Soccer and Devotion in the Barrios of Santiago
Lemebel, Pedro
The empty lots of land which dot the arid landscapes of Santiago's urban periphery were once planned as tree-lined plazas and recreational areas for the residents of the city's shantytowns, a...
...In Santiago's peripheral neighborhoods, these dusty fields have become a place beyond the law, a free-trade zone of sorts where poor kids gather to celebrate the triumphs and defeats of their soccer club or just to hang out...
...It is as if the announcement itself prefigures the all-out battle that inevitably takes place...
...On one occasion, they accepted funding for a new 70-foot banner from the A woman of the Milled Trophy Company on the barras proudly condition that they put the com- wearing her pierc- pany's name and logo on it...
...The former is devoted to the Colo-Colo soccer team, one of the country's most popular first-division clubs named after a heroic indigenous warrior who has been mythified in Chile's official histories for defending the territory against the Spaniards during the Conquest...
...It is the only freedom I know," proclaims Eric as he describes the barristas' strategy of entrenching themselves in one part of the stadium to protect themselves from police aggression or a rival barra...
...There, I am someone else," he states as he recounts the strategies he and his friends use to smuggle into the stadium the alcohol and marijuana that enliven their weekly party...
...And so it happens-kids appear on television being herded off to jail handcuffed, with their heads lowered...
...But only a handful of kids ever reach the first-division soccer league, while the rest remain beating their drum in the stadium stands where La Garra Blanca stages its weekly spectacle...
...cemetary, they form a human shield around the Monument to the Disappeared to protect the women and children from the inevitable police onslaught, always justified after the fact by claims of self-defense...
...The intense memories accumulated in the neighborhood soccer fields made them the physical and symbolic spaces from which the protests against the dictatorship, and later the barras bravas, would emerge...
...arra graffiti is the language of the shantytown tribe, a mix of gothic signs with their rocker grammar...
...The members of La Garra, mostly young men from Santiago's peripheries, refer to themselves as "Indios, Proletarios, y Rebolucionarios"' (Indians, Proletarians and Revolutionaries), contradicting the narrative of upward social mobility so pervasive in contemporary Chilean society...
...All that neighborhood kids need is a ball and a field to forget, at least for a time, the lack of opportunities that defines the world they inhabit...
...Entire communities, including some like La Legua and La Victoria, once famous for their activism and militancy, are now devastated by the desperate cravings of hundreds of pasta addicts who appear each night on the edges of the soccer field or under the shadows of neighborhood street lights in search of a fix...
...Bands of long-haired rockeros hanging out on shantytown street corners and groups of kids drinking beer and listening to music on the local soccer field were routinely rounded up in an attempt to control the "surplus" youth that the neoliberalization of the economy and the transition to democracy had left behind...
...In spite of the indictments of the national press, which accuses them of being lost souls, drug addicts, bums and drunks, the kids of the barras know where and when to pledge their allegiance...
...3. Here the expression "rebolucionario" is mixed with the word "albo," meaning white, in reference to the color of the ColoColo jersey 4. The hymn of Los de Abajo, to the tune of Venceremos, appears in P&gina Abierta (Santiago), February 2, 1992...
...The police always disrupt the event, launching tear-gas grenades into the crowd during the march or the ceremony inside the cemetery...
...The government, in what seemed like an act of vengeance against those who had so fiercely fought against the security forces in the 1980s, passed a law which allowed the police to he two most important bar- ras-famous for their boundless devotion to their teams-are La Garra Blanca (The White Claw) and Los de Abajo (The Ones From Below...
...Acceptance, however, is not without its price...
...They usually grow it themselves-a dash of green on their otherwise sad and dusty gardens...
...These episodes became indelibly etched in the memories of the kids who would eventually join the barras bravas...
...Eric bitterly compared his own situation to that of the players, who are paid millions of pesos each month...
...On the soccer field, victories and losses are all the same-both are valid reasons to celebrate...
...The police, now authorized by a legitimate democratic regime, soon unleashed a wave of repression directed specifically at shantytown youth...
...On one occasion, as the barristas made their way home from the stadium, they ran across a store selling Hush Puppy shoes, which in Chile are prohibitively expensive for everyone but the middle and upper classes...
...Those who escape arrest inflict their rage on the luxury cars, quaintly manicured gardens and other of toys of the upper class-that 1.8% of Chilean families who receive monthly incomes of over $15,000...
...So far, the Garra has published three issues of its magazine, which has a VOL XXXII, NO 1 JULY/AUG 1998 39REPORT ON YOUTH circulation of 3,000 and includes photographs, glossy paper, high-quality printing and only minimal advertising-at a cost of over $13,000 per issue...
...Kids from the barras simply laugh at these excuses, as they pummel hypocrisy with their rocks...
...In a similar gesture of solidarity, La Garra Blanca organized a demonstration when Mapuche communities were evicted from their lands by government and business interests in order to build a hydroelectric dam...
...These offers in part resulted from the pressure that the government was putting on soccer authorities to control their fans...
...Los Killers, Los Incansables, La Rio, Holocausto, Los Gangsters de Cerro Navia, and Los Rebolucionalbos 3 are some of La Garra's "working groups," a term they use with bitter irony, a commentary on the rampant unemployment of the group's members...
...I tell him that soccer is a transnational industry in which people are bought and sold like slaves based on their ability to move their legs...
...It stubbornly resists domestication...
...In such circumstances, barristas hide their faces from television cameras and photographers...
...Eric was adamant that the fans would never be seduced by such blackmail...
...In the face of such provocation, the two major barras join forces against the police...
...The machine guns carried of a shantytown by the soldiers insured that no one soccer field...
...The dictatorship's repressive apparatus was left almost intact-ready to quell any kind of social unrest with violence...
...Instead, they became the dusty fields on which generations of young people have come of age playing soccer...
...We had to follow them around to protect them from the cops and the rival barra...
...They are always present amidst the crowd that makes its way towards the main cemetery...
...During games, wooden stadium bleachers are set ablaze, and sticks, rocks and bottles rain on the playing field...
...2 This original group of rebellious Colo-Colo fans had ways of celebrating their beloved soccer team which were radically different from the orderly afternoons at the stadium sponsored by the official fan club...
...After all, they say, La Garra was expelled from the official fan club years ago...
...Many young shantytown residents who fought against the military machine with little more than stones were repeatedly detained, tortured and humiliated in the jails of the regime...
...detain individuals on suspicion alone...
...La Garra proudly flaunts the humble origins of its members-they sing about it in their hymns, spray-paint it in their graffiti and shout it in their slogans, defacing the manicured landscapes of the Chilean miracle with their intransigent presence...
...Only the city's shantytowns were subjected to such humiliating rituals of surveillance and intimidation, justified by the regime as part of its war against subversion...
...When images of the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles reached Santiago, the barristas organized street demonstrations to protest the incident and the impunity given to the L.A...
...There is no shortage of drugs there...
...To those who would give their name, date of birth, identity card number and address, the official fan clubs were offering all kinds of gifts and benefits-materials to replace their old banners tattered from urban warfare, new drums to reinvigorate their heartbeat in the stadium bleachers, an easily accessible office to coordinate fan activity and resources for future projects...
...In all likelihood, the money comes from a combination of pirate ventures administered by La Garra, including theft and other illicit undertakings...
...of these shantytown stiffs whose police files were created long before they were born...
...There they were wearing ski masks and ready for combat, just like Subcomandante Marcos but on skateboards...
...here are countless motives underlying the barras' rage...
...Pitos, guiros and macofia are some of the names given to the marijuana that freely passes through the lips of the kids on the field...
...Yet the desolate neighborhood soccer fields bear other memories as well...
...The buses of the barras transport their pubescent mayhem throughout the country, following their team wherever it may go as they sing: I was born in a neighborhood made of tin and cardboard I have smoked pot and I have felt love I have been to jail many times, and many times I have lost my voice Now with democracy everything remains the same We ask ourselves how long we can put up with it Now that I am from below [referring to the name of the barra] I understand the situation There are only two options-to be a hell-raiser and join the 'rebolucidn'.4 Colo-Colo officials court the media in an effort to distance the team from the mayhem, which they blame on the left-wing extremists who have corrupted the otherwise wholesome souls of the fans...
...The identities of individuals are also concealed and transmuted through the multiple names and nicknames used to elude the police and the files of the official fan club...
...The Law on Violence in Stadiums, which imposed stiff jail sentences and other penalties for soccer-related offenses, did not deter barristas from their enamored pursuits...
...There are also more explicitly political reasons that arouse the barristas' ire, such as Pinochet's presence in the Senate...
...Boxes of wine and marijuana joints would make their way around the stands...
...That is true," he responds, "but it is the only possibility that a lot of people have to get out of the barrio and become somebody...
...1960s...
...Amidst the smoke of tear-gas grenades, they fought the cops with an artillery of rocks thrown from behind their barricades...
...Soccer and Devotion in the Barrios of Santiago 1. In their graffiti, La Garra Blanca spells "revolucionarios" with a "b" to make the word pun with "boludo," which in this context would mean obnoxious or stupid...
...Young people no longer fashion their rebellion according to the nostalgic revolutionary ethic of the Pedro Lemebel is a writer and performance artist based in Santiago, Chile...
...They ransacked the store, leaving their old beat-up shoes in the store window...
...They spent their adolescent years involved in clandestine militancy, student strikes, school takeovers, vigils for the disappeared, soup kitchens, hunger strikes, and all the other struggles that birthed the return of democratic rule...
...It was difficult to determine to which of the two main barras they belonged, La Garra Blanca or Los de Abajo...
...The barras bravas erupted on the national scene at the outset of the democratic transition, just as the massive grassroots movement against the Pinochet regime was eclipsed by the reemergence of democratic institutions...
...They revive a melody that they themselves never sang-a melody they learned from clandestine tapes or the stories of relatives who were exiled or jailed after the military coup...
...The barras bravas erupted onto the national scene at the outset of the democratic transition in 1990, just as the massive grassroots movement against the Pinochet regime was eclipsed by the return of democratic institutions...
...Only a few women participate in the euphoria of the barras...
...As cocaine continued to make its way through Chile's middle and upper classes, pasta base, a highly addictive poor-man's cocaine made from plaster, the by-products of cocaine production and other powdered garbage, flooded Santiago's poor neighborhoods...
...Chile's new rulers were quick to criminalize the discontent expressed by the barras-the same discontent that only a few years earlier had fueled the shantytown uprisings against the Pinochet regime and which eventually brought them to power...
...We like Ivan 'Bam Bam' Zamorano, for example, because even though he has become rich and famous, he has never forgotten his class...
...Meanwhile, barra members tirelessly proclaim their independence: "I don't want to work, I don't want to study, I'm not going to affiliate, I want to sing to the White all day, and fuck up the chuncho (the rival Universidad de Chile team) and the police...
...In the 1980s, at the height of the protests against the Pinochet dictatorship, shantytowns were regularly raided and searched by the regime's security forces, often in the middle of the night...
...La Garra Blanca was formally founded in the late 1980s after generational tensions led to a split among the team's fans...
...Year after year, the march is led by a contingent of orphaned mothers wearing the pictures of their disappeared children on their lapels...
...The troops, often with their faces painted for combat, would kick down doors and break windows as they entered people's homes, dragging half-dressed husbands, grandfathers, children and youth out of their houses at gun point...
...Players come and go," comments Eric with a hint of sadness in his voice, "but the barra remains...
...The well known "Venceremos," one of the hymns of the Popular Unity, echoes afresh in the bleachers of the National Stadium, once a concentration camp of the military regime...
...They also leave the insignia of their teams behind, as their political memory unites them into a single squadron of rebellion...
...Residents were forced to trot to the soccer field boot-camp style, and were beaten if they so much as flinched when asked for their identity card number...
...In the youth group, there were about 50 of us...
...In the punitive eye of the system, they are the black sheep who set a bad example for today's success-oriented and conservative youth, those mesmerized by the year-round Christmas of the malls that line the Chilean Miami...
...Soon, however, they realized that their women comrades were just as fierce as they are...
...When ings and the team jersey and the team they unfurled it, the name of their corporate sponsor was nowhere to be found, ostensibly because the cops had ripped that part of the banner off in a scuffle before the game-any excuse to avoid selling one's soul to the market...
...Soccer is Chile's most popular sport, a cheap form of entertainment that is deeply etched into the everyday memories of proletarian Santiago...
...Since we were young, we weren't allowed to participate in the club's events and parties...
...The love-struck fervor of Garra fans is orphaned, unrecognized by the official institution for which it is proclaimed...
...They are usually women who were once girlNCILA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON YOUTH friends, sisters or friends of barra kids who, after accompanying them through countless triumphs and defeats, earn their place amidst the multitude of machos...
...Translated from the Spanish by NACLA...
...It is the city that stages their expressions of frustration and disenchantment...
...incident, he sat down in the stands on the north side of the National Stadium and began singing all by himself...
...At the first game following the NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 0 0 38REPORT ON YOUTH The barristas' most fervent desire is to see their team victorious on the field, but their passion transcends both the team and the players...
...From the trenches of their curbside struggles, they evoke the fractured memory of the country into which they were born...
...The sense of triumph that followed the electoral victory of Patricio Aylwin, who came to power with the support of the Socialist Party and other sectors of the left, faded quickly for most poor urban youth...
...Bands like A.N.I.M.A.L, Fisckales, Los Panteras Negras and Los Miserables were present, strumming their own tribal riffs as Mapuche leader Aucin Huilcamdn spoke of past and present injustices...
...His Perlas y Sicatrices is forthcom- ing from LOM...
...In the 1980s, marijuana was the most popular drug among kids on the fringes, so much so that its consumption came to be NACIAREPORT ON THE AMERICAS 36REPORT ON YOUTH accepted by mothers and relatives who did not see any grave danger in the innocent little plant...
...The affluent neighborhoods of Santiago shiver in fear every time there is a soccer game in the San Carlos de Apoquindo Stadium, home to the Catholic University Soccer team, which is located in the city's ritzy suburbs...
...As the fans make their way back to their neighborhoods, dozens of windshields are left shattered...
...It calms him down," the mothers would say, "and on occasion I'll even make myself a cup of tea with the leaves when I'm too nervous...
...Shantytown residents would awaken to the thunder of loudspeakers ordering all men to assemble on the local soccer field in military for- The desolate leisure mation...
...would disobey the order...
...These inscriptions, with their hip lettering and intentional misspellings, are visible signs VOL XXXII, No 1 JULY/AUG 1998 41REPORT ON YOUTH An advertisement for cable television in Santiago appealing directly to the passion of soccer fans...
...It's the only part of our bodies that they don't touch," he recounts with a smile, remembering one time when the stands were so crowded and the movement so intense that a bag of pisco broke and spilled all over his inner thigh, making him run to the bathroom several times to put water on his legs to ease the burning...
...At first it concerned us," Jorge remembered, reiterating the cliche of feminine fragility...
...While Santiago's political authorities insist that the club must pay the millions of pesos in damages and injuries, club officials refuse, stating again and again that the Garra Blanca operates beyond the limits of their control...
...The empty lots of land which dot the arid landscapes of Santiago's urban periphery were once planned as tree-lined plazas and recreational areas for the residents of the city's shantytowns, a status that they never attained...
...Inside the Every year on the anniversary of the military coup, the barras enter into a non-aggression pact, joining forces in a unified contingent of rebellion...
...The women who wield sticks, throw stones and yell team slogans are hardly delicate flowers...
...A few days before these games, there is always an announcement about increased police protection for the houses of the rich...
...Racial and ethnic discrimination is another factor that has detonated the rage of the barras...
...2. Interview in Las Ultimas Noticias (Santiago), March 23, 1997...
...While the barristas' most fervent desire is to see their team victorious on the field, their passion goes beyond the team and the players at any particular moment...
...During the 1980s, Santiago's poor barrios were the cradle of the intense struggle against the Pinochet regime...
...Several years ago, soccer authorities launched a campaign to promote the affiliation of the barras with the official fan clubs of their teams...
...Its inverted crosses and vowels-turnedarrows invoke both satanic and precolumbian signs to create a language indecipherable by the cops on their trail...
...There is no shantytown without a club that brings together those addicted to playing ball...
...They also helped organize the Festival of Mapuche Resistance, a large-scale benefit concert which brought together rock and heavy metal bands from Chile and Argentina, uniting the thunder of amplified rock music with the struggles of native peoples...
...He always had problems with the officers of the fan club and was eventually expelled for insulting one of them...
...In order to earn the respect of the barristas, women must transform themselves by masculinizing their gestures and their language to prove they deserve a place in the violent territory of the stadium bleachers...
...The kids of the barras, those angels with holes in their shoes, are the human surplus that wipe the hypocritical smirk off the face of the victorious Chile of the miracle...
...In Chile at least, soccer fan clubs, known as barras bravas-literally "fierce fan clubs"-are the highest expression of these new militancies...
...In these ways, the kids from the barras politicize their aggressions by creating allegiances with other minority struggles, placing their resentful hearts on the side of the victims of the neoliberal bulldozer...
...cops...
...But the barras sing it without nostalgia, without the sad optimism of what now seems a wordy leftist harangue...
...After so many years underground, La Garra has learned to operate with its own limited resources-taking up collections to repair the drum, putting on heavy metal benefit concerts and organizing parties to publish the La Garra Blanca magazine, which they say is the official and authentic voice of the fans...
...Fans meet clandestinely in neighborhood dives or on local soccer fields to plan their actions, organizing their movements through the city in strategic neighborhood-based groups...
...La Garra Blanca appropriated the hero's epic narrative and translated it into the social and economic idioms of its members...
...Molotov cocktails ignited the nights of protest other37 0 0> 37 VOL XXXII, No 1 JULY/AUG 1998REPORT ON YOUTH Soccer fans cheer for their team at Chile's National Stadium...
...It did not take long for La Garra to become a massive phenomenon, bringing together over 20,000 youth behind the chant of "Te quiero albo, te Ilevo en el coraz6n" (I love you White [the color of the Colo-Colo jersey], I carry you in my heart...
...Barristas identify each other through names like Viper, la Chica Sandra, Palomo, Rodilla, Bartiarti and Jota-without last names, without a past and without families because their only family is their passion for the barra...
...It is as if by inscribing the profane calligraphy of their graffiti on city walls, the barristas are confronting the new educational order of the free market-the classist policies of the private schools to which shantytown youth have no access...
...Players come and go," says Eric of La Garra, "but the barra remains...
...Neighborhood fields come to life after nightfall, when the protective shroud of darkness arrives to shield the revelers from the vigilant eye of the police...
...During the 1988 plebiscite, they actively participated in the marches for the "NO," which shook the regime and eventually led to the triumph of the Concertaci6n coalition in the closing months of 1989...
...We immediately followed, and that is where it all began...
...Among those on the fringes there were natural leaders like Fatman Jano, who was known for his foul mouth and his irreverence towards the rules...
...Out of nowhere, someone would shout, "Death to Pinochet," incorporating the political slogans of the moment into the mantras of the fans...
...The barras enter into non-aggression pacts every year on the anniversary of the military coup...
...The new barra grew by leaps and bounds until the old fan club disappeared in its shadow...
...I saw them at the massive demonstration outside the National Congress on the day the dictator made his shameful entrance into the legislature in March 1998...
...As if we were children," commented Eric of La Garra Blanca, "they offered us toys in exchange for our freedom...
...He is the author of La esquina es mi corazbn (Editorial Cuarto Propio, 1994) and El loco afsn: Cr6nicas de un sidario (Editorial LOM, 1996...
...wise shrouded in darkness thanks to the organized or random sabotage which often left entire neighborhoods without electricity...
...As Eric, a founding member, describes: The conflicts had been developing gradually, over many years...
...Forgetting his fanaticism for an instant, he wonders what the future might hold for him and those like him who live in a system which affords no guarantees...
...At the gates of the stadium, they are frisked by cops and sniffed by dogs, but the alcohol makes it in anyway, usually in plastic bags that they hide in their crotches...
...Each weekend on the neighborhood field, they experience the only real freedom that they know-their only respite from the resentments of growing up poor amidst the Chilean "miracle...
...By the 1990s, however, the homegrown herb was displaced by the other offerings of the free market...
...Then, and only then, the barristas return to their own neighborhoods-grooving to the sounds of their songs and reviving the popular melodies of yesteryear with new lyrics...
Vol. 32 • July 1998 • No. 1
