National identity in the sports pages: Footballand the mass media in 1920s Buenos Aires

Americas

Volumn 60, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 11-32

  Karush, Matthew B ^a  

^a GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950148529     PISSN: 00031615     EISSN: 15336247     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/tam.2003.0073     Document Type: Review

References (44)

1. See, for example, José Moya, Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850-1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p. 383
2. Most important among this research is the work of Leandro H. Gutiérrez and Luis Alberto Romero. See Gutiérrez and Romero, Sectores populares, cultura y política: Buenos Aires en la entreguerra (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1995)
3. For a recent summary of the new historiographical consensus, see Ricardo González Leandri, "La nueva identidad de los sectores populares," in Alejandro Cattaruzza, ed., Nueva Historia Argentina, vol. VII (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2001), pp. 201-237
4. On the decline of the union movement in the 1920s, see Ronaldo Munck with Ricardo Falcón and Bernardo Galitelli, Argentina: From Anarchism to Peronism (London: Zed Books, 1987), pp. 101-102
5. Janet Lever, Soccer Madness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 6
6. William Rowe and Vivian Schelling, Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America (London: Verso, 1991), p. 141
7. On the political appropriation of football in the Argentine case, see Vic Duke and Liz Crolley, "Fútbol, Politicians and the People: Populism and Politics in Argentina," The International Journal of the History of Sport 18:3 (September 2001), pp. 93-116
8. For the case of early twentieth-century Peru, Steve Stein argues that the emergence of mass culture and the growing intervention of the state stripped football of its usefulness as a site of "popular expression" and transformed it into an effective tool for "social control." By contrast, in a nuanced account of Brazilian football during the struggle for democracy of the early 1980s, Matthew Shirts shows that the sport helped generate popular identities and social movements with progressive political implications. See Steve Stein, "The Case of Soccer in Early Twentieth-Century Lima," and Matthew Shirts, "Sócrates, Corinthians, and Questions of Democracy and Citizenship," in Joseph L. Arbena, ed., Sport and Society in Latin America: Diffusion, Dependency, and the Rise of Mass Culture (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), pp. 63-84 and 97-112
9. For the case of Costa Rica, see Chester Urbina Gaitan, Costa Rica y el deporte, 1873-1921: un estudio acerca del origen del fútbol y la construcción de un deporte nacional (San Jose, Costa Rica: Editorial Universidad Nacional, 2001)
10. On the hegemonic appropriation of popular music, for example, see Robin D. Moore, Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920-1940 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), esp. pp. 6-8
11. More generally, for a nuanced account of the tension between mass culture and popular culture, see Rowe and Schelling, pp. 7-12
12. On the question of reception, see Jesús Martín-Barbero, De los medios a las mediaciones: comunicación, cultura y hegemonía (Mexico City: Gili, 1991)
13. For an account of Argentine football that is sensitive to the ways in which national identity can be constructed from below, see Pablo Alabarces, "Fútbol argentino: Un cacho de culturas," in Pablo Alabarces and María Graciela Rodríguez, Cuestión de pelotas: Fútbol, deporte, sociedad, cultura (Buenos Aires: Atuel, 1996), pp. 17-33
14. My usage of the terms "populist" and "populism" draws on Ernesto Laclau's definition of populism as a discourse in which "popular-democratic elements are presented as an antagonistic option against the ideology of the dominant bloc." In this case, football, a sport of the popular sectors, is articulated with an explicitly anti-elitist nationalism. See Ernesto Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capialism, Fascism, Populism (London: NLB, 1977), p. 173
15. For a general history of Argentine football, see Osvaldo Bayer, Fútbol argentino (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1990)
16. For a more institutional history, see Ariel Scher and Héctor Palomino, Fútbol: pasión de multitudes y de elites: Un estudio institucional de la Asociación de Fútbol Argentine (1934-1986) (Buenos Aires: CISEA, 1988)
17. Eduardo P. Archetti, Masculinities: Football, Polo and the Tango in Argentina (Oxford: Berg, 1999), pp. 46-76
18. and Archetti, "In Search of National Identity: Argentinian Football and Europe," International Journal of the History of Sport 12:2 (1995), pp. 201-219
19. See also Juan José Sebreli, La era del fútbol (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1998), pp. 30-33
20. At roughly the same time that Crítica achieved a daily circulation of over 300,000, El Gráfico was selling approximately 100,000 copies per week. Clearly many more porteños encountered the discourse on criollo football style in Crítica than in El Gráfico. For El Gráfico's circulation, see Archetti, p. 57
21. For Crítica's, see Sylvia Saítta, Regueros de tinta: El diario Crítica en la década de 1920 (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1998), pp. 49, 73
22. On the weekly novels, see Beatriz Sarlo, El imperio de los sentimientos: Narraciones de circulación periódica en la Argentina (1917-1927) (Buenos Aires: Catálogos Editera, 1985)
23. On the inexpensive books of the period and on Crítica's status as the "primer ejemplo porteño de periodismo de Corte popular," see Luis Alberto Romero, "Una empresa cultural: los libros baratos," in Gutiérrez and Romero, pp. 47-50
24. For Boca Juniors as "ambassadors" see, for example, Crítica, 2/5/25, p. 13
25. More research is needed on the consequences for women of the exclusively masculine national identities constructed around football. For one suggestive interpretation, see Donna J. Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), pp. 190-192
26. Archetti shows that Gráfico's journalists, Borocotó and Chantecler, did discuss ethnicity. While Borocotó argued that immigrants became criollo by virtue of their contact with Argentina, Chantecler developed a melting-pot theory, in which each immigrant group contributed something to the criollo style. See Archetti (1999), pp. 66-70. Notwithstanding these analyses of the origins of criollo football style, Crítica's day-to-day coverage of the sport never mentioned Argentina's ethnic diversity. Regardless of its origins, the criollo style was seen to belong naturally to any player who wore the nation's colors
27. On the diffusion of racial ideas among Argentine intellectuals, see Eduardo A. Zimmermann, "Racial Ideas and Social Reform: Argentina, 1890-1916" Hispanic American Historical Review 72:1 (1992), pp. 23-46
28. Nancy Leys Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). To cite just one example, the influential socialist thinker José Ingenieros, published his essay, "La formación de una raza argentina," in 1915. Zimmermann, p. 32
29. On the extensive participation of porteño modernists in Crítica during the 1920s, see Saítta, pp. 157-188
30. An impoverished childhood in a lower-class barrio, where football is played with rag balls on improvised asphalt fields or potreros, remains central to the mythology of Argentina's football heroes. See Archetti (1999), pp. 180-189
31. On Gardel's nickname, see Marta Savigliano, Tango and the Political Economy of Passion (Boulder: Westview, 1995), pp. 65-66
32. For a discussion of the populist usage of the term "negro" in Peronist discourse, see Daniel James, Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine Working Class, 1946-1976 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 31-32
33. On "negro," see also José Gobello, Nuevo diccionario lunfardo (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1994), p. 180
34. On the continuing salience of racial categories in contemporary Argentina, see Galen Joseph, "Taking Race Seriously: Whiteness in Argentina's National and Transnational Imaginary," Identities 7:3 (2000), pp. 333-371
35. Julio D. Frydenberg, "Prácticas y valores en el proceso de popularización del fútbol, Buenos Aires, 1900-1910," Entrepasados 6:12 (1997), p. 7-29
36. Frydenberg, "Redefinición del fútbol aficionado y del fútbol oficial. Buenos Aires, 1912," in Pablo Alabarces, et. al., eds. Deporte y sociedad (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1998), pp. 51-65. Frydenberg argues that the values of "fair play" were threatened by the emergence of football clubs organized by popular sector youth in the early years of the twentieth century
37. La Razón's less populist football coverage matched its more traditional appearance and conservative politics. For comparisons of Crítica and La Razón, see Saítta, pp. 48-60
38. Sergio Pujol, Valentino en Buenos Aires: Los años veinte y el espectáculo (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1994), pp. 69-74
39. On the persistence of class resentments in Argentina in the 1920s, see Matthew B. Karush, Workers or Citizens: Democracy and Identity in Rosario, Argentina 1912-1930 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002), pp. 156-163
40. Cristina Mateu, "Política e ideología de la Federación Deportiva Obrera, 1924-1929," in Deporte y sociedad, pp. 67-86
41. Quoted in Saítta (1998), p. 222. On La Nación's anti-Yrigoyensimo, see Ricardo Sidícaro, La político mirada desde arriba: Las ideas del diario La Nación 1909-1989 (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1993), pp. 55-81, 108-22
42. Crítica's effort to sell Yrigoyen as a populist was not limited to its sports section. On the paper's attempt to resuscitate the reputation of the nineteenth-century caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas and to link him with Yrigoyen, see Diana Quattrocchi-Woisson, Los males de la memoria: Historia y política en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1995), pp. 58-61
43. The political use of football predated Perón. General Agustín Justo, Argentina's president from 1932 to 1938 and a friend of Natalio Botana, supported Argentine football in general and Boca Juniors in particular. But while he recognized the potential political significance of football, he was not interested in mobilizing the sport's counterhegemonic associations. See Ariel Scher, La patria deportista: Cien años de política y deporte (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1996), pp. 109-149
44. On Perón's patronage and manipulation of popular sports, see Raanan Rein, "'El Primer Deportista': The Political Use and Abuse of Sport in Peronist Argentina," International Journal of the History of Sport 15:2 (August 1998), pp. 54-76