

form were severely limited, but public declarations of support for the political left in the early 1970s by Carlos Caszely, the star striker of the national team, led to him being known as ‘el rojo de la Roja’ (the red of the Reds) ahead of the trip to West Germany. At the World Cup finals in Berlin, a series of protests against the military dictatorship were made by local Chile Solidarity Groups, including the unfurling of large banners in the Olympia- stadion proclaiming ‘Chile sí, Junta no’ (Chile yes, Junta no) during the West Germany–Chile match; a rally and march on the World Cup’s organisational headquarters; and a pitch invasion during the Chile–Australia match that saw a large Chilean flag spread across the centre circle emblazoned with the words ‘Chile Socialista’ (Kraushaar, 2008). The 1962 World Cup in Chile had served as a means of uniting the country and of instilling pride in the nation’s achievements on the international stage, but events around the country’s participation in the 1974 World Cup had quite the opposite effect: the second leg match against the USSR in November 1973 is widely referred to as ‘The Match of Shame’ and the finals in West Germany provided an international televisual showcase through which opponents of the regime could highlight the situation in Chile. Literature served a similar function and, in light of strict censorship in Chile, became an important means through which writers who had left the country in the aftermath of the coup gave expression to the convergence of football and politics. Juan Armando Epple’s poem ‘Noticias del fútbol’ (News of Football) first appeared in July 1977 in Literatura Chilena en el Exilio, a journal published originally in Los Angeles by Chilean exiles based in California, and draws on football’s ability to unite those who remain in Chile with those who have left.6 From the poem’s outset Epple locates himself outside Chile, but the connection to his native country is maintained by friends who continue to write to him from there. Despite his physical distance, the use of first- person plural verb forms marks an ongoing participation in collective actions that are expressed through the symbol of the team, with which he continues to identify. In addition to the notion of the team and shared effort as an expression of political ideology, football also provides a sense of a confrontation that is time-limited and subject to attacks and counter- attacks before the final outcome can be determined. A reference to the Copa Libertadores, South America’s leading Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 club competition, is a clear allusion to the loss of freedoms under the Pino- chet dictatorship, but also has particular connotations for a Chilean readership: in June 1973, Colo-Colo became the first Chilean team to reach the final of the Copa Libertadores, eventually losing to Argentina’s Independi- ente after a play- off. By aligning himself through implication with Colo- Colo, Epple adds a further dimension to the struggle against the military regime: Colo-Colo is renowned as being the people’s club (one of its nick- names is ‘El Popular’), and the club takes its name and emblem from the Mapuche chieftain who fought against the Spanish in the sixteenth century. Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile 103

In this sense the poem is particularly prophetic, for Colo- Colo did win the Copa Libertadores in 1991, the year after the return to democracy under President Aylwin. The final three lines of the poem, ‘En el Estadio Nacional, luego del gol de Ahumada/ nuestra hinchada gritaba/ venceremos’ (In the Estadio Nacional, after Ahumada’s goal/ our fans shouted/ we will overcome), constitute a recuperation of the Estadio Nacional from its use as a detention and torture centre, reinvesting it with its pre-coup use. Sergio Ahumada was a member of the Chilean national team during the 1970s, winning over 20 caps and scoring Chile’s only goal at the 1974 World Cup finals in a 1–1 draw with East Germany. The goal at the Estadio Nacional that Epple mentions could be the one scored in May 1973 against Peru in the World Cup qualifiers or his goal – also against Peru in World Cup qualifiers – in March 1977. However, attempting to resolve this definitively is an irrelevance that would seek to remove an ambiguity that is essential to Epple’s endeavour to challenge the manner in which its use as a torture centre has come to define the Estadio Nacional. The figure of Ahumada and his goals act as a temporal bridge that connects the present of the text with the pre- coup era and undercuts the appropriation of the Stadium by the regime. Similarly, by closing the poem with a victorious crowd chanting ‘venceremos’ (we will overcome) Epple connects back to the use of the Stadium as a venue for political events and speeches, echoing in particular the speech given there by newly appointed President Allende on 5 November 1970, which opened with the words ‘Dijo el pueblo: «Venceremos», y vencimos’ (The people said: ‘We shall overcome’ and we overcame). Football, then, enables Epple to depict a Chile in which the Pinochet coup and subsequent regime is not the factor that proves decisive in the fate of the nation. The team effort in the Estadio Nacional shows that the collective ideology of the political left continues to function in the country, even in the spaces most strongly associated with the brutality of the regime, while the chants of the crowd contest the current situation and envision a future beyond the confines of the dictatorship.

Antonio Skármeta and Soñé que la nieve ardía Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Skármeta, described as ‘perhaps the most representative writer of the post- Boom’ (Giardinelli, 1986: 2), exempliﬁes what Donald Shaw sees as one of the most important characteristics of the post-Boom novel, namely a shift away from a fundamentally negative vision of the human condition towards renewed interest in the social and political situation in the region. This is mediated by another characteristic feature identiﬁed by Shaw: an emphasis on youth and youth culture (Shaw, 1994: 8–11), evident in particular in his debut novel Soñé que la nieve ardía (I Dreamt the Snow Was Burning) (Skármeta, 1975a) through the prominence of football as a key 104 Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile

theme. Skármeta bemoaned the elitism of many of the authors of the Boom, whom he saw as writing ‘products for a sophisticated bourgeoisie’, and in an essay written in the year that this (his first) novel was published he stated that he sought to produce literature that ‘renounces certain effects and techniques in order to achieve the communicability of social content’ (Skármeta, 1975b: 754–5). Recourse to sport as a central element in this greater communicability was a feature of many of Skármeta’s stories published from the late 1960s, in which a range of sports – including football – were to the fore (Wood, forthcoming). The confirmation of Skármeta as an author of continental significance, evident in the publication of Tiro libre in Mexico City in 1973, coincided with his departure from Chile in the wake of the military coup. In the stories in this collection, social and political concerns come to outweigh metaphysical and existential preoccupations that were more readily found in his previous works, leading Mario Rodríguez to state that this work ‘represents Skármeta’s installation within history’ (1987: 176). The author, too, recognises the change of direction undertaken in this work, revealing that ‘what I did in this book was pick up my narrative tradition and subject that tradition to a social experience that was thus enriched’ (Ruff- inelli, 1979: 142). Despite the change of emphasis, sport remains one of the means by which Skármeta explores social relations and the position of the individual in relation to existential issues. Its continuing importance is evident not only in the title of the collection,7 which emphasises the liberating possibilities of sporting practice, but also in the name given to the central block of four stories ‘En el área chica’ (In the Box), the heightened tension implicit in the approach to the goal drawing attention to this section of the collection, seen by Shaw as constituting its core (1994: 64). In the context of this study, it is interesting to note that the epigraph to this section of the collection is taken from a speech by President Allende, delivered in Santiago on Labour Day, 1971, in which he states that ‘This is no simple game of hopscotch; what is in play here is the future of Chile’ (p. 91). Skármeta is clearly working within a social and political context in which the language of play and the symbolism of sport have been widely assimilated as part of an effort to achieve communication between the political leadership and the masses, and what he does is bring this dis- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 course into the literary field. Through this use as a device to structure the narrative, and through its use in the stories to be considered below, sport occupies as prominent a position here as in any of his previous works, while the increasingly significant presence of football prefigures its use as a core component of Soñé que la nieve ardía, which was already being written as the stories of Tiro libre appeared. Building on the political activism of Juan Carlos Osorio and the presence of football in the story ‘Balada para un gordo’, one of those featured in the ‘En el área chica’ section of Tiro libre, Soñé que la nieve ardía Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile 105

provides its author with a means to explore metaphysical and intellectual preoccupations, while the discourse of football offers a form of expression and symbolism that is entirely in keeping with contemporary literary trends of the continental post- Boom. Completed and published in exile, Soñé que la nieve ardía is a direct response to the US- supported military coup in Chile in 1973, an attempt to make sense of the country’s recent political landscape and offer a vision of resistance and hope in the face of the Pinochet regime. The novel centres on Arturo, a young footballer who travels to Santiago from his home in the south in order to secure a place in one of the capital’s top teams and to gain sexual experience. These themes of football and sexual relations, central to constructions of Chilean masculinity, dominate the novel, and the manner in which they interact with national politics is the area in which lies its greatest interest. Skármeta had previously used virginity and sport in conjunction in the 1969 short story ‘Basketball’, in which the protagonist’s lack of experience in sexual matters runs parallel to his writers’ block, but the shift from existential concerns to socio- political exploration triggered by the Unidad Popular government and the subsequent coup signifies a change to a focus on political rather than literary engagement. Shaw sees virginity as an effective symbol of Arturo’s lack of political commitment because: ‘It has associations of immaturity, ingenuousness and a certain lack of manliness. Similarly it carries with it the ideas of isolation, unfulfilment and lack of union with others’ (1994: 85). Such notions also apply to Arturo’s style of play, and his attitude to football and life more widely attest to a parallel lack of maturity and fulfilment. From the outset, Arturo is defined by others – and by himself – in terms of his sporting prowess, and while he is waiting on the platform for the train to Santiago, his grandfather’s words to a fellow traveller allude to the possible connection between the development of his football skills and his lack of experience in other areas: ‘Este es mi nieto del que le hablé antes, ¿se acuerda? Va con usted ahora. Es completamente virgen y juega al fútbol’ (This is the grandson I told you about, you remember? He’s going with you now. He is completely virgin and he plays football) (pp. 15–16). On being introduced to the fellow occupants of the pensión in Santiago where he is to stay, all of whom are highly active in left- wing politics, football apparently Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 compensates for his inability to express himself in similar terms:

el joven recogió la sonrisa que había ensayado y se agarró fuerte de la pelota como si fuera un poste, y al frente estaba la foto del presidente con sus gruesos carrillos y anteojos de profesor provinciano y el orgul- loso pecho de paloma.

(the young man took up the smile he had rehearsed and held the ball tightly, as if it were a post, and in front of him was the photo of the 106 Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile

President, with his thick cheeks and glasses of a provincial teacher and his proud pigeon chest.) (p. 36)

What emerges here, moreover, is the contrast between Arturo’s reliance on football as his source of strength and identification, and the equivalent support and inspiration the others find in the portrait of President Allende, symbol of commitment to the political cause. Shortly after this comes Arturo’s first opportunity to become politically active as the fellow pen- sionistas invite him to join them in collecting scrap metal for the foundries. Arturo refuses, claiming that he wants to practise football every day, even on Sundays, and that ‘además yo soy apolítico [. . .] es decir yo aquí, graficó, y la política allá’ (anyway I’m apolitical [. . .] in other words I’m here, he demonstrated, and politics is over there) (p. 44). He interprets the ensuing silence as awestruck appreciation of the clarity with which he has explained his position rather than incredulity: ‘como todos se ponen sus- pendidos piensa que hizo lesa a la defensa, que no estaba off-side sino habilitado, per- fec-ta- men-te- ha-bi- lita-do veamos la repetición en videotape’ (as everyone stayed still he thinks he’s fooled the defence, that he wasn’t offside but fine to play on, per-fect-ly- on-side let’s see the replay on videotape) (p. 44). Arturo’s recourse to a football discourse to account for the gap in perspectives highlights what he perceives as the division between sport and politics, but as the novel – and Chilean history – reveals, the two are far more closely related than he is able to appreciate. Arturo’s first chance to impress with his footballing excellence comes with a trial for a second division team, part of his plan to be ‘discovered’ by one of Santiago’s big teams and be able to set his own conditions and levels of reward, as understood in terms of public recognition and financial gain. At the trial, his exaggerated self-importance and simplistic understanding of the meaning of Chilean nationhood are symbolised as he enters the pitch wearing a Chilean national strip, a pretension that immediately antagonises the other members of the team. However, they are soon won over by his undoubted ability and the prospect of his skills forming part of their attack. Less enthusiastic is Susana, a new friend who had accompanied Arturo to the ground, and whom he introduces to the rest of the Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 team as his girlfriend. After scoring two goals at the trial, the second of which was a free kick he dedicated to her, he proposes that they go to a local hotel for sex ‘Como tú ya eres mi polola’ (As you’re my girlfriend now) (p. 53). When Susana disabuses him of his assumptions he grabs her breast, but the directness that serves him well on the pitch is not so effective in relationships, and Susana rejects his traditionally machista attitudes, depicted as outmoded in Allende’s Chile. His understanding of the national football scene is similarly unsophisticated, and he fails to appreciate the long-standing rivalries of Universidad de Chile and Universidad Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile 107

Católica, or the symbolic value of Colo-Colo, all of which highlight political and ethnic tensions in modern Chile to which he remains oblivious. Arturo sees football and politics as entirely separate worlds, but the cor- relation between them is forcefully expressed when Arturo explains his style of play to the coach at the trial:

Mire, yo juego funcional. Centrodelantero adelantado. La cuestión es que yo suelto la pelota por el centro desde atrás y salgo disparado hasta el tope. Es decir, yo tiro la pelota a cualquiera de los wings y el primero que llegue ahí la agarra y me la chutea chanchita tratando de achuntarle más o menos a la entrada del area, y si es cañonazo y por bajo mejor porque a veces en las defensas ponen pailones que te ganan la cabezota o que te meten por detrás cuando la estái sacando de pecho, y ésa es toda la cuestión, y yo ahí me las arreglo solito.

(Look, I play a functional game. Advanced centre forward. The point is that I pass the ball through the middle from further back and sprint forwards. In other words, I kick the ball to either of the wings and the ﬁrst one to reach takes it on and crosses it straight over, trying to hit it more or less to the edge of the box, and if it’s hard and low, all the better because sometimes they put big guys in defence who beat you in the air or push you in the back when you’re bringing it down on your chest, and that’s all there is to it, and from there I’ll sort things out myself.) (p. 48)

His focus on the functional ties in with his approach to relationships and is in marked contrast to the idealism of the other characters in the work. The same is true of his extreme individualism, whereby others are there merely to serve his personal goals, an attitude that is completely opposed to that of those such as el Gordo and el Negro, who undertake collective and voluntary work as an integral expression of their political and social solidarity. The presence of football, and in particular Arturo’s style of play, is used to express the political ideologies in conﬂict in contemporary Chile, with capitalism based on the individual versus collective Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 and voluntary solidarity. Football reveals itself here to be an original metaphor, allowing Skármeta to make associations between football style and political ideology, a process to which Shaw also alludes when he notes that ‘in the context of commercialised, professional soccer [. . .] collective team spirit has been eroded by the star system and the commodity value of single outstanding players’ (1994: 82). On the way home from a subsequent football training session at the factory, where Arturo has been persuaded to coach the team, el Gordo is attacked and severely beaten by a para-military gang as punishment for his 108 Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile

union activism, while Arturo ﬁnds himself unable to act in any way other than to turn and run. However, he is not untouched by the incident, and as Torres Caballero suggests, ‘the barometer of Arturo’s solidarity, of his esprit de corps, is his level of performance on the football pitch’ (1991: 415). This coming together of politics and football manifests itself in his poor play in a match the following day, which culminates in him being sent off after he punches the referee, who had failed to award a penalty for a clear foul on Arturo. The incident echoes an earlier discussion with el Gordo in which he questions Arturo’s refusal to become involved with the words ‘¿Y que todo siga igual? ¿La misma injusticia?’ (So everything just carries on the same? The same injustice?) (p. 59). On that occasion Arturo had simply replied ‘¿Acaso yo tengo la culpa?’ (Is that my fault?), but here his action in the face of this personal injustice gives vent to his frustration at not taking action to help his friend to avoid the previous night’s beating at the hands of political thugs. The decline of Arturo’s footballing star, then, is directly related to his awakening political consciousness, and the political symbolism inherent in the tension between the individual’s actions and the team’s performance on the pitch carries clear political overtones: the brilliance of his individualism may have been dazzling in the short term, but it cannot form the basis of long-term success, which, it is implied, must be founded on communal action. It was not only the supporters of the Unidad Popular, such as Skármeta and the characters of the novel, who sought to appropriate sport for their political ends, of course, and the use of the Estadio Nacional as a detention and torture centre features in the novel’s ﬁnal chapter, an epilogue that narrates events of the coup to an author who is to write the story we have read. It is here that the notion of the world upside down, evident in the novel’s title, appears with force:

Si de mí quiere sacarme algo, compañero, diga que nací de nuevo, que nací al revés como un muerto, que en vez de venir del vientre de mi madre salí de entre medio de esta sombra humillante, que así salí del Estadio, míreme los dedos estos y anóteme estas costillas.

(If you want to take something from me, comrade, say that I was born Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 again, that I was born backwards like a corpse, that instead of coming from my mother’s womb I came from the midst of that shameful shadow, that I came out of the Stadium that way, look at my ﬁngers and take note of these ribs of mine.) (p. 206)

The locus of national triumphs and national pride has been converted into a place of suffering and shame, and the lines of the Chilean national anthem, played at the start of each match featuring the national team, are changed Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile 109

from ‘la copia feliz del Edén’ (the happy replica of Eden) to ‘la copia feliz de la muerte’ (the happy replica of death) (p. 208), highlighting the transformation of the Stadium from symbol of utopian joy to symbol of political violence. This symbolic power of the Estadio Nacional is all the more potent because victors and vanquished alike are fully aware of the manner in which it is being contested, as is apparent from the words of the soldiers as they round up their opponents: ‘con las manos arriba que vamos preso me dijo uno y que otro cliente para el Estadio, que a ver si ahora en el Estadio se juegan una pichanguita antes que nosotros los goleemos a balazos’ (hands up, we’re taking you prisoner, one of them said to me, another customer for the Stadium, let’s see if now in the Stadium you have a kickabout before we score a hatful with our bullets) (p. 216). As in the microcosm of Arturo’s personal development, football and its venues are again at the heart of the struggle between differing political ideologies that seek to determine the meaning of the nation. The accuracy of the historical referents throughout the novel indicates that sport may be used for political purposes in literature as in life, but the implication is that its appropriation by the military and the elite runs contrary to the way things should be, and that football in particular is a vehicle of expression whose meaning is to be determined by the Chilean people rather than the generals of the dictatorship. For Skármeta, then, the choice of sport as a key theme in his exploration of conflicting political ideologies and emotional engagement is highly effective and appropriate, in tune with continental literary trends and local reality alike. The use of forms of popular and mass culture to explore social issues places the work firmly in the line of the post- Boom novel, while the popularity of football in Chile and the political connotations of leading teams and stadia make this an obvious point of reference through which to examine the tensions of Chilean society in the 1970s. However, the use of football in this novel also highlights some of the contradictions that underlie its incorporation as a literary theme: the fact that Arturo leaves behind his footballing aspirations at the end of the novel suggests that political activism and the practice of football are incompatible, and that football may be an opium of the people that distracts them from more significant forms of activity. Yet Skármeta takes football as a symbol to show precisely the value of political engagement, while at the same time Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 demonstrating that its value as a shared experience renders it an important means of establishing political and cultural allegiances, and of expressing values. The contributions that Chilean music, cinema and literature made to national debates during this period have been widely recognised, but the role of football has been largely ignored by scholars. Soñé que la nieve ardía reveals how football, with its broad popular appeal and its unrivalled ability to create allegiances and rivalries, merits serious consideration alongside – or indeed before – these other forms in exploring the country’s recent political and socio- cultural history. 110 Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile

Hernán Rivera Letelier The return to democracy in 1990 did not mark an immediate upturn in the publication of football literature, but more recent years have seen a growing number of Chilean writers focusing on the sport (Bolaño, 2001; Labbé, 2014), as well as the appearance of works that study the position of football during the Pinochet era (González and Quezada, 2010; Elsey, 2011). Hernán Rivera Letelier, winner of Chile’s Premio Nacional del Consejo de Libro in 1994 and 1996, and awarded the prestigious Premio Alfaguara de Novela in 2010, has drawn on football as an important aspect of the working- class world he depicts in his fiction. His short story ‘Donde mueren los valientes’ (Where the Brave Die), from the 1999 collection of short stories of the same name, was published at the height of the controversy surrounding the arrest in London of Pinochet, and offers a telling example of how football can be inscribed with symbolic meanings, illustrating the manner in which the tables can be turned. General Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London on 16 October 1998 and detained until March 2000, when he was released on human- itarian grounds. Following an initial ruling by the High Court in London that Pinochet was immune from prosecution as a former head of state, in November 1998 the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords, the highest court in the UK, reversed the High Court ruling and determined he was not immune from prosecution. This decision tied in with – and perhaps contributed to – moves in Chile that saw five high-ranking military officers, including retired General Sergio Arellano (who was alleged to have led the ‘Caravana de la muerte’ death squads), charged in June 1999 with kidnap. A month later, Chile’s Supreme Court ruled out amnesties for the five charged, which led to further arrests of high- ranking officers involved in tortures and murders, as well as to talks between Chilean human rights lawyers and military officers in relation to the fate of the many disappeared persons from the Pinochet era. According to Angell and Pollack (2000: 357–78), Chile’s presidential elections of 1999–2000, which brought to power the country’s first socialist president since Allende, focused on the nation’s future and largely ignored Pinochet’s detention in London and the traumatic past Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 of which international media audiences had been reminded. While the political process may understandably have decided not to emphasise the issues surrounding Pinochet, the country’s judicial process continued to address them, and when he returned to Chile after being released from detention in London, the Court of Appeal in Santiago voted to strip him of immunity from prosecution. Pinochet appealed the ruling to the country’s Supreme Court, but in August 2000 it voted against allowing his appeal. ‘Donde mueren los valientes’ opens as follows: Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile 111

Y de pronto yo, el verdugo por excelencia, el ejecutor más despiadado de estos fusilamientos, el que no perdonaba a nadie, el capaz de rematar sin asco a su víctima en el suelo, el prócer indiscutido de estas encarnizadas batallas de suburbios, había pasado, de golpe y porrazo, de ejecutor a ejecutado.

(And suddenly I, the executioner par excellence, the most heartless shot in these ﬁring squads, the one that never pardoned anybody, the one capable of killing off with no remorse the victim on the ground, the undisputed leader in these bloody battles of the suburbs, had gone, in one fell swoop, from executioner to executed.) (p. 169)8

Use of such language continues for most of the story, which describes in detail the narrator’s replacement of a ‘compañero caído’ (fallen comrade) and the person before him as ‘un ejecutor’ (executioner), ‘un carnicero’ (butcher), ‘un mercenario’ (mercenary) and a ‘fusilero’ (marksman). It is only in the closing lines, when the shot comes, that it becomes apparent that the scenario is not a firing squad but a penalty kick, for which the protagonist has replaced his team’s injured goalkeeper. The degree to which the terminology of warfare can be applied to football is striking and recalls the origins of football in ritualised conflict, but in a Chilean context it inevitably calls to mind the manner in which military violence and executions became inextricably associated with football stadia during the 1970s. Published during Pinochet’s detention in London, ‘Donde mueren los valientes’ draws attention to how positions and situations can change dramatically and expresses the popular desire in Chile for justice, which was beginning to be addressed. The image of the victor being defeated in a rematch, at the heart of the story, is also applicable to the arrest of Pinochet 35 years after the multiple crimes of his coup, including the many committed in the Estadio Nacional, went unpunished. That the arrest should have taken place in London proved especially significant, as it allowed for the forging of symbolic connections between Chile and Britain that echo the British origins of football in Valparaíso and San- tiago. The particular circumstances around the publication of ‘Donde mueren los valientes’, then, mean that the story is able to represent a reappropriation Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 of the discourse of football while simultaneously marking both rupture and continuity: a rupture from the association between football and the Pinochet era, and a continuity with Britain in important national practices, be they football or the courts.

El Fantasista (2006) Rivera Letelier’s novel El Fantasista (The Fantasist) provides a re- examination of the Pinochet era and its impact on the daily lives of 112 Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile

working- class Chileans and their families in the remote communities of Chile’s northern desert, drawing substantially on the author’s first-hand experience of the isolated saltpetre (sodium nitrate) mines. Football rapidly emerges as the key means by which Coya Sur, where the novel is set, affirms itself via a long-standing rivalry with María Elena, headquarters for local operations, and when Coya Sur is earmarked for closure the arrival of El Fantasista provides an opportunity to end the rivalry with a historic victory. Expedito González is an itinerant street performer who juggles his football for audiences across Chile to scrape together a meagre living, his exquisite skills earning him the nickname that gives the work its title. From the outset it is clear that the protagonist is of indigenous appearance, and ‘con su cintillo araucano, que no se sacaba para nada, parecía un indio tallado en piedra caliza’ (with his Araucanian headband, which he never removed, he looked like an Indian sculpted from limestone) (p. 27). Such a description echoes the early twentieth- century discourses that depicted the indigenous as an extension of the landscape, thereby jus- tifying their position as founders of the modern nation. Indeed, later in the novel we learn that Coya Sur’s guards carry the names of ‘los tres máximos guerreros araucanos que cantaba la historia de Chile: Galvarino, Lautaro y Caupolicán’ (the three greatest Araucanian warriors in the history of Chile: Galvarino, Lautaro y Caupolicán) (p. 120), a passage that comes shortly after we are told that three players of the oficina Alianza team are called Aquiles, Odiseo and Hércules ‘tres de los más grandes héroes de la mitología universal’ (three of the greatest heroes of universal mythology). The implications here are two-fold: that everyday Chileans can be literary heroes, and that the Araucanians are being projected as the basis of Chile’s national foundational history, with El Fantasista’s death in the final game serving to secure victory and a communal narrative that draws on a discourse of victory. In the context of Chilean football, the image of an Araucanian headband inevitably calls to mind the logo of the Santiago-based Colo- Colo club, but El Fantasista was born and raised in Temuco and wears a Green Cross shirt to perform his juggling shows. The choice of Green Cross as the club to feature most prominently in the novel is significant: it was founded in Santiago in 1916 among the capital’s elites, but relocated to the Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 southern city of Temuco in 1965 to merge with Deportes Temuco as Green Cross Temuco. The team folded in 1985 but re-emerged later that year as Deportes Temuco, known by the nickname ‘Los araucanos’ in reference to Temuco’s status as capital of the Auracanía Region. The club conveniently symbolises a convergence of the capital and the provinces, of the elites and the indigenous, of new beginnings and national origins, allowing the author to span time and geographical space and thus present football as an inclusive practice that escapes the confines of Coya Sur and the temporal specificity of the novel, set during the Pinochet dictatorship. At the same Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile 113

time, El Fantasista’s journeys throughout the country bind together disparate geographies under the shared appreciation of footballing virtuosity that defies earthly preoccupations. The action of the novel’s opening chapter takes place in a setting that is generally indeterminate in its timing beyond being in the second half of the twentieth century, although for those with a detailed knowledge of Chilean football the mention of Francisco ‘Chamaco’ Valdés and Carlos Caszely in a photograph with El Fantasista narrows the timeframe down to a period between the late 1960s and mid- 1980s. Discussion of heated meetings by trades union activists includes a parenthetical clarification that these took place before the military coup (p. 26), thereby locating the action in the post- 1973 era, while subsequent references indicate that the dictatorship has been left behind and that the narrator has moved on to recount events in hindsight. There are, nonetheless, passages throughout the novel – with the exception of the final chapter – that describe at some length the impact of the Pinochet coup and subsequent regime, which made itself felt even in the middle of the desert in a remote mining camp: ‘Aunque no teníamos a los soldados patrul- lando las calles con sus metralletas, como sucedía en las ciudades grandes, sentíamos en cambio la sensación asfixiante de ser vigilados día y noche, como si estuviéramos viviendo en una cárcel abierta’ (Although we didn’t have soldiers patrolling the streets with machine guns, as happened in the big cities, we felt the suffocating sense of being watched day and night, as if we were living in an open prison) (p. 42). It is also made clear that this state of fear and paranoia was fairly low on the scale of what was suffered, compared with other mining areas, ‘donde se fusiló, se torturó y se hizo desaparecer gente’ (where people were shot, tortured and disappeared) (p. 42). The Rettig Report had published in 1991 its findings on the disappearances, torture and other human rights abuses of the Pinochet regime, but to address them in literature remained a bold move, especially as until his death in December 2006 Pinochet continued to live in Santiago with considerable support among certain sectors of society. The force of criticism of the dictatorship builds through the novel to the closing pages of the penultimate chapter, mocking the ineffective actions of the local carabineros (p. 158) and the exaggerated nature of repressive measures, which included locking up babies and dogs alongside potentially subversive ‘humanoides’ (p. 164). The memory of the Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 situation apparently erupts as the narrator describes the dictator himself as a ‘hijo de puta’ (son of a bitch) (p. 164), a strikingly ad hominem attack given that Pinochet was still alive when the book was first published, but an indication of the force of feeling that he and his regime continued to generate. To have engaged in such acts of protest during the regime itself was unthinkable for the first decade of its existence at least, and remained extremely dangerous well into the 1980s. The first mass protest against the dictatorship took place in May 1983, organised by the CTC (Confederación de Trabajadores del Cobre – Confederation of Copper 114 Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile

Workers), with the Alianza Democrática (Democratic Alliance) formed by 11 opposition parties in August 1983. Cultural producers were also active in the protest movement, and in December 1983 Santiago’s Coordinador Cultural organised the First Cultural Congress Against the Dictatorship, at which the anti-Pinochet slogan ‘Y va a caer, y va a caer, y va a caer y va a caer’ (He’s going to fall, he’s going to fall) was chanted.9 In the novel, this same chant results in the imprisonment of Cachimoco Farfán, who used the words in one of his crazed match commentaries in the presence of a regional military authority when a forward had stumbled into the penalty area during a previous encounter between Coya Sur and María Elena. The use of football discourse to oppose the military regime was a feature of Chile (and Argentina) in the 1980s, and the narrator comments explicitly on the overlap between football and politics following the punishment of the frustrated commentator: ‘Nadie sabe todavía si se trató de una lamen- table inocentada [. . .], o si el cabrón sabía perfectamente que ése era el grito de batalla de los opositores del régimen, y quiso hacer su propia y personal protesta al dictador’ (Nobody knows to this day if it was a regret- table moment of innocence [. . .], or if the bastard knew perfectly well that that was the battle cry of the regime’s opponents, and wanted to make his own personal protest against the dictator) (p. 104). It is here that the reference in the novel’s opening pages to Chamaco Valdés and Carlos Caszely as the figures in the photo with El Fantasista gains considerable resonance, for both were renowned for their left-wing sympathies and for their actions during the Pinochet era. Valdés was a midfielder who spent most of his long career with Colo-Colo, captained Chile in the 1970s and remains the all-time leading goalscorer in the country’s first division. In addition to his footballing prowess, he was noted for having intervened on behalf of footballers Hugo Lepe and Mario Moreno, who were detained in 1973 following the military coup. In later years he was also active in projects with disadvantaged children, notably the ‘Escue- las preventivas del fútbol’ under the first government of President Bachelet. Caszely, for his part, was the star forward of Colo-Colo and the Chilean national team from the late 1960s to the mid- 1980s, but was even more well known for his public opposition to the Pinochet regime, having apparently declined to shake his hand when Pinochet met the team prior to their Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 departure for the 1974 World Cup finals. At the end of his career, in 1985, Caszely enjoyed a testimonial match in the Estadio Nacional which, 12 years after its use as a detention and torture centre, became a site of the largest mass protest to date against the dictatorship, described by Montealegre as ‘el inicio del exorcismo del Estadio Nacional’ (2003: 69). A key aspect of the event were chants among the fans of anti- Pinochet slogans such as ‘Y va a caer, Y va a caer’ and ‘El que no salta es Pinochet’ (Anyone who’s not jumping is Pinochet), an adaptation of a traditional marker of rivalry among opposing fans. As Favoretto and Wilson (2010) Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile 115

note in their study of Argentinian pop music and its connections to political change, the use of football chants in popular music concerts – some of which were staged in football stadia – enabled listeners (or, in the case of football matches, spectators) to become active performers, participants in a collective endeavour of symbolic power that was particularly powerful in the case of the Estadio Nacional.10 In a country that at the time of publication of El Fantasista was still struggling to negotiate its relationship with the Pinochet era, and with the figure of the ex- dictator himself, Caszely’s most significant contribution arguably came after his playing career had ended. Ahead of the plebiscite in October 1988 that voted to put an end to Pinochet’s period as president, Caszely featured in the promotional video of the ‘No’ campaign that opposed the proposal to extend the military regime by eight more years and dealt with the difficult subject of torture under the Pinochet regime. His mother had been arrested and tortured in the months following the coup, in what Caszely himself understood as a warning not to speak out against the regime during the 1974 World Cup finals in West Germany, and after a moving personal testimony by his mother, in which she recounts her experiences, both she and Caszely stated that this was why they would be voting ‘No’ in the plebiscite.11 Edwards describes the appearance of Caszely’s mother in the ‘No’ campaign video as ‘an electri- fying moment’, Stern terms it ‘the moment no- one could forget’ and Caszely recalls it as having made up the minds of 7 per cent of the unde- cided voters (Edwards, 2001: 243; Stern, 2006: 370; Caszely, 2013). In his study of the struggle for control of memory in Pinochet’s Chile, Stern uses the notion of ‘memory knots’, which he understands as ‘the specific human groups and leaders, specific events and anniversary or commemoration dates, and specific physical remains or places that demanded attention to memory’ (2006: 1). El Fantasista indicates that football in general, and the Estadio Nacional in particular, constitute an important ‘memory knot’ that continues to be teased out well beyond the timeframe of Stern’s work, while the appearance of Carlos Caszely in a photograph at the Estadio Nacional in the opening pages of El Fantasista flags him as a significant thread of that knot in the context of Rivera Letelier’s novel. Making and disputing memory, and indeed making sense of what hap- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 pened in Chile during the military dictatorship, at the level of the individual, of competing ideologies or of the nation, depends on the telling of events and on the discourses used to do so. Here, the use of football discourse is significant: it undoubtedly serves as a means by which the author can focus on the everyday experiences of the nation’s working classes, but in the context of Chile, as has already been noted, football was one of the few public spaces to make possible a discourse of mass opposition to the Pinochet regime. A significant character in the novel in this regard is Cachimoco Farfán, whose extravagant match commentaries are relayed 116 Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile

into an empty milk tin in the absence of a microphone, and whose blurring of football and politics through declaring ‘Y va a caer’ incurred the wrath of the authorities. Attention is drawn to the impact of such discourse when used repeatedly, as the narrator notes that ‘Sin proponérselo él, y sin advertirlo nosotros, Cachimoco Farfán había comenzado a influir incon- scientemente en nuestra vida diaria’ (Without intending to do so, and without us noticing it, Cachimoco Farfán had begun to exert an unconscious influence on our daily lives) (p. 111). This observation is developed on the following page when the narrator reflects on the importance of the act of narration:

nos enseñó algo que aprendimos y asimilamos como una verdad abso- luta: que un gol o una buena jugada, como cualquier asunto importante en esta vida, no estaba completa si no se relataba, si no se contaba, si no se narraba y recreaba con la magia de las palabras.

(it taught us something that we learned and assimilated as an absolute truth: that a goal or a moment of skill, as any important matter in life, was not complete if it wasn’t related, if it wasn’t told, if it wasn’t narrated and recreated with the magic of words.) (p. 112)

El Fantasista certainly relates its fair share of goals and moments of skill, but the important matter that lies at its heart is the struggle of a community to assert itself in the midst of the dictatorship that is brought to life, remembered and contested in the telling of the novel. At the same time, the military regime is distanced from football as practice and discourse through its portrayal as – at best – an aloof observer of occasional matches, or through observations such as ‘desde que estábamos bajo la bota militar no le ganábamos un puto partido a los Cometierra’ (ever since we’d been under the boot of the military we’d not won a single bloody match against the Cometierra lot) (p. 79). Such comments combine to create a critical space of opposition between football and the military, and the opportunities that football provided through mass gatherings were unthinkable in other realms of public life before the first mass protests in Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 1983 and Caszely’s testimonial in 1985. Carlos Ossandón noted in 1982 that those who attended football matches in Chile during the dictatorship briefly recovered identities that had been lost or repressed, even experiencing the rebirth of ‘certain aspects of recent historical memory (everyone understood the political origins of many of the chants heard in the stadia)’ (Ossandón, 1982: 193). During the years of the dictatorship, football represented the only occasion for ‘el derecho a la opción personal y al triunfo de ella en buena lid’ (the right to express a personal preference and for it to be victorious in a fair fight) as eleven took on eleven (Ossandón, Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile 117

1982: 193). At the same time as it provides the opportunity for a struggle on equal terms, football allows for the creation of an alternative history that escapes the control of the military. By providing a narrative that overlaps the history constructed by the state while simultaneously standing apart from it in terms of actors, geography and key dates, football offers a powerful discourse that is more than simply the work of a fantasista.

Closing with a Sense of Opening Since the re-publication in 2010 of El Fantasista by Alfaguara, following the award of the Alfaguara prize of the same year to Rivera Letelier’s novel El arte de la resurrección, football, politics and literature have continued to converge in Chile. Gonzalez and Quezada’s 2010 study of football during the Pinochet dictatorship marks an important moment in addressing the relationship between football and politics through an extensive series of testimonies, while Caszely has published a collection of football chronicles entitled Calle larga con final de pasto (A Long Street Ending in Grass) (2011). Forty years on from the coup that brought Pinochet to power, the Estadio Nacional again became the focus of political attention as Amnesty International Chile launched a campaign for the ‘Gol de Silen- cio’ (Goal of Silence) around a World Cup qualification match against Venezuela on 6 September 2013.12 Were Chile to score in the match, the campaign, which included letters sent to players and a substantial social media effort, as well as radio and television coverage, asked that no one should celebrate the goal in commemoration of what had happened in the stadium almost exactly four decades before. In the event, Chile won the game 3–0 and the call for a ‘gol de silencio’ was almost entirely disregarded when the first goal was scored, but it served to generate considerable media interest and social media debate in the days leading up to the game, thus demonstrating the ongoing power of football as a site through which the country continues to work on Stern’s ‘memory knots’. The rise of football as a literary theme manifested itself again in Decem- ber 2013 with the publication of El fútbol también se lee (Football is Also Read), a collection of 20 short stories by Chilean authors: the three winners and 11 runners- up selected from over 600 entries to a national Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 competition, plus one story each by the six judges (Camponovo Llanos, 2013). The stories – all written by men – draw on football to cover a wide range of topics: some are set during the dictatorship and gently engage with issues of the time; others look back to the pre-Pinochet era to establish bridges between the 1960s and the present; and some are set entirely in twenty-first century Chile. As was the case with El Fantasista, football proves an effective means of knitting together a diverse cast of actors from across the nation while also creating a discourse that – superficially at least – is able to transcend the political events across the last half- century. Such 118 Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile

a reading is enhanced by the fact that the collection was published by Chile’s Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes in December 2013 on the cusp of the transition from Piñera’s right- wing government to Bache- let’s left-leaning presidency. A total of 3,000 copies were printed and distributed free of charge, with a PDF version made freely available online via a government website,13 the effort to encourage reading part of a broader response to education debates that resulted in a series of high- profile protests and campaigns between 2011 and 2013. Through its use of stadia as detention, torture and execution centres, the military coup led by Pinochet provided South America – and the world – with one of the most brutal and shocking appropriations of football, but the country’s long-standing tradition of associations between football and politics meant that it soon became a contested field. Indeed, during a decade in which internal protest against the regime was all but impossible, football proved itself a key means of challenging the hegemonic discourse of the dictatorship, either through the practice of the sport itself (for example, the use of stadium chants) or via the literary representation of the sport to explore ideologies in conflict. ‘Noticias del fútbol’ and Soñé que la nieve ardía offer two compelling examples of this from the darkest years of the dictatorship, drawing on the close historical connections between politics, stadia and football. Since the return to democracy, to which football made a direct contribution via Caszely’s appearance in the ‘No’ campaign, the sport has begun to emerge as an important practice through which to explore and construct the meaning of Chile’s recent history.

Notes 1 During the Pinochet era, verse III, which praises the nation’s ‘brave soldiers’, was also sung in public. As part of events at the Estadio Nacional in March 1990 to mark the country’s return to democracy, the Himno Nacional was symbolically performed without verse III. 2 An image of the shirts with black strips under the logo is available at www.ﬁfa. com/worldcup/photos/galleries/y=2012/m=12/gallery=ﬁfa- world-cup- 1962-19741 06.html#1649586 (accessed 28 June 2016). 3 The original Spanish version is available online at www.gob.cl/informe- rettig/, while an English version can be viewed at www.usip.org/sites/default/

Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 ﬁles/resources/collections/truth_commissions/Chile90-Report/Chile90-Report. pdf (accessed 16 April 2014). 4 The Estadio Chile was renamed Estadio Víctor Jara in September 2004. Pedro Pablo Barrientos Núñez, a Chilean ex- army ofﬁcer, was found guilty of Jara’s murder on 27 June 2016 following a trial in federal court in Orlando, Florida. 5 Footage of the goal can be readily viewed online; see, for example, www. youtube.com/watch?v=Fb5KpkSajpw (accessed 16 April 2014). 6 It was not only Chileans who used their art to oppose the regime: Scottish singer- songwriter Adam McNaughton released ‘Blood Upon the Grass’ to oppose the Scottish FA’s decision to arrange a friendly against Chile in June 1977 as part of their team’s preparations for the 1978 World Cup. Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile 119

7 Tiro libre translates most readily as ‘Free kick’, but the ‘shot’ of tiro could as easily come from a gun. 8 The page number cited refers to the story in Alejandro Apo’s anthology Y el fútbol contó un cuento (Buenos Aires: Alfaguara, 2007), 167–71. 9 This can be watched at www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq30iOfgLUc (accessed 7 August 2014). 10 The documentary Estadio Nacional (Carmen Luz Parot, 2002) provides an excellent examination of the use of the stadium during the aftermath of the coup and its political symbolism since the return to democracy. It can be viewed online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTvXQPxwrcw (accessed 11 August 2014). 11 The extract from the ‘No’ campaign can be viewed at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=BXcK- CFAhCI (accessed 28 June 2016). 12 The campaign video, uploaded by Amnesty International Chile, can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfGPRtDUOPo (accessed 28 June 2016). 13 See http://elfutboltambienselee.cultura.gob.cl and www.leechilelee.cl (accessed 28 June 2016).

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Edwards, Lee. Mediapolitik. How the Mass Media Have Transformed World Politics Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001). Elsey, Brenda. Citizens and Sportsmen. Fútbol and Politics in Twentieth-Century Chile (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011). Epple, Juan Armando. ‘Noticias del fútbol’ Literatura chilena en el exilio 1:3 (July 1977), 12. Favoretto, Mara and Timothy Wilson. ‘ “Entertaining” the Notion of Change: The Transformative Power of Performance in Argentine Pop’ Popular Entertainment Studies 1:2 (2010), 44–60. García Martín, José Luis. ‘Contagiosa pasión intransferible’ La Nueva España 14 May 2012, available online at www.lne.es/cultura/2012/05/14/contagiosa-pasion- intransferible/1241763.html (accessed 28 June 2016). García Montero, Luis and Jesús García Sánchez Un balón envenenado. Poesía y fútbol (Madrid: Visor, 2012). Giardinelli, Mempo. ‘Un retorno a la espontaneidad’ Clarín (suplemento Cultura y Nación) 2 January 1986, 2. Gonzalez, Carlos and Braian Quezada. A discreción. Viaje al corazón del fútbol chileno bajo la dictadura militar (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Forja, 2010). Heimann, K.-H. 1974 FIFA World Cup (Zurich: Fédération Internationale de Foot- ball Association, 1976). Kraushaar, Wolfgang. ‘Chile Sí, Junta No: Political Protests at the 1974 World Cup’ Mittelweg 36 No. 17:2 (April–May 2008). Consulted online at www.euro- zine.com/articles/2008-08-07-kraushaar2-en.html (accessed 28 June 2016). Labbé Jorcuera, Carlos. La parvá (Santiago de Chile: Sangría Editora, 2014). Laborde, Miguel. Contra mi voluntad: biografía de Julio Barrenechea (Santiago de Chile: RIL Editores, 2002). Los Sports (Santiago de Chile), No. 151 (29 January 1926). Available at www. memoriachilena.cl/archivos2/pdfs/Mc0012458.pdf (accessed 28 June 2016). Marín, Edgardo. Centenario. Historia total del fútbol chileno: 1895–1995 (San- tiago de Chile: Editores y Consultores REI, 1995). Montealegre, Jorge. Frazadas del Estadio Nacional (Santiago de Chile: LOM Edi- tores, 2003). Neruda, Pablo. Crepusculario (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Andrés Bello, 1999 [1923]). Neruda, Pablo. Residencia en la tierra (1925–1931) (Santiago de Chile: Nasci- mento, 1933). Neruda, Pablo. Canto general (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1981 [1950]). Neruda, Pablo. Estravagario (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1958). Ossandón, Carlos A. ‘Las dos caras del fútbol’ Araucaria de Chile 20 (1982), 192–4. Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Consulted online at www.scribd.com/doc/97158408/Araucaria-de-Chile- 20-1982 (accessed 28 June 2016). Parot, Carmen Luz. Estadio Nacional (Chile, 2002). Rivera Letelier, Hernán. Donde mueren los valientes (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Sudamericana, 1999). Rivera Letelier, Hernán. El Fantasista (Madrid: Santillana, 2010 [2006]). Rodríguez, Mario. ‘Antonio Skármeta, de El entusiasmo a La insurrección’ Atenea 445 (1987): 175–8. Rufﬁnelli, Jorge. ‘Antonio Skármeta: la embriaguez vital’ in Jorge Rufﬁnelli Crítica en marcha (Montevideo: Editorial Premiá, 1979), 132–45. Playing Dirty (First Half): Chile 121

Sánchez Hernani, Enrique. ‘El fútbol y las letras’ in Jorge Eslava (ed.) Bien jugado. Las patadas de una ilusión (Lima: Aguilar, 2011), 283–5. Schidlowsky, David. Neruda y su tiempo. Las furias y las penas (Santiago de Chile: RIL Editores, 2008). Shaw, Donald. Antonio Skármeta and the Post Boom (Hanover, NH: Ediciones del Norte, 1994). Skármeta, Antonio. ‘Basketball’ in Desnudo en el tejado (Santiago de Chile: Suda- mericana, 1969), 115–39. Skármeta, Antonio. Tiro libre (Barcelona: Random House Mondadori, 2002 [1973]). Skármeta, Antonio. Soñé que la nieve ardía (Barcelona: Debolsillo, 2003 [1975a]). Skármeta, Antonio. ‘Tendencias en la más nueva narrativa hispanoamericana’, Enciclopedia Labor, vol. XI (Barcelona: Labor, 1975b), 752–71. Skidmore, Thomas and Peter H. Smith, Modern Latin America (New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). Sosa, Juan Pablo. ‘La obra poética de Julio Barrenechea, Premio Nacional de Liter- atura 1960’ El Siglo 25 September 1960. Consulted online at http://sicpoesiachil- ena.cl/docs/critica_detalle.php?critica_id=1744 (accessed 28 June 2016). Stern, Steve. Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973–1988 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006). Torres Caballero, Benjamín. ‘Apuntes sobre la función del deporte en la narrativa latinoamericana’ Hispanic Review 59: 4 (1991), 401–20. Wilson, Jason. A Companion to Pablo Neruda: Evaluating Neruda’s Poetry (Woodbridge, UK: Tamesis, 2008). Wood, David. ‘Body Politic: The Evolving Role of Sport in Skármeta’s Short Stories’ in Jason Jolley and César Ferreira (eds) Asedios a Antonio Skármeta / Critical Approaches to Antonio Skármeta (Lima: Universidad Ricardo Palma, forthcoming). Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Chapter 6 Playing Dirty (Second Half ) Writing, Football and Dictatorship in the River Plate

Calentamiento (Warming Up): Football, Nationhood and Writing in the River Plate As a result of strong British commercial interests and presence in the River Plate from the mid- nineteenth century, following the declaration of independence from Spain by what is now Argentina in 1816, and proclamation of the first Uruguayan constitution in 1830, football became established in this region earlier than anywhere else in the Americas. The first documented football match in Latin America was played in Buenos Aires in 1867 (Archetti, 1994: 230), while Uruguay–Argentina is the oldest international fixture outside the British Isles and has been played more often than any other (Taylor, 1998: 20). Uruguay, winners of the Olympic Games football tournament in 1924 and 1928, as well as the first World Cup, hosted in Montevideo in 1930, have an unparalleled case as the first football superpower, a status secured at the expense of Argentina, who lost to Uruguay in the finals of both the 1928 Olympic Games and the 1930 World Cup. The historic rivalry between Argentina and Uruguay has been played out on the football pitch for well over a century, attested by literary texts that date back to the 1920s, as discussed in Chapter 2. The subsequent decline in the production of football literature from the 1930s did not mean that football lost its cultural significance, but rather that it became embedded as part of the national discourse, a key means through which both nations constructed a sense of self. Ezequiel Martínez Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Estrada, in his seminal essay Radiografía de la pampa (X- Ray of the Pampas, 1933), drew not on the gaucho or caudillo to express the ongoing dichotomies within the country, but on football, seeing in it work, struggle and democracy. Nonetheless, the production of football literature in the River Plate was negligible from the 1940s to the 1960s as intellectuals and authors alike eschewed the sport, those on the political left seeing it as an ‘opium of the people’, a form of social manipulation that distracted the masses from potential political activity, while traditional elites to the right considered it a popular practice that had no place in literary production. Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate 123

Mario Benedetti’s story ‘Puntero izquierdo’ (Left Winger), written in 1954 and first published in 1955, marks an outstanding exception to the dearth of football literature during these decades and constitutes the first step back towards the sport’s presence in literature of the region. In it, the protagonist narrates from a hospital bed how his inability to refrain from scoring a winning goal, part of a deal struck with a local political figure whose team he condemns to defeat, has led to a beating that will result not only in the end of his football career but also the loss of his job. A cautionary tale that warns of the political interference in football and its consequences for the working classes, ‘Puntero izquierdo’ is typical of the period in its denunciation of the sport by left- wingers as both a practice and a social phenomenon. By contrast, ‘Esse est percipi’ (To Be Is to Be Perceived) (1967), written by Jorge Luis Borges in collaboration with Adolfo Bioy Casares under the pseudonym of Honorio Bustos Domecq, explores the apparent disappearance of the River Plate stadium through a visit to the president of the fictional Buenos Aires football club Abasto Juniors, a name that mocks the sport’s place as a practice, translating as ‘Junior Supplies’. The president laments the end of football on 24 June 1937, since when football has been a staged drama played out for the masses by actors who perform to the requirements of the commentator or cameraman, thus expressing nostalgia for an era that predates football’s status as a mediatised spectacle for the masses. Borges’s antipathy for football is legendary – though repeatedly misquoted – through his affirmation that football is the most popular sport ‘because stupidity is popular’ (Alfiano, 1978; García Candau, 1978), as well as his delivery of a series of four public lectures under the collective title ‘Borges oral’ on the eve of Argentina’s key matches in the 1978 World Cup (Borges, 1979). Borges, however, makes an easy target for those who seek to invert the relationship between the intellectual and the physical expressed by Herrera y Reissig at the end of the nineteenth century, discussed in Chapter 1. Less widely discussed is Borges’s rejection of football for its aggression and violence, as ‘un universo marginal fuera de la realidad’ (a marginal universe outside reality) (Alfiano, 1978), or that the talk he gave ahead of Argentina’s decisive match against Brazil was entitled ‘El cuento policial’ (The Police Story) (Borges, 1996). Aware of fellow author Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Ernesto Sábato’s debates with the dictatorship around the hosting of the 1978 World Cup, Borges highlights in a newspaper interview conducted ahead of the event the danger of speaking out: ‘lo pueden meter preso los militares, o hacerlo desaparecer, una denuncia así es peligrosa en este momento’ (the military might arrest him, or make him disappear; a negative statement like that is dangerous at present) – before concluding that perhaps he and Sábato can do so as they enjoy ‘cierta impunidad’ (a certain impunity) (Alfiano, 1978). The very real dangers faced by opponents of the Argentinian regime have been well documented, notably in Nunca más 124 Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate

(Never Again), the ﬁnal report of the National Commission on the Disap- pearance of Persons, of which Sábato was president in the aftermath of the dictatorship that oversaw the so-called Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (Process of National Reorganisation). Football, literature and El Proceso also converge in poignant fashion around the ﬁgure of Roberto Santoro, whose edited collection of football texts La literatura de la pelota (1971) draws together a wealth of poems, short stories and extracts from longer texts, primarily by Argentine and Uruguayan authors. A political activist and poet, who criticised the military in his verses, he was taken for- cibly from the school in which he worked by three men on 1 June 1977 and disappeared; his body has never been found.

Left- wingers: Responses to Military Rule in Uruguay In a country renowned for producing some of Latin America’s best short story writers, Mario Benedetti and Eduardo Galeano figure alongside Horacio Quiroga, discussed in Chapter 2, as being among Uruguay’s most acclaimed and popular authors. Benedetti and Galeano were passionate fans of football, as both a practice and a literary subject, and while Galeano’s chronicles have made him a figure of international standing and one of the best-known authors of football writing in Latin America, his preferred genre does not fit within the scope of this study, for reasons explained in Chapter 1. Galeano and Benedetti were both forced into exile when the military took power in Uruguay in 1973, but returned in 1985 once the military had effected the transition to civilian government. This biography of short story writing, love of football and exile is also shared with Omar Prego Gadea, whose story ‘Una tarde con Pelé’ (An Afternoon with Pelé) was published in Montevideo in 1987, thereby constituting a questioning of the military regime soon after its departure from power.

Omar Prego’s Afternoon with Pelé In ‘Una tarde con Pelé’ the reader is confronted from the outset with the uncomfortable image of an unnamed protagonist who is tied by the wrists Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 and ankles to a hard chair, with a hood over his head. It is quickly con- ﬁrmed that he is being tortured and has just given up information that allows his interrogators to capture Lucía, who we are led to believe will now be tortured and raped, although there are also suggestions that she may be immediately killed. As the action moves between the detention centre in which the protagonist is being tortured and the street whose name he gave and in which Lucía will consequently be captured, the connecting thread is the radio commentary of a football match that has the attention of the military personnel in both settings. The names of the Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate 125

players mentioned in the commentary (Luis Artime, Julio César Montero, Juan Carlos Morales and Ladislao Mazurkiewicz) suggest a match between Uruguay and Argentina, with connotations of the historical rivalry between the neighbouring states and the role of football in drawing together diverse sectors of national society. There are also, however, darker associations, relating to the violence found in football and political arenas alike in the two countries, as well as the cooperation between Uruguayan and Argen- tinian military regimes in the 1970s, especially under Operation Condor, a US- backed project to target political ﬁgures and activists of the left, primarily in the Southern Cone and Brazil. That the commentary of the football match is listened to by military operatives in the detention centre and the delivery van used as cover in the operation to catch Lucía, drawing them together in a community, is suggestive of the use of football by military regimes of the time as a tool of national uniﬁcation and as a means of providing a distraction from the atrocities that were being committed against the civilian population. By contrast, we are told of our protagonist that he is not very keen on football (p. 47),1 but he recalls going to see Pelé play when he came with his Brazil- ian club team, Santos. The match is remembered as a happy time, enjoyed in the sun, and the protagonist’s decision to close his eyes, despite being hooded, emphasises the sense that this represents an attempt to escape from the current horror he is experiencing. Pelé himself is likened to a large black cat as he trots around the pitch, but when he receives the ball the protagonist recalls ‘de pronto el zarpazo, el quiebre a la derecha’ (suddenly the swipe with its paw, the break to the right) (p. 47) as Pelé goes on the attack. The sudden blow and the sharp turn to the right function as metaphors for the 1973 coup that brought the Uruguayan military to power in what had traditionally been one of the continent’s most democratic and liberal nations. The protagonist’s attempt to escape his bodily constraints, and the Uruguay–Argentina match on the radio, through a recollection of Pelé’s physicality is thus frustrated as the military regime has co- opted not only football to its vision of nationalism, but also the language within which it is framed. The connection between the military dictatorship and football is forcefully conveyed as an electrode is applied to the protagonist’s genitals: ‘otra vez la punzada y zumba, zumba el arco de Mazurkie- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 wicz, el remate de Juan Carlos Morales llevaba cien megatones de potencia, la tribuna ruge y otra vez la punzada’ (again the shooting pain and it hums, Mazurkiewicz’s goal hums, Juan Carlos Morales’s shot carried 100 megatons of power, the crowd roars and once again the shooting pain) (p. 45). The blurring and fusing of the football commentary with a description of the effect of the electric shock is disconcerting, forcing the reader to consider the relationship between football and the political violence of the Dirty War, as well as the degree to which one may have been used to mask or even validate the other. 126 Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate

Prego Gadea himself draws attention to a connection between football and the political events of the story, although not through the episode discussed above. In his editor’s prologue to the anthology Cuentos para patear (Stories to Kick Around), he indicates that:

The interest that that story aimed to awaken in the reader is concentrated in a few short minutes that separate the beginning of the operation that the betrayal sets in motion, and its eventual success or failure. In the meantime, the prisoner remembers an afternoon when he went to the Stadium and watched Pelé. A magical relationship is drawn between the net in which Pelé scores and the net that is spread to catch the girl. (p. 17)

In addition to the image of the net, the story draws on the image of a cage to convey the loss of liberty and the inability to escape: the operation deployed to catch Lucía waits for her to have ‘entrado en la jaula’ (entered the cage) (p. 45), while Pelé finds his way through the opposition defence to be left in front of ‘el pobre golero atrapado en su jaula’ (the poor goalkeeper trapped in his cage) (p. 48). As well as reinforcing associations between football and the dictatorship through Pelé’s problematic relationship with Brazil’s military regime in the 1970s (Levine, 1980: 244), Pelé’s involvement also takes the story in a different direction. The protagonist’s lack of interest in football suggests the level of political commitment called for by many activists and intellectuals in the 1960s (and before), who saw in football a diversion from more serious matters, but it simultaneously implies a rejection of the dominant discourse that has constructed a Uru- guayan national narrative on the basis of successes in the World Cup, and on a historical rivalry with Argentina. This rejection of Uruguayan nationalism based around football identification is also expressed by the way in which Pelé is the figure who comes to mind when in search of a means of mental escape from the detention centre, given his central role in Brazil’s defeat of Uruguay in the 1970 World Cup semi- final. The ambivalence of the figure of Pelé is further accentuated by associations that bind him, as the black cat that delivers a swipe and a move to the right, to the torturer, Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 referred to simply as ‘Negro’. The national borders used by the military regimes as they bound football into their political domain crumble further with the knowledge that the players mentioned in the radio commentary played their club football in Brazil, or on the other side of the Argentina–Uruguay divide, as well as in their ‘home’ leagues.2 This breaking down of the identification of football with national context may be seen to challenge its use as a nationalistic tool by the military regimes of the era, but any sense that football represents a field of freedom from the Uruguayan dictatorship that has Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate 127

tortured our protagonist is rendered problematic by the realisation that the military itself disregarded national boundaries equally effectively, especially through the infamous Operation Condor. There is little hope that the protagonist will be able to escape his physical or mental imprisonment, and even if he does manage to leave Uruguay, he will not be safe. More disturbingly, his attempts to find a mental release through the emblematic figure of Pelé are also outflanked by the dictatorship’s simultaneous use of football as a tool for national unity and its ability to act beyond a series of boundaries. Ultimately, the cage he envisions as holding both Lucía and the goalkeeper who faces Pelé holds him too, tying his attempts to escape back to the political violence, subjecting him to the humiliation of betrayal as his defences are broken down by the torturer Negro, just as Pelé pene- trates the defence to score in the match he remembers. As a result of the military’s ubiquitous presence in daily life and in people’s minds, the afternoon with Pelé that gives the story its title is not, as might be anticipated, a joyous occasion, but rather a period of humiliation, suffering and violence. Uruguay’s history of football success made a powerful contribution to establishing the country’s status as a regional power and a global player, initially through its defeat of arch- rivals Argen- tina in the finals of global tournaments in 1928 and 1930, and subsequently its World Cup victory against Brazil in 1950. These successes on the international stage served to define in large measure the country’s view of its place in the world (Giulianotti, 2000; Marrero and Piñeyrúa, 2009), but victories on the pitch against the nations from which Uruguay secured its independence are destabilised as a result of the collaboration of the three military dictatorships in the 1970s. The military’s role in brutally repressing the country’s own population recalls the campaign that eradi- cated the indigenous Charrúa population in the 1830s, and if the emergence from that period signalled the birth of a new national identity that came to incorporate the garra charrúa as its defining football characteristic, then texts such as ‘Una tarde con Pelé’ draw on football to construct a renewed sense of what it means to be Uruguayan in the wake of the dictatorship.

Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Mario Benedetti: ‘El césped’ (The Lawn) Benedetti’s ‘Puntero izquierdo’, mentioned above, is included in various anthologies of football stories as one of the foundational texts of the region’s sports literature (Galeano, 1968; Prego Gadea, 1990; Pérez, 2006), and has also been made into a ﬁlm (Wood, 1997). Less widely dissemi- nated is ‘El césped’, a (long) short story ﬁrst published in 1993, but written in the late 1980s in the context of post- dictatorship Uruguay.3 The protagonist of the story is Benjamín Ferrés, a 23-year- old forward in a small Uruguayan team who seems set to play for the national team after a series 128 Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate

of strong performances. His lifelong friend, Martín, is a goalkeeper in another local professional team who is on the verge of being transferred to a European club, and in the course of the story Benjamín meets and sets up home with Alejandra Ocampo, who is carrying their child by the end of the story. Although they are the closest of friends, Martín’s desire to leave behind what he sees as a small market to be successful ‘en un supermer- cado de veras’ (in a true supermarket) (p. 391)4 stands in clear contrast with Benjá’s resolve to remain at a local club, motivated by his view that players earn too much for what they do and by a desire to spoil the fun of the powerful club owners. The criticism of the commercialisation of football, implicit in the portrayal of Martín, and the explicit expression of a left- wing stance against the country’s socio-economic elite via Benjá reso- nate strongly with Benedetti’s political commitment and with the earlier denunciation of economic exploitation in ‘Puntero izquierdo’. Questions of life and death are also at the heart of the story: the child that Benjá and Ale are to have is conceived on the day that Martín commits suicide, dis- consolate at having allowed a shot from Benjá to pass through his legs, resulting in the decisive goal during a match against his friend’s team under the gaze of the European scout who was to sign him. That Martín shoots himself as the result of the apparent end of his football career inevitably recalls Quiroga’s 1918 story ‘Juan Polti, half- back’, and a series of intertextual allusions combine to locate the story within the context of a clearly Uruguayan literary and footballing heritage. Central to the exploration of contemporary Uruguay undertaken in ‘El césped’ is the Dirty War of the 1970s and its ongoing impact on society since the return to democracy. In the longest of the story’s 13 chapters, in which Benjá and Ale meet on their ﬁrst date, protagonist and reader alike discover from Ale that her father ‘es uno de los uruguayos desaparecidos en Argentina [. . .] (lo desaparecieron en 1974)’ (is one of the Uruguayans disappeared in Argentina [. . .] (he was disappeared in 1974)) (p. 387). For an entire page the narrative dwells on the human impact of his disappearance: her mother refuses to accept that her husband will never come back, and has gradually lost her balance, while for Ale and her brother it was a catastrophic loss. That this section is conveyed through a lengthy passage of free direct speech serves to Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 emphasise its emotional impact, approximating the reader to Ale’s perspective as the narrator withdraws from a position of conspicuous control, tacitly rejecting the authoritarianism of the military regime responsible for this and many other disappearances. On learning of her family tragedy, Benjá tells her that she does not look to have a ‘face of misfortune’, to which she replies ‘Onetti 1960’ in another reference that simultaneously binds this story into Uruguay’s literary tradition and events of the dictatorship of 1973–85.5 Her response to the allusion is heavy with notions of death, responsibility and exile: Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate 129

No, no tengo cara de desgracia, la llevo bien guardada, para no olvi- darla, sabes? No tengo cara de desgracia porque no quiero que, además de hundir a mi padre, me hundan también a mí, no en la muerte sin duelo sino en la tristeza. Sé que les cae mal que uno siga viviendo, y aunque fuera solo por eso, vale la pena vivir y disfrutar la vida.

No, I don’t have a face of misfortune, I keep it well hidden, so as not to forget it, you know? I don’t have a face of misfortune because I don’t want them to bring me down as they brought down my father, not in a death without mourning but in sadness. I know they don’t like the fact that I’m still alive, and for that alone it is worth living and enjoying life. (pp. 387–8)

The sense that Ale refuses to allow the disappearance of her father to bring her down is echoed by the couple’s certainty that they have conceived a son who will be called Martín just as Benjá decides to stop playing football in the wake of his friend’s suicide; the birth of their child symbolises their determination to live on their own terms rather than in terms of loss and despair dictated by events of the past. The story’s critical stance in relation to the commercialisation of football has already been mentioned, and this issue is brought back to the central question of the dictatorship and disappearances through the introduction of a list of famous Uruguayan footballers towards the end of the story. Benjá confesses to Ale that in his dreams he finds himself playing alongside illustrious compatriots, but to his surprise realises that the players who populate his dreams are not the contemporary national stars Rubén Sosa, Francescoli, De León, Rubén Paz, Perdomo, Seré, who he has watched (p. 390). What these players have in common is that they were born between 1958 and 1966 and saw the development of their playing careers, at club and international levels, coincide with the years of the dictatorship. During this period, the national team saw its worst ever performances in international competition: they were eliminated in the group stage of the 1974 World Cup, while their failure to qualify for Argentina Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 1978 or Spain 1982 was the first time the country had failed to reach suc- cessive finals. Uruguay did qualify for the 1986 World Cup finals in Mexico, where their appearance was associated with violence as the country emerged from the dictatorship, memorably in José Batista being sent off after only 53 seconds of the group game against Scotland. In strictly footballing terms, the most significant triumphs enjoyed in the national colours by any of the players listed above were in the 1983 Copa América and the 1980 Mundialito organised by the regime in what is widely regarded as a move to gain positive publicity for the country in the 130 Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate

wake of Argentina’s success in this regard with the 1978 World Cup. However, these players enjoyed considerable financial rewards as a result of the commercialisation of football and the development of a lucra- tive international market for football players. All but one of those listed above left Uruguay to play for European or Brazilian (and then European) clubs in the mid- 1980s, at precisely the time that Benedetti and thousands of other Uruguayans exiled during the dictatorship were undertaking journeys in the opposite direction. Benedetti appears here to be indulging in gentle criticism of the manner in which the country’s best football players, via their participation in the 1980 Mundialito and their pursuit of individual wealth, provided tacit support for the military’s political and economic agenda. Benjá expresses his admiration for the players of the 1980s who played abroad, but the players who populate his dreams are from another era: Nazassi, Obdulio, Atilio García, Piendibeni, Gambetta, Cea, Schiaffino, Petrone, Luis Ernesto Castro, Abbadie (p. 390). This list is a who’s who of Uruguay’s golden years of international football success, starting with the captains of the teams that won the World Cup in 1930 and 1950, and followed by a string of stars who featured in those World Cup campaigns, as well as in the Olympic Games triumphs in 1924 and 1928. At night, Benjá imagines playing alongside these players from the 1950s and before, and by day he discovers that they continue to help him on the pitch, replacing his team-mates and providing the advice and passes that allow him to perform in a manner befitting the country’s football history. In the story’s closing scene it is José Nazassi and Obdulio Varela, the two great Uru- guayan captains, who feature in Benjá’s dreams the night before Martín’s funeral, asking him to give up football because of the death of his friend. In the final lines, Benjá tells Ale that he is going to accede to their request and as they leave the cemetery the couple walk across ‘ese pastito queb- rado que es el césped del pobre. El césped’ (that parched grass that is the lawn of the poor. The lawn) (p. 397). The story ends, then, with a closure, but also with an opening into a future that is to be built around significant features of the couple’s past, the memory of Martín and Alejandra’s father, as well as the nation’s glorious football history. The presence of Obdulio and Nazassi in the story’s closing scene indi- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 cates the enduring power of Uruguay’s triumphs in the Olympic Games and the World Cup on the manner in which the country continues to construct an image of itself in the present, and if Varela’s performances belong to a fabulous past, it is only in the sense of a fabled history that provides the bases for nationhood. The figure of the inspirational football captain who led the Uruguayan team to international glory stands in stark opposition to the military captain of Benedetti’s powerful 1979 play Pedro y el capitán (Pedro and the Captain), which places a political prisoner in a cell with a torturer to explore the dynamics of civilian–military relations during Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate 131

the dictatorship, thus prefiguring (and inverting) Prego Gadea’s story considered above. Benedetti makes it forcefully clear that this (military) captain has no place in Uruguay’s process of national (re)construction after the return to civilian government,6 but it is equally clear that the figures of Obdulio and Nazassi continue to provide models of behaviour and contributions to a nation whose international presence has long been influenced by football matters. By heeding their call to quit the game, Benjá paradoxically demonstrates the hold that football continues to have on him as a national discourse, while at the same time Benedetti implicitly criticises those who did not stop playing when those around them died. The players who left Uruguay in the mid- 1980s, portrayed as complicit in the military regime’s agenda, be it through victories in the Mundialito or Copa América to bolster the international image of the dictatorship, or through participation in the international transfer market as a manifestation of neo-liberal economic policy, are overlooked as the basis for a new sense of nationhood. Instead, Benedetti looks back to an era that predates the 1970s as the basis for attempts to reclaim the country’s greatness from the depths of the dictatorship. Benjá’s references to the likes of Obdulio and Nazassi as ‘los viejos’ (the old-timers) establishes a connection with Ale’s disappeared father, who she had previously described in the same terms, acknowledging that it is to him that she owes the best of herself (p. 387). ‘El césped’, however, is not a nostalgic evocation of a glorious past by an author who had spent the dictatorship in exile, but an attempt to draw on a determining factor in the generation of a national identity, to revisit achievements and greatness that predate the military hiatus. The best of Ale’s father lives on in her, while the best of the country’s football history makes itself evident in Benjá’s success on the pitch and in his subsequent decision to leave the game. The child they are to have is the future to which they will turn their attentions, and Benedetti suggests that this future will be shaped and framed by a discourse that speaks to the nation’s footballing greatness and to the losses suffered by all.

On Argentinian Heroes and Tombs: Carlos Ferreira and the World Cup Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 The eerily prophetic title of the 1961 novel Sobre héroes y tumbas (On Heroes and Tombs) by Ernesto Sábato, who subsequently led the commission that investigated the abuses of the military junta, offers an appropriate starting point for a consideration of the 1978 World Cup victory, for the victorious football team and the estimated 30,000 desaparecidos can be seen as two of the deﬁning features of Argentina during the 1970s and 1980s. Alabarces forcefully suggests that ‘not enough has been written about the ill-fated 1978 World Cup’ (2014: 71), a statement that is evident in the work of the country’s most well-known football writers of recent 132 Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate

years, as discussed in Chapter 7, but a small number of literary texts place events of 1978 at their heart. Published in the year that the country saw a return to civilian government after the seven- year dictatorship (1976–83), Carlos Ferreira’s poem ‘Mundial’, from his 1983 collection A mi juego, seizes the opportunity to voice the ambivalence felt by many Argentines in relation to the 1978 World Cup victory. The poem captures the enthusiasm with which the public overwhelmingly embraced the tournament, which provided a temporary release from the daily horrors of the violence, repression and torture inflicted on the country by the military. The post- match celebrations depicted offered a unique opportunity for large crowds to reclaim the streets as a public space after curfews and the crushing of demonstrations, while the Montoneros opposed to the regime promised a ‘people’s festival’, which they would direct against the military. They also promoted an anti- junta slogan, ‘Argentina campeón, Videla al paredón’ (Argentina champions, Videla to the firing squad), which they hoped would be chanted at matches to counter the military’s discourse, which had successfully coupled the regime to the national team, nowhere more obvious than in the award of the trophy to Argentinian captain Passarella by General Videla himself. The poem’s opening ‘Aquello fue mundial’ (That was our world (Cup)) effectively conveys the pervasive convergence of football, fear and violence, as the World Cup served as a sublimation of the human rights atrocities experienced in the political arena. By continuing ‘Hicimos pelota nuestros miedos,/ le pusimos un caño a los horrores,/ gambeteamos el nudo/ que nos poblaba el vientre’ (We kicked about our fear,/ we nutmegged our horrors,/ we dribbled around the knot/ that lay in our stomachs), Ferreira uses the lexicon of football in association with the horrors of the regime. In doing so, he conveys in highly effective fashion the manner in which the tournament was bound up with the political violence, masking the situation through a discourse that confused the two. The national outpouring of joyous public expression around the football matches, however, ‘served to “muffle” the reality of the Argentine situation’ in the short term only (Arbena, 1990: 121), and the ghostly presence of the absent desaparecidos was a constant reminder of the manner in which the regime continued to commit abuses against the population. The players themselves were acutely Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 aware of the political violence, from which they were not immune: Argen- tina’s striker Leopoldo Luque has recalled how, after narrowly beating Hungary in their first group game, a military officer warned him and other members of the team that ‘this could easily be a group of death, as far as you are concerned’. Luque was perhaps better placed than his team- mates to appreciate that this was a threat that extended well beyond the usual football platitude: a good friend of his brother had disappeared that morning, his body subsequently found on the shore of the River Plate with concrete attached to his legs (Spurling, 2010). Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate 133

Such tensions came into focus most sharply around the final, played at the River Plate stadium between the river (into which many of the desaparecidos were dropped from helicopters) and the Escuela de Mecánica (ESMA, the Naval School of Mechanics), the torture centre from which detainees could hear the goals. Against this backdrop, the ‘canción de olvido’ (forgotten song) of the desaparecidos who return ‘meneando las cabezas’ (shaking their heads) from the river beds and common graves competes for a space in the ‘inexplicable fiesta’ alongside the ‘insensatas banderas sudorosas’ (meaningless sweaty flags) distributed by the regime as a symbol of national support. The staging of the World Cup as an opportunity for the military to promote its international image in the face of growing disquiet in relation to human rights abuses is well documented (Arbena, 1990; Farred, 2008; Alabarces, 2014) – but, according to the public discourse of the time, shaped through a highly controlled media, to oppose the regime or the World Cup was tantamount to placing oneself outside the nation (Smith, 2002). As Farred succinctly notes:

to be against the nation in the moment of triumph was to be without a legitimate position as national subject; to be against the triumph, if not against the team itself, was to be disenfranchised, without a critical space in the ebullient nation. (2008: 75)

With the return to democracy in 1983, however, that critical space reap- peared with considerable force, as Alfonsín’s newly elected government established the National Commission for Forced Disappearances (CONADEP), and initiated the trial of the nine military commanders- in- chief. Ferreira’s poem, which concludes that the public found themselves ‘con el mundo al revés/ hechos pelota’ (with the world upside down/ all ballsed up), contributes to the national debate as to the nature of El Proceso, harnessing the emotive power of the country’s victory in the 1978 World Cup as a touchstone in exploring the social and political history of the period.

Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Hay unos tipos abajo (There Are Some Guys Downstairs) Antonio Dal Masetto’s Hay unos tipos abajo also focuses on the 1978 World Cup, following the growing fears of the work’s protagonist that he is under observation during the days that lead up to the final match between Argentina and Holland. The novel has its origins in the script that the author wrote for the film of the same name, which was released in 1985 (Filippelli and Alfaro), contributing to the vibrant but difficult exploration of national life during the recent Proceso. Dal Masetto’s desire 134 Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate

to develop the script was realised with publication of the novel in 1998, with a second edition published in 2005. The significant delay in the appearance of the novel maps onto the changing politico- cultural landscape of the period following the return to democracy. The film was made during a period of feverish debate in Argentina after President Alfonsín overturned the amnesty that the military had granted itself before leaving power, and the new government enjoyed strong public support in bringing the former commanders- in-chief to trial for crimes against the country’s population. The Trial of the Juntas, celebrated as the first in which a country had brought to civilian justice its former military dictatorship, began in April 1985, the month that saw the release of the Oscar-winning film La historia oficial, widely recognised as the most powerful cinematic examination of the dictatorship. The release in September 1985 of Hay unos tipos abajo, then, was part of a broader contribution of literature and film to a public discourse around events of the dictatorship, with five of the nine military commanders- in-chief sentenced to prison in December of that year. Thereafter, however, the political climate cooled considerably in relation to prosecution of lower-ranking military officials for their part in the torture and disappearances, and laws in 1986 and 1987 put an end to efforts to bring to justice those below the rank of colonel. Shortly after coming to power in 1989, President Menem went further and issued pardons to the military commanders and guerrilla leaders who had been imprisoned in the mid-1980s. Against this political background, and a desire among certain sectors of Argentine society to move on from events of the 1970s, the reworking of the film script into a novel was not a timely project. Eventual publication of the novel in 1998 coincided with the 20th anniversary of the World Cup victory, at a temporal distance within which a critical space had been able to develop. One of the constant features of this ongoing effort to address the horrors of El Proceso and seek information – as well as justice – on behalf of the disappeared was the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, who had gathered every Thursday to mount a peaceful protest against the disappearances since 30 April 1977.7 In response to the efforts of the Madres and other grassroots human rights associations, the amnesty laws were overturned by the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 in June 2005, following a vote by Congress in August 2003 to the same effect, reflecting a significant shift in the public mood since the 1990 pardons. The publication of Hay unos tipos abajo in 1998 was part of a re- awakening to the events of the dictatorship 20 years after the World Cup, while the second edition, in November 2005, emerged into a public- political space and discourse that bore striking similarities to the release of the film 20 years earlier. Hay unos tipos abajo speaks to the public desire to evaluate events of the period 1976–83 and their (ongoing) impact on the daily lives of the Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate 135

nation’s inhabitants by following two days in the life of Pablo, a young journalist who has moved to Buenos Aires from the provinces. The choice of journalism as the protagonist’s profession locates the novel at the heart of debates around the relationship between politics, society and public information in the mid-1970s, as the Argentinian media were subjected to heavy censorship, making it impossible to discuss the issues that Dal Masetto explores in the writing of this novel. After forbidding reporters and editors from making reference to ‘subjects related to subversive incidents, the appearance of bodies and the death of subversive elements’ from April 1976, the military regime extended censorship ahead of the World Cup to prohibit negative reporting or criticism of any aspect of the national team, or of its coach, Menotti (Smith, 2002). This prohibition is mentioned explicitly in the novel’s opening pages, which quickly establish the parallel threads of the impending World Cup final between Argentina and Holland and the overwhelming atmosphere of fear and suspicion. Towards the end of the first, short chapter, Pablo’s girlfriend, Ana, utters the apparently innocuous words that give the novel its title, and which explode his existence, establishing an unresolved tension between paranoia and persecution that underpins his actions from that point. Pablo is employed as a reporter for an unnamed magazine, and has been asked to write a short article on the transformation of the city in the preceding months (p. 9). As part of this piece, he plans to include a paragraph on the presence, enthusiasm and expertise of women in relation to the football matches, thus tacitly conforming to the junta’s desire to promote the country’s image at home and abroad through the World Cup. In that context, he notices – but does not comment on – the number of cars in the street that carry in their window a sticker that proclaims ‘Los argentinos somos derechos y humanos’ (Argentines are upright and human) (p. 15), produced to counter reports by international human rights organisations of abuses against the civilian population.8 The unthinking assimilation of such material suggests how the regime sought to shape public opinion through the written word in a variety of media, but the process was also far more subtle, and Pablo’s idea of writing about women’s involvement in the World Cup unwittingly counters the efforts of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, who based themselves on clear gender lines precisely to distance Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 themselves from the male-dominated discourses of football and military conflict that were dominant in Argentine society during El Proceso. Against the backdrop of celebrated cases of journalists who dared to question the dictatorship or challenge its directives on reporting, such as Jacobo Timerman,9 Pablo shows no interest whatsoever in investigating reports of bodies that he is told are being washed up on the country’s beaches. Nor does he appear to connect these to the helicopter flights that are noted from the first page, returning low from the river (p. 7), although for a post- Proceso public keen to come to terms with the role of the military and the 136 Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate

1978 World Cup, such flights would clearly allude to the desaparecidos. The protagonist’s unconscious complicity with the junta’s agenda does not, however, mean that he can feel secure, and when he tells his friends Roberto and Sara of the tipos abajo, Roberto reassures his wife that there is nothing to worry about as Pablo has never written about political matters: ‘Las notas suyas no pueden molestar a nadie’ (Your pieces can’t upset anybody) (p. 63). The apparent words of comfort carry a charge that, with hindsight, can be seen to be critical of the manner in which many Argentines failed to challenge or question what was happening in the country around the World Cup. As Pablo himself recognises, ‘si no estás con ellos, estás en contra’ (if you’re not with them, you’re against them) (p. 24) – football’s duality of contingent identification and ritualised conflict, as nations play against each other on the pitch, mapping onto the rhetoric of the dictatorship. Alongside the atmosphere of fear, football is the other significant narrative that runs through the novel, and indeed features from the outset as the opening pages are dedicated to (re)constructing the feverish atmosphere that had developed in Argentina as the national team progressed to the final in 1978. Pablo is far from being a fanatical supporter, but it is evident from the novel’s second page that he has – as had Ferreira’s poetic voice – been caught up in the predominant football discourse as he disposes of some rubbish by screwing it into a ball and kicking it towards a bin, celebrating with a shout of ‘gol’ (p. 8) as it drops in. The sense of collective euphoria at Argentina’s presence in the final is subtly undermined, however, as the discourse of football becomes associated increasingly with authoritarian aspects of the game. Following what appear to be (or are imagined to be) several close encounters with the authorities, in addition to the ever- present tipos on the street corner opposite his flat, Pablo’s first actual interaction with the authorities comes when he finds himself in a bar that is subjected to a sweep by a group of plain-clothes and uniformed policemen. As he tries to leave by a side door, he is called back by a sharp blast on a whistle, and on turning round he finds himself face to face with a man in uniform who uses a flexing finger to call him over (p. 38), in a chain of events reminiscent of a referee calling to account a player guilty of an offence. Pablo is allowed to go on his way after his documents have Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 been found to be in order, but two other young men suffer a darker fate, and are taken away as if by magic (p. 37). The reader knows, of course, that it is not magic that has made them disappear, but rather a brutal military regime that was relying on football to validate its actions and distract public attention from them. Similarly, when his hopes of being able to stay with Roberto and Sara are dashed, we are told that he ‘revisaba paso a paso la expulsión final de la que había sido objeto’ (reviewed step by step the final expulsion he had just suffered) (p. 68). The couching of the episode in the terms of an incredulous footballer who has been sent off Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate 137

point up the degree to which football had permeated everyday life; and when his musings are interrupted by the snatching of someone from their home in the middle of the night, the link between this discourse and the junta’s strategy of disappearances becomes all too apparent. With the ubiquitous presence of football firmly established alongside the pervasive sense of fear and the regulation of communication in the first half of the novel, the three are then drawn together to explore how they related to each other in Argentina at the time of the World Cup. The first such episode is found when Pablo visits Roberto and Sara, during which time he becomes fully aware of the levels of distrust, suspicion and self- preservation generated by the regime’s potential interest in him, immediately linked in Sara’s mind to the disappearance of a friend’s brother, also a journalist. In response to Pablo’s interest in the case, Roberto tells him that nobody had seen or heard anything, after which they too fell quiet for a while (‘Callaron largo’) (p. 65). Their reflective silence is eventually broken by the appearance on television of highlights from the match for third place between Brazil and Italy, played earlier that day, football serving to divert their attention from the disappearances and the broader political situation. When the final between Argentina and Holland kicks off the following day, Pablo finds himself walking through Buenos Aires in a symbolic reclaiming of the streets and a simultaneous rejection of a nationhood based on the fusing of the Argentinian football team and the political ends of the military regime. Despite his exclusion from the match, Pablo cannot help but know the score as the Argentinian equaliser is loudly celebrated on the balconies of flats that line the road he is walking, and as extra time begins he enters a workshop, where he listens to a radio commentary on the defining moments of the match with the owner, a complete stranger. The description of the goal that gives Argentina the lead in the final leaves no doubt as to the connection that Dal Masetto seeks to establish between the World Cup and the human rights abuses perpetrated by the junta: ‘Cuando Kempes marcó el segundo gol argentino y la ciudad volvió a vibrar, el cuerpo del gordo sufrió una sacudida breve, igual que si le hubiese rozado un cable con electricidad’ (When Kempes scored the second goal for Argentina and the city shook again, the man’s body suffered a brief jolt, as if an electric cable had brushed against his body) Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 (p. 98). Such a scene resonates strongly with Prego’s representation of a victim of torture who hears a football commentary on the radio, discussed above, and similarly evokes the testimonies of those who heard the crowd’s celebration of Argentina’s goals from the depths of the ESMA torture centre. On the final whistle, Pablo returns to the street, where he is greeted by scenes of joyous celebration and allows himself to be carried along by the tide of people converging on the Avenida 9 de Julio, a huge boulevard in downtown Buenos Aires named in honour of the country’s Independence Day, and the traditional venue for celebration of football victories. After 138 Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate

the story has drawn on a series of national icons to bind the city’s inhabitants into an atmosphere of jubilation ‘como si cada uno hubiese partici- pado en el triunfo’ (as if each of them had taken part in the victory) (p. 101), the use of the hypothetical calls into question the degree to which this was the case. The scene quickly turns sour for Pablo, however, as one of the crowd is run over by a lorry and badly crushed, frantic waving to clear a path to take him to hospital confused with the enthusiastic flag- waving to mark the victory. The injured man’s plight reminds him of a cockroach he had earlier watched struggling to escape from a sink, and he goes on to reflect that each of those present on the street had been subjected to a sacrifice, best summed up as ‘una gran humillación’ (a great humiliation) (p. 104). The World Cup, and especially Argentina’s victory, means that matters of life and death become invisible amid the outpouring of joy; moreover, the clear implication is that Argentina’s success in the World Cup has come at the price of disappearance, torture and death for many of the nation’s citizens. In the face of such thoughts, and despite the temptation to lose himself in the crowd, in which identity, will, hopes and fears all become blurred (p. 104), Pablo decides to turn towards home, imagining a bird’s eye view of the scene as ‘como una mascarada demente en el patio inmenso de una cárcel’ (like a demented masquerade in the patio of a huge prison) (p. 105). The image of the public celebrations in a society where public association was severely restricted as a recreational space circumscribed by confinement is a powerfully effective one, and prefigures Pablo’s fruitless efforts to escape the persecution to which he imagines he is (or perhaps is) being subjected. After criss- crossing the city to throw off any pursuers, he reaches the train station and leaves Buenos Aires, but once on the train finds himself under the gaze of men who could be informants or operatives of the regime, peering at him from behind newspapers whose headlines proclaim Argentina’s triumph. The novel ends with Pablo getting off the train at a tiny station in the middle of nowhere, having left his bag on his seat to divert attention from his departure: as he walks into the night he has nothing, knows nobody, and does not even know where he is. As Pablo discovered on the train, and as was implicit in the image of the panoptical prison in whose patio he imagined the crowd celebrating, there was no escape from the reach of the Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 dictatorship amid the state of terror that had developed during El Proceso. As the novel closes, the reader knows that Pablo has done nothing wrong, but shares his anxiety and paranoia, expecting something to happen to him at any moment. The outcome of the Mundial, by contrast, seems certain and an Argentinian win entirely expected, foretold from the first page by enthusiastic passers-by and subsequently via television broadcasts by the military commanders. Pablo comes to discover that, despite his meticulous preparations and train journey, there can be no escape, either from the fear of state violence or from the World Cup, as the two prove to be Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate 139

intertwined. Over the course of the novel, a series of associations are made between the military dictatorship and football, and these are developed into a connection between fear, torture and disappearances on the one hand and the 1978 World Cup on the other. What begins as an apparently casual relationship between a brutal regime and football becomes over the course of the novel a causal relationship as one depends on the other for its success. The country’s courts brought to trial the main actors of El Proceso, the culmination of efforts to come to terms with what had happened in the political, military and social arenas, but Hay unos tipos abajo remains one of few texts to subject the 1978 World Cup to such scrutiny.

The Repetition of (Football) History: Two Times June Published in 2002, at a time when Argentina’s relationship with the period of El Proceso was under review through a revisiting of previous decisions to grant pardons to the leaders of the dictatorship, Martín Kohan’s novel Dos veces junio (Two Times June) deals with the period of the 1978 World Cup, thus mirroring the temporal frame of Hay unos tipos abajo. Kohan’s novel, however, has as its subject a military conscript whose role is as driver for a medical doctor who is involved in the military’s actions, to whom the chill- ing opening question, ‘¿A partir de qué edad se puede empesar [sic] a tor- turar a un niño?’ (From what aje [sic] can you start to torture a child?) (p. 7), is directed. The question lacks a moral dimension and discussion of it is, instead, concerned solely with the spelling mistake and its practical aspects, evident from the narrator’s reflection that ‘habiendo números de por medio, se trataba de una simple cuestión de azar’ (given that there were numbers involved, it was a simple matter of chance) (p. 7). The obsession with numbers becomes a structuring device around which the novel’s highly fragmented narrative is constructed, many of the apparently random figures drawn from the World Cup, such as dates of matches or the attendance figures. The football itself does not feature significantly in the narrative, but a series of short chapters consist entirely of variations on the names of the players in the Argentinian team, to include respectively their weight, club team, shirt number or date of birth. Such a strategy builds Argentina’s parti- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 cipation in the football tournament into the fabric of the novel and, by extension, into the core of its subject matter, the systematic (and scientific) torture and disappearance of detainees. At the same time, however, the military’s involvement in the World Cup emerges as another cynical manipulation of the World Cup as a means of securing its ends in as efficient a manner as possible, while reducing numbers to a matter of chance simultaneously undercuts the importance of the football results thus achieved. Dos veces junio also differs from Hay unos tipos abajo by explicitly moving beyond the temporal confines of the 1978 World Cup, the second 140 Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate

June of the title referring to the 1982 version of the tournament, where Argentina lost to Brazil and Italy in the second group stage, events that are narrated in the work’s lengthy epilogue. In focusing on the repeat of the loss to Italy, Argentina’s only defeat of the 1978 tournament, Kohan succeeds in moving beyond the triumphalist discourses typical of the country’s first World Cup success, projecting back from 1982 the disappointment and national sense of loss that should, it is implied, have been felt around the 1978 victory. The connections between the two tournaments are flagged to the reader by the narrator’s observation that ‘Noto que, con la escasa excepción de apenas dos integrantes, la formación de la Argentina se ha conservado idéntica desde la vez anterior, como si los años no hubiesen pasado’ (I note that, with the exception of just two players, the Argentina team has remained identical to last time, as if the years had not passed) (p. 113). The continuities to which the narrator draws attention play out in the context of the reader’s present, inviting reflection on the degree to which these connections, to the World Cup victory and to El Proceso more widely, play out in the fabric of Argentina at the start of the twenty- first century. In the novel’s closing pages, the narrator visits Doctor Mesiano,10 who tells him that ‘conviene ir acomodándose a la idea de que está todo perdido’ (you should get used to the idea that everything is lost) (p. 130), referring ostensibly to the country’s defeats in the Falklands War and the World Cup, both of which occurred in June 1982. Emblematic of the decline of the dictatorship, the novel takes events of 1982 as a means of casting a shadow back to the World Cup victory of 1978, when results on the pitch were similarly bound up with a conflict, although in this case it was a war with the country’s own inhabitants. At the novel’s close, the narrator records the comments of radio commentators, who offer their views on the defeat to Italy: ‘Opinan que lo importante, incluso perdiendo, es ser fieles a una historia y a una tradición de juego. Que el estilo argentino es lo que importa, más allá de las derrotas contingentes’ (They consider that the main thing, even in defeat, is to be faithful to a footballing history and tradition. That the Argentinian style is what matters, above and beyond contingent defeats) (p. 131). By establishing a connection between the two tournaments through this comment, as well as through the novel’s title and structure, Kohan invites reflection on the potential not Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 to see the 1982 defeat as a moral victory, but to reconsider the 1978 victory as a moral defeat.

Conclusions Eduardo Galeano, in his introduction to Su majestad el fútbol (Your Majesty, Football), advocates a re- evaluation of football and tackles the then normative view of the sport among intellectuals of the left: ‘si no fuera por el fútbol, el proletariado adquiriría su necesaria conciencia de Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate 141

clase y la revolución estallaría’ (if it wasn’t for football, the proletariat would acquire the necessary class consciousness and the revolution would erupt) (1968: 5). Events of the following decade would demonstrate that there was indeed a close relationship between football and politics as right- wing dictatorships in Uruguay and Argentina appropriated the sport to validate their regimes, binding themselves onto an activity that had emerged through the twentieth century as a central facet of the countries’ respective national identities. The brutal repression and censorship that characterised the dictatorships made it virtually impossible to contest this appropriation, but on the return to democracy writers who returned from exile quickly sought to contest this use of football and ascribe it with a quite different political function. The first small wave of football literature to engage with this process was written on both sides of the River Plate in the years immediately following the return to civilian government, and again – in the case of Argentina – around the turn of the millennium as part of broader public debates and discourses around renewed trials for the military leaders of the period. The Uruguayan military’s organisation of the Mundialito, held between December 1980 and January 1981, demonstrates its enthusiasm for using football as a political tool, but aside from their victory in this entirely symbolic tournament, the country endured a poor run of results in international competition during the dictatorship, especially in the World Cup. The same is not true of Argen- tina, where the military’s role in the nation’s first ever World Cup triumph extended to every aspect of its organisation and staging, making the 1978 trophy particularly powerful and problematic. All of the texts discussed here take football as a widely accepted – and indeed central – aspect of the historical, political and social trajectory of Argentina and Uruguay alike since the late nineteenth century. This position, closely bound as it is to the nations’ sense of self, rendered the military regimes’ appropriation of the sport as potent as it was unwelcome for those who saw in football a means of identification and an integral part of the process of nation- building that had taken place during the twentieth century. For the writers studied here, such considerations meant that football offered a means not only of challenging the relationship between football and the military, but also of contesting and denouncing the actions of the military Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 regimes themselves. By approaching this through football, with all that it connotes in the countries of the River Plate, these authors take an alternative route to the expression of support for the national project and (in the case of authors who went into exile) of re-engaging with it. The importance of captains of the national team from the 1930s and 1950s in Benedetti’s ‘El césped’, for example, represents a clear bridge to a period that predates the military dictatorship, linking past and present in a manner that seeks to isolate the recent regime and its players as a period of exception in the longer sweep of national history. Further convergence of these threads is evident 142 Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate

through Pase libre, la fuga de la mansión Seré (Free Pass: Escape from the Seré Mansion), a 2001 novel by Claudio Tamburrini, the professional goalkeeper for Club Almagro in Buenos Aires, who was kidnapped by the dictatorship in 1977 and held prisoner before escaping.11 In Argentina, the re- publication in 2007 of Santoro’s La literatura de la pelota to mark the 30th anniversary of his disappearance similarly afﬁrms the ability of football’s literary representation to transcend a period that was a brutal and traumatic interlude in a national project. The works considered here constitute an important aspect of an ongoing re- evaluation of the respective dictatorships, part of a public discourse that continues to negotiate the relationship between the present and the past through a range of key cultural practices, to be achieved in part though both football and writing.

Notes 1 All page references refer to the story in Cuentos para patear (Prego Gadea, 1990). 2 Argentinian star striker Artime, for example, played for Nacional in Uruguay, where he won three league titles (he was top scorer in each of these seasons) and one Copa Libertadores. He rose to prominence with River Plate, but also had spells in Brazil with Palmeiras and Fluminense. Montero played for Nacional and for Independiente (Argentina), while Mazurkiewicz played for Peñarol and Atlético Mineiro. 3 Sections of the story first appeared in Benedetti’s Despistes y franquezas (For- getfulness and Frankness) (1989). 4 Page numbers refer to the 1999 Alianza edition of Benedetti’s Cuentos. 5 Juan Carlos Onetti, author of the 1960 novella La cara de la desgracia (The Face of Misfortune), was arrested in January 1974 and imprisoned for five months for his role as a member of the jury that awarded a literary prize to a story by Nelson Marra that was considered pornographic and offensive by the military authorities. On his release, Onetti went into exile in Madrid. 6 The decision in October 2011 to revoke the 1986 amnesty on Uruguay’s military figures for their part in the human rights abuses of the period 1976–84 offers belated legal recognition of this. 7 For further information on their activities, visit the organisation’s website: www.madres.org (accessed 7 July 2016). 8 Dal Masetto enjoys here some creative licence: Alabarces (2014: 89) notes that these stickers were produced in 1979 ahead of the visit of the Inter- American Commission on Human Rights. 9 Timerman (1923–99) was the editor of La Opinión, and had reported tenta-

Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 tively on disappearances and guerrilla activities. He was taken from his apart- ment in April 1977 and detained for three years by the military, during which time he was tortured. He was eventually released into exile following pressure from human rights groups, and returned to Argentina in 1984. 10 It is tempting to see in the doctor’s name an echo of Lionel Messi, particularly given the manner in which he mirrored Maradona’s achievements in the 1979 World Youth Championship with his starring role as captain of Argentina’s victorious team in the 2005 version, also played in June. However, Messi was just 15 at the time of the novel’s publication in 2002. 11 The novel was made into the ﬁlm Crónica de una fuga (Chronicle of an Escape) (dir. Adrián Caetano, 2006). Playing Dirty (Second Half): The River Plate 143

Bibliography Alabarces, Pablo. Héroes, machos y patriotas. El fútbol entre la violencia y los medios (Buenos Aires: Aguilar, 2014). Alﬁano, Roberto. ‘Cosas de Borges’ La Razón 24 July 1978. Consulted online at www.taringa.net/posts/info/17891872/Borges- y-el-futbol.html (accessed 7 July 2016). Arbena, Joseph L. ‘Generals and Goles: Assessing the Connection Between the Military and Soccer in Argentina’ International Journal of the History of Sport 7:1 (1990), 120–30. Archetti, Eduardo. ‘Masculinity and Football: The Formation of National Identity in Argentina’ in John Williams and Richard Giulianotti (eds) Game Without Frontiers. Football, Identity and Modernity (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1994), 225–43. Benedetti, Mario. ‘Puntero izquierdo’ Número 6: 26 (March 1955), 30–4. Benedetti, Mario. Pedro y el capitán (Madrid: Alianza, 1999 [1979]). Benedetti, Mario. Despistes y franquezas (Montevideo: Arca / Nueva Imagen, 1989). Benedetti, Mario. El césped y otros cuentos (Barcelona: Ediciones Primera Plana, 1993). Benedetti, Mario. Cuentos (Madrid: Alianza, 1999). Borges, Jorge Luis. Borges oral (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores / Editorial de Belgrano, 1979). Borges, Jorge Luis and Adolfo Bioy Casares. ‘Esse est percipi’ in Crónicas de Bustos Domecq (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 2003 [1967]), 137–42. Caetano, Adrián (director). Crónica de una fuga (Argentina, 2006). Farred, Grant. ‘Los Desaparecidos y la Copa Mundial’ in his Long- Distance Love. A Passion for Football (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), 60–81. Ferreira, Carlos. A mi juego (Buenos Aires: Ediciones la Campana, 1983). Filippelli, Rafael and Emilio Alfaro (directors). Hay unos tipos abajo (Argentina, 1985). Galeano, Eduardo (ed.). Su majestad el fútbol (Montevideo: Arca, 1968). García Candau, Julián. ‘A Borges y Videla no les gusta el fútbol’ El País 16 June 1978. Consulted online at http://elpais.com/diario/1978/06/16/deportes/266796002_ 850215.html (accessed 7 July 2016). Giulianotti, Richard. ‘Built by the Two Varelas: The Rise and Fall of Football Culture and National Identity in Uruguay’ in Richard Giulianotti and Gerry Finn (eds) Football Culture. Local Contests, Global Visions (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 134–54. Kohan, Martín. Dos veces junio (Buenos Aires: Debolsillo e- book, 2011 [2002]).

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Nunca más. Informe de la Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de las Perso- nas (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1984). Onetti, Juan Carlos. La cara de la desgracia (Montevideo: Alfa, 1960). Pérez, Jorge Omar. Los Nobel del fútbol (Barcelona: Editorial Meteora, 2006). Prego Gadea, Omar. ‘Una tarde con Pelé’ in Sólo para exiliados (Montevideo: Arca, 1987). Prego Gadea, Omar (ed.). Cuentos para patear (Montevideo: Ediciones Trilce, 1990). Quiroga, Horacio. ‘Juan Polti, half- back’ Atlántida (Montevideo) 11, 16 May 1918. Sábato, Ernesto. Sobre héroes y tumbas (Buenos Aires: Compañía General Fabril Editora, 1961). Santoro, Roberto. Literatura de la pelota (Buenos Aires: Editorial Papeles de Buenos Aires, 1971). Smith, Bill L. ‘The Argentinian Junta and the Press in the Run- up to the 1978 World Cup’ Soccer and Society, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 2002), 69–78. Spurling, Jon. Death or Glory. The Dark History of the World Cup (Vision Sports Publishing, 2010). Consulted online at www.sabotagetimes.com/football-sport/ argentinas- 1978-world-cup-the- ugly-truth/ (accessed 7 July 2016). Tamburrini, Claudio. Pase libre, la fuga de la mansión Seré (Buenos Aires: Edi- ciones Continente, 2001). Taylor, Chris. The Beautiful Game. A Journey Through Latin American Football (London: Victor Gollancz, 1998). Wood, Andrés (director). Historias de fútbol (Chile, 1997). Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Chapter 7 Argentina Beyond El Proceso Narratives of National Reconstruction

In the wake of the return to democracy in Argentina in December 1983, which followed the official end of the military regime’s censorship a month earlier (Foster, 1995: 14), the country’s writers were extremely active in exploring events of the brutal dictatorship that had dominated every aspect of the nation’s life over the preceding years. Violent sup- pression of opposition voices and the disappearance (murder) of numerous authors and journalists had made writing about contemporary Argentinian realities a dangerous act during El Proceso (Kohut, 1996: 13). The presidency of Raúl Alfonsín (1983–89) marked the opening of a space that was rapidly filled by authors keen to voice the recent social and political landscape, including through an exploration of football, as discussed in Chapter 6. Emblematic of this connection between writers and recent political events was President Alfonsín’s appointment of novelist Ernesto Sábato – whose major novel Sobre héroes y tumbas (On Heroes and Tombs, 1961) includes a discussion of football – to oversee the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, whose report was published in 1984 under the title Nunca más (Never Again). In his study of Argentinian literature during this period, Foster notes how in the immediate post-Proceso era ‘the print media filled bookstores and kiosks with myriad publications that bear witness to the attempt to recover a cultural tradition that was altered and fragmented by the so- called Proceso de Reorganización Nacional’ (1995: 14). He also draws attention to how the deaths of Argentina’s literary giants (Julio Cortázar Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 in 1984, Jorge Luis Borges in 1986 and Manuel Puig in 1990) resulted in a ‘sort of “vacuum” [that would] perpetuate the sensation that Argentina is continuing to experience a period of cultural transition’ (1995: 57). Another feature of this transitional period that set out to reclaim the nation’s cultural landscape from the censorship and restrictions of the military dictatorship was the return of many of the writers and intellectuals who had gone into exile during the early years of the Proceso. 146 Argentina Beyond El Proceso

Osvaldo Soriano Among the returning exiles was Osvaldo Soriano (1943–97), who had left Argentina in 1976 after previously working with Jacobo Timerman on the left- leaning newspaper La Opinión and having published his first novel, Triste, solitario y final (Sad, Lonely and Final), in Buenos Aires in 1973. He spent the period 1976–84 in Mexico, Belgium and France and published in Europe, in 1980 and 1982 respectively, No habrá más penas ni olvido (Funny Dirty Little War) and Cuarteles de invierno (Winter Quar- ters), two novels highly critical of repressive political regimes in his native Argentina. In Cuarteles de invierno, Soriano had explored the mechanisms by which the dictatorship maintained its control over the country, featuring a boxer and a tango singer as the protagonists, thereby reflecting the greater interest in popular culture evident in many authors of the 1970s post- Boom. The confrontational and starkly oppositional nature of boxing, and the physical violence inherent to it, served as an effective means of depicting the conditions under which everyday Argentines experienced the dictatorship, but on returning to the country in 1984 Soriano turned increasingly to his lifelong passion of football to reflect on the state of the nation and its inhabitants. This inclusion of football in his writing can be traced back to the early 1970s, when he had published two football chronicles in La Opinión, but was consolidated via the regular column he wrote for the Página 12 newspaper from its founding in 1987, an integral aspect of the re-invigoration of the cultural domain that characterised the return to democracy. In 1993 Soriano published Cuentos de los años felices (Stories of the Happy Years), a short story collection that features nine texts that would be included in the various subsequent anthologies of Soriano’s football stories (1998, 2006, 2010). As the name of the collection suggests, many of the stories offer a nostalgic reconstruction of the author’s childhood, notably in the case of those that comprise the work’s first section, entitled ‘En nombre del padre’ (In the Name of the Father), which brought together pieces written originally for Página 12 (Berger, 2004: 79). Here we find ‘Primeros amores’ (First Loves), ‘Genevieve’ and ‘Otoño del 53’ (Autumn of ’53), three crónica-style texts written in the first person that Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 recreate Soriano’s adolescent experiences as a keen footballer in Neuquén, the largest city in Patagonia. In ‘Primeros amores’ the narrator describes how his teenage self inhabited a world in which he and his friends were

terriblemente machistas porque crecíamos en un tiempo y en un mundo que eran así sin cuestionarse. Un mundo de milicos levantiscos y jerarquías consagradas [. . .] sobre el que pronto iban a caer como un aluvión el furioso jolgorio de los años sesenta. Argentina Beyond El Proceso 147

(terribly machista because we grew up in a time and place that were simply like that. A world of military ofﬁcers prone to coups and unquestioned hierarchies [. . .] onto which would fall, like a landslide, the furious revelry of the 1960s.) (p. 22)

In the following lines he goes on to discuss how the boys of the town wanted to grow up quickly ‘y triunfar en alguna cosa viril y estúpida como las carreras de motos o los partidos de fútbol’ (and triumph in some virile and stupid activity like motorbike races or football matches) (p. 22). This apparent condemnation of football, the activity that binds together the 28 stories of the subsequent anthologies, has to be read in the context of what has immediately preceded it: a series of hierarchies that would be fundamentally challenged by events of the 1960s, and which continued to be challenged as Argentina emerged from another decade of ‘military officers prone to coups’. By the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s, when these stories were first published in book form, football in Argentina was undergoing a transformation, subject to a growing female presence and to increasingly sophisticated analyses of its role in national society and culture. As a consequence, it came to be accepted not as ‘some virile and stupid activity’ but rather as an important means of reflecting upon the country’s social, political and cultural landscape. Soriano continues this exploration of football’s role in mediating the relationship between Argentina’s past and its present in ‘Otoño del 53’, in which the narrator’s football team has recently returned triumphant from Buenos Aires after winning the Copa Infantil Evita (Evita Youth Cup), part of the Juegos Evita (Evita Games) that were established in 1948 for children across Argentina, and which ran until the overthrow of Juan Perón in 1955. In recognition of their achievement, the team is chosen by Perón to represent the country against a team from ‘las Falkland’ in a match that would determine once and for all whether the islands would carry the name ‘Falklands’ or ‘Malvinas’. The mission, however, is a disaster as the team fails to reach its destination and in the closing lines the narrator jumps to the present to reflect on how, had his team won the game, the 1982 war with Britain might never have taken place. Soriano’s opposition Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 to the actions of the Argentinian junta in relation to the Falklands/ Malvinas emerges at the end of the story, in which the lament that nobody remembers those who fought in the war (p. 92) serves as the basis for the narrative and links the young narrator’s efforts to those of the recruits who lie in the Argentinian cemetery in Port Stanley (p. 92). Rein’s study reveals that Perón’s use of sport as a tool of nationalism was not, of course, limited to football and the Neuquén youth team’s supposed match against the islanders (Rein, 1998), and the 29-year gap between the events of the narrative and the failed campaign in 1982 allows the narrator to show 148 Argentina Beyond El Proceso

how he has gone from being seduced by the figures of Perón and Evita as a child to gaining a critical awareness of the political ends of the Juegos Evita. It is here that Soriano engages with ‘In the Name of the Father’, the title of this section of stories, as the Messianic status of Perón as father of the nation is replaced by the more mundane figure of the narrator’s own father, whose loathing of Perón and Evita’s demagoguery was incompre- hensible to a 10-year- old child who idolised them both. The reasons behind the team’s failure to fulfil its mission to play the islanders merit brief consideration, lying as they do in a combination of factors that enrich (or impoverish) the depiction of the Perón regime. From the beaten- up bus in which they set off from Neuquén to the Atlantic coast, to the mountains, lakes and deserts they would have to cross, in addition to the hailstorms, howling winds, pumas and spitting guanacos, a series of natural and technological obstacles render their progress impossible. Eventually, instead of the coast they reach the far south of Patagonia after becoming hopelessly lost because of the lack of a good map, their ordeal meaning that the teacher has forgotten both the national anthem and the number of islands that make up the Falklands/Malvinas, while the local officials accompanying the team have all grown straggly beards. The prominence of so many markers of barbarism that stand as barriers to the realisation of national integrity draws attention to Argentina’s long- standing efforts to define itself through the civilisation/barbarism dichotomy, and while the child protagonist saw Perón as the epitome of a civilising mission, resplendent in a white suit and riding a chic Italian Vespa in the capital, his view as an adult has changed. At the end of the story, the temporal leap to the early 1980s connects what the narrator now sees as the barbarism of Peronism with that of El Proceso’s military dictatorship, which also embraced football as a key aspect of its nationalist agenda, most obviously through the 1978 World Cup that sought to project positive images of the nation to national and international audiences alike. Echoes of 1978 and 1982 also underlie ‘Maradona sí, Galtieri no’ (Maradona Yes, Galtieri No), which precedes ‘Otoño del 53’ in the collection and thus enters into dialogue with it. Taking as its point of departure Maradona’s two goals that defeated England in the 1986 World Cup, Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 including the infamous ‘Hand of God’ incident, Soriano relates his attempts to telephone the governor of the Falkland Islands to explain that a goal such as Maradona’s second is worth double to any child in Argen- tina, thereby compensating for the questionable first. As its title suggests, this text is a celebration of football’s ability to achieve a victory where the military dictatorship failed, while also acclaiming Maradona as a national hero, a man of the people, in stark opposition to the leader of the military junta that lost to los ingleses in actual – rather than ritualised – conflict.1 It would, however, be simplistic to see this text as an affirmation of football Argentina Beyond El Proceso 149

as a means of recuperating childhood innocence in the face of post-Proceso adulthood, especially given the profoundly problematic nature of Marado- na’s public persona. Like the narrator of ‘Otoño del 53’, Maradona was part of the winning team in the Juegos Evita football championship in 1974 during a brief re- establishment of the games in 1973 under Perón’s third term as president, although they came to an end following the coup that brought the dictatorship to power in 1976 (Juegos Evita, 2015).2 Moreover, Maradona was captain of the Argentina team that won the World Youth Championships in 1979, at which he was also named player of the tournament, successes that were used to drown out public and international opposition to the regime, incidents that are mentioned explicitly in this text. Despite Maradona’s tacit involvement in the manipulation of football for political gain by both the Peronist government and the military dictatorship in the 1970s, the fact that the two key points of reference in the elaboration of this story lie in the narrator’s childhood and 1986 respectively signifies the (re)construction of an Argentina that reclaims football as a national practice that lies outside Buenos Aires and beyond the confines of El Proceso. Almost half of the 38 football texts brought together in Soriano’s Arqueros, ilusionistas y goleadores (Goalkeepers, Conjurors and Scorers) (2006) could best be classed as chronicles typical of much football writing across Latin America – elaborations of historical episodes, characters or interviews written in a style that is more literary than journalistic, but which tend to be published first in newspapers. Kunz (2001: 266–7) suggests a cat- egorisation of Soriano’s football texts according to three types: first- person documentary- style reports; semi- fictional or semi- autobiographical stories, based around events in the author’s early life; and ‘purely fictional stories’ that, in their use of hyperbole, echo epic and picaresque tales. Attractive as such a schema might be, it oversimplifies the situation, ignoring as it does the leakage between the different types of text and overlooking the complex nature of (re)writing and (re)creating events of the past. Soriano himself draws the reader’s attention to such issues on various occasions: for example, the narrator of ‘El hijo de Butch Cassidy’ (The Son of Butch Cassidy) describes how his uncle Casimiro ‘escribió unas memorias fantásticas, llenas de desaciertos históricos y de insanias ahora irremediables por falta de Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 mejores testigos’ (wrote some fantastic memoirs, full of historical inaccura- cies and imaginings that cannot be set straight because there are no better witnesses) (p. 141). For his part, Míster Peregrino Fernández, in the story ‘Nostalgias’, confuses the narrator’s biography so completely with a series of other players he had known that the narrator daydreamed for a while, ‘como si lo que él creía recordar hubiese sido cierto’ (as if what he thought he remembered were true) (p. 206). It also becomes clear that Peregrino Fernán- dez, an avid reader and cinemagoer, constructs many of his memories in dialogue with a wide range of literary and cinematic works, indicating the 150 Argentina Beyond El Proceso

problematic reliability of memory and nostalgia, as well as the manner in which a range of discourses – including fictional ones – contribute to the (re)construction of key events such as El Proceso. There are also, nonetheless, a series of texts that Soriano describes explicitly as cuentos (short stories), self- consciously fictional constructs that allow the author a greater degree of latitude in creating characters and exploring relationships at the interface between football and nation in Argentina. The third section of Cuentos de los años felices, through its title ‘Pensar con los pies’ (Thinking With Your Feet), draws attention to the possibility of elaborating on ideas through football and consists of six excellent football stories that have contributed to Soriano’s status as one of the most renowned writers of football literature, two of which have been made into films.3 ‘El hijo de Butch Cassidy’, ‘Final con rojos en Ushuaia’ (Final with Reds in Ushuaia) and ‘Últimos días de William Brett Cassidy’ (The Last Days of William Brett Cassidy), originally published in Página 12, form a trilogy of stories that follow the fortunes of Butch Cassidy’s son as ‘the most feared and fair of all the referees that ever were in the World Cup’ (p. 170). Set in Patagonia in 1942, ‘El hijo de Butch Cassidy’ and ‘Final con rojos en Ushuaia’ convert the remote regions between Barda del Medio and the Chilean border into the centre of attention as the setting first for an unofficial World Cup – won by a team of local Mapuches – and subsequently a match to resolve differences between socialists and communists, thereby enabling the construction of an anti- fascist front among workers on the local ranches. By locating the stories in 1942, Soriano facilitates both the presence of disparate European nationalities escaping the Second World War and the sequencing of the World Cup, but also places them in a period when Argentina enjoyed civilian governments before a 1943 coup and the eventual rise to power of Perón in 1946. The same features are also evident in the remaining stories from ‘Pensar con los pies’, which are set in the Pat- agonian province of Río Negro during the period 1958–61, thus corresponding with the government of President Frondizi, who was preceded by a military regime and ousted in 1962 by a coup. Soriano, who wrote these stories during the post- Proceso governments of Presidents Alfonsín (1983–89) and Menem (1989–95), thus constructs an image of football Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 as a profoundly democratic practice, depicted as taking place during years of civilian government and played by everyday characters from a wide range of national, ethnic and political backgrounds. In the context of Argentina in the decade following the fall of the military dictatorship that had appropriated the sport to further its particular nationalist agenda, the football stories of Cuentos de los años felices persuasively represent the country’s most popular sport as the people’s game, reclaiming it as a national practice from the horrors surrounding the 1978 World Cup. Argentina Beyond El Proceso 151

A major part of each of the collections that bring together Soriano’s football stories is ‘Las memorias del Míster Peregrino Fernández’, a series of 13 texts that appeared in Página 12 between August 1996 and February 1997. The series was apparently destined to become a novel, although Soriano’s death in January 1997 cut short the project and three further short stories that share the same protagonist have subsequently been added to some editions of the series in what appears to be editorial opportunism and a desire to make the most of the editorial boom in football anthologies. Míster Peregrino Fernández, as his name suggests,4 is an itinerant figure who left his native Argentina to play football in Europe in the late 1930s before returning home to begin a career as an innovative manager that would subsequently take him to Europe, Africa and Australia from the 1960s onwards. Confined to a wheelchair in the narrative present of a residential care home on the outskirts of Paris, he recounts his stories and reflections during the course of weekly visits from the narrator, asking his interlocutor in one of the final episodes ‘¿Qué otra cosa puedo hacer ahora que estoy en tiempo de descuento? Mirarme para adentro, buscarme, eso es todo’ (What else can I do now that I’m in injury time? Look inside myself, search for myself, that’s all) (p. 261). Such comments bear clear resonance in the context of Soriano’s impending death from lung cancer, while the periods of absence from Argentina experienced by Soriano and Míster Peregrino Fernández alike further strengthen the notion that they are connected. Indeed, the narrator’s interviews with the latter may be seen as the former’s dialogue with himself as a writer who is also a man nearing the end of his life, at the same time highlighting the fleeting nature of man’s physical prowess, as the ex- football star is now ‘con las piernas duras en una silla de ruedas’ (stiff- legged in a wheelchair) (‘Nostalgias’, p. 205). The young Peregrino Fernández had first travelled to Europe after making a name for himself as a leading goalscorer in some of Argentina’s most well-known teams, only then to find himself caught up in the Second World War, which he was able to survive (in France, Russia, England, Italy and North Africa) as a result of his football ability. That he spent his time seeking to escape the worst of the conflict echoes Soriano’s period as an exile in Europe, while the remembrance of episodes prior to the war mirrors the reconstruction of Argentina on the basis of references that Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 again predate El Proceso. Both the book of memoirs that the narrator is explicitly elaborating in conjunction with Míster Peregrino Fernández and the novel that Soriano was writing are, then, narratives of exile in which football offers a means whereby Argentines continue to construct their relationship with their country of origin, as well as shape the narrative of national reconstruction in the post- Proceso era. Despite the warning issued by William Brett Cassidy (Butch Cassidy’s son) about the danger of mixing football and politics (p. 146), this is precisely what Soriano does time and again as a central element in his work, 152 Argentina Beyond El Proceso

which is characterised by Delgado- Costa as ‘an extensive variety of critical positions vis- à-vis his country’s reality’ (2002: 172). In the face of the repeated politicisation of football, most conspicuously by Perón in the 1950s and by the military junta around the 1978 World Cup, Soriano undertakes what Kunz terms ‘an imaginary footballisation of politics, nar- rating grotesque matches that are organised to resolve ideological conflicts and wars’ (2001: 270–1). Kunz goes on to affirm that this notion of football as a proxy for political conflict repeatedly fails in Soriano’s stories (2001: 273), but as ‘Maradona sí, Galtieri no’ illustrates, football can achieve victories that elude politicians, while the memories, re-creations and inventions of footballing episodes throughout the stories exemplify the daily reclaiming of cultural spaces and moments of action that cannot be captured by repressive political regimes. In her study of Soriano’s novels, Mathieu notes how, for characters who encounter challenging circumstances, ‘it is not losing that is important, but how you lose’ (1988: 87). It is here that Soriano’s belief in the fundamental value of human solidarity finds expression, reflected in his celebration of the collective endeavour of the team over the individualism of social, economic and cultural models that were felt with force in Argentina from the 1970s onwards. It is also, however, about how you win, and the tainted nature of Argentina’s triumph in the 1978 World Cup is implicitly condemned by the ‘fútbol espectáculo’ created by Míster Peregrino Fernández, whose tactical innova- tions and commitment to an attacking style dazzle audiences on three con- tinents. Ultimately, however, his tendency to break the rules to enhance the spectacle (for example, sending on a twelfth player during moments of on- pitch confusion) proves his undoing, and even the most entertaining matches prove able to distract the crowds only temporarily, as was also the case in 1978. The use of spectacle as a means of constructing nationhood around male practices here is suggestive of Taylor’s perceptive study, which highlights how the performance of nation and gender in Argentina are ‘difficult to imagine separately’ (1997: 92), and how women are effectively rendered invisible in the process, as has been largely true of football stories – and football practice – until recently. Written almost entirely after his return from exile, Soriano’s football stories bear witness to the sense of disenchantment felt by many after the Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 events of El Proceso, evident in a return to the more distant past and to the geographically remote regions of the nation as sources of inspiration. Sori- ano’s novels, in keeping with the work of other authors of the post-Boom, embrace diverse forms of popular culture, such as Laurel and Hardy, hard- boiled detective novels and film, as well as boxing, features that sit comfortably alongside his preoccupation with football – far and away Argentina’s most popular sport – as a central pillar of his short fiction. For a returning exile, the language of football, and especially club football, provided a lingua franca around which Argentines with divergent Argentina Beyond El Proceso 153

experiences during the dictatorship could share a common discourse that was simultaneously uniquely national in its slang and references and in keeping with the literary discourses of the period. Football, then, provided Soriano with a means of engaging with a project of national reconstruction in the aftermath of the horrors of the dictatorship while at the same time implicitly challenging the manner in which the sport had been used by political- military elites in recent (and not so recent) times. Through the football stories discussed here, the author contests the discursive practices of the repressive military dictatorship and reclaims from it the nation’s favourite sport, the ways of talking about it and the purposes it serves.

Roberto ‘El Negro’ Fontanarrosa Celebrated across Latin America for his cartoon characters Inodoro Pereyra and Boogie El Aceitoso, Roberto Fontanarrosa (1944–2007) has also become renowned for the football stories that appeared in his eight short story collections published between 1973 and 1998, brought together as a single anthology entitled Puro fútbol in 2000. In addition, he oversaw the collection Cuentos de fútbol argentino (1997), one of the outstanding examples of its kind, which brought together many of the country’s best- known writers of football stories, including several women. A prolific car- toonist who remained in Argentina throughout the period 1976–83, Fontanarrosa published no narrative texts between his first collection of short stories in 1973 and 1981, when his novel Best Seller appeared. This was followed a year later by another novel, El área 18, in which the Syrian mercenary Best Seller leads an international team of footballers, with the support of powerful US multi- national corporations, to challenge the unde- feated national team of Congodia, a young African republic. That Congo- dia depends on the results of its football team for its political present and – via large- scale betting – for its economic security can be seen as a typically metaphorical treatment of events in Argentina of the time, in particular the 1978 World Cup. For Alabarces the novel is ‘a brilliant parody of sporting nationalism’ that encapsulates the nationalistic fervour for football in many countries of the international periphery, including – of course – Argentina (2014: 217). By the time Fontanarrosa published these Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 two novels, the military regime’s restrictions on cultural production were starting to ease, and his literary silence during the worst of the repression is all the more striking given his prolific production after 1983, which saw the publication of seven collections of short stories and another novel between 1985 and 1998. The return to democracy would appear to have opened the floodgates to a wave of publication activity for authors who had effectively self-censored during El Proceso: for example, Fontanarro- sa’s short story ‘19 de diciembre de 1971’, which celebrates the first league title secured by his beloved Rosario Central, was written in the year of its 154 Argentina Beyond El Proceso

title, but appeared only in 1987 in Nada del otro mundo (Nothing Special). The writing of this story clearly predates El Proceso, but an admiring reference to the Tupamaros’ ability to organise kidnappings (p. 78)5 would have resulted in censorship and potentially disastrous consequences for the author, as they did for Santoro, who compiled the 1971 anthology of football texts Literatura de la pelota before being disappeared in June 1977. Stories that deal with episodes of the Proceso era are similarly delayed: for example, ‘¡Qué lástima, Cattamarancio!’ (What a Shame, Cattamaran- cio!), which alludes to the manner in which football in River Plate’s Estadio Monumental distracts attention from events of international political transcendence, was published in 1985 as part of the significantly named collection El mundo ha vivido equivocado (The World Has Lived Mistakenly). In this story, which takes the form of a live radio broadcast of a football match, the commentators’ enthusiasm in recounting the details of a 0–0 draw in the stadium that hosted the 1978 World Cup final means that they refuse to give air time to countrymen who have called in to the programme from Russia and the United States respectively. The two Argentines in temporary absence from their homeland have the ear of the presidents of the countries in which they find themselves and the potential to avert an imminent nuclear war, but instead of facilitating a conversation between opposing parties the football commentators repeatedly cut short their interlocutors to return to the details of an unremarkable match, resulting in an apocalypse that sweeps over Buenos Aires. Fontanarrosa (1993: 353) highlighted the 1978 World Cup final as one of a handful of ‘really transcendental events’ to have retained significance within Argen- tina beyond the period of El Proceso, and a forceful criticism of Argenti- na’s obsession with football to the detriment of events beyond the stadium – with highly damaging consequences for the nation – is readily appreci- ated here; indeed, the commentator explicitly states that football ‘takes us away from our daily problems just for a day’ (p. 14). At the same time, the hyperbole of the radio commentary in describing a dull match and the use of a discourse of attacks and defence, of conflict and injuries, common to football and warfare alike, foregrounds the manner in which language and the mass media were manipulated by the military during the 1970s to mask the realities of daily life. In the face of ‘the constant, disingenuous Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 manipulation of the news’ (Foster, 1995: 7) by the regime in the 1970s, Fontanarrosa focuses on one of the dictatorship’s key signifiers to raise questions as to how cultural producers – and consumers – responded to the ways in which they were presented with information, as well as to attitudes towards its credibility. Fontanarrosa’s enduring preoccupation with the intersection between football and events of El Proceso is evident in ‘Entre las cañas’ (Among the Canes), included in the 1998 short story collection Una lección de vida y otros cuentos (A Life Lesson and Other Stories). In this story, a team made Argentina Beyond El Proceso 155

up of friends from comfortable middle-class backgrounds suffers a defeat to a team from an impoverished and notoriously violent district, the latest in a series of losses. The manner in which one of the middle- class friends reflects on the forthcoming match as ‘the only chance they have to beat us, to overcome us and enjoy us’ (p. 158) highlights the socio-political potential of football and recalls Soriano’s reflections on Maradona’s role in the victory over England in the 1986 World Cup in ‘Maradona sí, Galtieri no’, discussed above. However, it is in the story’s closing lines that connections to El Proceso become apparent as Talo, the protagonist, looks for the ball after it has been kicked into a cane field in the final minutes of the match, only to find it next to a mutilated body. Given the emphasis on the violence for which the district is known, it would be possible to attribute the death to a local grievance, but the fact that the ball the narrator encounters next to the body, ‘como un perro fiel’ (like a faithful dog) (p. 161), is a Tango establishes a direct connection to the 1978 World Cup, for which this was the official tournament match ball. That the protagonist picks up the ball and returns to the pitch, urging his team-mates to search for a last- minute equaliser, simultaneously conveys the normalisation of brutal murders during this period and the perversion of values whereby football took precedence over a concern for brutal human rights abuses. The reader is left with the post-match image of Talo, who knows that ‘nunca se bor- raría esa imagen terrible de su memoria’ (he will never be able to erase that terrible image from his mind) (p. 161), recalling the ball sailing over the crossbar in his failed attempt to convert a penalty that would have prevented defeat. Despite the undeniable engagement with political matters and questions of expression in the stories considered above, the majority of Fontanarro- sa’s football stories have as their subject the everyday experience of barrio football in the author’s home city of Rosario. He was a lifelong supporter of Rosario Central, and several of the stories evoke the fierce rivalry with the city’s other major team, Newell’s Old Boys, while others have in common a group of young men who meet in the El Cairo bar – frequented by Fontanarrosa himself – to discuss football- related matters. Stories such as ‘Lo que se dice un jugador de folbo’ (What You Call a Footballer), ‘El ocho era Moacyr’ (The Number 8 Was Moacyr) and ‘Escenas de la vida Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 deportiva’ (Scenes of Sporting Life) offer a counterbalance to the more overtly political texts considered previously and constitute instead a celebration of daily life beyond the capital, Buenos Aires, where the horrors of El Proceso were most keenly felt. Others, including ‘Plegarias a la Virgen’ (Prayers to the Virgin) and ‘La observación de los pájaros’ (Watching the Birds), capture the anguish of fans before, during and after matches involving their team, while ‘El Pichón de Cristo’ (The Chick of Christ) and ‘Relato de un utilero’ (A Kitman’s Tale) explore the quasi- religious quality of exceptional passages of play. What all of these stories have in common 156 Argentina Beyond El Proceso

is that they reclaim football as a practice of the people and represent a contribution to the cultural rebuilding, from the grass roots up, of civilian life in Argentina in the wake of the Dirty War. Fontanarrosa’s use of language also contributes significantly to this endeavour, as several of his narrators – and most of his characters – use the discourse of football fans and urban slang, such as ‘zapán’ for ‘panza’ (belly) (p. 101) or ‘gonca’ for ‘cagón’ (wimp) (p. 150). Another feature is the phonetic reproduction of non- standard usage to emphasise its presence within the narrative, as in ‘usté’ and ‘calidá’ for ‘usted’ (you) and ‘calidad’ (quality) (p. 27). This move away from official modes of discourse to the language of the barrio marks a further aspect of the reappropriation of football from the state, enhanced through the ubiquitous presence of dialogues and first-person narratives that allow the voices of those who had been silenced under El Proceso to re- emerge within the nation’s cultural landscape.

Eduardo Sacheri Born in 1967, Eduardo Sacheri spent his childhood and adolescence in Buenos Aires Province during the years of El Proceso, and thus offers a different perspective on events from that period and the post- Proceso era to both Soriano and Fontanarrosa, whose writing careers were profoundly affected by the censorship that characterised 1976–83. A teacher by profession, Sacheri first came to prominence as a writer when in 1996 he sent three short stories to Alejandro Apo (Alejandro Rütschi) in response to the latter’s request for texts that could be read on his weekly radio programme. Despite Sacheri’s awareness that he might be following in the footsteps of Soriano and Fontanarrosa as writers of football stories (Varise, 2014), the fact that his texts were first read on air in a radio programme points to an ongoing relationship between football and the mass media. Just as many of the football stories by Soriano first appeared in Página 12, Sacheri’s literary beginnings via radio suggest that, despite publishing houses’ discovery of football texts in the 1990s, football’s long- standing presence as a normalised discourse in the press and on the radio meant that these media continued to function as effective vehicles for football narratives. The enthusiastic public response to Sacheri’s stories, however, Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 resulted in the publication in 2000 of Esperándolo a Tito y otros cuentos de fútbol (Waiting for Tito and Other Football Stories), his first collection, which takes as its title one of the stories originally sent to Apo. The titular story, which opens the collection, centres on a match between two barrio teams in Buenos Aires in which the winning record of the narrator’s team – and the honour of the neighbourhood – appear destined to be lost after a run of defeats. In desperation, they contact Tito, who has emerged from the team to enjoy a career as a professional footballer in Europe, to ask him to come back to play in the match. The bulk Argentina Beyond El Proceso 157

of the story consists of nostalgic recollections of childhood incidents, the taunts of the opponents in light of Tito’s absence, and the use of urban slang to recreate a highly masculinised discourse deemed appropriate to football. Inevitably, perhaps, Tito arrives seconds before kick-off to the delight of the narrator’s team, and the dismay of their opponents, who resign themselves to defeat: the bonds of childhood friendship triumph over Tito’s contractual obligations as a professional footballer and the barrio’s honour is saved. Sacheri is, of course, aware of the position of Soriano and Fontanarrosa as the key ﬁgures in the emergence of Argentinian football stories (Varise, 2014), and ‘Esperándolo a Tito’ references the work of both authors. Tito features as a character in Fontanarrosa’s 1993 story ‘Escenas de la vida deportiva’ (Scenes of Sporting Life) (included in Puro fútbol, 2000), in which a group of friends similarly wait for team-mates (and a ball) ahead of a game against a rival barrio, and Sacheri’s narrator recalls how years earlier Josesito, another member of their team, had begged Tito never to sign for Soriano’s beloved San Lorenzo. A more explicit homage is to be found in Sacheri’s ‘El golpe de Hormiga’ (Hormi- ga’s coup), from Lo raro empezó después. Cuentos de fútbol y otros relatos (The Strange Stuff Began Later. Football Stories and Other Tales) (2003), in which a group of San Lorenzo fans retrieve some soil from the team’s pitch, now buried under a shopping mall, this story being dedicated to Osvaldo Soriano. From the outset, then, Sacheri engages in a dialogue with the country’s most renowned writers of football short stories, but for Ala- barces this is a shortcoming rather than a strength: ‘he encounters all of their discoveries and cannot but repeat them – the autobiographical key or the colloquial register of masculine conversation – albeit lacking any novelty or nuance that makes it worth the reader’s while pausing over them’ (2014: 223). Regardless of these limitations, what Sacheri’s work illustrates is that by the turn of the millennium a canon of football literature was emerging in Argentina, establishing a baseline against which subsequent work would be compared. In a 2009 interview, Sacheri states that he does not read football stories, preferring – among others – García Márquez and Cortázar (Amiano, 2009), and there are echoes, too, of their work in the stories of Esperánd- olo a Tito. For example, the title of ‘La hipotética resurrección de Baltasar Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Quiñones’ recalls the former’s ‘La prodigiosa tarde de Baltazar’ while the plot of ‘El sueño de Nicoletti’ (Nicoletti’s Dream) is reminiscent of Corta- zar’s ‘La noche boca arriba’ (The Night Face Up), both translated to the realm of football. From the subsequent collection Lo raro empezó después. Cuentos de fútbol y otros relatos (The Strange Stuff Began Later. Football Stories and Other Texts, 2003), the story ‘El Rulo y la muerte’ (Curly and Death) updates Borges’ classic story ‘El Sur’ (The South), transposing it to a run- down shack on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, where the protagonist comes face to face with death. In addition to the possibility that the 158 Argentina Beyond El Proceso

protagonist is dreaming the episode, as in ‘El Sur’, the narrative foregrounds the matter of choosing the manner of your death, although in Sacheri’s story the protagonist manages to negotiate a penalty competition from which he may emerge with his life. In another similarity with ‘El Sur’, the story ends with the two characters stepping outside to carry out their duel, although as a means of partaking of a national myth, the outcome of a penalty shoot-out is less certain than that of a knife fight with a gaucho, offering the potential for redemption through engagement with the iconic national practice at the turn of the millennium. As Alabarces also notes (2014: 220), Fontanarrosa’s story ‘19 de diciembre de 1971’ similarly dialogues with Borges’s text and how one might choose to die in the context of iconic national practices. While there can be no doubting the challenges faced by Sacheri in escaping the shadow of Soriano and Fontanarrosa – even if he wished to do so – a story such as ‘El Rulo y la muerte’ offers a degree of originality in its outcome: unlike both Borges’s ‘El Sur’ and Fon- tanarrosa’s ‘19 de diciembre de 1971’, in which the protagonist becomes part of the imaginary Argentinian nation of the past (the gaucho, football glory) through death, El Rulo’s deal with death hints at the manner in which the daily practice of football is a practice that continues to be written and lived, with uncertain outcomes to be negotiated by those who play it. The bulk of Sacheri’s football stories evoke a nostalgia for childhood and adolescence in the barrios of Buenos Aires, when the sport was enjoyed – or suffered – on its own terms, the action on and around the pitch largely self- contained and sealed off from broader issues and concerns. It is here that a significant difference with Soriano and Fontanarrosa is apparent, as Sacheri’s precursors repeatedly drew on football as a route into consideration of social and political topics, part of a tangential approach that is perhaps informed by the period of El Proceso and the associated restrictions on expression. As the implied narrator, Sacheri, by contrast, locates the action of many of his stories in what appear to be the final years of the military dictatorship without this impinging on the daily lives of the characters. For example, the story ‘Jugar con una Tango es algo mucho más difícil que a primera vista se podría suponer’ (Playing with a Tango Is Much More Difficult than You Might at First Imagine), from Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Esperándolo a Tito, describes how the boys had seen the ball in use during the 1978 World Cup but that in their district it was ‘un objeto desconoc- ido’ (an unknown object) (p. 102). When one of the members of an opposing team produces a Tango that his father (an airline pilot) has brought back from Europe, the fear of losing the ball leads to it being replaced by a cheaper, smaller and heavier ball that allows the narrator’s team to win. The story closes with the reflection that ‘una Tango es muy linda y muy canchera, pero sale un ojo de la cara’ (a Tango is very pretty and very trendy but it costs a packet) (p. 107). Such an underwhelming conclusion Argentina Beyond El Proceso 159

as to the significance of the Tango ball (and of their connection to the father’s flights, which bring to mind the flights of death during El Proceso) stands in marked contrast to Fontanarrosa’s deployment of it in ‘Entre las cañas’ as a signifier of the relationship between football, the military dictatorship and human rights abuses. The emergence of Sacheri as a short story writer coincides with a period that witnessed ‘the footballing explosion of the 1990s, the colossal growth in the weight of sport as a media product’ (Alabarces, 2014: 205), in Argentina and more widely, leading Bromberger to reflect on what he termed ‘the footballisation of society’ (Losson and Villepreux, 1998). This period coincides exactly with the publication of the anthologies that first brought together the numerous football stories written by Soriano (1998) and Fontanarrosa (2000) over the course of many years, having previously formed part of collections that included these stories as one element in a broader representation and consideration of Argentine society. The result is that instead of football constituting one of the various means whereby an appreciation and understanding of the country may be gained, it becomes presented as the only such means. As much is evident in the epigraph to Esperándolo a Tito, in which Sacheri states:

There are those who claim that football has nothing to do with the life of man, with his most essential aspects. I don’t know how much those people know about life. But of one thing I’m certain: they know nothing about football.

Football, then, is not only about the important things in the life of a man: it is his life, and the general footballisation of Sacheri’s literature leaves little room for the consideration of anything other than football itself, regardless of the world that surrounds it. To this banalisation of the game as an integral aspect of its commercialisation must be added a questioning of the manner in which Sacheri portrays football as an entirely masculine domain, in which women are present only in the domestic back- story, often as an impediment to the realisation of the male protagonist through the practice of football. Such a presentation of football in Argentina as a uniformly masculine space goes entirely against the grain of the ‘feminiza- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 tion of football’ in Argentina (Rodríguez, 2005: 241), discussed in Chapter 9. As a result, Sacheri reproduces, albeit unwittingly, the male- dominated public discourses of El Proceso under which he grew up and to which Taylor draws attention through her study Disappearing Acts (1997). Sach- eri’s representation of football as a domain of freedom and – to some degree – of nostalgia for childhood innocence of the late 1970s sits uncomfortably with the game’s appropriation by the military during that period. The same is true in relation to the discourses of male-dominated ‘tradition’ by which Sacheri continues to construct the sport in his short stories, 160 Argentina Beyond El Proceso

suggestive of the enduring power of once hegemonic narratives. Sacheri’s avoidance of events of El Proceso – precisely the time for which his stories express nostalgia – during which football was appropriated by the military regime to present a carefully manipulated image of the country to local and international audiences alike, not to mention his presentation of football as an entirely masculine world, is difﬁcult to overlook. Football for Sacheri, ultimately, is a means of realisation for the individual, or at least the individual man, at best in conjunction with long-standing (male) friends from the barrio, a form of evasion rather than a mode of engagement with a national practice that might enter into a dialogue with the country’s troubled recent past, or its difﬁcult present.

Extra Time: Conclusions Since Argentina’s return to democracy in 1983, Soriano, Fontanarrosa and Sacheri stand out as the country’s three most successful authors of football ﬁction in terms of public recognition and sales, but Soriano is the only one to have been the subject of signiﬁcant critical study, and this primarily for his political novels, which do not deal with football. Writing just over a decade after the end of El Proceso, Foster suggested that

[t]he opportunity to take new and perhaps audacious positions as to what constitutes culture and what role it should play in national life cannot help but lead to the emergence of texts that would have been unthinkable ten years ago. (1995: 6)

A number of the football stories written by both Soriano and Fontanarrosa had already been published by this time, but there can nonetheless be little doubt that football is perhaps the ‘text’ that has emerged with greatest force in the country in the intervening two decades. This juncture between writers, football and the exploration of socio-political affairs of the nation is, of course, not the exclusive preserve of the post-Proceso era and can be traced back to Ezequiel Martínez Estrada’s consideration of football in Radiografía de la pampa (1933). Martínez Estrada recognised the growing Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 presence and importance of football as a national practice, including it as one of the aspects without which one cannot pretend to understand Argen- tina. Soriano and Fontanarrosa are similar in this regard, at least in the collections in which their football stories were ﬁrst published: an exploration of post-Proceso and post- Boom Argentina must include football as one of the aspects that enable a re- creation and consideration of contemporary society. By contrast, Sacheri’s production of collections that consist entirely (or primarily) of football stories speaks to the ‘footballisation of society’ and to the increased mercantilisation of the sport that has Argentina Beyond El Proceso 161

contributed to the boom of football publishing in Latin America since the 1990s, a phenomenon that led also to the production of anthologies of football stories by both Soriano and Fontanarrosa. At the same time, it is striking that none of these authors draw on football to undertake a sustained evaluation and criticism of the military dictatorship and its brutal regime, which shaped their lives in different ways, although several of Soriano’s novels do engage with such issues through other subject matter, including boxing. This absence is all the more noticeable given the prominent role of football during the late 1970s, when the military exploited and manipulated it to great effect as the country both hosted and won the World Cup for the first time. With the exception of a handful of stories by Soriano and Fontanarrosa discussed above, their criticism of El Proceso is on the whole implicit, evident in Soriano’s reconstruction of the nation in terms that move beyond this period, looking back instead to the 1950s, or even the 1940s, as the point of reference from which the Argentina of the narrative present is recreated. Another strategy is the use of geographical rather than temporal frameworks to look beyond El Proceso, which was experienced above all in the capital. Soriano’s exile is reflected in the wanderings of Míster Peregrino Fernández, while his childhood in Patagonia is a recurring feature; Fontanarrosa, for his part, locates a significant proportion of his football narratives in his native Rosario or the imaginary African republic of Congodia. Soriano in particular disturbs and questions the bases upon which the nation is constructed, an unsettling that invites a new configuration that can respond to the post- Proceso period, while Fontanarrosa’s use of oral language and dialogue challenges the manipulation of the spoken and written word under the dictatorship. At the same time, as Alabarces notes, Fontanar- rosa’s representation of football serves ‘to pick apart the clichés of Argentin- ian masculine culture’ (2014: 218): while his characters construct their masculinity by repeatedly talking about football and sex, they rarely participate in either. Sacheri draws on a similarly oral register, but there is little sense of clichés being challenged or of geographical or temporal frameworks being reconfigured; rather a reiteration of football as a masculine domain and of the nation as being experienced from a Buenos Aires in which El Proceso passed unnoticed. So why is it that when many authors in Argentina were exploring the Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 events of the 1970s in the years that followed El Proceso, the country’s best- known football writers on the whole avoided doing so? At the heart of the matter would appear to be the country’s ambivalent relationship with the 1978 World Cup, taken to task by Ferreira, Dal Masetto and Kohan (see Chapter 6), and with the figure of Maradona, Argentina’s popular national hero of the late twentieth century. The return to democracy in 1983 and the publication of Ernesto Sábato’s report Nunca más in 1984 marked a clean break from El Proceso in political, public and literary life, but no such clear demarcation was achieved in football. The 162 Argentina Beyond El Proceso

1978 World Cup saw Argentina join its neighbours and rivals Uruguay and Brazil as global champions in the national sport, a feat that endured even after the team won the tournament for a second time in 1986. Mara- dona did not play in the 1978 World Cup, but achieved iconic status as captain of Argentina’s youth team that won the World Youth Champion- ship in Japan the following year, a victory that was exploited by the military to drown out protests at the time around a visit by an international human rights delegation. Continuities between El Proceso and the post- Proceso era are also apparent in Maradona’s starring role in the 1986 World Cup, where his two goals in victory over England in the quarter- finals cemented his place as a national hero, triumph over the English team widely seen in Argentina as symbolic revenge for defeat in the 1982 Falk- lands War that marked the beginning of the end for the dictatorship. Exemplified perhaps in Soriano’s ‘Maradona sí, Galtieri no’, Argentina’s relationship with events of El Proceso continues to be problematic when viewed in terms of football. Nonetheless, there can be little doubt that football literature has come to represent one of the most visible forms of new textual production that mark the post- Proceso cultural transition discussed by Foster (1995: 57), the reappropriation and reconfiguration of the national sport in the work of Soriano and Fontanarrosa showing that football literature can provide important new angles on the country’s ongoing relationship with its troubled history.

Notes 1 While the Falklands War was fought against the British and the World Cup pitted Argentina against England, popular usage often referred simply to ‘los ingleses’. 2 The Juegos Evita were re- introduced by President Kirchner shortly after his election in 2003 and remained in place at least to the end of 2015 under the presidency of Cristina Fernández, who was similarly Peronist. 3 ‘El penal más largo del mundo’ gives rise to El penalti más largo del mundo (San- tiago, 2005) and ‘El hijo de Butch Cassidy’ to Il Mundial dimenticato (Garzella and Macelloni, 2011). A two- week delay in taking a penalty at the end of a match appears to have occurred in Río Negro in 1953, ﬁve years before the setting of Soriano’s story; see www.rionegro.com.ar/diario/el-penal-mas- largo-del- mundo- increible-pero-real- 1420597-9522-nota.aspx (accessed 10 December 2015). Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 4 ‘Peregrino’ translates as ‘pilgrim’ as well as ‘peregrine (falcon)’. 5 All page references refer to the 2004 edition of Puro fútbol (Ediciones de la Flor); all translations are mine.

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Berger, Silvia. Cuatro textos autobiográﬁcos latinoamericanos. Yo, historia e identidad nacional en A. Gerchunoff, M. Agosín, A. Bioy Casares y O. Soriano (New York / Frankfurt am Mein: Peter Lang, 2004). Delgado- Costa, José. Binarración y parodia en las tres primeras novelas de Osvaldo Soriano (Lewiston, NY / Queenston, Ontario / Lampeter, UK: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2002). Fontanarrosa, Roberto. Best Seller (Buenos Aires: Editorial Pomaire, 1981). Fontanarrosa, Roberto. El área 18 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Pomaire, 1982). Fontanarrosa, Roberto. El mundo ha vivido equivocado (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 1985). Fontanarrosa, Roberto. Nada del otro mundo (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 1987). Fontanarrosa, Roberto. ‘Nos tocó hacer reír’ Cuadernos hispanoamericanos 517–19 (July–September 1993), 353–60. Fontanarrosa, Roberto (ed.). Cuentos de fútbol argentino (Buenos Aires: Alfaguara, 1997). Fontanarrosa, Roberto. Una lección de vida y otros cuentos (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 1998). Fontanarrosa, Roberto. Puro fútbol (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 2004 [2000]). Foster, David William. Violence in Argentine Literature. Cultural Responses to Tyranny (London / Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995). Garzella, Lorenzo and Filippo Macelloni. Il Mundial dimenticato (Italy/Argentina, 2011). Juegos Evita. ‘Hitos de los juegos’ www.juegosevita.gob.ar/historia/hitos/ (2015, accessed 29 June 2016). Kohut, Karl. ‘De las utopias al desencanto. La novela argentina de los últimos dos decenios’ in Karl Kohut (ed.) Literaturas del Río de la Plata hoy. De las utopías al desencanto (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 1996), 9–33. Kunz, Marco. ‘Épica y picaresca del fútbol en la narrativa de Osvaldo Soriano’ Versants. Revue suisse des littératures romanes 40 (2001), 261–79. Losson, C. and O. Villepreux, ‘Il y a une footballisation de la société’ [interview with Christian Bromberger] Libération 12 May 1998, 22. Martínez Estrada, Ezequiel. Radiografía de la pampa (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1968 [1933]). Mathieu, Corina S. ‘La realidad tragicómica de Osvaldo Soriano’ Chasqui Vol. 17, No. 1 (May 1988), 85–91. Rein, Raanan. ‘ “El primer deportista”: the Political Use and Abuse of Sport in Per- onist Argentina’ The International Journal of the History of Sport 15:2 (1998), Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 54–76. Rodriguez, Maria Graciela. ‘The Place of Women in Argentinian Football’ The International Journal of the History of Sport 22:5 (2005), 231–45. Sábato, Ernesto. Sobre héroes y tumbas (Buenos Aires: Compañía General Fabril Editora, 1961). Sacheri, Eduardo. Esperándolo a Tito y otros cuentos de fútbol (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 2000). Sacheri, Eduardo. Lo raro empezó después. Cuentos de fútbol y otros relatos (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 2003). Santiago, Roberto. El penalti más largo del mundo (Spain, 2005). 164 Argentina Beyond El Proceso

Santoro, Jorge Roberto. Literatura de la pelota (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Lea, 2007 [1971]). Soriano, Osvaldo. Triste, solitario y ﬁnal (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Corregidor, 1973). Soriano, Osvaldo. No habrá más penas ni olvido (Barcelona: Bruguera, 1980). Soriano, Osvaldo. Cuarteles de invierno (Barcelona: Bruguera, 1982). Soriano, Osvaldo. Cuentos de los años felices (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1993). Soriano, Osvaldo. Memorias del Míster Peregrino Fernández y otros relatos de fútbol (Bogotá: Editorial Norma, 1998). Soriano, Osvaldo. Arqueros, ilusionistas y goleadores (Buenos Aires: Seix Barral, 2006). Soriano, Osvaldo. Fútbol (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 2010). Taylor, Diana. Disappearing Acts. Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argenti- na’s ‘Dirty War’ (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997). Varise, Franco. ‘Eduardo Sacheri: “Hay autores que hacen de la incomprensión un culto. No es mi caso: me encanta que guste lo que escribo; soy así de básico” ’ La Nación 22 June 2014. Consulted online at www.lanacion.com.ar/1702880-eduardo- sacheri-hay-autores-que- hacen-de- la-incomprension- un-culto- no-es- mi-caso- me-enc anta- que-guste- lo-que- escribo-soy- asi-de- basico (accessed 29 June 2016). Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Chapter 8 Narratives of Nation- building in Ecuador and Peru

An Unfriendly Rivalry The vexed relationship between Peru and Ecuador has its origins in the colonial era, when the area largely covered by present-day Ecuador was a religious-administrative jurisdiction of the Viceroyalty of Peru, for which ultimate authority lay in the vice-regal capital Lima. At the time of the region’s independence from Spain, Peru secured its future as a republic in 1824 and Ecuador sat uncomfortably on the ill- defined frontier between her newly constituted southern neighbour and the power bases of Gran Colom- bia to the north. A short- lived confederation (1819–30) that corresponded closely in geographical terms to the Viceroyalty of New Granada, Gran Colombia disintegrated after Simón Bolívar was ousted from power, resulting in the declaration of independence for the Republic of Ecuador in 1830. Uncertainties regarding the demarcation of both nations’ borders in the wake of independence, and the subsequent dissolution of Gran Colombia, resulted in a series of conflicts between Ecuador and Peru, most notably in 1941, 1981 and 1995, the last of which led to the signing of a definitive peace accord. These significant differences aside, the two countries have sub- stantive similarities around ethnic and cultural composition and a marked diversity of geography (coast, Andean mountains and Amazon jungle), together with the attendant practical and symbolic challenges that such factors bring to a sense of nationhood. In the case of Ecuador, this identification of three distinct geographical regions has led to ‘a kind of earth- born Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 panacea that has endorsed the most diverse processes of socio-cultural separation to which Ecuadorians have been subjected’ (Ramírez Gallegos, 2003: 102); in Peru, questions around the inclusion of the indigenous majority have acted as the drivers behind major political and cultural debates since the late nineteenth century. In both nations, mestizaje may be considered the dominant discourse throughout the twentieth century, although in more recent years the ability of a single narrative to account for the countries’ heterogeneous populations has been questioned, resulting in a fracturing of hegemonic – and monolithic – national narratives. 166 Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru

Against this background of the growing recognition and acceptance of internal diversity, the Cenepa War between the two countries in January– February 1995 marked a turn back towards an external focus for the identification of significant others against whom a sense of nation might be constructed. Associations between the Cenepa War and football may not be as close as in the case of the infamous Football War between Honduras and El Salvador in 1969, but the drawing of Peru and Ecuador in the same group at the Copa América in July 1995 resulted in heightened tensions. In the event the match passed without incident, and although Ecuador defeated Peru in the ritualised conflict on the pitch, neither team progressed from a group that also included Brazil and Colombia. The events of 1995 converged and were embedded in Ecuador’s subsequent qualification campaign ahead of the 1998 World Cup, for which President Sixto Durán Ballén’s call to arms ‘Ecuador not a single step back’ during the Cenepa War became central to the national team’s campaign slogan ‘Ecuador, we are all the team, Ecuador not a single step back’ (Ramírez and Ramírez, 2001: 112). Despite their best qualification campaign for many years, in which they lost at home just once and the chance of qualification came down to the last round of matches, Ecuador failed to qualify, finishing just behind Peru, who also missed out. The frontiers disputed in the Cenepa War were definitively settled via a treaty signed in October 1998 resulting in an erasure of the border with Peru, and of the associated military conflict, as the determining factor in the nation’s integrity. Into the new millennium, Ecuador’s rise in footballing fortunes has accompanied a renewed search for nationhood within the country’s borders, while Peru’s ongoing slump in results since a series of excellent performances in the 1970s – notwithstanding the surprise third place gained at the Copa América in both 2011 and 2015 – has resulted in a re-evaluation of the game in the country’s cultural landscape.

¿Sí se puede? (Yes, We Can?): Ecuador’s Search for a Winning Formula After repeatedly unsuccessful attempts to qualify for the World Cup finals since their first group match in 1960, Ecuador reached the 2002 finals in Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Japan and South Korea, securing qualification with a 1–1 draw against Uruguay in Quito and eventually finishing in second place in the South American qualifying group behind Argentina. They failed to progress from their group via the three games they played in Japan, but another strong campaign in the CONMEBOL group resulted in qualification for the 2006 finals in Germany, where they won two of their three group matches before losing narrowly to England in the last 16. Ecuador’s presence in Brazil 2014 confirmed the nation’s transformation from perpetual also- rans through the second half of the twentieth century to a regular presence at Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru 167

the highest level of the global game at the start of the twenty-first. This raised profile of the game as a vehicle for the expression of a newly defined sense of nationhood has coincided with the first steps towards the creation of a significant literary representation of football by the country’s authors. Indeed, Jorge Enrique Adoum, one of the country’s most renowned twentieth- century writers, concurred that only football and the 1995 border war with Peru had proved able to unite the country in recent times (2006: 155), although historic rivalries between Ecuador’s regions – notably those centred on Guayaquil and Quito – continued to make themselves felt through football in a variety of ways. The following pages will explore the ways in which Ecuador’s incipient football literature has engaged with issues of regional rivalries and ethnic differences in new narratives of the nation, part of an ongoing negotiation as to how the country perceives and expresses its sense of self at the start of the twenty-first century.

Ecuadorian Football Studies: Biblioteca del fútbol ecuatoriano The publication in 2006 of the five-volume Biblioteca del fútbol ecuatoriano (BIFE; Library of Ecuadorian Football), overseen by Fernando Carrión, constituted a milestone in the study of football in the country, a conscious effort to mark a step change in both quantitative and qualitative terms with regard to understandings of the game. That it should have been published in the same year that Ecuador qualified for its second consecutive World Cup finals is no coincidence: as is stated in the prologue to the first volume: ‘This collection seeks to fill the void and open a new path for reflection on and knowledge of our football, just as we have made an international leap by qualifying for two World Cups’ (Carrión, 2006 [vol. 1]: 13). Volume 1 of the BIFE, edited by Raúl Pérez Torres, is devoted to football and literature, although only the first of the work’s five sections consists of fictional works ‘by the few Ecuadorian writers who have taken football as a literary theme’ (Pérez Torres, 2006: 32), the remaining four sections comprising primarily crónicas and journalistic- style essays on a wide range of football- related topics. Of note is the presentation of the fictional texts, which are set out in Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 two columns, a format associated more with journalism than with literary publications. The use of this layout throughout the five volumes – especially in combination with the use of images captioned by short quotations on almost every other page – bears witness to the pervasive presence of football in the national printed media and offers a tacit reminder of the framework within which the fictional texts and the construction of a literary discourse around Ecuadorian football are located. ‘Una pelota, un sueño y diez centavos’ (A Ball, A Dream and Ten Cents) is a short extract from the posthumous novel (1988) of the same name by 168 Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru

Demetrio Aguilera Malta, widely recognised as one of Ecuador’s outstanding writers. Born in Guayaquil in 1909, and so growing up as football was becoming established as a popular pastime there, Aguilera Malta lived in Mexico City from 1958 until his death in 1981, and his interest in football literature was first evident when he featured in Área chica (In the Box) (Donoso Pareja, 1982), an early anthology of football stories by Latin American authors, including several other Ecuadorians whose work is reproduced in the BIFE collection. The novel is arranged in a series of short sections that are ordered by time, echoing the reporting of a football match, and in the excerpt included here two elderly men, accustomed to the disappointments of supporting their local team, experience a moment of sheer joy as one of the home players scores a dramatic last-minute winner. Although experienced locally in the stadium, the narrator imagines the goal being relayed via radio and television ‘a todo el país, y aun hasta afuera, más allá de las fronteras patrias’ (to the whole country, and even outside it, beyond the national borders) (p. 35), which would provoke heated debates, ‘cruces de palabrotas y, a veces, hasta de golpes’ (exchanges of swearwords and, sometimes, even blows) (p. 35). There are no references in the text that mark its setting beyond the fictional community of Macrópolis, but the fierce rivalries within the nation are certainly in keeping with the situation in Ecuador, as are the disparaging comments towards indigenous players, for whom ‘les sobra de greñas lo que les falta de patas’ (an excess of tangled hair makes up for their short legs) (p. 35), football serving to reinforce racial – and, by extension, regional – differences. At the same time, the narrative draws repeatedly on the overblown rhetoric of football commentaries, with descriptions such as ‘un incontenible tiro a distancia [que] perforó la portería adversaria’ (an unstoppable shot from distance that made the opponents’ net ripple) evi- dencing the challenge of developing a mode of literary discourse that is able to represent events on the pitch in terms other than those of journalistic match reports. In Carlos Béjar Portilla’s ‘Segundo tiempo’ (Second Half ) a former player recalls some of the outstanding performances by Ecuadorian teams in the Copa Libertadores, including a (fictional) final between two national sides in the early 1960s. Previously included in the 1982 Área chica anthol- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 ogy, the story is on the whole unremarkable, though it is worth noting how the narrative is constructed around a series of club rivalries within a continental context, thereby expressing the lack of national cohesion in football until recent years. The clearest allusion to this tension between region and nation comes when the narrator remembers a match between the Argentinian national side and a team representing the Andean province of Pichincha, won 2–0 by the latter, on 6 December 1960. In the story this followed a World Cup qualification match two days earlier in which Argentina had defeated Ecuador 6–3 in Guayaquil, with the national side Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru 169

consisting entirely of players born and/or based in the port city. Such a practice was not unusual in Ecuador, and in the course of the 1966 World Cup qualification campaign gave rise to newspaper headlines such as ‘The Guayas national team played’ or ‘match between Chile and Guayaquil’ (Ramírez Gallegos, 2006: 45). That a story first published in the early 1980s should continue to be considered relevant to an Ecuadorian audience in 2006 reveals the enduring strength of these regional rivalries as the basis of a discourse that explores the ongoing construction of a sense of nation. ‘El pase internacional’ (The International Transfer) by Sócrates Ulloa is one of five stories apparently written for the 2006 collection that engage more closely with recent developments in Ecuadorian football, and follows an ex- professional player who uses his job as a bus driver to travel the country and scout for talented young footballers. In the coastal city of Manta, he spots an outstanding young black player and sets about securing his registration card so that he can sell him on to an agent and from there secure him a trial with a club in Quito or Guayaquil. From there, the title implies, a transfer to a European club may await, although ‘international’ could also be seen as alluding to the ongoing divisions between Ecuador’s regions that serve as obstacles to national integration. This process takes him to the boy’s home club in Esmeraldas, a small city on Ecuador’s northern coast that has – together with el Valle del Chota – become synonymous with the rise of black players in the national team. Following decades in which Quito and Guayaquil dominated the national football imaginary, Carrión notes that around the end of the 1980s ‘football at a national level became afro-Ecuadorian’ (2006 [vol. 4]: 66). Indeed, of the players who featured in the historic 2002 World Cup qualification campaign, 47 per cent came from Esmeraldas and el Valle del Chota (Ramírez Gallegos, 2009: 180), while in the 2006 and 2014 World Cup finals the selección that took to the pitch typically had nine or ten Afro- Ecuadorian players. To put this into context, in the 2001 census just 2.2 per cent of the population self-identified as Afro-Ecuadorian, with a further 4.9 per cent as Negro or mulatto, compared with 77 per cent who declared themselves to be mestizo, thereby aligning themselves with the national identity promulgated by national elites since the beginning of the Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 twentieth century (Rahier, 2008: 2). Of particular interest in the story is the manner in which the scout, who is himself described as ‘moreno’ (dark), repeatedly talks down to the boy, only ever addressing him as ‘Negro’ (black), suggesting that racial differences in Ecuador are not simply marked by skin colour, but also depend on social and economic factors. The tension between the celebration of black footballers as a key component in the national team’s recent success (and the scout’s financial security) on the one hand and the long-standing assertion of a mestizo national identity on the other comes to the fore 170 Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru

when the scout imagines the origins of the young player. Describing him to two friends in a bar, he deems him to be ‘centroamericano neto’ (classic Central American) (p. 59) before going on to refuse to believe that the boy is from Esmeraldas, telling him instead that ‘colombiano has de ser’ (you must be Colombian) (p. 61). By attributing to the young player origins in areas where black footballers have featured in national imaginaries for some time, the narrator highlights the failure to recognise Afro- Ecuadorians as part of the nation before their participation in the national team. Moreover, the dark- skinned scout’s failure to identify with the pro- spective black star is an expression of the under- reporting of minorities in the national census, where they are thought to self-identify with a racial category that may not correspond to their phenotype as a result of the pressure to conform to the dominant narrative in relation to a mestizo national identity (Rahier, 2008: 3). References throughout the story to a series of locations within Ecuador that have produced good players suggest that football is a practice that binds the nation together in a sense of shared experience, or as an imagined community, yet the attitudes apparent in relation to questions of race point to the contradictions thrown up by the recent success of the national team. Ulloa’s short story can, then, be seen as part of a process whereby ‘certain identities and geographies that are normally marginalised – for example the communities of Chota – have been openly problematised and highlighted as an integral part of national society’ (Ramírez and Ramírez, 2001: 115). Football literature here allows for the collision of powerful discourses, drawing attention to the gap between the recognition of Afro-Ecuadorians on the pitch and their position in other everyday constructions of the nation. Patricio Herrera Crespo’s short story ‘La clasificación’ (Qualification), another text apparently written for the BIFE anthology, engages with some similar issues, but updates them to refer explicitly to the national team’s qualification for the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany. The unnamed protagonist is a teenage boy from a poor family who goes to the stadium on the day of the match that sees Ecuador secure their place at the finals; but, unable to pay for a ticket, he interprets the roars of the crowd to follow the game. He juxtaposes his experience with what he has heard from his father and grandfather, thereby allowing the reader to gain an Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 appreciation of how Ecuadorian football has changed: whereas previously ticket prices were accessible to all, and there was even a section of the stands where children could enter without payment, watching a match in the stadium – and thereby participating in the construction of this particular national narrative – is now the preserve of the middle classes. He also recalls the anecdotes he has heard that tell of how his father and grandfather used to love going to games, ‘pero solo entre equipos de Quito y Ambato porque estaban peleados con los monos’ (but only between teams from Quito and Ambato because they had fallen out with the Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru 171

monos1) (p. 75), revealing again the country’s deep-seated regional rivalries. By contrast, the boy’s thoughts about the national team in 2005 emphasise unity:

está buena la selección, los jugadores son de todo el país, los jugadores son como nosotros, de chocolate y barro. Mi abuelo dice que siempre ha habido buenos jugadores, pero los dirigentes que eran monos sólo hacían jugar a los de Barcelona y Emelec y [. . .] algún quiteño. Y mi abuelo se caga de risa diciendo que ahora de ahí casi no hay nadie. Que desde que llegó no sé cuál entrenador de un nombre difícil, y después unos paisas que bailaban después de cada gol, la cosa cambió.

(the team’s really good, the players are from all over the country, the players are like us, of chocolate and mud. My grandpa says there have always been good players, but the bosses, who were monos, only selected players from Barcelona and Emelec and [. . .] the odd player from Quito. And my grandpa kills himself laughing when he says that now there’s hardly anyone from there. That since the arrival of some coach with a difﬁcult name, and then some guys who danced after every goal, things changed.) (p. 74)

The coach in question is Dusan Draskovic, manager of the national team from 1988 to 1993 and widely credited with bringing about a fundamental change in Ecuadorian football, overhauling traditional attitudes in player selection that largely conformed to the hegemonic vision of the nation as mestizo and drew primarily on clubs in Quito and Guayaquil. In similar vein to the bus- driver-cum- talent-scout in ‘El pase internacional’, Drasko- vic travelled throughout the country to discover talented youngsters, finding in Esmeraldas and el Valle del Chota many players with whom he worked in youth teams, some of whom went on to represent the country in the period of unprecedented success at the start of the twenty- first century. At the end of the match, when the boy realises that Ecuador have qualified for the final in Germany, he states that ‘ahora nos olvidamos de todo, nosotros también somos la selección, nosotros también ganamos’ (now we Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 can forget about everything, we too are the national team, we too have won) (p. 75). The new-found sense of national identification he voices expresses a symbolic inclusivity that at the same time underlines his physical exclusion from the stadium on economic grounds, thereby suggesting that the celebration of non- traditional actors as part of the nation is partial and contingent. Ramírez and Ramírez (2001: 112) describe how it was when hosting the 1993 Copa América that Ecuador embraced the notion of the national team as ‘the domain of all of us’, a discourse that was consolidated through the adoption in 1998 of a new Constitution that for the 172 Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru

first time declared Ecuador to be a multicultural and multi-ethnic country (Rahier, 2008: 4). This move has to be seen in the broader context of the crisis in political structures that became conspicuous in the last decade of the twentieth century, following a nationwide indigenous uprising in 1990 (with further mobilisations in 1992, 1994 and 2000) that foregrounded as never before questions of ethnicity within the nation. As a consequence of this political instability, the country was overseen by six different governments in the last four years of the millennium, while between 1997 and 2005 four Ecuadorian presidents were removed from office by irregular procedures. In light of such developments, the boy’s celebration of Ecua- dor’s triumph can be understood as part of a wider process of redefining the country’s national identity and challenging ‘a solidly defeatist and pess- imistic discourse’ that has historically dominated the national media’s representations of the country (Ramírez and Ramírez, 2001: 111). By taking as its subject Ecuador’s qualification for the 2006 World Cup, ‘La clasifi- cación’ explores the manner in which international competition can provide an alternative focus to internal (and internalised) concepts of nationhood and provides an opportunity to reconsider the terms and agents upon which the nation is constructed. In this regard, qualification for the World Cup marked the transcendence – at least temporarily – of the long-standing regional rivalries and ethnic fissures that have traditionally lain at the heart of Ecuadorian nationhood. For Rahier (2008: 3), ‘the performance of the almost entirely black Ecuadorian team at the 2006 World Cup was “transruptive”, bringing multiculturalism into contested political focus’, and while this story portrays a resolution of the tensions between regions and nation, as well as racial inclusivity that extends beyond the mestizo, it simultaneously flags the socio- economic exclusions and the partial visibility of historically marginal sectors even as this potential reconfiguration of the nation takes place. ‘Gambetas para un poema’ (Dribbling for a Poem), by Marcelo Ceval- los, is another story in the BIFE anthology based on the premise of football as a route out of poverty, in which a father reads about an Ecuadorian immigrant who has sold his son to Real Madrid for six million euros. He sees the potential solution to his economic ambitions if he can train his own son and develop his ability in order to secure his Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 transfer to a European team, which is what he sets about achieving by buying his son some boots and reading as many football books as he can find. The boy turns out to be talented and enjoys some success with Esmeraldas Petrolero, but despite such a promising trajectory he decides not to follow his parents to Spain and remains in Ecuador to pursue his dream to become a writer, inspired by the books purchased by his father. That he should seek fulfilment by emulating authors such as Galeano and Soriano, both of whom are mentioned in the text, rather than by playing, speaks to the growing corpus of football literature in the region, as well Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru 173

as to Ecuador’s incipient contribution to it. Ethnicity does not figure explicitly in the story, but the protagonist’s association with Esmeraldas and comparisons with Franklin Salas imply that he, like the stars of the stories discussed previously, is black. ‘Gambetas para un poema’, however, destabilises the increasingly accepted notion that Afro- Ecuadorians’ contribution to national culture is made via physicality on the football pitch: by at once envisaging and creating football literature in Ecuador, the story projects an alternative future for talented Afro- Ecuadorians and for their contribution to discourses that construct a new sense of nationhood between football and literary texts. There is no doubt that the Biblioteca del fútbol ecuatoriano represents an important moment in the development of football studies in the country. That the first volume of the collection consists of short stories and other forms of creative writing highlights the prominent position that literary texts play in the process of articulating a vision of the nation through football. Establishing a corpus of Ecuadorian football literature is part of a broader goal that is envisaged as ‘the starting point of a project or dream under construction that should be built through research, debate and training. It seeks to become the first step, by way of a “baseline”, of significant reflection on football in our country’ (Carrión Mena, 2006 [vol. 1]: 14). While recognising the achievements of this five- volume work, it is worth noting that of the ten literary texts that it brings together, five had appeared over two decades earlier in the Área chica anthology (Donoso Pareja, 1982). That the intervening period should have seen the production of a further five short stories, as collected in the first volume of the BIFE, suggests that the relationship between football and literature in Ecuador remained a low- key affair through to the turn of the millennium.

José Hidalgo Pallares: ‘El ídolo’ A marked upturn in the nation’s footballing fortunes at the start of the twenty- ﬁrst century, together with the major undertaking of the BIFE, provided the conditions for an exploration of a series of socio-political issues facing Ecuador through the coming together of football and literature. The stories discussed above exemplify the manner in which questions of race Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 and regionalism in particular constitute the ongoing bases for a discussion of nationhood through football, and there is some evidence that the years since the publication of the BIFE have witnessed movement beyond the baseline established therein. In 2007 José Hidalgo Pallares published Sábados de fútbol (Saturdays of Football), a novel that explores the interpersonal dynamics among a group of friends in Quito, for whom football ends up being the only common bond as they drift apart, but it is in his short story ‘El ídolo’ (The Idol) (2014) that issues of interest in the context of this study come to the fore. 174 Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru

‘El ídolo’ is narrated in the first person by a dedicated fan of Rumiña- hui, an established but unfashionable and unsuccessful team in Quito, whose long- suffering support is on the verge of being rewarded by an unexpected national championship. In the final game of the season, the team’s error- prone goalkeeper exacts revenge for years of mockery and abuse from his own fans by stepping aside to allow a soft injury-time shot to roll into the goal and give victory to Club Sport Guayaquil, thereby settling the championship in favour of their opponents on the basis of goal difference. Neither Rumiñahui nor Club Sport Guayaquil exist as teams, but Hidalgo Pallares nonetheless draws on a series of readily identifiable national referents in the construction of a story that explores solidarity, cohesion and identification. The teams that contest the final match of the championship clearly represent the ongoing power struggle between Ecua- dor’s coastal and Andean centres of power: Rumiñahui has already drawn with ‘los dos poderosos equipos de Guayaquil’ (the two powerful teams from Guayaquil) (p. 135) – an allusion to Barcelona and Emelec – but for the championship decider their fans anticipate ‘un diluvio de insultos y pedradas’ (a shower of insults and stones) on their trip to the coastal port (p. 138). Such regional hostility fails to materialise, however, and what most upsets the fans from Quito is how little importance their counterparts from Guayaquil pay to their arrival, indicative perhaps of the new footballing identities ushered in through the prominence of Afro- Ecuadorian players and the national team’s success in a global arena. In addition to expressing the historical rivalry between Quito and Guayaquil, the two clubs that dispute the national title represent competing symbolic visions of the nation: Rumiñahui, with its Quechua name, yellow and black kit and status as a traditional mid-table team from the capital (p. 135), echoes the Quito-based club Aucas, known by its nickname of ‘El ídolo del pueblo’ (The idol of the people). For its part, the use of English in the name of Club Sport Guayaquil inevitably brings to mind Guayaquil Sport Club, founded in 1899 by the Wright brothers, who were among those who first brought football to Ecuador. By occupying a middle ground between an entirely imaginary world and the re- creation of actual events, ‘El ídolo’ moves away from the tribalism evident among Ecuador’s leading clubs to focus instead on the expression of individual subjectivities at Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 tension with collective allegiances. On several occasions, the narrator draws attention to the difficulty of writing about football, and to the hegemonic status of journalistic discourses around football, despite the hyperbole that characterises ‘nuestros floridos relatores de fútbol’ (our florid football commentators) (p. 133). In spite of this awareness of the shortcomings evident in football journalism, the narrator finds that when it comes to recounting the defining moments of the game he has no alternative other than to resort to copying the match report from the local newspaper ‘porque no me considero capaz de narrar Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru 175

lo ocurrido sin dejarme llevar por las emociones’ (because I don’t consider myself able to narrate what happened without getting carried away by emotion) (p. 140). ‘El ídolo’, then, highlights a number of the issues that may inhibit the creation of literature about football, in particular as a discourse that enjoys a problematic relationship with journalistic match reports as the established mode of football narrative in the public arena. At the same time, however, Hidalgo Pallares succeeds in exploring through football the ongoing tensions between tradition and modernity, between the indigenous and the foreign, between the Andes and the coast in the nation’s struggle to redefine itself as a team in which all Ecuadorians feel they have a place. Football literature in Ecuador is a recent development, but can be expected to continue as the nation’s success in international football tournaments accumulates cultural capital that is increasingly recognised as part of broader social and political debates, although there is some way to go before the two can be considered to have become aligned. Despite explicit mention of him by name in Herrera’s story ‘La clasificación’, epitomising the success of the Ecuador team that qualified for the 2006 World Cup finals, Agustín Delgado has sparked debates that indicate that some sectors of the nation are not yet ready to accept the agency of non- traditional actors in positions of power that move beyond the symbolic. Delgado’s success on the pitch, and his status as the leading goalscorer in the national team, were undoubtedly contributory factors in his election to the National Assembly in 2013, but his presence in the legislature has led to considerable criticism as part of broader debates around the populism of President Rafael Correa. Of particular interest in the context of this study is the fact that the most acerbic comments have centred on Delgado’s apparent dif- ficulties in reading a prepared text to the Assembly on 6 May 2014.2 The written word may embrace Afro- Ecuadorians as part of the nation on the pitch, but this serves as a space of exception in which their agency is mediated by others whose position of power is vigorously defended off the pitch. In this regard, football literature may be seen as a space that is uniquely positioned to mediate the bodily practice of traditional subalterns with written narratives that have – until recently – spoken to the construction of a mestizo nation centred on Quito and Guayaquil, expressions Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 above all of the experiences and perspectives of the nation’s traditional elites.

Football and Nation in Peru Despite the various similarities that Peru shares with Ecuador in terms of history, geography and racial composition, there are signiﬁcant differences in the role that football has played in mediating a sense of nationhood. As the focal point for trade between the Viceroyalty of Peru and Spain during 176 Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru

the colonial period, Lima’s ongoing importance as a maritime centre after the declaration of independence in 1821 resulted in the establishment of a significant British expatriate community and their cultural practices. Foot- ball was played in Lima from 1872 (Alvarez, 2008: 52), but it was in the 1890s that its practice became more widespread, initially among local elites, as part of the process of national reconstruction following the disastrous War of the Pacific against Chile (1879–83) that had highlighted the physical unpreparedness of Peruvian men. On 3 August 1892 El Nacional announced the first documented match (played on 7 August), while in 1897 Association Football Club became the first club founded exclusively for the practice of football, followed in 1898 by Unión Foot Ball and Club Foot Ball Perú. The first inter- schools football championship was held in Lima in 1898, and the second edition of the tournament, in 1899, involved seven schools that played before the president of Peru and a reported crowd of 20,000, while 1899 also saw the first inter- faculty football championship at the Universidad de San Marcos (Alvarez, 2008: 32–8). By the time that football first reached Ecuador, then, football in Peru was well established and matches between teams consisting of British residents and members of local criollo elites were a feature of the capital’s growing sporting scene, even giving rise to the continent’s earliest example of football poetry, as discussed in Chapter 1. Peru’s first multi-sport complex – including a football pitch – was inaugurated just outside the old walls of the colonial city in 1898, and this foreshadowed an explosion in the popularity and practice of football beyond the city’s traditional elites. In the period 1895–1925 some 30 football teams were founded in Lima, and by the end of the 1920s Alianza Lima, a team closely identified with the Afro- Peruvian population from the working- class district of La Victoria since its founding in 1901, had emerged as the best team in the country, winning the first division title on five occasions between 1927 and 1933 (Wood, 2003). Several of Alianza Lima’s black players starred in the Peruvian team’s controversial quarter- final defeat to Austria in the 1936 Olympic Games,3 considered by Panfichi as ‘the foundational myth of Peruvian football’ (2008: 22), as well as in the nation’s first international tournament victory in the 1939 South American Championship. At the same time as Afro-Peruvians were achieving a place in the sym- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 bolic construction of the nation, indigenismo rose to prominence, promoting the representation of the country’s indigenous majority through national politics and a range of cultural forms, notably literature. José María Arguedas, one of the continent’s greatest indigenista authors, included football in his seminal novel Los ríos profundos (The Deep Rivers) (1958) to explore the tensions between the coast and the Andes, the criollo and the indigenous. Among the boys in the religious school in the Andean city of Abancay, where the novel is set, Romero and Gerardo are the mainstays of the school team’s defence and attack respectively, the Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru 177

former a product of Andean culture while the latter has come from the coast as the son of an army ofﬁcer who has arrived to restore the status quo following a rebellion. In addition to Romero’s position as a defender, of the team as of indigenous culture more widely, it is notable that he is unbeatable in races, recalling the Andean tradition of the chasqui, the runner who delivered messages on foot across the Inca empire. The depiction of football in Los ríos profundos is symptomatic of contrasting values that were jockeying for position in the national imaginary at the time as part of debates around mestizaje, debates that remain unresolved into the twenty- ﬁrst century (Wood, 2009), evident in the adoption of the chasqui as the mascot for the 2004 Copa América in Peru, for which the host nation’s key matches were all played in Lima.4

Augusto Higa Oshiro and the Team as Nation Through the late 1970s and into the 1980s the international success of Peru’s multi-ethnic national team was aligned with the nationalist rhetoric of the left- leaning Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces (1968–78), which gave unprecedented visibility to the country’s indigenous majority, thereby addressing the long- standing claims of the indigenista movement of which Arguedas was the outstanding author. Alongside the indigenous Hugo ‘El Cholo’ Sotil (scorer of the winning goal in the 1975 Copa América), the national team included Afro-Peruvian stars Teóﬁlo Cubillas and Héctor Chumpitaz, as well as players of European descent such as Roberto Challe and César Cueto, a scenario that gave rise to a series of literary works that explored football to foreground racial issues. Augusto Higa Oshiro’s short story ‘El equipito de Mogollón’ (The Team of The Masses), which opens his 1977 collection Que te coma el tigre (May the Tiger Eat You), expresses this celebration of the country’s ethnically diverse composition through the image of a successful football team based in one of Lima’s working- class barrios. Among the various players who feature in the team, the ﬁrst to whom we are introduced is ‘al cobrizo Hernández, macizo, compadrito y retacón’ (coppery Hernández, burly, cocky and a bit dumpy) (p. 11), the physical description leaving little doubt as to his indigenous origins. However, the use of ‘compadrito’, typical of Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 the River Plate, implies that he is a cholo – a mestizo who has assumed the ways of Lima’s criollo culture, thus exemplifying the type celebrated in national discourse of the time. Although there are no physical descriptions of the rest of the team, their names and origins suggest an ethnically diverse team: the Spanish surname of Hernández, together with his origins in Monterrico, suggests a player of middle- class Hispanic descent; the name of the forward Jochón implies an Ashkenazic Jew; and the skilful attacker Tubo (Tube) Méndez recalls the legendary Afro- Peruvian striker Manguera (Hosepipe) Villanueva. 178 Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru

Over the course of the story, this diverse team wins a string of matches before losing a decisive game that determines the outcome of the league. Its first victory comes against ‘Bangú, un once de Santoyo’ (Bangú, an 11 from Santoyo) (p. 13), followed by a win in Balnearios ‘con un público rubio de cara bruta’ (with a crowd made up of whites with rough faces) (p. 14), and then against Deportivo Cienciano (p. 14). These teams speak respectively to Peru’s major ethnic and cultural traditions: the original Bangu was one of the first teams in Brazil to admit black players (Goldblatt, 2014: 19); Balnearios covers the upper- and middle- class districts of Miraflores, Bar- ranco and Chorrillos; and Cienciano is the professional team from Cusco, which gained access to Peru’s Campeonato Descentralizado as Sportivo Cienciano in 1973 (but was relegated in the year the story was published). Against the background of a period in which Peru’s military government, with the support of important social and intellectual actors, promoted a single model of homogeneous national identity, the victory of the ethnically diverse ‘equipito de Mogollón’ over those associated with a particular constituency expresses the power of a project that is able to draw together the various sectors of national society into a unitary whole. Ultimately, however, the team’s run comes to an end as players are missing through injury or absence, and in the final match against San José the player to whom the narrator apparently addresses himself refuses to play, having begun to believe himself too good for the team: ‘se creía el amo, el blanquito del equipo. Y eso ni en el Africa, compadre’ (he believed himself the boss, the white guy of the team. And that’s not on even in Africa, mate) (p. 15). It emerges that he has been secretly on the payroll of San José for some time, with the promise of professional football the following season, and his betrayal of the team results in a beating by fans from the barrio that leaves him in hospital. In the context of the left- leaning and highly nationalistic discourses that were dominant in Peru during the 1970s, ‘El equipito de Mogollón’ highlights – through the metaphor of the football team – the presumed power of uniting the ethnically diverse nation into a cohesive unit, as well as highlighting the disruptively divisive nature of individualism and the traditional white elite.

Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Alejandro Villanueva and the Invention of Tradition Published in 1978, Guillermo Thorndike’s Manguera (Hosepipe) presents a dramatised biography of Alejandro ‘Manguera’ Villanueva, the country’s ﬁrst Afro- Peruvian football hero, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 35. The work also features Villanueva’s team-mates at Alianza Lima and recre- ates the origins of football as a national practice in Peru, but the focus is on the Peru team’s participation at the 1936 Olympic Games. With players from Alianza Lima and Universitario de Deportes – the latter founded by Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru 179

and associated with the capital’s white elites – as well as other clubs from Lima and Callao, the Peruvian football team is portrayed in Manguera as a model of multi- ethnic nationalism that overcomes supposedly superior European teams. In the novel’s closing pages, the reception of the national team as heroes as they return from the sea updates the narratives surrounding Peru’s defeat to Chile in the War of the Pacific (1879–83) and provides another of the glorious defeats around which Peruvian national identity is partially constructed. A further allusion to the War of the Pacific comes in Villanueva’s final days before his early death from tuberculosis; as he walks down the Jirón de la Unión in the colonial heart of Lima, the narrator writes that:

esa calle opulenta, quieta al mediodía, a la que asoman casas bien saci- adas, importancias apenas entrevistas, tal calle estrecha nunca fue propiamente su país. El suyo empezaba en otra parte. La alameda Grau fue su frontera. Junto a textilerías, más allá de conventillos que parecían transatlánticos de pobreza.

(that opulent street, calm at midday, onto which lean sated houses, half- seen importances, that narrow street was never really his country. His began elsewhere. The Alameda Grau was his frontier. Next to textile factories, beyond the poor housing that looked like transatlantic cruise liners of poverty.) (p. 183)

Despite his starring role in international football matches, and his goals at the Olympic football tournament of 1936, Villanueva is presented as continuing to experience a fractured sense of nationhood, from which Afro- Peruvians are partially excluded. The comparison of the cramped housing conditions of the urban poor to a transatlantic cruise liner establishes a connection with the football team’s journey to Berlin that had featured only pages previously, and the mention of Admiral Miguel Grau – a hero of the War of the Pacific – cements the association with glorious defeat. The strong suggestion here, at the close of the novel, is that while the contribution of Villanueva and other non-hegemonic actors was not fully Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 accepted as part of the nation in the period covered by Manguera (c.1912–44), in the 1970s it most definitely was. Reflecting on the significance of Alianza Lima and its players from a distance of almost half a century, the narrator concludes that ‘Habían sido mucho más que un club de fútbol. [. . .] También jugaron a vivir, observando más o menos las mismas reglas. Combinaban a cualquier hora’ (They had been much more than a football club. [. . .] They had also played at living, observing more or less the same rules. They came together at any hour) (p. 183). Football here is clearly more than just a game, and serves to express a whole set of 180 Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru

life experiences through which, it is suggested, racial, social and political differences can be dissolved and resolved through a deeply national practice, part of a broadly nationalistic project that portrayed the agency of subaltern groups in the construction of a new vision for Peru.

Jewish Identity through Peruvian Football: Isaac Goldemberg Isaac Goldemberg’s novel Tiempo al tiempo (Play by Play, 1984) offers a quite different perspective on the expression of nationhood through football via the character of Marquitos Karushansky Ávila, who struggles to reconcile his Jewish identity with being Peruvian. Marcos is the son of an indigenous Peruvian mother and an immigrant Jewish father, whose mar- riage is described by the narrator as an ‘armoniosa unión para crear el nuevo hombre peruano’ (harmonious union to create the new Peruvian man) (p. 26), thus echoing both the mestizo championed by Arguedas in Los ríos profundos and the cholo central to the national cultural identity promoted by General Velasco’s military government. However, this Jewish- indigenous version of Peruvian mestizaje fails to gain acceptance: the protagonist’s classmates in the Jewish León Pinelo school (founded in Lima in 1946) repeatedly refer to him as ‘el cholo Marcos’, while his fellow cadets in the Leoncio Prado military academy describe him as ‘el judío’ (the Jew). Marquitos is the subject of repeated discrimination and marginalisation in the León Pinelo and of beatings in the Leoncio Prado, all the result of his assertions of simultaneous Jewish and Peruvian identity. Ultimately, Marquitos’s exclusion from the various options for identification within Peru leads him to leave the country for Israel, where he dies shortly afterwards in defence of the nation. Football’s presence permeates Tiempo al tiempo on several levels, evident in relation to the work’s structure, its content and its discourse. The novel is divided into a ‘Primer tiempo’ ‘First Half ’ (consisting of five chapters) and a ‘Segundo tiempo’ ‘Second Half ’ (five chapters and an epilogue), the 11 sections representative of the Peruvian football team that plays against Brazil in the odd chapters of each half, while the even chapters explore Marquitos’s school life through the recollections of his class- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 mates. However, the structure of the football team is upset by the presence of untitled introductory sections to each half which relate the protagonist’s belated circumcision as the decisive moment in his entry to Lima’s Jewish community. The manner in which Jewish cultural practices unsettle Mar- quitos’s place in Peruvian society is evident too throughout the novel in the Peru–Brazil match that will decide the outcome of the 1962 South American Championship, apparently the product of Marquitos’s febrile dreams following circumcision, an ‘injury’ that means he is unable to take his place in the Peruvian midfield. A first- half hat- trick by Pelé puts Brazil Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru 181

in control, but the entry of Marquitos as a second- half substitute, roared on by the Peruvian crowd, quickly turns the game, and a hat- trick of his own draws Peru level with 20 minutes of the match remaining, though a draw will suffice for Brazil to win the title.5 For the remainder of the game, however, Marquitos has to face not only Didí, Vavá and Garrincha but also a series of reinforcements in the Brazilian team as a defensive trio of Berkowitz–Goldstein–Karushansky conspire to block his attempts to score the winning goal. The doctor who performed his circumcision, the local rabbi and his father (who make up the defensive trio) represent the elements that resulted in the protagonist’s definitive entry into Jewish culture and his inability to start the match for Peru, and once again they combine to make impossible his full realisation within a Peruvian framework. Indeed, a tackle from behind by Rabbi Goldstein leaves Marquitos badly injured and while he stays on the pitch until the end of the match, he is unable to break the deadlock. Attention is repeatedly drawn to the oppositional – even confrontational – character of Peruvian and Jewish identities, in marked contrast to the optimistic treatment of Higa Oshiro’s ‘El equipito de Mogollón’, in which an Ashkenazic Jew was an integral part of the team. In Tiempo al tiempo this is most obvious through the image of the football match between two national teams that are ethnically diverse (Zagalo, Garrincha and Didí play for Brazil; Vides Mosquera, Terry and Soria are in the Peru team), although the dual identity that Marquitos embodies means that he cannot contribute fully to the nation’s collective efforts. As his now adult classmates reflect on their experiences with Marquitos in the Jewish school and the Peruvian military academy alike, it is clear that both groups considered him an outsider, stating that ‘no era como nosotros’ (he wasn’t like us) (pp. 38, 148). In adulthood, the two communities appear to have settled into a modus vivendi whereby the Jewish friends describe the world of the ‘muchachos peruanos [. . .] paralelo al nuestro pero casi sin nunca cruzar- nos’ (Peruvian guys [. . .] parallel to ours but hardly ever encountering each other) (p. 123). Rein (2015) makes a persuasive case for a space for Jewish identity in Argentinian football, but there is little evidence of such an outcome in Peru, where Marquitos’s circumcision rendered impossible his full realisation as part of the national team. Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017

National Fractures and the Decline of the Team Since the publication of Tiempo al tiempo, Peru has failed to qualify for the World Cup ﬁnals and has endured a run of poor performances in the international arena, falling to its lowest ever FIFA ranking (91) in Septem- ber 2009. At the same time, the return to civilian government in 1980 after a decade of nationalistic military rule marked a downturn in state support for the national football team and a lack of emphasis on the sport as part 182 Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru

of efforts to engender a sense of national unity. This situation was, of course, exacerbated by the period of internal conﬂict between Sendero Luminoso and the Armed Forces that devastated the country between 1980 and the mid-1990s, a virtual civil war that resulted in almost 70,000 deaths, distrust between the diverse sectors of Peruvian society and an almost complete collapse of any inclusive sense of nationhood. As a result of these factors, football lost its symbolic power as a means of engaging with nation- building and such literary texts that did feature the sport during the 1990s drew on it to depict a society that was the site of deep divisions, be they social, ethnic or gender-based. 6 Such attitudes stand in marked contrast to the situation of the 1970s discussed above, and it is precisely to those years of international success that authors have returned as football has made a tentative reappearance as a means of engaging with national identity.

Football Centre Stage into the New Millennium: Alfredo Bushby A rare example of a playwright who has foregrounded football in his dramatic oeuvre, Alfredo Bushby, a former sports journalist, has won national and international awards for works that were published in a single volume in 2003. Of the three plays that comprise the volume, La dama del laberinto (The Lady of the Labyrinth) (1993) and Historia de un gol peruano (2003) both explore issues of personal and national identity through Peru’s involvement in international football tournaments of the 1970s. La dama del laberinto spans several centuries of Peru’s history, concentrating on the pre- independence struggle, the period following independence in 1821, the War of the Pacific against Chile (1879–83) and the government of General Velasco Alvarado (1968–75) to explore how national sovereignty intersects with the history of the Roca family and a colonial mansion in central Lima. Among the cast, which consists primarily of members of the Roca family from across the generations, are ‘Futbolista peruano’ (Peruvian football player) and ‘Futbolista chileno’ (Chilean football player), who enter the stage at strategic moments to re-enact the match in August 1973 that would determine which team had the right to a play- off against a team Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 from Europe for a place at the 1974 World Cup.7 Peru’s loss to Chile in that match provokes the suicide of Rómulo Roca, whose youngest daughter is interviewed by the play’s narrator, recalling how he shot himself at the end of the match that saw Peru eliminated from the 1974 World Cup. During one episode of this interview, the narrator asks why a football match should have led to Roca’s demise, and answers her own question simply with ‘Chile’ (p. 104), Peru’s defeat in the World Cup qualifiers a reminder of the national trauma of the War of the Pacific that has served to shape the nation’s sense of self since the late nineteenth century.8 Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru 183

Historia de un gol peruano is a challenging piece constructed in two halves around Peru’s decisive match against Argentina to determine qualification for the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico, as three young boys – one of whom has an Argentine mother – prepare to watch the game on television. Forced to attend a (cancelled) school football practice on the morning of the match, one of the boys is unable to watch events live but hopes to share the excitement by watching it later that day without knowing the score. Misinformed by his friends as to the outcome of the game (which was drawn, ensuring Peru’s qualification), Mannie fears that Peru has lost and imagines sacrifices – including his own life – that might change the score in Peru’s favour. By binding his personal efforts to a sense of enduring nationhood, Mannie gives voice to Anderson’s ‘imagined community’ (1983) via football and a willingness to die for his compatriots, while implicitly juxtaposing his personal contribution to the nation with his father’s meaningless suicide. In a scenario that echoes the dilemmas faced by Marquitos in Tiempo al tiempo, during the second half of the play Dámaso is challenged by Mannie and Knox to affirm his support for Peru over Argentina as a result of his mother’s nationality (his father was Peruvian) and a heated debate ensues that highlights issues of allegiance and identity, as well as the bases on which these are constructed. Mutual recriminations of being maricones mark a traditionally machista discourse as the basis of nationhood, and this is soon mapped onto the War of the Pacific, in which Argentina’s refusal to join a pact with Bolivia and Peru is held by the boys to have resulted in a Chilean victory. The match in Buenos Aires represents an opportunity to address this historical disagreement and affirm Peruvian masculinity in the cauldron of the Bombonera stadium, while Dámaso’s Peruvian–Argentinian background forces the boys to ask themselves if national allegiance is the result of birth, of residence or of individual subjectivities. In his most recent works, notably in 1975 – a 2013 play that devotes a section to Peru’s Copa América victory of that year – Bushby has continued to afford football a prominent position in an ongoing exploration of the nature of being Peruvian through events from the country’s Golden Age of football. Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Peruvian Penalties: Argentina 1978 Revisited Santiago Roncagliolo, winner of the Premio Alfaguara in 2006 for his novel Abril rojo, also looks back to the 1970s and the nationalism generated around Peruvian football at the time as the setting for his 2014 novel La pena máxima (The Maximum Penalty). A political thriller that offers a prequel to Abril rojo (Red April) by going further back in time to provide the first case for protagonist Félix Chacaltana, La pena máxima is set during the period of the 1978 World Cup and explores relations between 184 Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru

Peru and Argentina in the context of Operation Condor, the regional alliance between various military dictatorships that led to numerous disappearances and human rights abuses. Peru’s participation in the 1978 World Cup is perhaps best remembered for the 6–0 loss to Argentina that allowed the hosts to qualify for the final by goal difference at the expense of Brazil, a result that has given rise to various conspiracy theories (Campomar, 2014: 358–9). The novel is divided into seven chapters, the first six of which are framed around Peru’s matches at the 1978 World Cup finals, and are defined by football through chapter titles that simply bear the names of the rival nations (so Chapter One is Peru–Scotland), while the final chapter (Argentina–Holland) brings about the denouement of the detective story that has developed throughout the novel in parallel to the climax of the tournament. Football’s influence on the novel’s circular structure is also apparent through the manner in which the climax (or anti- climax) of each chapter takes place against the background of a radio commentary on the match in question: cheers at Peru’s third goal against Scotland serve to mask the fatal shot that sets in train the novel’s plot, while Peru’s loss to Argentina during the penultimate chapter is cheered by prison guards during the protagonist’s visit to Buenos Aires, where he comes to appreciate the full horror of the military’s Dirty War. The atrocities that Chacaltana witnesses in Buenos Aires, however, are not confined to Argentina: while he travels from Lima to Buenos Aires with football players and supporters alike, political activists, military agents and traf- ficked babies make the journey in the opposite direction. By locating the action of the novel against the backdrop of the 1978 World Cup, Roncagliolo draws parallels between football and the political- military domain to explore their impact on daily life. One of the key ways in which this confluence of football and violence is expressed is through the language used throughout the work, evident from the outset in the novel’s title, which in a legal context signifies the maximum sentence, while in the text it also connotes both the death sentence and a penalty kick (pp. 13, 90). The numerous match commentaries that make their way into the narrative via radio or television coverage similarly draw on a lexicon that is common to both football and military conflict, to the point where the narrator makes explicit the similarity, commenting that ‘el partido parecía una Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 batalla, con referencias a ataques y disparos’ (the match seemed like a battle, with references to attacks and shots) (p. 189). This oppositional construction of nationhood through a football discourse that overlaps significantly with that of the military regimes that appropriated the 1978 World Cup is evident elsewhere, as when the Polish striker ‘fusila al portero Quiroga’ (blasts the keeper Quiroga) (p. 273), leading Chacaltana to fear that he is about to be shot for knowing too much about Peru’s cooperation with Argentina in Operation Condor. The same verb ‘fusilar’ (to shoot) reappears in the build-up to the Peru–Argentina match, for Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru 185

which Chacaltana’s boss fears that Quiroga will let in goals to help his native Argentina, suggesting that such actions would constitute treason and justify a firing squad (p. 286). Couched in highly militarised terms, football’s status as a matter of national importance is again expressed as a form of ritualised conflict, and one that depends on a significant other against which victory or defeat can be determined. That Peru’s significant other in the novel is Argentina merits consideration as Argentina has, perhaps more than any other nation in Latin America, constructed its sense of self around notions of civilisation – albeit in tension with barbarism – since the publication in 1845 of Sarmiento’s seminal work Facundo: civilización y barbarie (Facundo: Civilisation and Barbarism). Events around the 1978 World Cup finals amply demonstrated that Argentina was far from having resolved its relationship with barbarism, and throughout La pena máxima Peruvian characters develop a sense of national identity vis-à-vis Argentina, both on the pitch and off it. When Chacaltana witnesses the kidnapping of a female Argentinian militant and her Peruvian host by Argentinian security forces on the streets of Lima and realises that the Peruvian police have been complicit in the event, he reports his findings, only to be met with incredulity. After Chacaltana has been taken to speak to political prisoners held in the cells of the court where he works, none of whom have been maltreated, his superior concludes that ‘en este país no pasan esas cosas, Felixito. No somos unos bár- baros’ (in this country that sort of thing doesn’t happen, Felix. We are not barbarous) (p. 156), while Admiral Carmona later tells him that ‘Esto no es Argentina, Félix. Y nosotros no somos esos salvajes’ (This isn’t Argen- tina, Félix. And we are not those savages) (p. 272). Similarly, when Cha- caltana returns from Buenos Aires and confronts Carmona about Peru’s involvement in Operation Condor, the military officer’s response is that things had gone too far: ‘estos argentinos son unos animales’ (these Argen- tines are animals) (p. 333). This evaluation reminds Chacaltana of his recent visit to the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada, where his contact takes pride in the national team’s progress and in General Videla’s enthusiasm for football, summing up the qualities of the players who symbolically represent him in two words: ‘Son bárbaros’ (They’re barbarous) (p. 310). Through repeated references to Argentines in the terms discussed above, Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Roncagliolo draws on one of the most infamous examples of the convergence of politics and football to challenge the (self-)identification of Argen- tina as a model of civilisation and by extension reframe the manner in which Peru constructs an image of itself as a South American nation. However, any triumphalist conclusions in relation to Peru’s more humane regime during the 1970s are rendered problematic by Peru’s own Dirty War of the 1980s, the subject of Chacaltana’s investigations in the award-winning Abril rojo. Peru’s military government of the 1970s did not undertake the systematic atrocities of its counterparts in the Southern Cone, but the emergence of 186 Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru

Sendero Luminoso under democratic governments through the 1980s resulted in a state of virtual civil war in which human rights abuses were widespread and almost 70,000 people lost their lives, predominantly indigenous Peruvians in rural areas whose ﬁrst language was Quechua.9 The apparent exceptionalism of Peru as the basis of nationhood in La pena máxima is similarly undercut by the novel’s depiction of the country’s participation in Operation Condor, praised by Carmona as a multi- national collaboration (p. 203). In light of the virtual civil war and associated brutalities that engulfed Peru for most of the 15 years that followed the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, the two nations may have proved more similar than results on the pitch suggested. Channelling the enduring popular appeal of the episodes around which the novel is constructed, Roncagliolo draws on the 1978 World Cup to provide a façade of football, but in a crucial divergence from the way in which the game was used by the military regimes of the time, La pena máxima undertakes an exploration of what the event might reveal about the facilitation of political violence on one hand and the simultaneous construction of national narratives on the other.

Conclusions and Openings The historically antagonistic relationship between Ecuador and Peru, peri- odically expressed in military conflict, has been one of the decisive factors in their processes of nation-building, especially from the perspective of the former. The border wars fought through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries led to a situation whereby in ‘Ecuador’s official discourses of nationhood, the permanence of national identity is certainly predicated upon a (material and highly symbolic) spatial discontinuity with other neighbouring countries, particularly Peru’ (Radcliffe and Westwood, 1996: 78). However, the definitive settling of the border dispute via the Brasilia Pres- idential Act, signed by the Peruvian and Ecuadorian presidents in October 1998, changed this long-standing dynamic and opened a space within which other narratives could occupy a central role in the shaping of Ecua- dorian nationhood. The 1990s also witnessed fundamental shifts within the nation (indigenous mobilisations, the removal of a succession of presidents, the recognition of ethnic plurality in the 1998 Constitution) that ran Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 alongside the redefining of relations with the country’s significant external other. Within the resulting reconsideration of Ecuador’s vision of itself and of those with agency in the development of that new self-image, the national football team emerged as an important means of constructing that identity, a ‘central reference point for the nation’ since the late 1990s (Ramírez and Ramírez, 2001: 109). Football’s status as a mode of ritualised conflict in the international arena allowed for a smooth – and highly successful – transition to a position of symbolic dominance over its southern neighbour as Ecuador secured a place towards the top of the Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru 187

South American World Cup qualification groups from 2002 onwards and was represented at the finals in 2002, 2010 and 2014, from which Peru was consistently absent through its poor results on the pitch. At the same time as the fortunes of the selección took a turn for the better, the new-found sense of confidence in relation to the country’s external others allowed Ecuador to direct a collective gaze inwards and reconsider the constitution and articulation of the nation in terms other than those determined by the state, which had undergone a crisis of authority as the political establishment appeared increasingly unable to respond to the nation’s demands. The turbulence generated by the indigenous uprisings of the 1990s, which fundamentally unsettled the narratives that had dominated Ecuador throughout the twentieth century, also brought into focus Afro- Ecuadorians as part of the broad- ranging questioning of issues around ethnicity and nation. It was precisely at this time that Afro- Ecuadorian footballers from regions other than Quito and Guayaquil, the traditional centres of power, came to form the core of the national team, thereby playing a key role in the construction of alternative narratives of nationhood. It is here that the stories discussed above come into play, balancing Ecuador’s international visibility through football with an inter- rogation of the manner in which new configurations of national geographies and ethnicities have come to redefine the face of the nation at the start of the twenty-first century. The appropriation of literature, traditionally a mode of expression for local elites, as a means of exploring these new discourses, echoes the manner in which football has escaped the confines of the Quito–Guayaquil duopoly in the national imaginary. Despite the long-running border conflict with its northern neighbour, Peru instead saw across her own southern border with Chile the nation’s most significant other, the result of an antagonism that dates back to the War of the Pacific (1879–83), definitively resolved even more recently than the agreement with Ecuador.10 The Peruvian texts discussed above from the new millennium deal primarily with Peru’s external others to engage with the long- standing territorial uncertainties around the country’s borders and to question the nation’s place in relation to its continental peers. Both Bushby and Roncagliolo locate the dramatic action of their work in the 1970s, a decade marked in Peru by unprecedented footballing successes and by pro- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 found shifts in national identity, as a means of reflecting on what the nation signifies into the twenty-first century. By 1970 the dominant national cultural identity, promoted by General Velasco’s military government, was cholo, foregrounding Andean ethnic and cultural characteristics on the national stage as never before. This period represented a moment of significant disruption to the traditional national narratives, first criollo and later mestizo, and – as has been the case in Ecuador since the 1990s – football was uniquely placed to provide a site of broad national appeal in the construction of more inclusive models of nationhood. In the case of Peru in the 1970s, the 188 Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru

rise in the country’s football fortunes coincided with the literary post-Boom that incorporated diverse modes of popular culture at the same time as many writers moved away from the metaphysical seriousness of the 1960s Boom. In a country with a rich literary tradition, this combination of factors led to a surge of short stories, poems and novels that centred on football as a symbol of the new national identity that was being championed. As such, the use of football in these texts contributes significantly to what Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983) term ‘the invention of tradition’, looking back to the country’s golden eras of the 1930s and the 1970s and creating the bases for a history that would use football as a touchstone in shifting national frameworks. Key to all of these considerations is the pervasive mediatisation of football, evident in various of the texts discussed via references to newspaper reports, radio match commentaries and televised screenings. Literature constitutes an important additional means whereby football is mediated and represented to a national (and international) audience, its position as a discourse through which national debates have been held since the colonial period affording it a privileged position in the reworking of national narratives. It is within these that football has come to occupy an increasingly important place as a site that can negotiate the tensions in international relations between neighbouring states on the one hand and the heterogeneity of those countries’ cultural landscapes on the other. The image of the team, be it local or national, has proved to be a powerful unifying practice upon which authors from Peru and Ecuador have drawn as a means of binding together diverse elements of the nation into a symbolic unit. This has proved highly effective in the context of countries characterised by historical binaries (coast/Andes; white/indigenous; tradition/ modernity), which can be mapped onto the fundamental duality of football matches that pit one team against another. The football texts considered here have played a key role in ensuring that the indigenous Andean and the Afro- Ecuadorian/Afro-Peruvian have come to be represented and considered as integral elements of the nation, this internal focus perhaps accounting for the absence of literary renditions of matches between the two countries as an expression of their historical conflicts. At the same time, however, it must be noted that the Amazon – the third component of both countries alongside the coastal and Andean regions – has yet to find a meaningful place in that Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 team, either in terms of football or as part of the conceptions of nationhood that have been fundamentally reconfigured since the late twentieth century.

Notes 1 ‘Monos’ is a disparaging and racially charged term for those from Guayaquil, which translates as ‘monkeys’. 2 See, for example, ‘Ecuador se ríe del “Tin” Delgado, un diputado que “no sabe leer” ’ Infobae América, 8 August 2014. 3 For discussion of this episode, see Arias Schereiber (2008). Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru 189

4 Peru played its three group matches in Lima, which also hosted both semi-finals and the final. The only match played in the Andes was the third- place match, which was played in Cusco. 5 The result mirrors that of the 1975 Copa América semi-final, in which Peru drew 3–3 with Brazil and progressed to the final by the drawing of lots. 6 For further discussion of texts from this period, see David Wood, ‘Reading the Game: The Role of Football in Peruvian Literature’ in David Wood and P. Louise Johnson (eds) Sporting Cultures. Hispanic Perspectives on Sport, Text and the Body (Oxford: Routledge, 2008), 128–46. 7 After each won their home games 2–0 (Venezuela, the third team in their group, withdrew), a play-off was held in Montevideo on 5 August 1973, which Chile won 2–1. 8 Many of Peru’s national heroes are military figures from the War of the Pacific, while many street names, notably in Lima, commemorate places and dates from that conflict, constituting an example of what Billig terms ‘banal nationalism’. Echoes of the historic rivalry were to the fore around the semi- final match between the two countries at the 2015 Copa América, won in Santiago 2–1 by Chile. 9 The full findings of Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission can be found in the Informe Final, available online at www.cverdad.org.pe/ifinal/index.php (accessed 26 May 2015). 10 Disputes over maritime delimitation between Peru and Chile were settled by the International Court of Justice in The Hague in January 2014.

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Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 135–53. Béjar Portilla, Carlos. ‘Segundo tiempo’ in Raúl Pérez Torres (ed.) Biblioteca del fútbol ecuatoriano (Vol. 1), Área de candela. Fútbol y literatura (Quito: FLACSO, 2006), 37–9. Bushby, Alfredo. La dama del laberinto. Perro muerto. Historia de un gol peruano (Lima: Pontiﬁcia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2003). Bushby, Alfredo. 1975 in Cuerpos callosos. Trece obras dramáticas (Lima: Santo Oﬁcio, 2013). Campomar, Andreas. ¡Golazo! A History of Latin American Football (London: Quercus, 2014). 190 Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru

Carrión Mena, Fernando. ‘Prólogo. El fútbol como hecho social total’ in Raúl Pérez Torres (ed.) Biblioteca del fútbol ecuatoriano (Vol. 1), Área de candela. Fútbol y literatura (Quito: FLACSO, 2006), 11–18. Carrión, Fernando. ‘De la foraneidad al fin de la ventriloquia del fútbol ecuatoriano’ in Fernando Carrión M. (ed.) Biblioteca del fútbol ecuatoriano (Vol. 4), Quema de tiempo y área chica. Fútbol e historia (Quito: FLACSO, 2006), 65–77. Cevallos, Marcelo. ‘Gambetas para un poema’ in Raúl Pérez Torres (ed.) Biblioteca del fútbol ecuatoriano (Vol. 1), Área de candela. Fútbol y literatura (Quito: FLACSO, 2006), 69–71. Donoso Pareja, Miguel (ed.). Área Chica: antología literaria de fútbol (Quito: El Conejo, 1982). Goldblatt, David. The Ball is Round. A Global History of Soccer (New York: Riverhead Books, 2006). Goldblatt, David. Futebol Nation: A Footballing History of Brazil (London: Penguin, 2014). Goldemberg, Isaac. Tiempo al tiempo (Hanover, NH: Ediciones del Norte, 1984). Herrera Crespo, Patricio. ‘La clasificación’ in Raúl Pérez Torres (ed.) Biblioteca del fútbol ecuatoriano (Vol. 1), Área de candela. Fútbol y literatura (Quito: FLACSO, 2006), 73–5. Hidalgo Pallares, José. Sábados de fútbol (Quito: Paradiso Editores, 2007). Hidalgo Pallares, José. ‘El ídolo’ in Shawn Stein and Nicolás Campisi (eds) Por amor a la pelota. Once cracks de la ficción futbolera (Santiago de Chile: Edit- orial Cuarto Propio, 2014), 131–42. Higa Oshiro, Augusto. ‘El equipito de Mogollón’ in Que te coma el tigre (Lima: Lámpara de Papel, 1977), 9–16. Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger (eds). The Invention of Tradition (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Infobae. ‘Ecuador se ríe del “Tin” Delgado, un diputado que “no sabe leer” ’ Infobae América, 8 August 2014. Consulted online at www.infobae.com/2014/08/08/ 1586271-ecuador-se-rie- del-tin- delgado-un- diputado-que- no-sabe- leer/ (accessed 5 July 2016). Panfichi, Aldo. ‘Introducción: hacia una sociología del fútbol’ in Aldo Panfichi (ed.) Ese gol existe. Una mirada al Perú a través del fútbol (Lima: Fondo Editorial Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2008), 13–23. Pérez Torres, Raúl. ‘Toda cancha pasada fue mejor’ in Raúl Pérez Torres (ed.) Bib- lioteca del fútbol ecuatoriano (Vol. 1), Área de candela. Fútbol y literatura (Quito: FLACSO, 2006), 21–32. Radcliffe, Sarah and Sallie Westwood. Remaking the Nation. Place, Identity and Politics in Latin America (Oxford: Routledge, 1996). Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Rahier, Jean Muteba. ‘Race, Fútbol, and the Ecuadorian Nation: the Ideological Biology of (Non-)Citizenship’ e- misférica 5.2 (December 2008). Consulted online at http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/e- misferica-52/rahier (accessed 16 Sep- tember 2016). Ramírez Gallegos, Franklin and Jacques Ramírez Gallegos. ‘Como insulina al dia- bético: la selección de fútbol a la nación en el Ecuador de los noventa’ Iconos 12 (November 2001), 108–17. Ramírez Gallegos, Jacques Paul. ‘Fútbol e identidad regional en el Ecuador’ in Pablo Alabarces (ed.) Futbologías. Fútbol, identidad y violencia en América Latina (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2003), 101–21. Nation-building in Ecuador and Peru 191

Ramírez Gallegos, Jacques Paul. ‘La selección de fútbol como nuevo símbolo de identidad nacional’ in Fernando Carrión M. (ed.) Biblioteca del fútbol ecuatoriano (Vol. 5), El jugador número 12. Fútbol y sociedad (Quito: FLACSO, 2006), 35–60. Ramírez, Jacques. ‘«Ecuador, Ecuador, mi país». Narrativas patrias a través del fútbol’ in Ramón Llopis Goig (ed.) Fútbol postnacional. Transformaciones sociales y culturales del ‘deporte global’ en Europa y América Latina (Barcelona: Anthropos, 2009), 167–81. Rein, Raanan. Jews, Fútbol and the Making of Argentina (Stanford, CA: University of Stanford Press, 2015). Roncagliolo, Santiago. Abril rojo (Lima: Alfaguara, 2006). Roncagliolo, Santiago. La pena máxima (Lima: Alfaguara, 2014). Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino. Facundo: civilización y barbarie (Santiago de Chile: Imprenta del Progreso, 1845). Thorndike, Guillermo. Manguera in El revés de morir (Lima: Mosca Azul Editores, 1978), 9–189. Ulloa, Sócrates. ‘El pase internacional’ in Raúl Pérez Torres (ed.) Biblioteca del fútbol ecuatoriano (Vol. 1), Área de candela. Fútbol y literatura (Quito: FLACSO, 2006), 57–63. Wood, David. ‘From Right Wing to Midﬁeld: A Study of Soccer in Peru’ Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 22 (2003), 103–14. Wood, David. ‘Reading the Game: The Role of Football in Peruvian Literature’ in David Wood and P. Louise Johnson (eds) Sporting Cultures. Hispanic Perspec- tives on Sport, Text and the Body (Oxford: Routledge, 2008), 128–46. Wood, David. ‘El fútbol en Perú’ in Ramón Llopis Goig (ed.) Fútbol postnacional. Transformaciones sociales y culturales del ‘deporte global’ en Europa y América Latina (Barcelona: Anthropos, 2009), 153–66. Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Chapter 9 Offside? Women Writers Creating Space

The inclusion of a separate chapter to explore the place of women writers and their relationship with football might be considered to risk perpetu- ating the perception that women are marginal to the experience of football in South America. Instead, the decision should be seen as a means of foregrounding the contribution of women authors who have faced similar historical challenges across the continent in terms of football’s relationship with patriarchy, as well as a literary realm dominated by men. At the same time, it enables a clearer appreciation of the manner in which women’s entry into what is a key domain in the construction of nationhood across much of the region has varied from country to country. Similarly, placing this as the ﬁnal chapter does not echo Canal Feijóo’s relegation of women’s football (discussed below) to a position of lesser importance, but rather allows material explored here to be read in the light of historical events and literary developments discussed across several countries and time periods in preceding chapters. Football has been practised by women in Latin America since at least the 1920s, when matches between teams of women were reported in the Brazilian press (Goellner, 2005: 146; Bocketti, 2016: 167). Evidence of women’s teams playing against each other is also found in Canal Feijóo’s Penúltimo poema del fútbol of 1924, which includes ‘Fútbol de mujeres’ (Women’s Football) as its penultimate piece. The position of the text within this collection is reﬂected in its content, which demeans women’s football, opening with the line ‘No podía prosperar el partido’ (The match Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 could not prosper) before going on to describe tackles that ‘trababan a las jugadoras en un abrazo lésbico inaceptable’ (entangled the players in an unacceptable lesbian embrace) (p. 42). Following decades of sporadic initi- atives regarding women’s football, the latter part of the twentieth century saw the emergence of national teams across South America and of national women’s leagues in many countries of the region. However, it is only since the turn of the millennium that such phenomena have begun to be studied, increasingly visible in multi-author volumes written by authors from Latin America (Binello et al., 2000; Pontón, 2006; Santillán, 2010; Pimentel, Offside? Women Writers Creating Space 193

2014; Malek, 2014), as well as in studies of football by those based in the western academy (Elsey, 2011; Nadel, 2014; Bocketti, 2016). Also of note is the fact that much of this work within the region is produced by women: the rise in women’s football in Brazil has been accompanied by a growing number of female Brazilian and Argentinian academics publishing the results of their research on the topic in Portuguese, Spanish and English (Goellner, 2000 and 2005; Mourão and Morel, 2005; Rodríguez, 2005 and 2008; Guedes, 2009). These developments make it ever more possible to talk of the presence of women in the practice and discourse of football, a trend towards the representation – and, crucially, self- representation – of female agency in the sport. As with football, literature in South America was, until the latter decades of the twentieth century, a cultural practice that was, overwhelmingly, part of the traditionally male public domain. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries figures such as Clorinda Matto de Turner (Peru, 1852–1909), Victoria Ocampo (Argentina, 1890–1979) and Gabriela Mistral (Chile, 1889–1957) did enjoy considerable recognition, but provided notable exceptions to the rule. Mistral’s exceptionalism extended to her becoming the first Latin American winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1945), evidence that in some cases their work reso- nated well beyond their national and continental boundaries. There is evidence, too, that Mistral’s exceptionalism extended to football, as a letter from Elena Rojas Mercado dated 18 March 1948 thanks Mistral for a gift of shirts and football boots that she made for ‘niños menos afortunados’ (less fortunate children).1 However, as Bassnett (1987) notes in an early essay on Latin American women writers, there was no sense that these isolated examples might form a group or tradition, and their presence reinforced the notion that the woman writer was an exception, a scenario that echoes the situation in relation to women and football for much of the twentieth century. South American literature came to global prominence in the 1960s, but the major figures of the Boom (García Márquez, Cortázar, Fuentes, Vargas Llosa) were all male, as were the great majority of writers of the 1970s post- Boom, who increasingly brought popular culture – including football – into their literary creations. From the 1980s a substantial weight of crit- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 ical work began to explore the contribution of female authors whose publications had previously been largely overlooked, as well as that of women writing during that decade itself. Partly in response to the specifically gendered violence and oppression to which women were subjected during the military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s, a number of women writers focused on rape, abortion, torture and murder, thus marking a clear rupture in the traditional visions of women’s writing as being concerned with romance and intimacy. This new generation of writers explicitly challenged long-standing concepts around machismo and the position of 194 Offside? Women Writers Creating Space

women, and for Franco it is such authors ‘who have assumed the responsibility for questioning and destabilising received pieties’ (1994: 353). It is striking that it is precisely the period since 1980 that also witnessed the rise of women’s football across the continent, as literature and football alike offered routes to modes of self- expression that challenged the gender- based roles of patriarchal societies. In more recent years it should perhaps come as no surprise that women’s writing and women’s football should converge to provide a rapidly increasing number of texts that provide an ever more rich view of their experiences in relation to one of the key components in the construction of identities and of nationhood in many countries of the region.

Beginnings in Brazil: Anna Amélia de Queiroz In light of the early massification of football in Brazil and the cultural capital it quickly acquired there through debates around its influence, together with the presence and public visibility of women’s football in the country, it is perhaps no surprise that the first football literature by a woman should have been produced there. Anna Amélia de Queiroz Car- neiro de Mendonça’s 1922 sonnet ‘O salto’ (The Leap) is the earliest example of football literature written by a woman in South America, or indeed anywhere, part of a blossoming of the sport at the time in the country’s major cities, where women formed an enthusiastic and important part of the crowds (Bocketti, 2016: 186–200). Evidence of such involvement from the very start of the twentieth century comes in the form of a press report on the first match between representative teams from Rio and São Paulo in 1901, which notes that ‘prominent were the elegant women who lent a happy note to the festivities’ (cited in Goldblatt, 2014: 8). Anna Amélia de Queiroz (1896–1971) was born in Rio de Janeiro into a family of considerable means, but was privately educated in Minas Gerais by a series of European tutors after her father, a pioneer of Brazil’s steel industry, moved there in 1897 to establish a factory. Fluent in English, French and German, she wrote poetry from an early age and published her first collection in 1911, later becoming renowned as a fine literary translator and a leading figure in Brazil’s early feminism. Her interest Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 in football was evident from her twelfth birthday, for which she requested a ball and boots as a present, and she took an active role in organising matches with the workers in her father’s factory, having translated a rule book from English. After the family moved back to Rio her interest in football led to her going to watch Fluminense, the club of Rio’s elites, where in 1913 she met Marcos de Mendonça, described as ‘the emblematic figure of the golden age of elite amateurism’ (Wisnik, 2008: 212) and ‘the first idol of Brazilian football, the very incarnation of the Greek ideal of an athlete-intellectual’ (Coutinho, 1980: 115–16). Mendonça merited such Offside? Women Writers Creating Space 195

acclaim: he won a tri- campeonato with Fluminense (1917–19) and was the first goalkeeper for the Brazilian national team, winning the South American Championship in 1919 and 1922, before becoming a respected historian. ‘O salto’ may not be the first text devoted to football in Brazil, but it can be said to be the first self-consciously literary manifestation of football in Brazil, offering points of comparison with Parra del Riego’s poetic celebration of Gradín, discussed in Chapter 2. Those similarities come most obviously in taking a football star as poetic subject and in references to classical antiquity as providing a model of athletic beauty, though also of note is the manner in which both authors clearly draw on European literary influences and attest to the presence of women as a significant – and erotically charged – part of the crowd. By the time ‘O Salto’ was published, football was a regular feature of newspaper reports and chronicles written by Lima Barreto and Coelho Neto, had been painted by leading artists and had been celebrated in songs such as Pixinguinha’s ‘Um zero’ that marked Brazil’s triumph in the 1919 South American Championship. In short, football was an increasingly visible part of the cultural landscape in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo by 1922, though this does not make it any less noteworthy that the sport should be brought into the realm of literary creativity by a female author, whose personal enthusiasm for the game would appear to have been the decisive factor. ‘O Salto’ adopts the form of a sonnet, and while it may be tempting to attribute this to Queiroz’s experiences as a translator of Shakespeare (who, apart from his sonnets, mentions football in both King Lear and Comedy of Errors), the poem does not adhere to the conventions of European traditions of the sonnet in terms of verse length or rhyme patterns. Instead, it conforms to Brazilian modernism’s tendency simultaneously to absorb and reject European modes of expression – as was occurring in debates around football, and would subsequently be made famous in Oswald de Andrade’s 1928 Mani- festo Antropófago – in order to establish a national literature and a national- popular culture. At the level of content, the poem praises the athletic grace and beauty of the goalkeeper (presumed to be Marcos de Mendonça) as he leaps to meet the ball in the air, the result of seeing his form, which is compared to a Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 figure from the Iliad, being that ‘todo o meu ser vibrou num ímpeto frenético’ (my entire being trembled in a frenetic impetus). References to classical antiquity abound: in addition to the Iliad, there are references to an Olympic hero, Apollo, Olympus, a dryad and the perfection of an ancient Greek’s build, explicitly evoking the ancient athletic games as justi- fication for the exaltation of a football player, while implicitly practising the celebration of sporting success exemplified by Pindar’s Olympian odes. However, by describing the action as being inspired by a ‘heliconíada’, a neologism that references both the submerged Greek city of Helike and the 196 Offside? Women Writers Creating Space

exuberant and colourful heliconia flower typical of the tropics, Queiroz establishes a bridge between the world of classical antiquity and Brazil, drawn together through athletic endeavour. The first eight verses provide a personal, even intimate, response to the figure of the goalkeeper, but after the classical ‘volta’ of the sonnet the closing six verses locate the action in a packed stadium that sees the star player transcend through the leap his status as a local football player, and when he lands back on Brazilian soil his athletic prowess has earned him a place among the ranks of the acclaimed Greek Olympians. Football, then, enables the poet to give voice to her position in relation to the private and public domains alike, and to take her place as a subject in both of them, while also helping to shape Brazil’s early relationship with the sport. Despite the ‘acclaim of the enthusiastic masses’ (‘aclamações de massa entusiástica’), football at this time was still primarily a game of the white elites, who – on the basis of ‘O Salto’ – perhaps imagined greater affinities with figures of classical antiquity than with their fellow (non-white) Brazilians in the founding of the modern nation. These were certainly the issues that were debated through football by Lima Barreto and Coelho Neto in the early 1920s, and while Anna Amélia de Queiroz takes a somewhat different approach to issues of race than did Parra del Riego in his poem to Gradín, her challenge lies elsewhere: she may be admiring the game from the touchline, but does so in terms that are of her own making as her body and her intellect provide responses that challenge expectations surrounding the place of women.

The 1930s: Bertha de Tabbush and Gilka Machado The trail blazed by Queiroz was not quickly followed by other women writers in Brazil or neighbouring countries, although it must be recognised that they represented a small minority of the nation’s authors at the time. Indeed, it would be another 15 years before the next landmark texts appeared in the region, with Bertha de Tabbush’s poem ‘Fútbol’ (1937) closely followed by Gilka Machado’s ‘Aos heróis do futebol brasileiro’ (To the Heroes of Brazilian Football, 1938). Published in her collection El secreto de la cigarra, de Tabbush’s poem is to be found in the ﬁnal section, Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 entitled ‘Las alegrías del sol’, which contains three texts devoted to polo, rowing and football respectively. ‘Fútbol’ consists of four quatrains that celebrate the strength and exuberance of male players during a match, the repetition of nouns to indicate physicality combining with the image of the ball soaring in the air to eclipse the sun. Three of the four quatrains begin with an exhortation to be strong, and while the ‘Fuerte, campeones’ (Be strong, champions) of the third hints at an inspiration in the Argentinian team’s triumph in the 1937 South American Championship, hosted in Buenos Aires, overall the poem is more a celebration of virility and Offside? Women Writers Creating Space 197

masculinity channelled through football. A repeatedly upward trajectory for the ball mirrors the uplifting emotions experienced by the poet and echoes both the manner in which Queiroz combined literal and metaphysical elevation in the goalkeeper’s leap and the sense of transcendence expressed by Parra del Riego in his depiction of Gradín. As with these previous poetic representations of male footballers, there is also a sense that the poet is physically moved by watching the action, although de Tabbush does not express the erotic charge of Parra del Riego or Queiroz, limiting herself to a description of a heart set racing by the spectacle of football and the strength of the players. Such restraint is not surprising and must be read against the backdrop of a period in Argentina known as ‘La década infame’ (The Infamous Decade) and the limited public presence of women in the country, where suffrage was not granted until 1947. De Tabbush’s poem is of note as the first football text by an Argentine woman, while its points of comparison with works published by figures such as Parra del Riego and Queiroz suggest the creation of a literary discourse around football that was employed by men and women alike. It does, however, provide less of a challenge to patriarchal conventions than many football texts by women writers, although the degree to which it conforms more closely to social and gender norms is of interest in itself. A year after the publication of ‘Fútbol’, another significant moment in the development of women’s writing on football came in the form of Gilka Machado’s celebration of the Brazilian team at the 1938 World Cup. A near contemporary of Queiroz, Machado too was very active in efforts to secure women’s rights and in 1910 was co- founder in Rio de Janeiro of the Partido Republicano Feminino, which campaigned for women’s suffrage, eventually granted in 1932. In 1922, the same year that the female eroticism of ‘O Salto’ created waves, Machado published a collection of poems entitled Mulher nua (Naked Woman), followed in 1928 by Meu glorioso pecado (My Glorious Sin), both of which scandalised more conservative sectors of Brazilian literary society as a result of their eroticism. Nonethe- less, in 1933 she was voted Brazil’s best female poet and it was in her subsequent 1938 collection Sublimação (Sublimation) that she published ‘Aos heróis do futebol brasileiro’, a poem of 53 free verses arranged into seven stanzas of irregular length. In the context of Machado’s previous work, Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 characterised by its erotic charge and intimate depictions of a woman’s pleasure, Sublimação represents a clear shift to a preoccupation with concerns that are more social and global, the poet assuming the guise of ‘the voice of humanity’ (Cardoso Tardelli, 2014). The poem opens in the first person, echoing the intimacy of Machado’s earlier work, but here the purpose is not to explore the self, rather to salute the ‘heróis do dia’ (heroes of the day) who, ‘escrevendo com os pés’ (writing with their feet), have created ‘uma epopéia internacional!’ (an international epic!). In this first stanza, then, the poet establishes a distance 198 Offside? Women Writers Creating Space

between herself and the heroic football players, whose creativity is recognised to constitute a ‘linguagem muda’ (silent language) that elevates them to the status of Greek warriors or Olympians. The second stanza develops these notions, but extends the admiration for the players to the level of the nation as a whole, and while the Brazilians’ souls are distant from the players, they overcome the physical separation to join them in their footballing endeavours for the glory of the nation. The distance is highlighted stylistically as the Brazilian public is referred to in the third person, while the players are addressed in second person, and the word ‘distant’ stands out through enjambement to be the sole element on the second line of the stanza. Brazil’s squad for the 1938 World Cup was the first to represent the nation in any meaningful sense: with players from clubs in both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, as well as other major cities, this squad differed from those in 1930 and 1934 that had been dominated by players from Rio. Moreover, the rise of radio in the 1930s played a crucial role in the creation of a sense of nation around football: following the first live commentary of a football match in 1931 (Goldblatt, 2014: 46), football commentators had become an established and distinctive part of the national airwaves, all of which meant that the 1938 tournament could be – and was – enjoyed live across the nation for the first time. Radio broadcasts also served political ends, and just eight months before the World Cup began in France Getúlio Vargas had used radio to announce the start of the Estado Novo, a dictatorship he would head until 1945. By referring to the manner in which Brazilians are able to join the players and share in their exploits in France, Machado appears to be implicitly acknowledging the convergence of politics, football and radio as a means of securing national cohesion. In the third stanza, we find hints of the poet’s eroticism as she celebrates the ‘penetração dos gols de Leônidas’ (penetration of Leonidas’s goals), which cannot be matched by any work of art or science and generate an emotional attachment from people around the world. Celebrating the exploits of a black player, not to mention investing him with an erotic charge, is in marked contrast to de Queiroz’s ‘O Salto’, and Machado here reflects the changes that had taken place in Brazilian football during the intervening years. As discussed in Chapter 3, the national team that trav- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 elled to the 1921 South American Championship in Buenos Aires contained no black players in the face of concern at how the country might be projected beyond its borders, and Fluminense, who would resist the incorporation of black players until the 1950s, provided more members of the 1930 World Cup squad than any other club.2 However, the seleção that travelled to represent the nation at the 1938 World Cup consisted primarily of black players, with striker Leônidas and central defender Domin- gos da Guia widely acknowledged as the two stars of the team. In the penultimate stanza, Machado foregrounds the question of skin colour as Offside? Women Writers Creating Space 199

she affirms that ‘qualquer raça’ (any race), even those far removed from Brazil’s character, can understand the sporting expression of Leônidas and Domingos, whose names are both given in the plural. The stanza closes by pointing out how such players bring to the attention of foreigners ‘a milag- rosa realidade/ que é o homem do Brasil’ (the miraculous reality/ that is the man of Brazil), the synecdoche making it clear that it is the two black footballers who are at the heart of this new sense of national pride on the international stage. ‘Novo’ (new) is highlighted through enjambement at the end of the fourth stanza, where it has been separated from the accompanying ‘povo’ (people), and in the context of the period associations are inevitable with the dictatorial Estado Novo of President Vargas, whose daughter was offi- cially named ‘madrina’ (godmother) of the World Cup team, providing a rare – if purely symbolic and nepotistic – incursion of women into the administration of the game. To read Machado’s poem as an endorsement of the Vargas regime would be misguided, however, and the ‘new’ should instead be understood in the context of the influential writing of social anthropologist Gilberto Freyre, whose re-evaluation of the contribution of black culture to Brazil had marked a turning point towards more positive views, as discussed in Chapter 4. Of particular interest here is Freyre’s celebration of ‘Foot-ball mulatto’ in the aftermath of Brazil’s quarter- final victory against Czechoslovakia, in which he proclaimed that

to be Brazilian is to be mulatto, an enemy of formalism [. . .] and a friend of variations; taking delight in soothing tricks that are followed by surprising moments of agility. The art of deception. The Brazilian mulatto has de-Europeanised football by giving it curves, rounded edges and the graces of a dance. (Freyre, 1938)

Machado’s poetics appear to draw directly on this sociological discourse in the celebration of the players’ ‘improvisos/ em vôos e saltos,/ ó bailarinos espontáneos’ (improvisations/ in flights and leaps/ of spontaneous dancers) before imploring the ‘atletas franzinos’ (skinny athletes) to transform themselves into giants on the pitch through their ‘astúcia e audácia’ Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 (cunning and bravery). At a structural level the poem practices such spontaneity and improvisation through its use of free verse, suggesting that the footballers’ poetics have an influence that extends well beyond the field of play into the fields of sociology, politics and literary aesthetics alike. More- over, the inclusion of Domingos alongside Leônidas ensures that attacking creativity is balanced with defensive solidity and organisation, with ‘tenacidade e energía’ (tenacity and energy), thus avoiding the stereotypical association with flair and natural ability and encouraging readers to value equally the contributions of all Afro- Brazilians. 200 Offside? Women Writers Creating Space

The poem closes with an image of the players creating ‘um debuxo maravilhoso/ do nosso desconhecido país’ (a wonderful drawing/ of our unknown country), of football putting the country on the map thanks to the exploits of the primarily black team and its newly described style of play. While the poem opens with the poetic ‘I’ saluting the players in the second person, and the Brazilian public presented in the third person, the ‘nosso’ (our) of the closing line sees all of these elements converge into a shared plurality made possible through the success of the football team. Also of note is that as a woman involved in radical politics of the era Machado feels football to be an appropriate vehicle for the exploration of social issues, and that she includes herself among the national community that is created around it; indeed, with ‘Aos heróis do futebol brasileiro’ she plays a central role in creating this nation and in redeploying Freyre’s discourse to new ends. Ironically, however, just three years later women’s football would be banned by the Estado Novo’s National Sports Council, an act that effectively closed the door to women’s engagement with the sport for several decades. Similarly, the optimism expressed by Freyre and Machado around the contribution of Afro-Brazilians to the nation, developed in Mario Rodrigues Filho’s O negro no foot-ball brasileiro (Blacks in Brazilian Football, 1947), crumbled with the Maracanaço, the country’s loss to Uruguay in the 1950 World Cup final, for which Barbosa, Bigode and Juvenal (the team’s black goalkeeper and defenders) became scapegoats. With the exception of the chronicle ‘O amistoso’ by Rachel de Queiroz (1954), the involvement of Brazilian women writers for the three decades after the publication of Machado’s poem was negligible, a situation that was reflected throughout the continent. The solitary text by Queiroz, which describes a ‘friendly’ match in the Alagoas region characterised by fights, police intervention, the use of a gun to avert the award of a penalty, the arrest of a player, and the eventual flight of the visiting team on their bus, does little to challenge the perceived violence of the sport, which had been the basis of its 1941 ban for women.

Clarice Lispector Enters the Fray Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Only in 1968 would the silence of women writers around football be broken in any signiﬁcant way, with the publication in Jornal do Brasil of Clarice Lispector’s short piece ‘Armando Nogueira, o futebol e eu, coitada’ (Armando Nogueira, Football and Me, Screwed). It should be noted, however, that this piece was written in direct response to a challenge laid down by Nogueira, Lispector’s fellow columnist on Jornal do Brasil, who had stated that he would happily exchange a Botafogo victory for a football chronicle written by her. In the chronicle, which appeared on 30 March 1968 in the weekly column she wrote between 1967 and 1973, she Offside? Women Writers Creating Space 201

discusses her support of Botafogo, her relationship with the game as a Brazilian woman and the sport’s place within her family. Lispector’s 1974 short story ‘A procura de uma dignidade’ (In Search of Dignity) picks up on many of the features of the 1968 chronicle, with football again a point of entry to a series of broadly political issues. The story follows a day in the life of the elderly Sra Jorge B Xavier, whose partially remembered directions to a cultural event lead her to enter the Maracanã stadium, where she becomes thoroughly lost in a succession of labyrinthine corridors and closed doors.3 After failing to meet there the friends she had arranged to see, she struggles to find her way out of the stadium, and eventually does so only with the help of a man who appears in the corridors. Her dif- ficulties continue on her journey home as taxi drivers are unable to locate the places to which she wants to go, or second guess her destination for her. With the aid of a sleeping tablet, the day comes to a close with her reflections on a sexual fantasy with a popular singer and on questions around erotic desire in a woman of her age, concluding that – as with her earlier tortuous experience of the Maracanã – ‘tem! que! haver! uma! porta! de saííííííída!’ (there has to be a way out!). As Lispector had noted in her 1968 chronicle, football was synonymous then with notions of Brazilianness, and this was cultivated further by the country’s military dictatorship following the 1970 World Cup victory. In ‘A procura de uma dignidade’, however, it is clear that Sra Jorge B Xavier feels out of place in the Maracanã, suggesting that many Brazilians – and in particular Brazilian women – may not share in this construct of nationhood. Further challenges come via the inevitable association of the stadium with the country’s most traumatic national defeat, the 1950 Maracanaço at the hands of Uruguay, and via the manner in which people in the stadium disappear. With the help of a man in the corridors, the protagonist spots three people who could be the friends she has arranged to meet, but they promptly vanish, leading the man to offer to help her find them as ‘As pessoas não podem ter sumido no ar!’ (People can’t just disappear into thin air!). Despite this phrase being repeated shortly afterwards, the man also vanishes, and in the context of the military regime that exploited football as a tool of national unification such disappearances were a feature of the state repression that would converge with that of Uruguay, Argentina Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 and Chile in Operation Condor. Instead of being a symbol of the national sport and of Brazilian greatness on the international stage, the Maracanã stadium assumes a menacing presence in which men and women alike lose their way and disappear, both literally and metaphorically. Sexuality is also explored in the story, most obviously when Sra Jorge B Xavier, who is almost 70, has returned home and contemplates her own naked body with some amusement before asking herself if her rouged lips are still kissable or if it would be disgusting to kiss the mouth of an old woman. The gap between the polite elderly lady seen by others and the 202 Offside? Women Writers Creating Space

sexual desire she experiences is typical of Lispector’s exploration of women’s public and private dimensions, and the image of her painted lips links to her previous description of herself: ‘Por fora – viu no espelho – ela era uma coisa seca como um figo seco. Mas por dentro não era estorri- cada. Pelo contrário. Parecia por dentro uma gengiva úmida, mole assim como gengiva desdentada’ (On the outside – she saw in the mirror – she was some dry thing like a dry fig. But inside she wasn’t parched. On the contrary. Inside she seemed like a moist gum, as soft as a toothless gum). Lispector here is clearly subverting the image of the toothed vagina that threatens hegemonic masculinity, but the protagonist’s lack of teeth does not mean that the threat to male dominance is diminished, and again relates back to the key locus of the Maracanã. When she arrived at the stadium, Sra Xavier found her way in through a narrow opening ‘como se tivesse entrado de esguelha por um buraco feito só para ela’ (as if she had gone in sideways through a hole made only for her). Moreover, the circular form of the stadium, surrounded by a ring of stands with panelled sheet roofing that runs towards the pitch, echoes the form of the toothed vagina, and in the story it is described as ‘o estadio nu desventrado, sem bola nem futebol’ (the naked stadium with its stomach scraped out, without balls nor football), further developing the associations between the Maracanã and sexuality. In his imaginative reading of sexuality and stadia in Rio and Buenos Aires, Gaffney (2008: 143) suggests that ‘there is a logical extension of female attributes to the stadium’ resulting from its status as ‘home’ to the team. It is worth pointing out here that the Maracanã is ‘home’ to Botafogo, the team Lispector supported and went to see in her only visit to a live match (Lispector, 1968), so the feminisation of the stadium that takes place in this story can be related more widely to the author’s entry to the traditionally masculine realm of football in Brazil discussed above. More recently, this process of feminisation in stadia has been apparent in the context of opposing (male) fans whose use of chants that threaten violent homosexual penetration serves to assert dominant masculinities. Lispector, however, provides an early challenge to such stadium-bound masculinity, and while stadia have historically served as almost exclusively male domains, ‘as women have gained greater cultural, political, and economic agency they have begun to change the hyper-masculine nature of the Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 stadium space’ (Gaffney, 2008: 32). As is often the case in Lispector’s texts, madness lies in wait for ‘the powerful but frustrated women in her narratives [who] often turn in on themselves rather than attempting to speak out’ (Bassnett, 1987: 264). Although Sra Jorge B Xavier managed to escape the physical confines of the stadium’s labyrinths, her desperate repetition in the story’s closing line of the search for a way out indicates that she remains as screwed by the values that the Maracanã and football sym- bolise as Lispector was herself in her 1968 text, and indeed as was Brazil more widely during the football- appropriating dictatorship. Offside? Women Writers Creating Space 203

Peruvian Poetesses: Blanca Varela and Giovanna Pollarolo The period that spanned Lispector’s football texts also saw a marked rise in the profile of football in Peru, Brazil’s opponent in the 1970 World Cup quarter- final. Football’s role in the process of nation- building that was taking place at the time has been discussed in Chapter 8, and among the texts that constituted a boom of football literature in the country we find Blanca Varela’s poem ‘Fútbol’, published in the 1972 collection Valses y otras falsas confesiones (Waltzes and Other False Confessions). Widely recognised as one of the country’s outstanding poets of the twentieth century, Varela produced a substantial body of work that gave consistent expression to a distinctive poetic voice and earned international acclaim.4 ‘Fútbol’ is to be found in the first half of the collection, which is entitled ‘valses’, which in a Peruvian context refers to the ‘vals criollo’ (creole waltz), a musical form closely associated with the experiences of Lima’s working classes during the first half of the twentieth century. The lyrics are characterised by their sentimentality and the expression of inner suffering that results from a sense of fatalism and an acceptance of social hierarchies, as in Felipe Pinglo’s classic ‘El plebeyo’ (c.1934), in which a young man laments his working-class status as an insuperable obstacle in his love for a woman of high society. Pinglo himself was a keen football fan and wrote a number of songs that celebrated players and teams of the early 1930s, notably Alianza Lima, establishing a relationship between Lima’s música criolla and football that has been continued by songwriters to the present. Another important connection here is Varela’s mother, Esmeralda González Castro, who under the pseudonym of Sefarina Quinteras wrote (with her cousin Emma Castro Pervuli) numerous canciones criollas, including the well-known valses ‘Parlamanías’ and ‘Todo y nada’. Against this backdrop, Varela’s choice of football as the subject of one of her own valses is less surprising, particularly given her own enjoyment in watching matches (Szyslo, 2007). The poem itself is dedicated to Vicente and Lorenzo (her sons), and, along with the other valses in the collection, enters into a dialogue with the sentimentalism and fatalism of the vals as a popular form, as well as with Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 the poet’s maternal emotions while observing a son playing football in the garden. By opening with an instruction to her son to ‘Juega con la tierra/ como con una pelota’ (Play with the earth/ as with a ball) Varela immediately opens the significance of the poem to universal and existential issues before inciting the son to ‘báilala/ estréllala/ reviéntala’ (dance to it/ smash it/ burst it), the ball again acting as a metaphor for the world. It is then made clear that the action is taking place in the poet’s garden, where the son is in turn the poet’s goalkeeper and scarecrow, Attila and son, pairs that connote a mother’s tenderness at watching her child at play as well as 204 Offside? Women Writers Creating Space

her hopes that he will be able to carve out his own space in the world, implicitly juxtaposing this with the housebound constraints of the poet as a woman. The poem then closes with an image of the earth at her son’s feet spinning as never before, ‘prodigiosamente bella’ (prodigiously beautiful) in the face of childhood innocence and freedom. It would be easy to see much of the poem as an expression of maternal affection and of the intimacy that was conventionally seen to mark women’s writing, but the title of the collection ﬂags the rejection of sentimentality typical of the vals as one more form of false confession, with which Varela enters into a dialogue. The focus on football here enables Varela to engage simultaneously with two spheres of emotional expression traditionally associated with Lima’s men, namely football and the vals, while rejecting the hierarchies typical of the form, in particular those surrounding the nature of the poetic subject and gender roles. By using a domestic setting and drawing attention to a highly personalised experience through the close repetition of ‘mi’ (my), Varela establishes what appears to be a conventionally ‘feminine’ text, but the rejection of the vals as a vehicle for masculine sentimentality and the imperatives of the poem’s opening lines indicate a strong desire to break free from convention and the limitations on women. Giovanna Pollarolo’s 1991 poem ‘El sueño del domingo (por la tarde)’ (The Dream of Sunday Afternoon) relates, from the perspective of a teenage girl, the manner in which she and her mother lose their father and husband respectively to the football commentaries that are broadcast on the radio every Sunday afternoon. The daughter is determined to ensure that the social changes that have seen women’s football begin to emerge in the region by this time will continue through her own actions, resolving that the relationship with her future husband will be different, and that ‘en mis días no habrá plancha/ ni fútbol ni lamentos’ (in my days there will be no ironing/ nor football nor regrets). As in Varela’s ‘Fútbol’, football here is clearly marked in terms of exclusion along the lines of gender divisions, and the changes that the daughter imagines for her adult self have come slowly over the two decades since Varela explored football as a poetic subject. By 1998 the Peruvian women’s team had entered the Copa América Femenina, where they ﬁnished in third place, but there is no sense that Pollarolo’s narrator seeks the inclusion of women in football; rather, Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 as Lispector had done in her 1974 story, she rejects it as a divisive practice that is constructed around established and predetermined masculine codes. One of the features of Pollarolo’s poetry is the manner in which her use of apparently trivial language creates ‘echoes that bear witness to the weight of the patriarchal subject on the network of interpersonal relationships’ (Borsò, 1998: 204). In ‘El sueño del domingo’, such a strategy is evident in the repeated use of the language of football to describe the impact that the sport has on the family, as the click of the radio switch is the signal for mother and daughter to be ‘expulsadas’ (sent off ) to the kitchen. In addition, the father Offside? Women Writers Creating Space 205

‘vibra por la pasión de un gol/ olvidado ya del amor’ (shudders with the passion of a goal/ love forgotten) while lying on the matrimonial bed as his wife undertakes domestic chores. Pollarolo draws attention to the radio adverts that interrupt the match commentary, and here mocks the mediatised passion for football in contrast to the wife he ignores, echoing the notion of football as sexual sublimation expressed by her compatriot Carmen Ollé in her poem ‘Damas al dominó’ (Ladies at Domino, 1981). Pollarolo and Varela (as well as Ollé) draw on football as a practice and a discourse to explore the interface between the traditionally private (female) and public (male) spaces of Peru, taking control of its discourse – if not its practice – to question and challenge the conventions of a patriarchy that excludes.

River Plate Writing The upturn in the numbers of women writing since the 1980s, and the growing attention to those who had been writing before then, ran in parallel to the beginnings of women’s football in countries across the continent. As a result, football increasingly appeared as an element of literary texts by women who challenged deeply ingrained assumptions around patriarchal societies, and while local conditions make it impossible to gen- eralise at a continental level, women writers in countries with strong literary traditions began to draw on football as a means of exploring traditionally male- dominated practices and discourses. In this regard, Sylvia Lago’s story ‘Recibir al campeón’ (To Receive the Champion) is a precursor: ﬁrst published in 1967, and included in Prego’s 1990 anthology of Uruguayan football texts, it examines from the perspective of a fan’s wife the corrosive impact of Peñarol’s victory in the 1966 Intercontinental Cup on the life of a middle- class family. Football is portrayed as an entirely male domain in which the women of the story do not participate: the wife who narrates the bulk of the story is not allowed to celebrate the victory with her husband, charged instead with remaining at home to look after their football- mad son. The other female character in the story is the mistress of the country’s president, a plaything to be enjoyed when parliament is closed in recognition of the victory. The wife, traumatised by the death of her elder son after a football injury, has a nightmare that sees a riot at Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 the airport as the frenzied crowd loses control, trampling her younger son underfoot and crushing her husband to death. In the ﬁnal paragraph it is the president’s mistress who has fallen asleep, and the storylines of the women become blurred as the wife takes Valium to escape the victory parade and the behaviours that surround it. As with Pollarolo’s text, football here is presented as a means of male socialisation from which women are excluded, while the presentation of the mistress provides another take on the association between football and sexual relations as domains of masculine discourse. 206 Offside? Women Writers Creating Space

Much as the works considered above demonstrate that women writers have been exploring the implications of football for much of the last century, it is only from the 1990s that what might be deemed a corpus of texts has begun to take shape. Significantly, this period coincides with the emergence of countries in the Southern Cone in particular from military dictatorships that stifled literary creativity and challenges to traditional gender roles such as women’s football, with little scope for the two fields to enter into dialogue. Lago’s ‘Recibir al campeón’ is the only text by a woman in Omar Prego’s Uruguay-based Cuentos para patear (Stories to Kick Around) (1990), but Roberto Fontanarrosa’s selection of texts in Cuentos de fútbol argentino (1997) includes a crónica by Luisa Valenzuela as well as short stories by Liliana Heker and Inés Fernández Moreno. In ‘Milagro en Parque Chas’ (Miracle in Parque Chas) Fernández Moreno focuses on the relationship between reality and fictional (re)creation – albeit through a male protagonist- narrator – as he traduces the commentary on an Argentina–Brazil match that he is listening to via the headphones of his Walkman. Instead of sharing the details of Brazil’s domination and goals to a growing group of expectant fans in the streets of the Buenos Aires district mentioned in the title, the narrator converts the defeat into a glorious victory, thereby highlighting the disconnect between the discourse of football and the reality of its practice. Liliana Heker’s short story ‘La música de los domingos’ (The Music of Sundays), by contrast, is narrated by a woman protagonist who forms part of a family that attempts to humour an aged grandfather by recreating a Sunday afternoon of football experiences for which he nostalgically yearns. Through a series of what are initially contrived episodes that replicate the abuelo’s memories, the family comes to experience a genuine recuperation of shared emotion and enjoyment, a collective experience in which three generations and both sexes come together. The story closes with the death of the grandfather, but through the recovery of Sundays filled with the sounds of football the narrator concludes that they can all recall that ‘hubo una vez una música por la que fuimos fugazmente apacibles y felices’ (there was once a music that made us all fleetingly peaceful and happy). Heker’s portrayal of football as a practice and discourse that unifies the family, with implications for the nation more widely, stands in marked contrast to Gio- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 vanna Pollarolo’s poem ‘El sueño del domingo (por la tarde)’, discussed above, suggestive of the ways in which the practice and discourse of football may be differently constituted from nation to nation. Such differences between football texts by women writing within a few years of each other, and the similarities between those writing decades apart, bring into sharp relief the problems of generalising about women’s literature – and women’s experiences more widely – across South America. Peruvian women are far less likely to play football or go to matches than their counterparts in Argentina, and the differences in the public profile of Offside? Women Writers Creating Space 207

women’s football and the cultural capital of football more generally within the nation, as well as attitudes towards gender equality more generally, undoubtedly all play a major role in determining the prevalence of women’s football literature. In the prologue to her collected Cuentos (2001: 17) Heker describes how she was invited to write ‘La música de los domingos’ for the 1997 anthology overseen by Roberto Fontanarrosa because ‘yo no podía faltar en una antología de cuentos sobre fútbol’ (I couldn’t be left out of an anthology of stories about football). Such acceptance that women writers constitute a presence in national football culture is far from universal, however: among the 30 Ecuadorian stories in Area de candela: Fútbol y literatura (Pérez Torres, 2006) and the 20 by Chilean authors in El fútbol también se lee (Camponovo, 2013) there is not a single text written by a woman. Within South America, the greater prominence of women’s football since the 1990s has been most evident in Brazil and Argentina, and it is no coincidence that it is in these same countries that the majority of football texts by women authors have been written. At the same time, these are perhaps the two countries of the region in which football is most closely and consistently related to national identity, and the manner in which women have increasingly claimed a place as subjects of the nation with a stake in its public negotiation and redefinition has been expressed both through literature in general and through football literature in particular. Recent developments in Colombia similarly point to the relationship between women’s football, football literature and broader socio- cultural debates. The Colombian women’s team reached the final of the Copa América Femenina for the first time in 2010, a result that qualified them for the Women’s World Cup in 2011, also for the first time, while the under- 20 women’s team finished in fourth place at the U- 20 Women’s World Cup in 2010, their best ever result. The inclusion of football texts by Laura Restrepo and Luisa Valenzuela in the anthology El fútbol se lee (Restrepo, 2011), an initiative of the Alcaldía Mayor de Bogotá under the leadership of Clara López Obregón as Acting Mayor, illustrates how the symbolic empowerment of women in the traditionally masculine domain of football has run parallel to the occupation of public and political offices by women in countries across the region. This has taken place not only in Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 the position of mayor of Colombia’s capital, but – notably – in Argentina and Brazil, the leading exponents of women’s football (and women’s football literature), where presidents Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Dilma Rousseff successfully stood for re- election. Of particular note is the recent publication in Argentina of two anthologies of football stories by women writers. Mujeres con pelotas: cuentos inspirados en el fútbol (Women With Balls: Short Stories Inspired by Foot- ball) (Pagano, 2010) contains 25 short stories and one poem that represent a landmark in the formation – or consolidation – of a corpus of women’s 208 Offside? Women Writers Creating Space

football literature in South America. The anthology’s cover, which features a meat cleaver encrusted in a football, makes clear that it is challenging the gendered binary separation of the internal and external worlds, the attribu- tion of domestic and public spaces, while the presence of the Argentinian ﬂag as a backdrop symbolises the inscription of women’s football as part of the nation. Such considerations are made explicit in the work’s prologue, in which María Rosa Lojo describes football as ‘the Argentine sport par excellence, emblem, too, of the masculine condition that has long been forbidden territory for women’ (2010: 7). The choice of ‘pelotas’ (balls) in the title draws together the physical sphere that traditionally belonged only to men and the metaphorical balls ‘which language tends to turn into a metaphor for qualities that are valued: initiative, creativity, strength, bravery’ (2010: 7). She goes on to note, however, that this collection marks the moment in which women pick up the baton, and while the texts discussed throughout this chapter mean that many such moments had already come, there is nonetheless a sense that this anthology does mark a shift in the space occupied by women’s football literature. The ambiguity of ‘pelotas’ as a polyvalent marker of masculinity renders it an obvious reference in such works, and a similar play on words is apparent in Las dueñas de la pelota (The Owners of the Ball), a 2014 anthology of 14 football stories by women writers co-ordinated by Claudia Piñeiro. However, the shift in the title to ownership of the ball speaks to the increasing conﬁdence in women’s relationship with the sport, evident too in Piñeiro’s prologue, in which she describes football as having been the territory of men. Nonetheless:

In the midst of this hostile climate, we appear on the scene, fourteen female players ready to get dirty in texts related to football, a sport about which we are often passionate, but in which they make us try to believe that we are on loan. All women. (Piñeiro, 2014: 12–13)

She goes on to tell of her lifelong support for Independiente and the role that football has always played in her life, and while she no longer watches as much football as she used to she still has a firm grasp on the details of Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 the offside law. A significant development in this anthology is that several of the stories deal with women who are footballing subjects, either in the stands or on the pitch itself, in a reflection of the personal experiences of female authors for whom football is a daily practice. For example, Gabri- ela Cabezón Cámara’s story ‘La guacha redonda’ (The Round Nutmeg) tells the story of an outstanding female player from a shanty town who uses football as a form of revenge. In a series of interviews shortly after publication of the anthology story, she explained how she had herself played football as a girl, had until recently been in a women’s team, Offside? Women Writers Creating Space 209

watched matches with her father and enjoyed football as an integral part of her daily life (Rodríguez, 2014). For her part, Ana María Shua, author of ‘Fútbol era el de antes’ (Proper Football Was What They Used to Play), reflects on the generational shift among women, admitting to know little herself but learning from her fanatical daughter. She suggests that such a lack of knowledge was common in women of her generation, but that ‘younger women writers play football, watch it and know more about it’ (Rodríguez, 2014), and that while her mother fought against her own husband’s passion for football, ‘today lots of girls share in it’. Esther Cross, whose story ‘La gorda Matosas’ takes as its subject the legendary female River Plate fan, and acts as a reminder of women’s agency in the sport since at least the 1960s, states that ‘my relationship with football is perma- nent because I am Argentinian’. This rewriting of the link between football and national identity to include women is expressed by other contributors too, and sits alongside the retrospective consideration of the place of women in the nation’s footballing history carried out by Cross and other writers in the anthology. Another source of a significant number of football texts by Argentinian women writers is the online site Gambeteando palabras,5 established in 2008 as an outlet for football writing. As of mid-2016 the site hosted a body of texts by some 70 authors from Argentina and Uruguay, including ten women who had contributed a total of 20 texts, many of which explore issues around gender, football and identity. Sandra d’Ovidio’s 2008 story ‘Legado’ (Legacy) reflects on the female narrator’s transformation from a young girl excluded from a masculine practice to a passionate fan as a mature woman, stating that ‘Boca es para mí una herencia, algo que mi padre me dejó sin preguntarme si realmente lo quería, o si era necesario en mi vida’ (Boca is for me an inheritance, something that my father left me without asking me if I really wanted it, or if I needed it in my life). By the end of the story, she not only has assumed the status of a dedicated fan, but looks forward to it being her who hands on the legacy to her son: ‘para ser yo, su madre, quien lo inicie en este rito machista’ (for it to be me, his mother, who initiates him in this machista ritual). Similarly transgressive is Cristina Occhipinti’s ‘Pelusa’ (2010), in which it is gradually revealed that among the team preparing to take the pitch for a match is a woman, who Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 overcomes the prejudices of the opposition crowd and players to impose herself on the game. This text serves as a reminder that however much women writers – and women’s football – gain acceptance in South America, as part of a more general challenge to patriarchal values, the presence of a woman in a male team remains a flight of fiction. Occhipin- ti’s story is strongly reminiscent of the case of Maribel Domínguez, the star forward of the Mexican women’s team, who signed for Mexican second division club Celaya in December 2004 only for the move to be blocked by FIFA, whose ruling on the case stated that ‘there must be a clear separation 210 Offside? Women Writers Creating Space

between men’s and women’s football’ (BBC, 2004). The upsurge of work by Argentinian female authors has undoubtedly contributed to creating a place for women’s football as a national practice, but the values and prejudices they are challenging are deeply ingrained in discourses and institutions that extend well beyond Argentina and South America.

Concluding Reflections The poems by Anna Amélia de Queiroz, Bertha de Tabbush and Gilka Machado studied above undoubtedly mark signiﬁcant moments in the history of football literature, in South America and more widely, and the fact that these early texts were produced in Brazil and Argentina bears witness to the role that the sport played in the construction of national identities in these countries from the early twentieth century onwards. It must be noted, however, that the publication of a handful of texts over the space of several decades does not constitute the establishment of what might be considered a corpus or a sustained challenge to traditional values, and reﬂects rather the generally precarious position of women writers in the region at the time. Writing 50 years after the publication of de Tab- bush’s poem ‘Fútbol’, Bassnett states that the discussion of isolated examples of women writers in Latin America means that ‘literary history reinforces the notion of the woman writer as an exception’ (1987: 249). It is hard to reach any other conclusion than that the football poems of the 1920s and 1930s discussed above were exceptions, written by exceptional women: both Queiroz and Machado provided explicit challenges to the gender- based norms of contemporary patriarchy through their professional life and their literary works alike. Nonetheless, all of these early women writers on football coincided in representing their experience of football as that of a spectator, watching from the sidelines and admiring the performance of male players, even though women’s football was practised in Brazil and Argentina from at least the early 1920s, represented (usually disparag- ingly) through newspaper reports or poetic representations. Moreover, the structures, images and discourse that these early writers employ in their poems are from a semantic domain that is essentially masculine, especially in the case of those who look back to the forms of classical antiquity. At Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 the same time, it must be recognised that by inverting the masculine gaze and, most obviously in the case of Machado, including themselves as part of the nation that is constructed through football, they chart the beginnings of female agency in their public positioning of women as modern subjects, as the creators of new meanings around predominantly masculine practices. The banning of women’s football in Brazil in 1941, and the presence of socially conservative regimes across much of the region, largely resulted in the undoing of such early gains in relation to women’s presence in football across the region. Offside? Women Writers Creating Space 211

The military dictatorships that held sway across much of South America through the 1970s and 1980s, and which were particularly repressive in the Southern Cone, stifled literary creativity and challenges to traditional gender roles, meaning that the practice of women’s football and women’s football writing largely stalled through that period. Lispector’s 1974 ‘A procura de uma dignidade’ (In Search of Dignity) must again be seen as exceptional in this regard, the work of a woman who was an established figure in Brazil’s public cultural life before the military came to power in 1964. By structuring the story around the protagonist’s inability to find her way out of the Maracanã stadium and drawing this together with ageing, self- determination and gender, she invites a profound questioning of the nature of a national identity that is constructed as a masculine domain via the appropriation of football by the military regime around the recent triumph in the 1970 World Cup. The easing of the military dictatorship’s restrictions under the policy of distensão in the second half of the 1970s saw the lifting in 1979 of the ban on women’s football, which had been in place in the country since 1941, ushering in an explosion in the number of women’s teams in the country. Argentina and Uruguay also witnessed a rise in women’s football following the transition to civilian regimes in the mid- 1980s, and the 1990s saw the birth of the Women’s World Cup (1991), the Copa América Femenina (1991) and women’s leagues in several South American nations, all part of what Rodríguez (2005: 241) describes as a ‘feminization of football’ at that time. Further evidence of the (re-)entry of women into the realm of football came with the inclusion of Sylvia Lago’s 1967 story ‘Recibir a los campeones’ in the Uruguayan anthology Cuentos para patear (Prego, 1990), which heralded women authors as an expected presence in football anthologies that began to appear with increasing frequency from the late 1990s. Into the twenty-first century, the presence of women at football matches has become normalised through media representations, though the sexual- ised terms of that representation often remain problematically constructed (implicitly at least) via a masculine gaze. Women’s football as a practice has gained ground and has in Marta the continent’s first superstar, while female academics make significant contributions to the study of various football disciplines, from a variety of perspectives. Football literature is Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 another discourse that has been similarly appropriated and populated by women since the turn of the millennium, exemplified by the two anthologies of football stories by women writers published in Argentina in 2010 and 2014, with substantial participation of women in anthologies and collections in Brazil. Along with Uruguay, these are undoubtedly the countries in which football holds the greatest degree of cultural capital and has enjoyed the most powerful role in the exploration of modern nationhood. As such, it is no surprise that it is here that women’s football and the sport’s literary representation by women should have emerged most 212 Offside? Women Writers Creating Space

consistently, with women’s football itself the subject of various stories in the most recent anthologies. At the same time, football’s symbolic power in these countries renders it particularly potent as a site of contestation, and it is precisely this value in national imaginaries that the women authors discussed here have engaged with to such striking effect. In the process they have established a clearly identiﬁable corpus of women’s writing on football that provides an increasingly rich ﬁeld in which women as writers – and players – of football are ever less the exception.

Notes 1 Available in the Biblioteca Nacional de Chile archives. I am grateful to Matthew Brown for this reference. 2 The Fluminense contingent at the 1930 World Cup included Preguinho, who not only captained the team and scored Brazil’s ﬁrst ever World Cup goal but was also the son of Coelho Neto, the writer whose debates with Lima Barreto on the value of football were a feature of the Rio press in the early 1920s. 3 The name of the protagonist, the presence of labyrinths and the use of sleep to introduce uncertainties as to whether we are dealing with a dream or lived experience all strongly evoke the Ficciones of Jorge Luis Borges, whose antipathy towards football was notorious. 4 In 2001 she was awarded the Octavio Paz Prize for Poetry and Essay, in 2006 the García Lorca International Poetry Prize and in 2007 the Queen Sofía Poetry Prize. 5 gambeteandopalabras.cruzagramas.com.ar (accessed 2 July 2016).

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Since the publication of the first football poem in Lima in 1899, football and literature have enjoyed an enduring, albeit irregular, relationship in South America, expressed in the work of many of the continent’s most celebrated and widely read authors, as well as texts written by some less familiar names. Following the introduction of football to major cities across the continent in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, and its adoption by local elites, football quickly came to constitute a means of promoting supposedly British and European values among local intellectual circles, with literary texts and other forms of writing an important forum for accompanying debates, as analysed in Chapters 2 and 3. This was the case not only in countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Peru, but also in Europe, where writers in Britain, France and Spain explored the possibilities of sport in general, and football in particular, as part of their literary creations. Seddon describes the moralising tone of many football stories published for boys in Britain during the 1920s, which were ‘usually centred on the triumph of good over evil, honesty over deceit, in which genuine endeavour would always prevail over shady skulduggery’ (1999: 487), while in Spain the philosopher Ortega y Gasset proclaimed in 1920 that ‘sport is the superior form of human existence’ (Rota, 2000: 71). A similarly positive response to the rise of sports was evident in France during the same period (Balmand, 1990: 112–14), encapsulated by the football player in Montherlant’s Les Olympiques (1924) who champions the value of the team and the spirit of amateurism. There is little doubt as Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 to the exchange of ideas that took place in the early decades of the twentieth century as writers from Latin America undertook trips to Europe, and in particular Paris, as part of their intellectual journey, but it would be wrong to see the origins of football literature in South America as the mere transplantation of a European practice. The emergence of football literature as pulp fiction in Britain came in the 1920s, the decade that also witnessed the first evidence of football literature in continental Europe, all part of a search for new directions in the wake of World War I. South America was, of course, far less affected by the horrors of the Great War, 216 Conclusions: 100 Years of Golitude

and by the time it finished several authors there had already published poems, short stories and novels that featured football to a greater or lesser degree as a practice around which new conceptions of nationhood could be constructed in the context of recent independence and mass immigration. Football, as a practice and a subject of representation, simultaneously offered possibilities of engagement with notions of modernity in societies that were becoming increasingly urbanised and industrialised, as well as enabling the working through of influential ideas and scientific thinking, such as social Darwinism and Lamarck’s concept of acquired characteristics, in societies that were undergoing rapid change. The 1920s did, however, mark a turning point in football in South America that saw the game move from elite clubs to being a mass- based practice of the popular classes across the region. Marcos de Mendonça, gentleman goalkeeper of Fluminense and of the Brazil team of 1919, subject of ‘O Salto’ by his wife Anna Amélia de Queiroz, stopped playing football before he was 30 as he disapproved of the way the game was changing (Kittleson, 2014: 30). In 1928, the first encounter between Alianza Lima and Universitario de Deportes, teams that represented the Afro- Peruvian working classes and the white elites respectively, ended with the sending-off of five Alianza players and a subsequent fight with members of the crowd. Following what became known as ‘El clásico de los bastona- zos’ (the derby of the canings), Alianza Lima won a rearranged match 2–1 and with it claimed the 1928 league title. By the early 1930s, the appropriation of football by the masses meant that it no longer constituted a means of mediating broader concepts and ideas for writers, intellectuals and politicians drawn from the country’s elites, and in the following decades football literature became a far less conspicuous part of the cultural landscape. At the same time, football’s status as a mass-based practice was accompanied by the rise of radio and, especially in Brazil, where the sport enjoyed particular prominence as a national discourse through the 1930s and 1940s, the development of the football chronicle, which arose from the increasing presence of football in the printed media. The prominence of these new modes of discussing matches and players, which created their own football narratives and discourses, undoubtedly also contributed to the downturn in the number of novels, poems and stories to feature the Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 sport during this period. The publication in 1968 of Galeano’s Su majestad el fútbol is indicative of a shift in attitudes towards popular and mass culture, apparent in the foregrounding of a range of such practices through the literature of the post- Boom that came to prominence around 1970. In the prologue to that work, Galeano expresses his hope that football may become an expression of literature, in which he decries the unrealised potential of ‘the intensity of passions that it encapsulates and unleashes’ (1968: 7). At the same time as he debunks the myth of football constituting a distraction of the revolutionary Conclusions: 100 Years of Golitude 217

potential of the masses, Galeano here reduces football to another set of clichés around passion, but authors from the 1970s onwards quickly moved beyond such limitations to explore a series of issues around the politics of race and gender, dictatorship and identity, the subject of Chapters 4 to 9. This resurgence in the visibility of football in the region’s literary production also coincided with the spread of television, which challenged the primacy of established narratives around football via radio broadcasts and the printed media, and it is notable how a number of examples of football literature draw attention to this by including radio commentators or writers of chronicles in their fictional creations. In the context of dictatorships that appropriated football through the 1970s and into the 1980s to serve their particular political agendas, at the same time exercising strict control over the use of language, around football and more widely, such works are themselves undertaking acts of political contestation, part of broader efforts to reclaim national narratives from the generals. Further to what might be termed a literaturisation (or perhaps a re- literaturisation) of football through the 1980s and 1990s, the period since around the turn of the millennium has been witness to an increasing footballisation of literature, as the discursive power of football as a narrative has become evident through the rapidly growing volume of works that deploy it to varied ends. This latter process, at the same time, corresponds to the pervasive mediatisation and mercantilisation of football that has seen a sharp rise in the number of fictional and non-fictional publications that have football as their subject matter, evident especially from Chapters 4 and 7.1 Not- withstanding the many works discussed in this study that successfully draw on football, several Latin American authors whose texts explore aspects of football have commented on the factors that inhibit the production of football literature. In attempting to account for the lack of ‘great football novels in a planet that holds its breath to watch the World Cup’, Mexican Juan Villoro suggests that

football’s system of references is so codiﬁed and engages the emotions so effectively that it contains within itself its own epic, its own tragedy and its own comedy. It has no need of parallel plot lines and leaves little room for authorial invention. Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 (2006: 21)

For Villoro, there are few areas of human activity whose outcomes are as well known and as thoroughly pre-constituted through language as the feats of the football pitch; as a result, ‘its untold mysteries tend to be brief ’ (Villoro, 2006: 21), leading to the predominance of shorter forms of ﬁction. Brazilian Sérgio Rodrigues echoes Villoro’s words almost exactly, declaring that football consists of ‘closed narratives, endowed with beginning, middle and end, full of drama, comedy and tragedy’, concluding 218 Conclusions: 100 Years of Golitude

that rather than the novel it is poetry and the short story, ‘genres that lend themselves more to lyricism, that are equipped to deal with that closed world by means of exaltation’ (Rodrigues, 2010). The similarity in their explanations of the challenges facing novelists who might wish to write about football suggests that even as the dominant discourses around football were constructed via radio commentaries and chronicles in previous decades, the recent commercial success of football literature and the attendant proliferation of blogs and articles on electronic media may replace one dominant narrative with another. Nonetheless, it is apparent through the course of this study that poetry and short stories easily outweigh the number of novels, the ability of shorter forms of literature to focus on a single episode affording them a greater proximity to what Gumbrecht terms the ‘eventness’ of the sporting moment (2004: 113). It is also apparent that those novels that do concern themselves significantly with football focus on the social and political framework within which it is practised, and on the discourses through which it is constituted, rather than on the action of football as a practice. Longer forms of football fiction in Latin America, then, lie towards the ‘meaning’ side of Gumbrecht’s ‘tension/oscillation between meaning effects and presence effects’ (2004: 108) while shorter forms may better mediate the relationship between the two. Poetry in particular, with its visual (not to mention oral) dimensions, its ability to create and break patterns and structures, to achieve sudden changes of direction and unexpected movements through allusion and association, is uniquely able to achieve approximation to the action on the pitch. It is, in this regard, notable how poetry features prominently among the texts considered throughout this study and how many poets have successfully moved beyond the established discourses of football to negotiate the tensions between the action on the pitch and the sport’s broader significances. At the start of the 1990s, Ian Hamilton described football as ‘a sport without much literature’ (1992) and in the same year George Plimpton declared: ‘Soccer has no important literature that I can find, though it is such a universal activity that surely I am at fault here – I must have missed a South American novel’ (cited in Turnbull et al., 2008: xi). This study points up just how wrong Hamilton was in relation to South America and begins to reveal just how much Plimpton had missed. The period since the turn of the millen- Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 nium has undoubtedly seen an increase in the amount of football literature published in South America, some of which obeys the interest of publishing houses in exploiting the commercialisation of football across a wide range of fields. This does not, however, account entirely for the phenomenon, which also builds on a substantial corpus of football literature that has been produced across the region since the start of the twentieth century following publication of the first football poem in Lima in 1899. Indeed, this study has had to be selective in the works that it has included, especially in the context of the rapidly expanding number of texts published in recent years. Conclusions: 100 Years of Golitude 219

The study of the relationship between football and literature in South America remains in its early stages, inside the region as in the western academy, but the richness and diversity of the texts analysed in the preceding chapters convey the considerable potential of this field. Countries such as Colombia, Paraguay and Bolivia, which have seen less activity in this area, have had to be omitted here, while it is increasingly difficult to do justice to the wealth of texts published in the last decade. As one of the most widely practised, consumed and debated cultural forms across South America since at least the early twentieth century, football’s depiction in literature has been less visible than might be expected, and certainly less explored than literature’s relationship with music, art, cinema and dance. From the 1930s through to the end of the 1960s, when the post- Boom marked a watershed in such relationships, such a disconnect may be explained in large measure by literature’s status as being primarily the preserve of local intellectual elites and (upper) middle classes while professionalised football, enjoyed by the masses, was no longer the gentlemanly game of the period up to the 1920s. Changing attitudes towards the place of popular culture as a subject of academic study over recent decades have paved the way for the development of discourses and approaches to the study of football in various disciplines, including literature, coinciding with the opening up of literature in South America to writers from a far greater diversity of backgrounds. The commercial imperatives of the publishing industry undoubtedly have a role to play in the boom of football texts and anthologies into the new millennium, and correspond to the greatly increased commodification of the professional game over the same period, but many authors continue to write about football at the heart of the barrio, or as a defining expression of personal experience. Such works, as well as those that explore the articulation of communities along lines of race, gender or nationhood, can provide touch- stones towards new understandings of the daily experiences of millions of the continent’s inhabitants, of the communities in which they live, and of the shifting dynamics of the terms in which they express and construct themselves. As such, they merit our serious consideration.

Note

Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 1 In Argentina, for example, ﬁgures from the country’s ISBN Agency show that there were 65 such publications in 2005, compared with 21 in 1996 (Arena, 2009).

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Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. Production of Presence. What Meaning Cannot Convey (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). Hamilton, Ian (ed.). The Faber Book of Soccer (London: Faber and Faber, 1992). Kittleson, Roger. The Country of Football. Soccer and the Making of Modern Brazil (Los Angeles / London: University of California Press, 2014). Montherlant, Henry de. Les Olympiques (Paris: Grasset, 1924). Queiroz Carneiro de Mendonça, Anna Amélia de. ‘O salto’ in Milton Pedrosa (ed.) Gol de letra. O futebol na literatura brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Gol, 1967), 109. Rodrigues, Sérgio. ‘O grande romance do Futebol e outras lendas’ on his blog Todo Prosa (25 June 2010) http://todoprosa.com.br/o-grande-romance- do-futebol- e-outras- lendas/ (accessed 26 September 2016). Rota, Ivana. ‘La relación entre deporte y cultura en España en los primeros treinta años del siglo’ in Gabriele Morelli (ed.) Ludus. Cine, arte y deporte en la literatura de vanguardia (Valencia: Pre- textos, 2000), 67–88. Seddon, Peter. A Football Compendium. An Expert Guide to the Books, Films and Music of Association Football (Boston Spa: The British Library, 1999). Turnbull, John, Thom Satterlee and Alon Raab. The Global Game. Writers on Soccer (Lincoln, NE / London: University of Nebraska Press, 2008). Villoro, Juan. Dios es redondo (Mexico D.F.: Editorial Planeta, 2006). Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Index

Adoum, Jorge Enrique 167 Barrenechea, Julio: ‘Homenaje al Afro-Brazilian 45, 49, 59, 62n2, 66, Mundial’ 96, 98–100 69–71, 78, 84–5, 199–200 Béjar Portilla, Carlos: ‘Segundo tiempo’ Afro-Ecuadorian 169–70, 173–5, 168–9 187–8 Benedetti, Mario 124; ‘El césped’ Afro-Peruvian 176–9, 188, 216 127–31, 141; ‘Puntero izquierdo’ Aguilera Malta, Demetrio: ‘Una pelota, 123, 127 un sueño y diez centavos’ 167–8 Bohemia (Montevideo) 16 Alberti, Rafael 42n20; ‘Oda a Platko’ 40 Bolivia 10, 183, 219 Alcântara Machado, Antônio de: Boom 2, 4–5, 41, 104, 188, 193 ‘Corinthians (2) versus Palestra (1)’ Borges, Jorge Luis 29, 123, 145, 212n3; 58–9; ‘Gaetaninho’ 58 ‘El sur’ 157–8 Alianza Lima 41, 176, 178–9, 203, 216 Borges, Jorge Luis and Adolfo Bioy Andrade, Mário de: ‘Brasil–Argentina’ Casares: ‘Esse est percipi’ 123 67–8; ‘Domingo’ 56–7; Macunaíma Brazil 1, 3, 24, 37, 39, 40, 41n3, 42n7, 59; O losango cáqui 57; Paulicéia 45–63, 64–94, 98, 100, 123, 125, Desvairada 56–7 126–7, 130, 137, 140, 142n2, 162, Andrade, Oswald de: ‘Bungalow das 166, 178, 180–1, 184, 189n5, 192–3, rosas e dos pontapés’ 57; ‘E a Europa 194–202, 203, 206, 207, 210–11, curvou-se ante o Brasil’ 57–8; 212n2, 215–17 Manifesto Antropófago 57, 61, 195; Brinkerhoff Torelly, Aparício Pau-Brasil 57 Fernando de: ‘Match de Football’ Apollonian–Dionysian duality 31–2, 48–9, 51, 88 65–7 British see Great Britain Argentina 1, 3, 22, 28–34, 36–41, 67, Buenos Aires 16–17, 19, 22, 29–30, 73–4, 75–6, 96–7, 114–15, 122–4, 36–7, 38, 40, 41n3, 42n20, 42n22, 126–7, 128, 130, 131–42, 145–62, 47, 61, 73, 122, 123, 135, 137–8,

Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 168, 181, 183–6, 193, 196–7, 201, 142, 146, 147, 149, 154, 155, 206–12, 215 156–8, 161, 183, 184–5, 196, 198, Arguedas, José María: Los ríos 202, 206 profundos 176–7, 180 Bushby, Alfredo 182; 1975 183; Arlt, Roberto: ‘Ayer vi ganar a los Historia de un gol peruano 13n1, argentinos’ 37–8 182–3; La dama del laberinto 182 Bustos Domecq, Honorio see Borges, Barão de Pindaré Jr see Miranda, Jorge Luis and Adolfo Bioy Casares Antonio barbarism 6, 19, 24, 26, 30–2, 34, 37, Cabezón Cámara, Gabriela: ‘La guacha 48, 55, 148, 185 redonda’ 208–9 222 Index

Cabral de Melo Neto, João 74, 90; crónica 7, 70, 72, 76, 89, 142n11, 146, ‘Ademir da Guia’ 74; ‘Ademir de 167, 206; see also chronicle Meneses’ 74; ‘Brasil 4 x Argentina 0’ Cross, Esther: ‘La gorda Matosas’ 209 75–6; ‘O futebol brasileiro evocado Cuba 3, 7, 23, 76, 90 da Europa’ 74–5; ‘O torcedor do América FC’ 74 Darthés, Juan Fernando Camilo and Camponovo Llanos, Soledad: El fútbol Carlos Santiago Daniel: ‘Avanti Foot- también se lee 117, 207 ball Club’ 38 Campos, Augusto de: ‘Brazilian Darwin, Charles 8, 12, 13n4; social Football’ 86–7 Darwinism 13n4, 61, 216 Canal Feijóo, Bernardo: Penúltimo Delgado, Agustín 175, 188n2 poema del fútbol 28–34, 192 Delgado, José María 18, 35; ‘La nueva Carrión Mena, Fernando: Biblioteca del hazaña’ 35–6; ‘Sol verdadero’ 35 fútbol ecuatoriano 167–73 Delgado, Juan 24, 26 Caszely, Carlos 102, 113, 114–16, Diez de Medina, Fernando: 118; Calle larga con final de pasto ‘Interpretación lírica del fútbol’ 39 117 Dionysian 5, 31–2, 64, 65; see also Cenepa War 166 Apollonian–Dionysian duality Cevallos, Marcelo: ‘Gambetas para un Dittborn, Carlos 96, 99–100 poema’ 172–3 Domínguez, Maribel 209–10 Chile 3, 8, 10, 11, 19, 24, 26, 41n3, Donoso Pareja, Miguel: Área chica 168, 42n7, 53, 71, 95–121, 150, 169, 176, 173 179, 182, 183, 187, 189n7, 189n8, Drummond de Andrade, Carlos 72, 90, 189n10, 193, 201, 207, 212 91n1; ‘A Seleção’ 72; ‘Aos atletas’ cholo 177, 180, 187 72; ‘Foi-se a Copa?’ 73–4; ‘Meu chronicle 7, 68–9, 79, 83, 117, 124, coração no México’ 72; ‘O momento 146, 149, 195, 200–1, 216, 217, 218; feliz’ 72–3; ‘Pelé 1, 000’ 72 see also crónica cinema 4, 9, 40, 109, 134, 149–50, Ecuador 12, 75, 165–75, 176, 186–8, 219; see also films 207 civilisation 6, 19, 22, 24, 26, 31–2, 34, Epple, Juan Armando: ‘Noticias del 37, 48, 55, 56, 148, 185 fútbol’ 102–3 Coelho Neto, Henrique Maximiano Estadio Nacional (Santiago de Chile) 45–6, 49–51, 54, 61, 85, 88, 195, 98, 100–3, 108–9, 111, 114–15, 117, 196, 212n2; Esphinge 45–6, 48; 118n1, 119n10 Mano, livro da saudade 46 Eugenics 40, 50, 61 Colo-Colo 102–3, 107, 112, 114 Evita (María Eva Duarte de Perón) Colombia 3, 64, 88, 98, 165, 166, 170, 147–8, 149, 162n2 207, 219 Copa América 17; 1975 177, 183, Fernández Moreno, Inés: ‘Milagro en 189n5; 1983 129, 131; 1993 171; Parque Chas’ 206 1995 166; 2004 177; 2011 166; Ferreira, Carlos: ‘Mundial’ 131–3 Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 2015 166, 189n8; see also South films: Campeão de futebol (Brazil 1931) American Championship 89; Campeonato Sudamericano de Copa América Femenina 1991 211; Fútbol (Peru 1927) 40; Crónica de 1998 204; 2010 207 una fuga (Argentina 2006) 142n11; Copa Libertadores 142n2, 168; 1973 El cañonero de Giles (Argentina 102; 1991 103 1936) 40; El penalti más largo del Cortázar, Julio 145, 157, 193; ‘La mundo (Chile 2005) 162n3; noche boca arriba’ 157 Garrincha, alegria do povo (Brazil Coutinho, Edilberto: Amor na boca do 1963) 71; Hay unos tipos abajo túnel 79; Maracanã adeus 76–9, 85, (Argentina 1985) 133–4; Il Mundial 90; O jogo terminado 79 dimenticato (Italy 2011) 162n3; Los Index 223

tres berretines (Argentina 1933) 40; Greece 32, 67; classical tradition 1, 23, Pra frente Brasil (Brazil 1982) 76; 25–6, 31, 42n12, 50, 194–6, 198 Puntero izquierdo in Historias de Grupo Martín Fierro 29, 30 fútbol (Chile 1997), 127; Terra Guayaquil 12, 167–9, 171, 174–5, 187, encantada (Brazil 1922) 40; see also 188n1 cinema Guia, Domingos Antônio da 67, 74, Firmino de Paula, Francisco: O Brasil, 198–9 campeão do mundo 70–1 Guillén, Nicolás 7 Fluminense 40, 45–6, 47–8, 49–50, 53, 54, 62n3, 68, 77–8, 142n2, 194–5, Heker, Liliana: ‘La música de los 198, 212n2, 216 domingos’ 206–7 Fontanarrosa, Roberto 153–6, 156–9, Herrera Crespo, Patricio: ‘La 160–2; ‘19 de diciembre de 1971’ clasiﬁcación’ 170–2, 175 153–4, 158; Cuentos de fútbol Herrera y Reissig, Julio 12, 16–18, 30, argentino 153, 206–7; El área 18, 123 153; ‘El ocho era Moacyr’ 155–6; ‘El Hidalgo Pallares, José: ‘El ídolo’ 173–5 Pichón de Cristo’ 155–6; ‘Entre las Higa Oshiro, Augusto: ‘El equipito de cañas’ 154–5, 159; ‘Escenas de la Mogollón’ 177–8, 181 vida deportiva’ 157; ‘La observación de los pájaros’ 155–6; ‘Lo que se dice Iliad 68, 195 un jugador de folbo’ 155–6; Independiente (Argentina) 102, 142n2, ‘Plegarias a la Virgen’ 155–6; ‘¡Qué 208 lástima, Cattamarancio!’ 154; ‘Relato de un utilero’ 155–6 Kohan, Martín: Dos veces junio France 7, 16, 41, 65, 98, 146, 151, 198, 139–40, 161 215 Freyre, Gilberto 65–9, 74, 76, 85, 89, Lago, Sylvia: ‘Recibir al campeón’ 90, 199–200; Casa-grande & senzala 205–6, 211 65; ‘Foot-ball mulato’ 66–7, 84, 199; Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste 8, 9, 12, 216 Sobrados e mucambos 65; ‘Um team Lima 8–11, 12, 13n4, 19, 40, 41, 48, afro brasileiro’ 66 165, 176–80, 182, 184, 185, 189n4, Friedenreich, Arthur 40, 47, 56–7, 58 189n8, 203–4, 215, 216, 218 futurism 2, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 28 Lima Barreto, Afonso Henriques de 49–54, 59, 61, 87, 195, 196, 212n2; Galeano, Eduardo 7, 124, 172; El ‘Ainda e sempre’ 51–2; ‘Futebol: para fútbol a sol y sombra 19; Su majestad o Campeonato sul-americano – o el fútbol 140, 216–17 Presidente da República não quer García Márquez, Gabriel 193; ‘La “homens de cor” no nosso scratch’ prodigiosa tarde de Baltazar’ 157 52; ‘Herói!’; ‘Não quería, mas…’ 51; Gardel, Carlos 42n22; ‘Mi primer gol’ ‘O Haroldo’ 52; ‘Quase ela deu a 41 “sim”; mas…’ 52–3; ‘Uma Garrincha (Manuel Francisco dos conferencia esportiva’ 51; ‘Vantajens Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Santos) 64, 71–2, 78, 181 do futebol’ 51 Germany 64, 82, 85, 88, 166, 170–1; Lins do Rego, José: Água-mãe 68–9 East 96, 103; West 101–2, 115 Lispector, Clarice: ‘A procura de uma Goldemberg, Isaac: Tiempo al tiempo dignidade’ 201–2, 211; ‘Armando 180–1 Nogueira, o futebol e eu, coitada’ Gradín, Isabelino 2, 20, 24–8, 31, 36, 200–1, 204 38–9, 195, 196, 197 Gráﬁco, El (Buenos Aires) 22, 34, 41n1 Machado, Gilka: ‘Aos heróis do futebol Great Britain 2, 7, 9–11, 22, 23, 24, 41, brasileiro’ 67, 70, 89, 196–200, 210 47, 55, 65, 86, 95–6, 111, 122, 147, Maracanã stadium 68, 82, 201–2, 162n1, 176, 215 211 224 Index

Maracanaço 64, 89, 200, 201 ‘Colección nocturna’ 97; ‘El miedo’ Maradona, Diego Armando 5, 142n10, 97; ‘Los jugadores’ 97 148–9, 152, 155, 161–2 Ney, Ivan: ‘Schootando (Ás cariocas Martí, José: ‘Nuestra América’ 22–3, footballers)’ 48 28, 32 Neymar 64, 88 Martínez Estrada, Ezequiel: Radiografía Nietzsche,Friedrich 30–3; Beyond de la pampa 122, 160 Good and Evil 31; Thus Spoke Marta (Marta Vieira da Silva) 211 Zarathustra 30–1 masculinity 27, 33–4, 45, 105, 161, nineteenth century 1, 2, 6, 7–11, 16, 183, 197, 202, 208 22, 23–4, 28, 39, 62n2, 77, 98–9, Masetto, Antonio Dal: Hay unos tipos 122, 123, 141, 165, 182, 186, 193, abajo 133–9, 142n8, 161 215 Matto de Turner, Clorinda 193; Nogueira, Armando 89, 91, 200 Herencia 9 Mattoso, Glauco (Pedro José Ferreira Occhipinti, Cristina: ‘Pelusa’ 209–10 da Silva) 87 Ollé, Carmen: ‘Damas al dominó’ 205 Mazzoni, Thomas: Flô, o melhor Olympic Games 36; 1924 23, 24, 25, goleiro do mundo 68 32, 35, 38, 122, 130; 1928 23, 25, Mendonça, Marcos de 78, 194–5, 216 122, 130; 1936 176, 178–9; Greece mestiçagem 65 23, 25, 32, 35, 195 mestizaje 165, 177, 180 Operation Condor 125, 127, 184–6, mestizo 11, 96, 169–70, 171, 172, 175, 201 177, 180, 187 Ortega y Gasset, José 215 Mexico 1, 3, 7, 39, 72, 75, 90, 97, 104, Ovidio, Sandra d’: ‘Legado’ 209 129, 146, 168, 183, 209, 217 Miranda, Antonio: ‘Hexagero, aﬁnal’ Pagano, Mabel: Mujeres con pelotas: 88; ‘Isto não é futebol’ 88; ‘Seleção cuentos inspirados en el fútbol 207–8 (prognostico de ﬁnal feliz)’ 88 Paraguay 219 Mistral, Gabriela 41n1, 97, 193 Parra del Riego, Juan 5, 16, 19, 29, 34, Modern Art Week (São Paulo) 56, 57, 35–6, 39; ‘Aspectos psicológicos del 60 foot-ball’ 36–7, 42n18; ‘Elogio lírico modernism 28; Brazilian 56, 195 del fútbol’ 19–23; ‘Polirritmo modernity 2, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 20, 24–6, dinámico a Gradín, jugador de 33, 34, 41, 55, 60–1, 64, 175, 188, fútbol’ 2, 24–8, 31, 38, 195–7 216 Peixoto, Afrânio 46–7, 49 Montevideo 11–12, 16–18, 19–20, 24, Pelé (Edson Arantes do Nascimento) 5, 25, 28, 38, 41n3, 122, 124, 189n7 64, 65, 71, 72–3, 76–7, 84–5, 124–7, Montherlant, Henry de: Les 180–1 Olympiques 21, 36, 215 Perón, Juan Domingo 96, 147–50, 152, Moraes, Vinícius de 71; ‘O anjo das 162n2 pernas tortas’ 71–2 Peru 1, 2, 3, 8–11, 13n3, 16, 19–20, Moreira da Costa, Flávio: Onze em 26, 38, 40–1, 103, 165–7, 175–88, Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 campo 79; Onze em campo e um 188n3–189n10, 193, 203–5, 206, banco de primeira 79 215, 216 Mundialito 75, 76, 129–31, 141 Pessoa, Epitácio 47 music 4, 23, 40–1, 65–6, 68, 69, 71, photography 8–9 72, 86, 89, 99, 109, 115, 203, 206, Pindar 28, 195 219; see also Gardel, Carlos; Moraes, Piñeiro, Claudia: Las dueñas de la Vinícius de; Pinglo, Felipe pelota 208 Pinglo, Felipe 203; ‘Alianza Lima’ 41; Nacional (Uruguay) 17–20, 35, 142n2 ‘El Plebeyo’ 203 Neruda, Pablo (Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Pinochet, Augusto 98, 100, 102–3, 105, Reyes Basoalto) 97–8, 100; 110–15, 117–18, 118n1 Index 225

Pollarolo, Giovanna: ‘El sueño del Rosario Central 153, 155 domingo (por la tarde)’ 203, 204–6 Portugal 47, 53, 56, 58 Sábato, Ernesto 123–4; Nunca más positivism 7–8, 50 123, 145, 161; Sobre héroes y post-Boom 2, 4–5, 41, 103, 105, tumbas 131, 145 109, 146, 152, 160, 188, 193, 216, Sacheri, Eduardo 156–61; ‘Esperándolo 219 a Tito’ 156–7; Esperándolo a Tito y Prego Gadea, Omar: Cuentos para otros cuentos de fútbol 156–9; ‘El patear 126, 205, 206, 211; ‘Una golpe de Hormiga’ 157; ‘El Rulo y la tarde con Pelé’ 124–7, 131, 137 muerte’ 157–8; ‘Jugar con una Tango Proceso de Reorganización Nacional es algo mucho más difícil que a 124, 133–40, 145, 148–62 primera vista se podría suponer’ 158–9; Lo raro empezó después. Queiroz, Rachel de: ‘O amistoso’ 200 Cuentos de fútbol y otros relatos Queiroz Carneiro de Mendonça, Anna 157–8 Amélia de 194; ‘O salto’ 68, 70, 78, San Lorenzo 157 85, 194–6 Santiago de Chile 11, 12, 95–6, 98, Quiroga, Horacio 29, 35, 124; ‘Juan 101, 104, 105–6, 110, 111, 112, 113, Polti, half-back’ 16–19, 30, 35, 128 114, 189n8 Quito 166, 167, 169, 170–1, 173–5, Santiago del Estero 29 187 Sant’Anna, Sérgio 80–2, 83, 85, 90; ‘As cartas não mentem jamais’ 80; race 4, 8, 11, 26–7, 32, 40, 42n11, 49, ‘Invocações’ 80; ‘Na boca do túnel’ 55–6, 57–8, 64, 70, 86, 99, 170, 173, 82; ‘No último minuto’ 80–1; 196, 199, 217, 219; see also Afro- Páginas sem glória 80 Brazilian; Afro-Ecuadorian; Afro- Santoro, Roberto Jorge 124; Literatura Peruvian de la pelota 37, 124 Racing Club (Argentina) 22 São Paulo 47–8, 52, 56–9, 60–1, 65–6, Ramos, Graciliano: ‘Traços a Esmo’ 69, 80, 85, 87, 88, 89, 91, 98, 194, 54–6, 68 195, 198 Ricardo Leite, Cassiano: Martim Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino 28; Cererê: O Brasil dos meninos, dos Facundo: civilización y barbarie 185 poetas e dos héroes 59–60 Shakespeare, William 23, 195 Rio de Janeiro 45, 47, 50–4, 57, 59, 61, Shua, Ana María: ‘Fútbol era el de 62n1, 68, 77, 80, 87, 91, 194–5, 197, antes’ 209 198 Silva, Leônidas da 67, 198–9 River Plate (football club) 40, 133, Singerman, Berta 38, 42n19 142n2, 154, 209 Skármeta, Antonio 103–4; Soñé que la River Plate (region) 17, 22, 26, 28, 34, nieve ardía 103, 104–9; Tiro libre 36, 45, 122–4, 141, 177, 205 104, 119n7 Rivera Letelier, Hernán 110; ‘Donde slavery: in Brazil 46, 65, 77–8 mueren los valientes’ 110–11; El Soriano, Osvaldo 7, 146–53, 155, 156, Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017 Fantasista 111–17 157–8, 159, 160–2, 162n3, 172; Rodó, José Enrique 28, 32; ‘Ariel’ Arqueros, ilusionistas y goleadores 22–3, 25 149; Cuarteles de invierno 146; ‘El Rodrigues, Nelson 7, 69, 89–90 hijo de Butch Cassidy’ 149–50, 151, Rodrigues, Sérgio 89–90, 217–18; O 162n3; ‘Final con rojos en Ushuaia’ drible 82–6, 89, 90 150; ‘Las memorias del Míster Rodrigues Filho, Mário 68, 69, 83, 89; Peregrino Fernández’ 151–2, 161; O negro no foot-ball brasileiro 68–9, ‘Maradona sí, Galtieri no’ 148–9, 79, 85–6, 89, 200 152, 155, 162; ‘Nostalgias’ 149–50; Roncagliolo, Santiago: La pena máxima ‘Otoño del 53’ 147–8, 149; ‘Primeros 183–6, 187 amores’ 146–7 226 Index

South American Championship 41n3, Valle del Chota, El 169–70, 171 180; 1916 17, 20, 24, 95; 1917 17, Valparaíso 11, 95–6, 111 18, 20; 1919 24, 47, 49, 195; 1921 Varela, Blanca: ‘Fútbol’ 203–5 47, 52, 198; 1922 53, 195; 1927 40; Varela, Obdulio 5, 130–1 1937 196; 1939 176; see also Copa Vargas, Getûlio 65–6, 69, 75, 88–9, América 198–9 Spain 23, 28, 30, 37, 38, 39–40, 41, Vargas Llosa, Mario 7, 193 42n8, 42n19, 42n20, 72, 122, 129, Villoro, Juan 7, 217 165, 172, 175, 215 Spencer, Herbert 8, 12, 51 War of the Paciﬁc 8, 10, 11, 13n3, 176, Spengler, Oswald: Decline of the West 179, 182–3, 187, 189n8 21–2, 23 Women’s World Cup 207, 211 Sport, El (Lima) 8, 9, 10, 11, 48 World Cup 5, 126, 150, 187, 217; Sussekind de Mendonça, Carlos: O 1930 35, 36, 46, 122, 127, 130, sport está deseducando a mocidade 212n2; 1938 65–7, 68, 89, 197–200; brasileira 51 1950 64, 74, 81, 89, 127, 130, 200; 1958 65, 89; 1962 65, 71–2, 89, Tabbush, Bertha de: ‘Fútbol’ 196–7 96–7, 98–100; 1966 72, 169; 1970 Tamburrini, Claudio: Pase libre, la fuga 72–3, 75–6, 83, 84, 90, 126, 183, de la mansión Seré 142 201, 211; 1974 96, 101–3, 114–15, Thorndike, Guillermo: Manguera 129, 182; 1978 73–4, 118n6, 123, 178–80 129, 130, 131–42, 148, 150, 152–5, 158, 161–2, 183–6; 1982 129; 1986 Ulloa, Sócrates: ‘El pase internacional’ 129, 148, 155; 1994 79, 88; 1998 169–70 166; 2002 169; 2006 166–7, 169, United States of America 1, 4, 22–3, 28, 170, 172, 175; 2014 56, 64, 82, 83, 154 85, 86–8, 90–1, 117, 166, 169 Universitario de Deportes (Peru) World War, First 21–2, 28, 215 179–80, 216 World War, Second 150, 151 Uruguay 2, 3, 11–13, 16–20, 22, 23, 24–8, 32, 35–9, 41n3, 42n7, 42n10, 42n11, 42n17, 45, 49, 51, 57, 64, 74, 75, 84, 97, 98, 122–3, 124–31, 140–1, 142n6, 162, 166, 200, 201, 205–6, 209, 211 Downloaded by [New York University] at 04:46 12 April 2017