Horowitz, Joel Football Clubs and Neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires Before 1943 The Role of Political Linkages and Personal Influence Div

J. Lat. Amer. Stud.
, Cambridge University Press

doi:./SX
Football Clubs and Neighbourhoods in

Buenos Aires before : The Role of
Political Linkages and Personal Inuence
J OE L H O ROW I T Z *
Abstract. In the rst decades of the twentieth century, the inhabitants of greater
Buenos Aires formed innumerable football clubs, as part of a burgeoning civic culture.
Many of these clubs not only proved enduring but helped to shape the sense of
neighbourhood that dominated much of the cultural and political world of the city. In
this they diered from clubs in other South American cities, which tended to have
much less of a barrio identity. However, successful soccer teams required assistance to
acquire land and construct stadiums. The evidence of club records and the local press
shows that as the clubs grew in size and importance, politicians and other leading
neighbourhood gures became critical in obtaining the necessary resources for them,
but in turn they made use of their association with the clubs to aid their election
campaigns and build up their constituencies and clienteles.
Keywords: Argentina, Buenos Aires, soccer, football, civic associations, clientelism
In Greater Buenos Aires, from the rst decades of the twentieth century to
the present, football clubs have played a critical role in both politics and
the creation of barrio identity. Football clubs became important just as the
electoral system was reformed and as barrio identity in many cases became
manifest. Football, politics and neighbourhoods became intertwined and
remain so. Mauricio Macri, the current mayor of Buenos Aires, brought
himself to voters attention through his successful presidency of a football club,
Boca Juniors. In late the legislature of the city of Buenos Aires, under
tremendous pressure from the fans of another football club, San Lorenzo de
Almagro, voted to allow the expropriation of land so that the team could build
a stadium in the exact location of its former one in the neighbourhood of
Joel Horowitz is professor of history at St Bonaventure University. Email jhorowit@sbu.edu.

* I would like to thank Nils Jacobsen, Tulio Halpern Donghi, Mariano Plotkin, Gardenia
Vidal, Lila Caimari, Roy Hora, the late Joseph Arbena, Steven Brown and Sergio Lodise for
their help. I would also like to thank those who commented on earlier versions of this article
in presentations in Montreal, Boston, Buenos Aires and Crdoba. I am also grateful for the
suggestions made by Rory Miller and the referees for the Journal.
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Football Clubs and Neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires
Boedo, with which the club had long been identied but which it had
been forced to abandon. This article will focus on why football clubs
became integral parts of politics and neighbourhood identity in the period
prior to .
Recent studies have looked at footballs role in the development
of masculine identities and of nationalism, but this work examines the role
of football clubs prior to in the emerging electoral politics and their
role in helping to create a sense of neighbourhood. Football could be both
barrio-based and nationalistic: my team is better than your team but our
football is better than other countries. After the nature of politics
shifted dramatically and the sense of barrio identity began a long, slow decline.
As John Bale has pointed out: Sport has become perhaps the main medium of
collective identication in an era when bonding is more frequently a result of
achievement.
Football clubs developed in the rst decades of the twentieth century as
part of a burgeoning civic culture that existed in greater Buenos Aires, just as it
did in much of the western world. The inhabitants of Buenos Aires displayed
an ability to create organisations with popular participation by forming
hundreds of membership associations, from neighbourhood development
groups (sociedades de fomento) to libraries, mutual aid associations and unions.
The growth of membership organisations has received a good deal of
attention. However, football clubs have largely been ignored in this context,
despite having arguably the most impact, with the exception of unions. They
certainly were much larger than most unions. Successful football clubs, despite
being created to permit the playing of the game and controlled by the
members, rapidly became complex organisations dominated by inuential
men and intimately connected to the political and social world of the barrios.

See, for example, Clarn, Nov. .

See Eduardo P. Archetti, Masculinities: Football, Polo and the Tango in Argentina (Oxford:
Berg, ); Matthew B. Karush, National Identity in the Sports Pages: Football and the
Mass Media in s Buenos Aires, The Americas, : (July ), pp. .

John Bale, Sports Geography (nd edition, London: Routledge, ), p. .

Leandro Gutirrez and Luis Alberto Romero, Sectores populares, cultura y poltica: Buenos
Aires en la entreguerra (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, ); Luciano de Privitellio,
Vecinos y ciudadanos: poltica y sociedad en la Buenos Aires de entreguerras (Buenos Aires: Siglo
XXI, ); Joel Horowitz, Argentinas Radical Party and Popular Mobilization,
(University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, ); Fernando J. Devoto and Eduardo
J. Mguez (eds.), Asociacionismo, trabajo e identidad tnica (Buenos Aires: CEMLA-CSER-
IEHS, ); Roberto Di Stefano, Hilda Sabato, Luis Alberto Romero and Jos Luis
Moreno, De las cofradas a las organizaciones de la sociedad civil (Buenos Aires: Gadis, );
Melina Piglia, Asociaciones civiles y Estado en los aos veinte: las intervenciones pblicas del
Automvil Club Argentina y del Touring Club Argentino en materia de vialidad y turismo,
Estudios y Perspectivas en Turismo, : (), pp. ; Dylan Riley, The Civic
Foundations of Fascism in Europe: Italy, Spain and Romania, (Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, ).
Joel Horowitz
Football clubs helped create a sense of neighbourhood identity which is crucial
to understanding the culture of Buenos Aires. In contrast to the situation in
most other countries, football was based primarily in that one city, and for
decades much of the fan support for almost all teams came from particular
barrios of Buenos Aires. In the twenty-rst century, Buenos Aires has
stadiums where professional football is played.
Serious examinations of civic organisations in Buenos Aires began in the
s, as Argentine historians grappled with the question of what parts of
their political traditions seemed worth saving in the wake of the horric
military regime that was in power between and . A historic and
vigorous civic culture seemed to prove that there existed a real democratic (or
proto-democratic) tradition. As Hilda Sabato has shown, a relatively dense net
of civic associations existed in Buenos Aires, which gave inhabitants a voice
despite the lack of fair voting. Leandro Gutirrez and Luis Alberto Romero
and many of their students have pointed out that during the rst opening
towards democracy the so-called Radical period, and the
subsequent period of neo-conservative domination between and ,
dense networks of membership organisations existed in Buenos Aires. They
continued to ourish in the capital after the coup because from
politics within the city was democratic. Despite the extensive use of fraud in
most elections in the province of Buenos Aires in the s, in Avellaneda, just
south of the Federal District boundary, conservatives remained capable of
winning elections honestly because of the elaborate and popular political
machine that they created. Unions, peoples libraries (bibliotecas populares),
neighbourhood development groups, mutual aid associations and political
organisations were extraordinarily common. As the years have passed, however,
historians have become less optimistic about the positive impacts of civic
associations. This article supports some of that pessimism. Although young
males created their own institutions in order to play football, they turned to
outsiders in order to have their clubs ourish.
The development of clubs coincided with the reform of the voting system
in , which made voting fairer and obligatory for male citizens, at both the
municipal and national levels. Football clubs were the focus of interest of
thousands of young men, many of whom were eligible to vote. Politicians, who

Christopher T. Ganey, Temples of the Earthbound Gods: Stadiums in the Cultural
Landscapes of Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, ),
p. .

PEHESA, Dnde anida la democracia? Punta de Vista, (), pp. .

Hilda Sabato, The Many and the Few: Political Participation in Republican Buenos Aires
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, ), pp. .

Adriana Beatriz Raga, Workers, Neighbors and Citizens: A Study of an Argentine Industrial
Town, , unpubl. PhD diss., Yale University, , pp. .
were exploring how to attract voters, saw the clubs as a way of building bastions
of support, particularly in their neighbourhoods. Politicians were creating per-
sonal capital, coteries of friends and sympathisers who could provide political
support. At times, internal elections within the clubs came to reect the
political tensions that existed at both local and national levels. However, both
clubs and politicians usually beneted from the politicians interest in football.
The Beginnings
Football rst came to Argentina with British citizens, and by the last decades
of the nineteenth century Britons and their Argentine descendants had
established a number of clubs that played the sport. Almost all the players of
the rst dominant team, Alumni, had British surnames. However, by
Alumni had withdrawn from competition and teams with British ties had
been surpassed by those whose players were predominantly native-born
Argentines or came from other immigrant communities.
In the rst decades of the twentieth century, the population of the city was
predominately male, foreign and young, though more of the age group that
played football was likely to have been born in the country. In addition, an
increasing number of inhabitants had the time, income and inclination to
engage in leisure activities. Football clubs were founded in order to play the
game, although with time it became a spectator sport. The growing demand
for places to play, stadiums and other expenses forced successful clubs to turn
for support to those who could provide ties to the state or to other sources of
power or wealth. In many ways this parallels the path followed by trade unions
after where the unions, despite their ideological scorn for bourgeois
politics, found that they needed ties to the government if they were going to be
able to deal with employers.
In Argentina, and indeed much of South America, football teams were and
are elded by clubs governed by boards elected by the membership, making the
ties to politics relatively simple. A characteristic of Argentine football leagues,

See, for example, Julio D. Frydenberg, Historia social del ftbol: del amateurismo a la
profesionalizacin (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, ); Jorge Iwanczuk, Historia de ftbol
amateur en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Centro de Investigacin de la Historia del Ftbol,
); Ricardo Lorenzo (Borocot), Historia del ftbol argentino, vols. (Buenos Aires:
Editorial Eiel, ); Julio David Frydenberg, Espacio urbano y prctica del ftbol, Buenos
Aires , Revista Digital, : (), www.efdeportes.com/efd/juliof.htm. The
literature is vast and this footnote is not intended to be comprehensive. All internet
references were last checked in June .

Comisin Nacional del Censo, Tercer censo nacional, levantado el o de junio de , vol.
(Buenos Aires: Talleres Grcos de L. J. Rosso, ), pp. .

See Joel Horowitz, Argentinas Radical Party; Argentine Unions, the State and the Rise of
Pern, (Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, University of California,
Berkeley, ).
Joel Horowitz
which they share with soccer in much of the rest of the world, is that teams
are not permanently in the rst division. Teams ascend to a higher level by
winning or get relegated after doing badly.
The situation for football clubs in the early twentieth century was
extraordinarily uid. Most existed for a brief time and then disappeared for a
myriad of reasons. Boys or young men who wanted to play football founded
a club in their barrio. Their clubs success depended upon prowess on the eld
and an ability to lure good players to join them. Other factors were crucial.
Clubs needed to achieve some type of organisational stability. Successful clubs
also needed to attract powerful patronage. To be successful as a club, it was not
enough to win games. Expenses had to be met; a ground on which to play had
to be acquired and, as teams climbed the ladder of success, stadiums had to be
built. Membership dues and ticket sales could not by themselves cover
expenses. Most clubs founded in the rst decades of the twentieth century have
long ago disappeared and we can learn little about them. Those that we do
know something about were successful both on the eld and organisationally.
The barrio basis of the clubs and their creation prior to helped shape
the nature of football in Argentina compared to other Latin American
countries. Unlike Vasco da Gama in Rio de Janeiro, Palestra Itlia (today
Palmeiras) in So Paulo, Alianza Lima, or Audax Italiano and Palestino of
Santiago, the Buenos Aires clubs reected the mixed ethnicity of the citys
neighbourhoods. As Julio Frydenberg has shown, the names of Buenos Aires
clubs do not reference foreign nations, indicating the mixed nature of their
founders or at least their desire not to be identied with a foreign community.
In contrast to Santiago, trade unions played an insignicant role because the
teams were founded before the formation of solid unions, while, in contrast to
Brazil, Peru and to a lesser extent Chile, Argentine clubs grew important under
a relatively open political system in which politicians needed to look for
support. The nature of clubs in the inland city of Crdoba was similar to that
in Buenos Aires, but elites and institutions played a larger role there.

Small neighbourhood clubs continued to exist; see, for example, Angel Oscar Prignano, Seis
clubes de ftbol del Bajo Flores, in Eduardo Mario Favier-Dubois (ed.), San Jos de Flores: las
instituciones del barrio (Buenos Aires: Junta de Estudios Histricos de San Jos de
Flores, ), pp. ; Frydenberg, Historia social, pp. .

Ganey, Temples of the Earthbound Gods, esp. pp. ; Gregg P. Bocketti, Italian
Immigrants, Brazilian Football, and the Dilemma of National Identity, Journal of Latin
American Studies, : (), pp. ; Aldo Panchi and Jorge Theroldt, Identity
and Rivalry: The Football Clubs and Barras Bravas of Peru, in Rory M. Miller and Liz
Crolley (eds.), Football in the Americas: Ftbol, Futebol, Soccer (London: Institute for the
Study of the Americas, ), pp. ; Brenda Elsey, Citizens and Sportsmen: Ftbol and
Politics in th-Century Chile (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, ).

Julio David Frydenberg, Los nombres de los clubes de ftbol, Buenos Aires ,
Revista Digital, : (), www.efdeportes.com/efd/jdf.htm; Franco D. Reyna,
Cuando ramos footballers: una historia sociocultural del surgimiento y difusin del ftbol en
Many Buenos Aires clubs were formed slightly earlier than the reform of the
political system that opened up politics. In other words, the development
of football clubs occurred prior to, or parallel to, the creation of other types of
popular structure. Even when the clubs were controlled by politicians or
wealthy men, they were rarely members of the elite, probably because elites
embraced rugby, eld hockey, golf and equestrian sports. It is dicult to
identify the class basis of clubs because neighbourhoods tended to contain
residents of both the working and the middle classes and social mobility
between generations was relatively common.
Almost all of the important clubs and many of the minor ones in greater
Buenos Aires were formed in the rst decades of the twentieth century. The
playing of football was the primary reason for the formation of almost all of
them. As early as , there were around clubs in greater Buenos Aires.
By there were . Early record-keeping was vague and therefore we
know little about their formation beyond club mythology. Almost all have
tales of a group of boys or young men getting together in a public place,
someones house or a caf to start a football club. In , one of the founders
of the Club Atltico Atlanta, Emilio Bolinches, told a newspaper this about
Atlantas founding: One day I got together with some friends and we founded
a club. They met in the house of a local businessman and when there were not
enough chairs adjourned to a nearby plaza. They wanted to play football.
Although there are tales about diculties in raising even piddling sums, many
of the founders were middle-class. For example, many original members of
Boca Juniors and River Plate, both started in the predominantly working-
class district of La Boca, were middle-class since they were attending or had
attended secondary school, where some had been exposed to football.
Crdoba () (Crdoba: Centro de Estudios Histricos Prof. Carlos S. A. Segreti,

).

The nature of class in interwar Buenos Aires is highly controversial and cannot be
addressed here. For some very diering views, see Gutirrez and Romero, Sectores populares,
esp. pp. ; Nicols Iigo Carrera, La estrategia de la clase obrera (Buenos Aires: La
Rosa Blindada, ), esp. pp. ; Ezequiel Adamovsky, Historia de la clase media
argentina: apogeo y decadencia de una ilusin, (Buenos Aires: Planeta, ).

Ariel Scher and Hctor Palomino, Ftbol, pasin de multitudes y de elites: un estudio de la
Asociacin de Ftbol Argentino () (Buenos Aires: Documentos del CISEA, ),
pp. ; see also note , above.

Frydenberg, Espacio urbano y prctica del ftbol; and Redenicin del ftbol acionado y
del ftbol ocial: Buenos Aires , in Pablo Alabarces, Roberto Di Giano and Julio
Frydenberg (eds.), Deporte y sociedad (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, ), p. .

El ltimo patriarca bohemio, Sentimiento Bohemio, : ( July ), www.
sentimientobohemio.com.ar/produccion_bolinches.htm. See also Club Atltico Atlanta,
Sitio Ocial, Historia del club, www.atlantapasion.com.ar/historia.php.

For the founding of clubs, see Alejandro Fabbri, El nacimiento de una pasin: historia de los
clubes de ftbol (Buenos Aires: Capital Intelectual, ). For River and Bocas middle-class
Joel Horowitz
By the s, football had become part of urban life and stoked the
imagination of much of the population. Membership in clubs climbed sharply,
as the clubs became places to watch rather than just play football. River Plate
had , members in , , in , , in , , in ,
, in and , in . Even a small club like Temperley had
members in , in and , in . In the wake of
professionalisation in , attendance at games soared.
Football had become a mass spectacle. In part this reected the legal
establishment of a longer weekend with the addition of Saturday afternoon, in
in the capital and in the province. The use of lighting permitted
night games, and radio stations broadcast matches and information on major
clubs. Newspapers and sports magazines such as El Grco intensied their
coverage of football.
By the s, however, uidity had lessened. Newer clubs found it harder to
meet the increasingly stringent requirements for grounds and stadiums, and
independent leagues that were not part of the formal football structures had
begun to disappear. Football as a spectator sport meant that some clubs drew
large paying crowds and thus ensured their future success. In the team in
the rst division that received the largest sum from the gate took in . times
more money than the team that received the least. This was a time of sham
amateurism. Although the players were technically amateurs, good footballers
received compensation in various ways, making the more successful clubs the
popular ones, since they had the resources to draw players from poorer
teams. In openly professional football was introduced. Some previously
important teams tried to remain amateur but lost any wide base of support.
The so-called big ve (Boca Juniors, River Plate, San Lorenzo de Almagro,
Racing and Independiente) dominated the rst division because their greater
popularity gave them sizeable revenue and thus enabled them to acquire the
best players.
nature, see note ; Horacio Rosatti, Cien aos de multitud: historia de Boca Juniors, una
pasin argentina, vol. (Buenos Aires: Galerna, ), pp. ; and El Grco, Jan.
, p. .

River Plate, Revista Grca e Informativa, May , p. ; Club Atltico River Plate,
Memoria y balance (Buenos Aires, ), p. ; La Vanguardia, Feb. ; Marcelo
Horacio Ventieri, Historia del Club Atltico Temperley: de centenario football club a la
primera divisin () (Buenos Aires: Editorial de los Cuatro Vientos, ), pp. ,

, . Scher and Palomino, Ftbol, pp. , .

Frydenberg, Redenicin del ftbol, p. ; Iwanczuk, Historia de ftbol amateur, esp.
pp. , . For gate revenues in , see La Vanguardia, Feb. .
Embedded in the Population
The population of the city of Buenos Aires almost doubled between and
. It spread across the citys landscape and away from the historic centre
at an even faster rate because of the growth of public transportation. As the
city grew, a sense of neighbourhood developed around the scattered shopping
areas and locations of dense employment and residence. People became
strongly attached to these barrios. The barrios had no xed boundaries.
(See Figure for a schematic map of barrios mentioned in the text.)
Football clubs became crucial to the identity of many barrios. The
importance of football clubs for barrio identication is a trait shared with at
least Santiago and Lima but appears more intense in Buenos Aires. In
Buenos Aires, as a sense of neighbourhood was in many cases just forming, one
can hypothesise that at times football clubs helped to form that identication.
As a website comments, Atlanta is not Villa Crespo [a barrio], but Villa
Crespo would not be Villa Crespo without Atlanta. Historically only two
teams, Boca Juniors and River Plate, developed citywide and national
popularity. After its move out of the barrio of La Boca into the wealthier
northern sector of Buenos Aires, River Plate became identied with the more
comfortable sectors and their arch-rivals with the poorer ones.
The identication of a neighbourhood with a club does not mean, however,
that that was where the club was founded. Because of diculties in locating
places to play, many clubs spent at least some time playing away from where
their founders lived or worked. Some came to be identied with dierent
neighbourhoods from that of their founding, but the tie between a team and a
barrio was often extraordinarily strong. Clubs helped to create a sense of
community; they came to be more than just a place to play or watch football.
They provided a respectable location for entertainment. Important tango

Richard J. Walter, Politics and Urban Growth in Buenos Aires: (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, ), appendix A.

For example, James R. Scobie, Buenos Aires: Plaza to Suburb, (New York: Oxford
University Press, ); Adrin Gorelik, La grilla y el parque: espacio pblico y cultura urbana
en Buenos Aires, (Bernal: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, ); Ricardo
Gonzlez Leandro, La nueva identidad de los sectores populares, in Alejandro Cattaruzza
(ed.), Nueva historia argentina, vol. (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, ),
pp. ; Iigo Carrera, La estrategia de la clase obrera, esp. pp. .

Elsey, Citizens and Sportsmen; Steve J. Stein, 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, ), pp. .

Raanan Rein, Los bohemios de Villa Crespo: judos y futbol in Argentina (Buenos Aires:
Sudamericana, ), p. . For identication between barrios and football clubs, see
Archetti, Masculinities, esp. pp. , ; Frydenberg, Historia social, esp., .

Frydenberg, Espacio urbano y prctica del ftbol.
Joel Horowitz
Figure . Map of the City of Buenos Aires with the Barrios and Suburbs
Mentioned
groups performed there and people danced to the music. Clubs held carnival
celebrations and tango dance contests. Football clubs became important

Eduardo Glvez, El tango en su poca de gloria: ni prostibulario, ni orillero. Los bailes en los
clubes sociales y deportivos de Buenos Aires , Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos,
Debates , http://nuevomundo.revues.org; Sylvia Satta, Recuerdos de tinta: el diario
Crtica en la dcada de (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, ), p. . For
carnival celebrations, see for example La Prensa, Feb. ; La Vanguardia, Feb. .
places for people of a barrio to gather. Although football remained a largely
masculine domain, other activities included women.
The sense of community that clubs helped to generate can be seen in part
through tango. As early as a tango dedicated to Boca Juniors was
recorded. In the next decades, other clubs received similar songs. For example,
after San Lorenzo de Almagros championship season a tango was
written honouring its victory and dedicated to Eduardo Larrandart and Pedro
Bidegain, the clubs president and vice-president and active politicians. This
tango, entitled San Lorenzo, makes clear the ties between a barrio and its club.
A segment went: The boys of Boedo [the barrio] celebrated the victory / that
the tin [team] of San Lorenzo won this year, / arriving with its triumph at the
pedestal of glory: / and [that] was the only strong desire that the barrio
coveted. Ernesto Ziperstein lists tangos connected to San Lorenzo. Other
large clubs also had numerous songs dedicated to them.
As clubs got larger they served more functions and bound the community
to them. An example is Atlanta, which was founded in . As early as ,
it had a library which received a large donation of books from the newspaper
La Nacin. In it built a basketball court, and it also had one for tennis. In
, when it opened its new headquarters, it had a roller-skating rink which
was also used for dances. Before boxing, basketball, tennis, track events,
bocce (the Italian form of lawn bowls), handball, chess and table tennis were all
practised there. Even a small club like Chacarita Juniors by the early s
provided free legal consultations and low-cost medical services for its
members.
Successful clubs had deep neighbourhood ties but also attracted
membership from outside the barrio. According to El Grco, in the
presidential election of Boca Juniors was between two factions, one composed
of older members from the neighbourhood and the other representing newer
members and those from outside the barrio. By the mid-s, dierent
factions of Boca Juniors membership had opened oces for the clubs
elections in neighbourhoods far from La Boca, and these were important in
the election outcome. Still, small areas within the barrio also mattered. In
Bocas president, Camilo Cichero, was interviewed about why he had decided
to run for oce. He said that he had been asked by the opposition group

El ftbol, www.eldiariodeltango.com/especiales/El%Futbol.htm; Tango San Lorenzo-La
enciclopedia de San Lorenzo, www.somoscuervos.com.ar/wiki/Tango_San_Lorenzo.

Ernesto Ziperstein, Tango y ftbol: dos pasiones argentinas (Buenos Aires: Instituto
Movilizador de Fondos Cooperativos, ), esp. pp. .

Reinauguracin de la sede social, Sentimiento Bohemio, : ( May ), www.
sentimientobohemio.com.ar/sede_historia.htm; aos despus, Sentimiento Bohemio,
: ( Jan. ), www.sentimientobohemio.com.ar/sede_historia.htm; Club Atltico
Atlanta, Historia del club, www.atlantapasion.com.ar/historia.php.

C. A. Chacarita Juniors: rgano ocial de la institucin, no. , pp. , Apr. , pp. .
Joel Horowitz
known as Los de Ayalos or those of the Caf Torre, because many of them
lived on the street of that name or went regularly to that caf. These were his
childhood friends and according to him were the same as ever, despite having
jobs ranging from masons to merchants and professionals of various kinds. He
had grown up there and regularly went to the caf until , when he moved
away after receiving his medical degree. From until the previous year, he
had been a doctor for the team and had served on the governing board. Only
his successor, Eduardo Snchez Terrero, the son-in-law of Argentinas ex-
president, Agustn Justo, was not of the barrio, and he was chosen for his
connections.
The Role of Notable Individuals

Politicians and wealthy individuals played a large role in football clubs. That
politicians would want to become identied with football clubs or provide
them with favours is not surprising. Leaving aside interest in football,
politicians desired to create a clientele or, where that was not practical, at least
to build links to voters. After the passage of the Senz Pea law in , which
assured cleaner elections, grassroots politics necessitated the mobilisation of
voters and campaign workers. Football clubs provided bases to cultivate that
support. A former leader of Racing Club, Carlos Boloque, said in :
A football club has a tremendous social importance. If we measure only
from the point of view of politics, the members and sympathisers used to mean
hundreds of thousands of votes that no party is in a position to disdain.
This was also true in the s and s, though the number of voters
who could be swayed was smaller. Clubs provided a way for politicians to be
visible in their communities and build personal ties that would hopefully
translate into votes.
The desire to be identied with a particular team started early. In ,
eight years after its founding, Defensores de Belgrano reached the rst division
and a triumphal march took place. Among the participants was Jos
P. Tamborini, who became an important Radical politician. Tamborini was
born and built his political base in Belgrano; elected to congress in ,
he later became minister of the interior, a senator and, in , a presidential
candidate.

El Grco, Jan. , p. ; March , pp. ; Ultima Hora, and Dec. ;
El Mundo, Dec. ; Rosatti, Cien aos de multitud, vol. , p. .

See Horowitz, Argentinas Radical Party.

Dante Panzeri, Burguesa y gangsterismo en el deporte (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Lbera,
), p. .

Historia de Defensores de Belgrano-Taringa!, www.taringa.net/posts/deportes//
Historia-de-Defensores-de-Belgrano.html; Crtica, Aug. ; Vicente Osvaldo Cutolo,
An example of the inuence of important men is Reinaldo Elena. His father
owned a marine hardware store in La Boca and in , at the age of ,
Reinaldo helped found a pro-Radical newspaper, La Pluma, which covered La
Boca and the adjacent barrio of Barracas. In the s Elena dispensed
patronage as a boss of the Anti-Personalist Radicals (the faction that opposed
Hiplito Yrigoyen and supported President Marcelo T. de Alvear) in La Boca.
He was elected to the city council twice in the s and to congress three
times after the overthrow of Juan Pern. In two newspapers, La Razn
and La Repblica, claimed that the Anti-Personalists good showing in
elections in La Boca was due to Elena.
What did he do to attract support? Elena positioned himself so as to be
close to the inhabitants of his barrio and obtained concrete benets for them.
He belonged to several local development associations. He was active in a
football club, Boca Alumni, most of whose supporters lived in a particularly
poor part of the barrio. It remained small, having members in .
Elena, representing the club, played an important role on the council of
the Asociacin Argentina de Football, one of two competing organisations of
football clubs. He also belonged to Boca Juniors and when, in , the
club was split into two factions, both oered him the presidency, which he
refused. When Elena served on the city council and Boca Juniors needed
something, he always helped. In , when representatives of Boca went
to see the intendente (mayor) of Buenos Aires to invite him to the laying of
the cornerstone of their new stadium, they brought Elena along. Earlier,
the club had made him an honorary member simultaneously with president-
elect Roberto M. Ortiz. River Plate also named him an honorary member.
In Elenas political right-hand man was Boca Juniors vice-president.
Historia de los barrios de Buenos Aires, vol. (nd edition, Buenos Aires: Editorial ELCHE,
), p. .

Antonio J. Bucich, La Boca del Riachuelo en la historia (Buenos Aires: Asociacin
Amigos de la Escuela-Museo de Bellas Artes de La Boca, ), p. ; Los aos de
Reinaldo Elena, Conexin : desde La Boca del Riachuelo para la Ciudad de Buenos
Aires, Jan. , http://conexion.com.ar/losa%C%Bosdereinaldoelena.htm;
Horowitz, Argentinas Radical Party, pp. ; La Repblica, Feb., Apr. ;
La Razn, Apr. ; De Privitellio, Vecinos y ciudadanos, p. ; Ultima Hora, Dec.
, Dec. ; Asociacin Amateurs Argentina de Football, Memoria y balance
general correspondiente al ejercicio de (Buenos Aires, ); Asociacin Amateurs
de Football, Memoria y balance general correspondiente al ejercicio de (Buenos
Aires, ), p. ; Club Atltico Boca Alumni, http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_
Atltico_Boca_Alumni; Algo ms que ftbol: Desde el barrio (Boca Alumni ),
http://carlosaira.blogspot.co.uk///desde-el-barrio-boca-alumni-.html. See also,
for example, Concejo Deliberante de la Municipalidad de Buenos Aires, Actas, Dec.
, pp. ; Dec. , pp. ; July , pp. ; and Dec.
, pp. ; La Vanguardia, Dec. and Dec. .
Joel Horowitz
Although Elena had special political talents, he shared his strategy of
embedding himself in the organisations of his barrio with many.
For businessmen, football clubs were a way of expanding their inuence
within the political system. Involvement with the clubs enabled them to widen
their contacts and gave them publicity and prestige. In describing a similar
situation in Brazil, Janet Lever hypothesises that the holding of club posts is
part of a career pattern of holding more than one job. The additional jobs
serve as a springboard to more lucrative opportunities, and alliance-building
is crucial. James Brennan and Marcelo Rougier make a similar observation
about Argentine business associations. The importance of the identication
between barrios and their clubs cannot be discounted. A local business owner
might feel a great love for his club and his barrio, but a club leadership role
would engender barrio loyalty to his business.
The Need for a Place to Play

Buenos Aires had few public parks and these could not be used to set up stands
without political permission. In peripheral barrios that were built up, such as
La Boca, the only vacant land was in the port area, which was controlled by the
state or large companies. Groups of young men could obtain the use of that
land only through inuential intermediaries. Obtaining a pitch, and hopefully
later a stadium, was not a one-time event. River Plate played in six sites before
moving to its current stadium in . Boca played in ve locations before
securing its present home. In central areas of the city, nding a place to play
was close to impossible. For example, Independiente had been formed by
young men who worked in a downtown department store called Ciudad de
Londres and were joined by employees from other downtown stores. In its rst
three years, Independiente moved three times inside the city of Buenos Aires
before relocating to the industrial suburb of Avellaneda in the province. Teams
often had to travel long distances from their home district. In their early years,
Boca, River and San Lorenzo de Almagro all played briey outside the city
proper. When Boca played in suburban Wilde between and , it lost
, of its , members (see Table ).
Even clubs created in not fully developed neighbourhoods, where land
might be available, needed the help of politicians or inuential individuals to
obtain places to play. When clubs became successful and wanted to advance to

Janet Lever, Soccer Madness: Brazils Passion for the Worlds Most Popular Sport (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, ), p. ; James P. Brennan and Marcelo Rougier, The
Politics of National Capitalism: Peronism and the Argentine Bourgeoisie,
(University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, ), p. .

Frydenberg, Espacio urbano y prctica del ftbol; El Grco, Dec. , pp. , ;
Historia de Boca Juniors, www.informexeneize.com.ar/historia_.htm.
Table . The Neighbourhoods of the Pitches of Key Football Clubs Mentioned
Club Year of founding Initial barrio Barrio in
Atlanta Villa Luro Villa Crespo
Boca Juniors La Boca La Boca
Boca Alumni La Boca (ceased to exist)
Chacarita Juniors Villa Crespo Villa Crespo
Defensores del Belgrano Belgrano Nez
Huracn Nueva Pompeya Parque Patricios
Independiente Villa G. Mitre Avellaneda
Nueva Chicago Mataderos Mataderos
Racing Avellaneda Avellaneda
River Plate La Boca Nez
San Lorenzo de Almagro Almagro Boedo
Vlez Srseld Parque Avellaneda Liniers
Note: The barrio names used are the modern names; which barrio a pitch was in is debatable
since boundaries were not clearly dened.
Sources: Asociacin Amateurs Argentina de Football, Memoria y balance general
correspondiente al ejercicio de ; Julio David Frydenberg, Espacio urbano y prctica del
ftbol, Buenos Aires , Revista Digital, www.efdeportes.com/efd/juliof.htm;
Alejandro Fabbri, El nacimiento de una pasin: historia de los clubes de ftbol (Buenos Aires:
Capital Intelectual, ).
the rst division, the football authorities forced them to build stands and
other facilities. Frequently clubs needed monetary or political help. As clubs
increased in scope and became more complex to administer, obtaining good
leaders became dicult because club directors were not paid. Only wealthy
individuals or others such as politicians whose eorts were compensated in
other areas had the time to preside over large clubs.
From early on, politics and inuence mattered. For example, in , three
years after its founding, Huracn faced a dilemma. It needed a ground, and one
that was properly equipped, if it was to be admitted to the ocial football
league. Through the good oces of Jorge Newbery, a well-known sportsman
who had adopted the team after the club started using a picture of his hot-air
balloon as the teams symbol, the club received the loan of a ground from the
Buenos Aires city government. It still needed to build the required facilities,
for which it lacked funds. According to legend, the club was approached by a
conservative politician, Eliseo Cantn, who gave it the money to buy timber
for the facilities in return for voting documents, many more than the
members possessed. These would allow Cantn to control votes.
Huracn successfully collected the documents and completed the facilities.

Scher and Palamino, Ftbol, p. .

This was before the voting reform. El Grco, Feb. , p. ; Historia and ,
Semanario Quemero (found at www.semanarioquemero.com.ar/historiahtm and htm, no
longer available); Jorge Newton, Historia del Club Atltico Huracn, (Buenos
Aires, ), p. .
Joel Horowitz
The role of wealthy individuals is well illustrated by Vlez Srseld. In
when the club owed over , pesos, had lost its ground, had barely over
, members and had dropped to the second division, Jos Amaltani took
over as president. He paid the debt himself; the club returned to the rst
division in the season, and he remained its president until his death in
. Amaltanis actions were not unique in the history of Vlez, although
the amount of money was.
Despite the amateur status of football before , the Socialist Party paper
was lamenting the payment or the giving of employment to players as early as
. In , according to El Grco, River paid its players pesos for a
defeat, for a draw and for a victory. Ludovico Bidoglio, an outstanding
defender for Boca, transferred to that team instead of San Lorenzo because
Boca promised to get him a job as an electrician, obtaining one for him at the
Ministry of Public Works. In El Grco made sarcastic comments about
a player for Chacarita Juniors, Juan Gil, who, the magazine said, went regularly
to his job unlike most footballers. He worked, as did six of his teammates,
for the Department of National Hygiene, whose secretary general was
Tiburcio Padilla, president of the club and a Radical politician. Contacts with
politicians or businessmen who could provide jobs were a necessity.
Nueva Chicago and a Web of Community

The formation of a well-established civic culture, including football clubs, in
the rst years of the twentieth century can be seen in the barrio of Mataderos
(often called Nueva Chicago). In it was a new neighbourhood. In that
year, the municipal slaughterhouse opened there, along with the citys cattle
market. Already developers had begun to sell lots for housing. The rst real
social organisation, Centro Social Nueva Chicago, was founded in with
the help of the second director of the national stockyards () and
conservative politician, Alejandro Mohr. Mohr was elected to the city council
in the rst open contest in and re-elected in . He also served on the
local school board.

Asociacin de Football Argentino, Registro de instituciones aliados, , p. ;
Club Atltico Vlez Srseld, Memoria y balance general ejercicio (Buenos Aires, ),
pp. ; Pedro Urquiza, Tu nombre me sabe a hierba, Clarn, Mar. ; Cutolo,
Historia de los barrios, vol. , p. ; Comisin de Asuntos Histricos, Club Atltico Vlez
Srseld, La historia de Vlez Srseld () (Buenos Aires: Comisin de Asuntos
Histricos, ), pp. ; www.velezsarseld.com.ar/club/autoridades/.

La Vanguardia, Apr. ; El Grco, Nov. , p. ; Jan. , p. ;
Sep. , pp. and ; Scher and Palomino, Ftbol, p. . For a list of where the players
worked, see El Grco, Nov. , p. .

Its population is dicult to calculate. One source claimed that in it had more than
, houses. Club Atltico Nueva Chicago, www.taringa.net/posts/info//Club-
Altletico-Nueva-Chicago-%BMegapost%D---ra-Parte.html.
In a recent study of the neighbourhood, Mara Teresa Sirvent located
extant neighbourhood organisations founded before . Many other
development societies, peoples libraries and athletic clubs had existed. The
most important athletic club was the Club Atltico Nueva Chicago, which a
group of young men founded in to play football. Nueva Chicago rapidly
became a key local institution and remains so, though it has largely been
conned to the second division. Mohr played a crucial role in its
establishment. One of its rst grounds was obtained with his help, as was
the timber for the rst goalposts. The clubs second president, Roberto Grillo,
came to the organisation at Mohrs suggestion. In , when an honorary
commission was established to aid the directors, its president was Mohr.
Honorary commissions had some inuence, for at least three future club
presidents served on them. In Mohrs son, Jos Luis, served a term as the
clubs president.
The other crucial political connection was to the Socialist Party through
Fernando Gho. His family emigrated to La Boca in from Italy when he
was ve. Shortly thereafter they moved to Mataderos, where they were among
the early inhabitants. Gho became active in the Centro Social Nueva Chicago
and in other social clubs. Besides editing two local newspapers, he helped
found the local section of the Socialist Party. He was active in several
development societies and in presided over a national congress of such
associations. After Gho owned a bar, which was famous for its
traditional gaucho singers, as well as for cultural discussions attended by
intellectuals close to the Socialist Party. Gho reputedly taught people to read
and lent books from his large private library. He assisted the founding of
Nueva Chicago and was elected president three times in the s but was
active in the organisation for a longer time. Gho won election to the Buenos
Aires city council in on the Socialist Party list.

See Mara Teresa Sirvent, Cultura popular y participacin social: una investigacin en el barrio
de Mataderos (Buenos Aires: Mio y Dvila Editores, ), esp. pp. , , ;
Ofelio Vecchio, Mataderos, mi barrio (Buenos Aires: Editora Nueva Lugano, ), esp.
pp. , , , ; and Aqu entre nosotros (Buenos Aires: EDG Ediciones,
), pp. , ; Mercado de Hacienda de Liniers, http://pueblodechicago.com.ar/
mercado_liniers.htm; Historia del Club Atltico Nueva Chicago, www.chicagopasion.com.
ar/historia.htm; Aqu Mataderos Revista social, cultural y deportiva de Mataderos, www.r-
aquimataderos.com.ar/nueva_chicago_.htm; Ismael Bucich Escobar, Buenos Aires
ciudad (Buenos Aires: Editorial Tor, ), pp. ; Cutolo, Historia de los barrios,
vol. , p. ; Pueblo de Nueva Chicago Presentacin, www.pueblodechicago.com.ar/
presentacion.htm.

Vecchio, Mataderos, mi barrio, esp. pp. , , , ; Aqu Mataderos Revista
social, cultural y deportiva de Mataderos; Bucich Escobar, Buenos Aires ciudad, pp. ;
Sitios de inters cultural, bar Oviedo, www.bibleduc.gov.ar/areas/cultura/cpphc/sitios/
detalle.php?id=; Don Fernando Ghio, Foro de la Memoria de Mataderos, Feb. ,
Joel Horowitz
The coexistence of dierent political tendencies was possible because of
the clubs importance to the community and Mataderos sense of identity. The
teams rst shirts were donated by Carlos Peretti, an owner of a large store in
the barrio. Also, as Luis Alberto Romero has noted, in civic associations in the
s and s people with dierent ideologies could and frequently did
coexist.
Many presidents of Nueva Chicago were inuential local citizens. Fernando
Gacio Mastache owned a food store, published a local newspaper intended to
defend the interests, moral and material, of Nueva Chicago [the barrio], had
served on the honorary commission for the club and had been active in the
Centro Social Nueva Chicago. Amadeo Cozza, prior to his time as president,
had served pro bono as the teams doctor.
The barrios loyalty to the club explains some of the local elites
participation. When a store owner from Nueva Chicago went to a match
against Huracn and rooted for the latter, he faced a boycott that forced him
to leave the neighbourhood. Simn Bruchstein, who opened the barrios
second pharmacy around , donated the clubs rst bocce court.
Although his motivations are unknowable, such a move would build ties to his
potential customer base.
A crisis in the late s illustrates the need for connections. The pitch
where matches had been played since was requisitioned for a hospital.
After the long-time director of the national stockyards, Edmundo Kelly,
intervened, Nueva Chicago received a new site from the intendente.
This action was then approved by the city council. When Kelly took the
ceremonial kick-o at the inauguration of the ground, , spectators were
in attendance, and the club had members, a tempting target for a
politician.
www.forommataderos.blogspot.com///don-fernando-ghio.html; Cutolo, Historia de

los barrios, vol. , p. .

www.chicagopasion.com.ar/historia.htm; Historia Barrial, Aqu Mataderos, www.r-aquima-
taderos.com.ar/historia_barrial_.htm; Luis Alberto Romero, La poltica en los barrios y
en el centro, in Francis Korn and Luis Alberto Romero (eds.), Buenos Aires/entreguerras: la
callada transformacin (Buenos Aires: Alianza Editorial, ), pp. .

Vecchio, Mataderos, mi barrio, pp. , , .

Ibid., pp. , . The dates when these occurred are not given.

Historia Barrial, Aqu Mataderos, www.r-aquimataderos.com.ar/historia_barrial_.htm,
Jan. ; Historia del Club Atltico Nueva Chicago, www.chicagopasion.com.ar/
historia.htm; Vecchio, Mataderos, mi barrio, p. ; Concejo Deliberante, Actas, Oct.
, p. ; Mercado de Hacienda de Liniers, www.pueblodechicago.com.ar/mercado_-
liniers.htm.
Community and Politics
The leaders of San Lorenzo de Almagro during the s were tightly linked
with the UCR, and the clubs internal conicts partially reected problems in
the party. The barrio where the club was based was dominated by political
caudillos, and their dominance arose in part because of the party leaders ties
to the community.
The San Lorenzo club was founded by boys who, according to legend, were
playing football in the street when one was almost hit by a tram. A Salesian
priest, Father Lorenzo Massa, oered them a place to play and became their
adviser and supporter. Massa helped pick their name and bought their rst
shirts. Sponsorship by a priest makes San Lorenzo unique, at least among the
clubs that became successful.
The clubs early history was dicult. For two years it ceased to exist, and
when it was reconstituted it wandered far from its home barrio, Almagro. For
a short time it played in the distant northern suburb of Martnez, with players
and spectators walking blocks from the railway station. When they rented a
pitch closer to Almagro, the league said it was inadequate, but the club needed
to pay what it owed and a sizeable contribution came from Massa. He found a
long-term solution as well, a property which could be rented and developed as
a football ground. Massa and several others contributed relatively large sums to
make the pitch playable. After this period, Massa was transferred elsewhere in
the country.
As it became a mass-based party, the Radical Party developed political
machines in the electoral wards of Buenos Aires. Pedro Bidegain became the
dominant Radical politician in the sixth ward, the home of San Lorenzo.
Bidegain was born, married and lived in the ward. As early as he held a
position in the wards party structure. By he headed it and in
Crtica used him as an example of the local party barons. In he was
elected to the city council and in to congress. He had a good deal of
charisma. When a female fan was asked in why she rooted for San
Lorenzo, she replied that she was religious and the club had been founded by
Father Massa, adding as another reason the sympathy that was inspired in me
by Don Pedro Bidegain, whom I always remember.
In Bidegain became vice-president of San Lorenzo. In addition, his
brother, Jos, was on the board of directors, while his nephew, Eduardo
Larrandart, was secretary. Both Jos and Larrandart were Radical activists.

La Conquista de Avenida La Plata, http://gloriosociclon.ar.tripod.com/metro.htm;
Lorenzo, Historia del ftbol, vol. , pp. ; Alberto Den, San Lorenzo querido:
aos de pasin (Buenos Aires: Dos Tintas, ), pp. ; Ana di Cesare and Gernimo
Rombol, Para futuras memorias Lorenzo Massa, May , http://parafuturasmemor-
ias.blogspot.com///lorenzo-massa.html.
Joel Horowitz
Between and the latter was president of the club, with Pedro
Bidegain as vice-president.
San Lorenzo was very much part of the community. Bidegain and
Larrandart spent much time in the Caf Dante talking with the clubs players,
members of the community and the many literary gures who identied with
that section of the city, Boedo. Followers of Huracn, a club based in a
contiguous barrio, were reputedly not permitted to enter the Dante; similarly
followers of San Lorenzo were not permitted in the caf of Huracn. A tango
written in after San Lorenzo won a championship said: Because San
Lorenzo won on Sunday, / The habitus of the Dante put on their party
clothes. The rst four decades of the century saw associations of all types
created in the barrio. Bidegain helped found the Universidad Popular de
Boedo and a social club that survived until . Larrandart served as
president of that club in the s.
When the Radical Party splintered over the role of Hiplito Yrigoyen
during the presidency of Marcelo T. de Alvear, the split led to conict within
San Lorenzo in . This occurred despite the family connections between
the key leaders of the two factions that emerged. Larrandart was an Anti-
Personalist, while Bidegain supported Yrigoyen. Larrandarts ability to hold on
to the presidency of the club may not reect voters approval of his political
beliefs, but rather that San Lorenzo won league titles in , and .
Despite his factions failure to dominate, in March Bidegain used San
Lorenzos membership rolls to ask for support for his candidacy for congress.
The ier that was distributed read in part: If until now San Lorenzo de
Almagro had in Mr Bidegain one of its best collaborators, what cannot be
hoped for if the porteo electorate sends him to occupy a seat in the Chamber
of Deputies? According to the Socialist paper, some were displeased that
members addresses were taken from club records, but Bidegain claimed that it
was not a big issue and that he had done a lot for the club, including obtaining
a subsidy. In later accounts, he did do a lot for San Lorenzo. According to one
story, his political inuence helped force Huracn from a stadium just blocks
away from San Lorenzos, thus aiding his club in consolidating its
neighbourhood base.
Any modus vivendi between San Lorenzos factions broke down in ,
purportedly over who should have represented the football federation on a trip
to Europe. However, also saw a heated national presidential election with
the two Radical factions as prime contenders, and this was likely the real
reason for the conict. Friction led to Bidegains resignation from the clubs
vice-presidency.
After Yrigoyens victory in the presidential election, in early Bidegain
faced his nephew in a club election. According to La Vanguardia, Bidegain
threatened the government employment of players and board members.
The players openly supported Bidegain. His opponents charged that it was
all politics and that players were intentionally losing games to discredit
Larrandart. Rumours circulated that San Lorenzo was to receive a subsidy
from Congress (Bidegain was a congressman) and that several important
players wanted to play for San Lorenzo if Bidegain was elected club president.
Two bus companies had posters in their vehicles windows supporting
Bidegain. The newspaper, Ultima Hora, backed him, printing, for example, a
headline that read: San Lorenzo without Bidegain is not San Lorenzo Never
will the club San Lorenzo de Almagro be in better hands than those of seor
Pedro Bidegain. The assembly of club members was marred by several ghts,
despite the presence of police and government ocials, and Bidegain won by
votes to .
Bidegains presidency was extremely active. The playing of basketball and
tennis began. Membership grew from , to ,. This is a large increase,
but not totally out of line with other big clubs at the time. Bidegain recruited
established players and frequently persuaded them to play for San Lorenzo.
The stadium was expanded to become the largest in the capital, seating ,.
According to one account, municipal workers were used. Bidegain had
political help. The clubs vice-president in was Pedro Villemur, an
Almagro resident who was also president of the city council.
After Yrigoyens overthrow in September , Bidegain went into exile
and was jailed on his return. Other prominent Radicals were forced from the
clubs leadership and an interim president took charge. In early , elections
took place, with the factions from competing. Larrandarts supporters
proclaimed that they would remove politics from the club and restore good
administration to an organisation that was in bad nancial shape. With many
more voters than two years before, Larrandart won by , votes to ,.
His success was not surprising given the Anti-Personalist support for the coup.

La Internacional, Nov. ; La Vanguardia, Apr. , Jan. Feb. ; Crtica,
Aug. , Jan., Feb. ; La Nacin, Jan., Feb. ; La Prensa, Jan.
Feb. ; Almagro, Apr. ; Ultima Hora, Dec. Feb. , esp. Jan.
; La Razn, Jan. Feb. ; El Grco, Aug. , Jan. , Jan.
, pp. ; Eduardo Bernal, Pedro Bidegain, un hombre de Boedo, Desmemoria, :
/ (), pp. ; Pedro Bidegain, Mi radicalismo (Buenos Aires, ); Anbal
Lomba, Los cafs de Boedo, in Mario S. Banchik (ed.), Buenos Aires, los cafs, vol. (Buenos
Aires: Ediciones Tursticas, ), pp. ; Ricardo M. Llanes, El barrio de Almagro
(Buenos Aires: Municipalidad de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, ), pp. ; Den,
San Lorenzo, p. ; Presidentes, www.mundoazulgrana.com.ar/casla/presidentes.php;
Pedro Bidegain El propulsor de la grandeza azulgrana, www.somoscuervos.com.ar/wiki/
pedro_bidegain_''el_propulsor_de_la_grandeza_azulgrana; Ley de restitucin histrica
para el Club Atltico San Lorenzo de Almagro, www.somoscuervos.com.ar/wiki/
ley_de_restitucion_historica_-_volver_a_boedo.
Joel Horowitz
The players were upset and for a time threatened to leave the club. Bidegains
followers were to remain out of power.
The Radicals still retained inuence within the club. When in the late
s it wanted help from the city to build a social centre with a gym and a
library, among other features, two Radical city councillors, Villemur and Luis
Bo, who had been on the governing council of San Lorenzo, presented the
project. It was never approved.
A Suburb and the Role of Its Key Football Clubs

Avellaneda, an industrial suburb, lies directly south of the city of Buenos Aires,
across the boundary between the federal district and the province, and had
over , inhabitants in . Two clubs Racing and Independiente
rapidly embedded themselves there, becoming two of the largest and most
popular clubs in Buenos Aires. Not only were they erce opponents on the
pitch, but they came to represent opposing political positions. The focus here
will be on Racing because there is more information available about it, but the
two clubs should be examined together to see the impact of politics on the
world of the clubs.
Racing had close links with Alberto Barcel, a conservative political boss,
who controlled Avellaneda during almost the entire interwar period; it was
therefore usually dominated by men connected to the local political elite.
Barcel encouraged the establishment of large industrial plants in Avellaneda
and favoured public works. He regularly received friends, followers and favour-
seekers in his large house. He permitted to say the least prostitution and
gambling, which undoubtedly paid the costs of his political machine. Barcel
had close relations with the legendary tango singer and composer, Carlos
Gardel, who was a fan of Racing. The club was identied with Barcel and its
rapid success undoubtedly enhanced his popularity. Barcels initial support
for Racing came when football was still unimportant and before the voting
reform of . He was not, therefore, looking for popular support through

Concejo Deliberante, Actas, Jan. , p. ; El Grco, Mar. , p. , Nov. ,
p. , Mar., ; La Prensa, Feb. ; La Vanguardia, Jan., Dec. ,
Jan. , Jan., Feb. ; Bucich Escobar, Buenos Aires ciudad, p. ; Bernal, Pedro
Bidegain, pp. ; Iwanczuk, Historia de ftbol amateur, p. .

El cicln se sigue ampliando, Oct. , http://debatecuervo.blogspot.com/

___archive.html. Avellaneda, Boletn Municipal, Jan. , p. .

Pablo Fernndez Hirsuta, Alberto Barcel: polticas pblicas y caudillismo conservador en
Avellaneda, , unpubl. PhD thesis, Universidad Nacional del Quilmes, ;
Norberto Folino, Barcel, Ruggierito y el populismo oligrquico (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la
Flor, ); Adrin Pignatelli, Ruggierito: poltica y negocios sucios en la Avellaneda violenta
de y (Buenos Aires: Editorial Nueva Mayora, ); El Grco, July ,
pp. , .
his initial aid for Racing, but was helping his friends and supporters in
something they wanted to do.
The clubs support lay among the middle class of Avellaneda. A direct
predecessor of Racing had been created by Argentine employees of the
Ferrocarril Sud. Another predecessor was formed after a meeting at the home
of two of Barcels brothers. A member of that club, Leandro Boloque, who
was to go on to lead Racing for three years, was Albertos brother-in-law.
After a number of twists and turns, Racing was formed in ; its founders
were mostly under and were all Argentine-born. By January , Racing
had members and received economic assistance from the Barcel
family. This caused some founding members to leave Racing and play for
Independiente, a club which had just moved to Avellaneda and became the
eternal rival of Racing. Independiente became identied with Barcels
opponents.
Racing dominated Argentine football from to , ending British
hegemony, and for some this marked the start of a distinctive Argentine
style of play. In Racing was the largest club, with , members. At
the beginning of the s it had facilities for basketball, swimming, track
events and Basque paddleball. In Racing had , members, making it
the third-largest club, just ahead of Independiente. By it claimed slightly
over , members, while Independiente had over ,. In Racing
had , members. As the club grew, it added more sports. By the end
of , members played football, tennis, bocce, basketball, paddleball, roller-
skating, eld hockey, track events, gymnastics, swimming, table tennis, fencing
and Greco-Roman wrestling. Some sports were played by both men and
women.
In addition Racing held carnival celebrations. It established a beach for
its members along the coast. For its young members it had a summer camp
and excursions. During the summer, Racing showed free movies which non-
members could attend. The club held conferences and classes, including
cookery lessons by the famous Doa Petrona. Racing also organised a
football tournament in in which schools participated. It gave milk

Fabbri, El nacimiento de una pasin, pp. ; Folino, Barcel, pp. ; Lus Paso Viola,
Como era la Ciudad de Buenos Aires y su entorno en los albores del siglo XX, Jan. ,
www.culteducaavellaneda.com.ar/noticias/wmview.php?ArtID=; Racing Club, www.
rsssf.com/tablesr/racingclub.html.

Historia, www.racingclub.com/historia.php; Fabbri, El nacimiento de una pasin, pp. .

Archetti, Masculinities, pp. ; Historia, www.racingclub.com/historia.php; Asociacin
de Football Argentino, Memoria y balance general (Buenos Aires, ), p. ;
Asociacin Amateurs Argentina de Football, Memoria y balance (Buenos Aires, );
El Grco, Apr. , p. ; La Opinin (Avellaneda), , Dec. .
Joel Horowitz
to children three times a week, many coming from local schools. In other
words, it was part of the community.
In a study of the most inuential followers of Barcel, ten belonged to
Racing and one to Independiente. The leaders of Racing, according to Juan
Corradi, discussed the aairs of the club with Barcel at his home. The clubs
political connections are made obvious by an incident in when Barcel
and a number of his followers were indicted for using their ocial positions
to inuence elections. Three of those indicted, Leopoldo Siri, Luis Carbone
and Pedro Groppo, had been or were to be presidents of Racing and were
together to hold that oce for years. All were absolved. Other Racing
presidents, such as Arturo Giro and Leandro Boloque, were among the regular
visitors to the house of Barcel. In , Pedro Werner served briey as
secretary of the city council, just three years after serving as the clubs third
president. However, club elections were frequently contested and the
dominant group not always victorious.
Many club leaders were people of substance. The president of Racing in
and , Pedro Groppo, was a doctor who became director of the
Hospital Fiorito, built by Barcel. He served as president of Avellanedas city
council in and and from until . In the military
government appointed him to run the city. Groppo also served in both houses
of the Buenos Aires provincial legislature and in the national chamber of
deputies. He was the national nance minister between and . When
he married in , Barcel was a witness at the civil ceremony. Luis
Carbone served as president of Racing for nine years and was a municipal
ocial. The ties to the political elite were deep and when Racing opened a
new headquarters in , it celebrated with a banquet in honour of the
nations president, the governor of the province of Buenos Aires and Barcel.
Like other large clubs, Racing attracted members from outside the barrio
even though they found it dicult to use the clubs facilities. This produced
tensions and permitted members who were not close to Barcel to control the
club for a number of years. By , pressure existed to create a branch in the

See, for example, La Opinin, May , , , Jan., Feb., , , Apr., , Nov.,
Dec. , Jan. , Sep., Oct. .

Folino, Barcel, p. . How this information was gathered is unclear.

Folino, Barcel, pp. , n. ; Luis Fernn Cisneros, Historia de la Ciudad de
Avellaneda (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Argentinas, ), p. ; personal communication
from Juan Corradi, Apr. ; see below.

Cisneros, Historia de la Ciudad de Avellaneda, pp. , ; Folino, Barcel, p. ; Quien
es quien en la Argentina (nd edition, Buenos Aires: Editorial Guillermo Kraft, ), p. ;
Diego Abad de Santilln, Gran enciclopedia argentina, vol. (Buenos Aires: Ediar, ),
p. ; La Opinin, Jan. .

Cisneros, Historia de la Ciudad de Avellaneda, p. .

La Vanguardia, Dec. .
capital and there was unhappiness with the management of the club,
especially with the football team. That year two electoral lists presented
themselves; one represented traditional leaders, and the other apparently
newer members, especially those from the capital. The latters presidential
candidate, and the easy victor, was Ernesto Malbec, a former player for
Racing and a distinguished plastic surgeon. Shortly after Malbec took oce,
a branch of the club was opened in the capital, and not very long afterwards,
one was created south of Avellaneda in Bernal. Although Malbec and his
successor, Antonio Salustio, may not have been as close to Barcel as many
others, they were not necessarily political opponents, since Salustio, when he
was president of Racing, joined the presidents of Boca, River, San Lorenzo
and Vlez Srseld in a banquet in honour of presidential candidate
Roberto M. Ortiz, whom Barcel supported. This did not prevent the
governor of Buenos Aires province from taking over Racing in and
handing it to Barcels brother-in-law, alleging misuse of power by those in
charge.
Independiente gave to its members and the community many of the same
opportunities that Racing oered, though probably on a lesser scale. This
is not surprising in a city dominated by Barcels conservatives. In a sense
Independiente became the club for Barcels critics. From until at least
the key gures in Independiente also had political ties, but to those who
opposed Barcel. Juan R. Mignaburu, a lawyer, had been intendente of what
became Avellaneda in and served on the city council as late as . In
he founded a newspaper that defended the political positions of
Bartolom Mitre. His successor as the dominant gure was Pedro Canaveri, a
Radical politician who served two years on the city council while president of
the club.
Both Racing and Independiente stirred deep passions in Avellaneda. There
were two funeral homes in the city, one owned by the Peruihl family, who
were fans of Independiente, the other by the Corradi family, who supported
Racing and not incidentally Barcel. When the two teams played, the victors

La Opinin, July, and Aug., , , and Dec. ; Jan., Mar. ;
and Sep. ; La Vanguardia, and Jan. ; Scher and Palomino, Ftbol, p. .

La Razn, Dec. ; May ; La Opinin, and Dec. ; May
; La Repblica, and Jan., Apr., May .

See for example, La Opinin, Sep. ; Nov., Dec. ; La Vanguardia, Jan.
. The best source I have for what was occurring in Avellaneda was La Opinin, which
was the newspaper of Barcel and therefore covered Racing more closely.

Los presidentes rojos, www.somosdiablos.com.ar/wiki/los_presidentes_rojos; Cisneros,
Historia de la Ciudad de Avellaneda, pp. , , , ; Rudi Varela, Qu peridicos
lea la gente de Avellaneda y Lans? , La Ciudad, June , www.
laciudadavellaneda.com.ar; Scher and Palomino, Ftbol, p. .
Joel Horowitz
followers would go to their funeral home, borrow cons and parade them
past their opponents.
Escaping the Barrio

River Plate has the reputation of being the team of the wealthy. However, its
origins lay in the largely working-class waterfront neighbourhood of La Boca,
which had been heavily populated by Genoese immigrants but by the time of
Rivers founding had become much less so. The club resulted from the merger
of two clubs. One, La Rosales, was considered middle-class, since its direct
predecessor was formed by high-school students. The other, Santa Rosa, was
founded by young men who met at the house of a Mr Jacobs, a deputy
manager of the Wilson Coal Yards, in order to have tea, dance and practise
English. One attendee, Isodoro Kitzler, had been born in Bombay and
attended the school of Alejandro Watson Hutton, who is considered the
founder of football in Argentina. Two others, Leopoldo Bard and Livio
Ratto, both future presidents of River and players on the team, became
medical school students and Radicals. Bard, despite being Jewish and born in
Austria-Hungary, became an important politician, serving as majority leader in
the Chamber of Deputies. Bards presidency of River occurred before he and
the club became important. Undoubtedly his connections with River helped
his political career.
In , ve clubs based in La Boca belonged to the major football
association, making the search for support dicult. In a popularity contest
conducted by a newspaper, Boca Juniors, with , votes, was the most
popular club, and River followed with ,. The other three lagged far
behind.
For River Plate, the key to observing the importance of politics and
inuential men is the search for a place to play. Rivers rst pitch was near the
docks in La Boca. However, in the Ministry of Agriculture forced the
club o the land. River was oered the use of land in the suburb of Sarand by
Jos Bernasconi, an executive of a naval store company, Dresco. He became
president of River in .

Personal communication from Corradi.

Centro para la Investigacin de la Historia del Ftbol, Fundacin del Club Atltico River
Plate, Boletn CIHF, : ( May ), www.cihf.org.ar/trabajos/RiverPlate.pdf;
Miguel Angel Bertolotto, Mientras viva tu bandera, Clarn, May ; Miguel Angel
Bertolotto, River: El campen del siglo (Buenos Aires: Oceano/Temas, ), pp. .

Bucich, La Boca, p. .

Los estadios, www.sitioriverplatense.com.ar/estadios-ant.htm; Los presidentes, www.river-
plate.t.com/lospresidentes.htm.
After one year, the team moved back to the ground that it had previously
occupied and stayed there until , when the government agency that
oversaw the ports denitively evicted it. In the new president of River,
Antonio Zolezzi, had obtained a ,-peso subsidy from the municipal
government, which River used to build stands for spectators. Zolezzi was a
city councillor and presented the motion in favour of the subsidy. When
objections were raised, Zolezzi countered that a club from the northern sector
of the city had received , pesos and that some , people attended
Rivers games. Zolezzi was born in Italy, and came to Argentina at a young age;
he subsequently opened a store. He clearly did very well, as he supported
mutual aid societies and popular education and founded several institutions
for orphans. He also became the conservative political leader of La Boca. He
was in addition an honorary member of Boca Juniors.
In River played on the ground of the Club Ferrocarril Oeste, which
was far from its home base. The following year River rented land in the port
area in order to build a stadium. In the early s, however, River moved to
Recoleta in the richer northern sector of the city, where it rented land. Its then
president, Jos Bacigaluppi, explained the move by saying: River is not a club
for a barrio but for a city. This vision is not surprising, since his familys
business sold subdivided lots throughout the capital, helping the city expand
into new areas. The move enabled River to build a stadium holding , and
a basketball court, four tennis courts, three for bocce, a swimming pool, an
equipped gymnasium and a place for kids to play.
In the s River needed a new location for a stadium and, after failing to
obtain sites closer to La Boca, made the great leap to Nez, in what was then
a practically empty portion of the city. Fans had no way to get to the stadium
on public transport. The club received signicant assistance from the
government. The city ceded a signicant percentage of the land and the
national government loaned the club . million pesos (over US$ , at
exchange rates).

Ibid.; Centro para la Investigacin de la Historia del Ftbol, Fundacin del Club Atltico
River Plate; Abad de Santilln, Gran enciclopedia, vol. , pp. ; La Repblica, Apr.
.

Lorenzo, Historia del Ftbol, vol. , pp. ; Los estadios, www.sitioriverplatense.
com.ar/estadios-ant.htm; Jos Bacigaluppi en la historia riverplatense, www.agpbacigaluppi.
com.ar/historia.html. For the Bacigaluppi family business see real estate advertisements in La
Prensa in the s.

Estadio Monumental, www.cariverplate.com.ar/estadio-monumental/; Historia del Estadio
Antonio Vespucio Liberti, www.reocities.com/Colosseum/Ring//Estadio.htm; Club
Atltico River Plate, Memoria y balance (Buenos Aires, ), pp. ; River Plate,
Revista Grca e Informativa, Feb. , p. ; El Grco, Jan. , p. ; La Prensa,
Jan. ; La Opinin, Aug. ; Nov. ; Concejo Deliberante, Actas, May
, p. ; Oct. , pp. ; Ariel Scher, La patria deportista (Buenos Aires:
Planeta, ), p. .
Joel Horowitz
The break with La Boca was gradual. Several years after it moved out of the
barrio, an ocial publication of the club dedicated a page to the glory of La
Boca. Only in was the headquarters removed from the barrio, and
remnants of fan support still existed. Although River cut ties to its barrio,
it made itself more attractive to the wealthier inhabitants of the northern
suburbs.
Conclusions
Football clubs were founded at a time of great change in greater Buenos Aires.
As the population increased rapidly, it spread away from the traditional core of
the city and a sense of neighbourhood began developing. Simultaneously,
political participation increased, especially after , and thousands of civic
associations, from libraries to unions, were formed. The founding of football
clubs shows the ability of porteos to build the institutions that they felt they
needed.
Most of the early football clubs have long since disappeared, but others
survived. The latter were successful on the eld but, equally importantly, as
institutions. Politics and football clubs became intertwined. Politicians, usually
from their own barrio, helped clubs obtain places to play and other favours,
and in return received support. The clubs became central to the identity of the
barrios in which they developed. Loyalties intermingled. This helps explain, in
part, why many businessmen gave so much of their time and money to these
institutions.
In recent years some who inspired the study of civic associations in
Argentina have argued that the world of civic associations was permeated with
politics, a much less optimistic view of them. This questioning of the role of
civic associations in establishing democracy is part of a worldwide trend. An
examination of football clubs makes clear that in the pre-Pern period
powerful men came to colonise many of them. By colonise I mean that
they came to inuence them because of what they oered in real terms.
Football clubs turned to those who could solve their immediate problems,
even if they were not really one of them. Politicians role in the clubs at times
led to divisiveness, as the political conicts in the larger society came to be

Boletn Ocial del Club Atltico River Plate, Jan. , p. ; La Repblica, Mar. ; La
Razn, Apr. .

Luciano de Privitellio and Luis Alberto Romero, Organizaciones de la sociedad civil,
tradiciones cvicas y cultura poltica democrtica: el caso de Buenos Aires, ,
Revista de Historia (Mar del Plata), : (), pp. ; Di Stefano et al., De las cofradas;
Riley, The Civic Foundations of Fascism.

See Carlos A. Forment, Democracy in Latin America , vol. : Civic Selfhood and
Public Life in Mexico and Peru (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, ), for the idea
of colonising.
reected within the institutions. This is not surprising, given the frequently
heated political atmosphere in Argentina in the s and s.
Clubs looked to individuals as saviours rather than to their membership.
This was the experience of Argentine society as a whole. Patronage and
clientelism played an ever increasing role. Even labour unions, which
ideologically rejected ties to the state and had much more immediate leverage
than football clubs, began turning to the state for help during the second
decade of the twentieth century.
The politicisation of football clubs intensied in the Pern years; they
received many benets (stadiums for example) but at the same time, like
labour unions, they lost signicant autonomy. The process continued in
subsequent years, though not in a linear fashion. Club elections remain
important. A paid advertisement for the club election of Boca Juniors played
on the closed circuit television system in the Buenos Aires subway in the
southern spring of . Mauricio Macri rode the reputation he had built as
president of Boca Juniors to victory as the chief executive of the city of Buenos
Aires and became a critical political force in contemporary Argentina. Hugo
Moyano, head of one of the national labour confederations, indirectly controls
ve football clubs which play at dierent levels.
The emergence in the late s of the so-called barras bravas, the
frequently violent bands of fans attached to football clubs, is linked to the
politicisation of the clubs, certainly making it dicult to control them. There
can be no question that current politicians use the barras for their own
purposes. They have corrupted the internal working of many clubs and made
attending games frequently a dangerous thing. The concentration of clubs
in Buenos Aires and their barrio bases of support have made the economic
position of the clubs more and more dicult, as competition for players and
fans among football clubs has become increasingly international.
An examination of football clubs exposes a great deal about the political
culture of Argentina. Even large and mostly successful organisations perceived
a need to seek help from politicians or the wealthy. Ordinary citizens, even if
backed by a sizeable organisation, lacked the clout to obtain the requisite aid.
The clubs also helped to shape the sense of neighbourhood that was so
important in Buenos Aires for so long.

There is a vast literature on the post- politicisation of football. For an overview see Scher
and Palamino, Ftbol. See also La Nacin, . Feb. and Aug. .

See for example, Vic Duke and Liz Crolley, Ftbol, Politicians and People: Populism and
Politics in Argentina, International Journal of the History of Sport, : (), pp. ;
Clarn, Dec. .
Joel Horowitz
Spanish and Portuguese abstracts
Spanish abstract. En las primeras dcadas del siglo XX, los habitantes del Gran Buenos
Aires formaron innumerables clubs de ftbol como parte de una emergente cultura
cvica. Muchos de estos clubs no slo fueron de larga duracin, sino que ayudaron a
congurar la sensacin de barrio que domin mucho del mundo cultural y poltico de
la ciudad. En ello se diferenciaron de los clubs de otras ciudades de Sudamrica, que
tendieron a tener mucho menos identidad barrial. Sin embargo, los equipos de ftbol
exitosos requirieron de apoyos para adquirir tierras y construir estadios. La evidencia
de los registros de los clubs y de la prensa local muestra que en la medida que los clubs
crecieron en tamao e importancia, polticos y otras guras vecinales clave fueron
fundamentales en la obtencin de los recursos necesarios para ello. A la vez, estos
personajes hicieron uso de su asociacin con los clubs para apoyar a sus campaas
electorales y desarrollar as su electorado y redes clientelares.
Spanish keywords: Argentina, Buenos Aires, ftbol, asociaciones cvicas, clientelismo
Portuguese abstract. Nas primeiras dcadas do sculo XX, os moradores da grande

Buenos Aires formaram inmeros clubes de futebol como parte de uma crescente
cultura cvica. Muitos desses clubes no apenas sobreviveram como ajudaram a formar
o senso de comunidade que dominou muito do mundo poltico e cultural da cidade.
Neste sentido eles se diferenciavam de clubes em outras cidades sul americanas que
tendiam a ter menos identidade de bairro. Contudo, os times de futebol que foram
bem sucedidos precisaram de ajuda para compra de terrenos e para construo de
estdios. Evidncias oriundas de registros dos clubes e da imprensa local demonstram
que paralelamente ao crescimento dos clubes em tamanho e importncia, polticos e
outros lderes de bairro tornaram-se essenciais para a obteno dos recursos
necessrios. Em contrapartida, porm, eles zeram uso da associao com os clubes
para auxiliar nas campanhas eleitorais e expandir seus eleitorados e bases de apoio.
Portuguese keywords: Argentina, Buenos Aires, futebol, associaes cvicas, cliente-

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J. Lat. Amer. Stud.

, Cambridge University Press

Football Clubs and Neighbourhoods in

Keywords: Argentina, Buenos Aires, soccer, football, civic associations, clientelism

Joel Horowitz is professor of history at St Bonaventure University. Email jhorowit@sbu.edu.

Crdoba () (Crdoba: Centro de Estudios Histricos Prof. Carlos S. A. Segreti,

The Role of Notable Individuals

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www.forommataderos.blogspot.com///don-fernando-ghio.html; Cutolo, Historia de

A Suburb and the Role of Its Key Football Clubs

Escaping the Barrio

Spanish keywords: Argentina, Buenos Aires, ftbol, asociaciones cvicas, clientelismo

Portuguese abstract. Nas primeiras dcadas do sculo XX, os moradores da grande

Portuguese keywords: Argentina, Buenos Aires, futebol, associaes cvicas, cliente-

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