Soccer and the Return of Argentine Politics
Alabarces, Pablo
When Argentina plunged into a political and economic crisis of unprecedented proportions at the end of 2001, I was finishing my book Faltbol y Patria. The book traced the way soccer had...
...Every minute, explosive rise in poverty and unemployment...
...With this appeared two R divergent discourses...
...And on the other, 1 the forecast maintained that a World Cup failure would unleash a new societal crash...
...and disastrous flood in Santa Fe, which took a particuWithout a doubt, the political, economic and social cli- larly heavy toll on and around Col6n's stadium, the mate allowed the staging of absurdly inflated expecta- Uni6n fans' banner mercilessly replied: "In Col6n's soctions...
...Quilmes, traditionally an Argentine company, was catchy jingle: "Let's keep on yelling, keep on believsold to the Brazilian beer company Brahma just days ing/Let's not lose heart, in the end we'll be winning/It's before the start of the tournament...
...A representative article pub- v lished by the daily Pdgina 12 on the day of f Argentina's first game in the tournament cited a 1 survey revealing that 65% of Argentines believed the s country had a "very good" chance of winning the p World Cup...
...Similarly, soccer h served as a national narrative par excellence during t neoliberal context of dissolved political spaces, the in( vidual reclusion of citizens, the withdrawal of the stu and a debilitated civil society...
...I passed by a large group of soccer fans narrative of the tribal identity of Argentine con- of the team San Lorenzo...
...Repsol$" the echoed Argentines' anti-neoliberal sensibilities...
...experiment discard four presidents in two weeks, it also brought with it an The cacerolazo was in full force...
...It is highly ever before understands that citizenship and national unlikely today that the national soccer team would identity are not determined by soccer victories or in the appear with jerseys defending the state-owned consumption of goods, whether a soft drink or an Aerolineas Argentinas and its workers, nor would the Argentine soccer jersey...
...Every sponsor was a multina- we are not just playing for the trophy, we play for the tional corporation, but Quilmes and Repsol-YPF stand country...
...On the main avenue protestors began smashing the windows of banks and other multinational enter- y book discussed the centrality of soccer as a prises with rocks...
...I listened as President Fernando De la Rda addressed the country...
...He declared a state of siege, an emergency measure limiting constitutional rights of assembly and other civil liberties...
...The perceived national narrative by advertisers preyed on nationalism and patriotism, but ironically, also implicitly official fan of the Argentine national team...
...B perhaps more important was that practices learned at sc cer stadiums-the spontaneous creation of chants a the tactics of resistance against police repressionbecame purely political when crossbred with popu] mobilization...
...The other actor is civil society, Mayo was fenced-off and protected by police who vio- which was severely weakened under the military dicta- lently stood their ground against the ebb and flow of pro- torship of 1976-1983 and by the failure of the subse- testors trying to enter the plaza...
...thus, a producer of con- was no longer just pots and pans...
...Brazil, 21...
...Nonetheless, the projection of the a Argentine soccer team as a favorite to win the 2002 p World Cup incited a media-driven frenzy of inflated expectations eagerly consumed by the public...
...Argentina now discusses generally speaking, the population is much more opti- its problems in appropriate places: in congress or in popmistic today...
...The tour- n nament arrived in the context of heightened attention to h the sharp social disparities and fragmentation P brought to light by the crisis...
...investments for the World Cup were significant...
...Identity, however, is not just a narrative, it is also lived experience, one of struggle and conflict...
...Coca-Cola invested ble to disregard the 2001 crisis...
...Demands for peace were made in some stadiums where large flags appeared vindicating Saddamagain, a clear snub at U.S...
...to the most opulent brand of consumerism thanks to the Several thousand demonstrators began marching from monetary overvaluation were now left at the doorstep of the Congress towards the Plaza de Mayo, which is their farcical reality...
...Once outside I was immediately swallowed up by thousands of protestors hitting their kitchenware and shouting anti-government chants demanding the resignation of the President and the Minister of Economy Domingo Cavallo...
...The ailure did, however, prove the foreseeable fiction of the atter...
...Protestors also clamored against the state of siege, under which the demonstration was illegal: "Qud boludos/el estado de sitio/se lo meten en el culo...
...The fi that attacks were directed specifically at banks and at t companies of privatized services underlines that glob...
...The ad said, 'The Brazilians bought tepid discourse-the ancient heroic story of the country Quilmes...
...Alas, the absolute failure of Argentina at the World up-eliminated in the first round with only two conerted goals, a tie and a loss, to England no less-preented debunking the first prophecy empirically...
...success...
...Mundial Corea-Japdn 2002, (Buenos Aires: mimeo, 2002...
...To this day, memory of the employite ment role of the state company remains strong and continues to define politics in the many affected communia ties...
...A victory would mean he suspension-if not the outright elimination--of the onflict or at the very least, a grace period for the govrnment...
...received by a population hit hard by devaluation, infla- In July 2003 Argentines celebrated the 25th annivertion, unemployment, hunger, poverty, the collapse of sary of the country's championship victory in the 1978 First World illusions and betrayal by the political class- World Cup, held at the height of the oppressive military the seven plagues of the neoliberal inheritance-but the dictatorship...
...No one, not the by taking up its traditional populist, social-democrat ban- soccer establishment, nor the fans in the stands were ner...
...ular mobilizations, and not in soccer stadiums or in the After the climax of politicization reached during the sports press...
...campaign that questioned the legitimacy of Quilmes as a All these ads allude to a crack, a rupture in the consupposed "defender" of Argentine soccer patriotism...
...During t crisis, the "globalized" conditions of Argentine socie were perceived as economic, that is, material...
...tainted half of the official company name, was conspicuDespite severe cutbacks in consumption, corporate ously absent...
...Why had there been so many useless prophetic tatements...
...More ecently, for instance, the Brazilian daily Folha de Sdo laulo suspected that Mauricio Macri, president of the uccessful Boca Juniors soccer club, reached the second ound in the 2003 Buenos Aires mayoral election ecause of his team's victory at a regional tournament the NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 36REPORT ON SPORT AND SOCIETY team demand better wages for teachers, as they did in 2001 at qualifying games for the World Cup...
...However, the same article contained what I call the evolutionary counter-prophecy...
...Menem even showed up at the national stadium donning the national team's soccer jersey shortly after taking office...
...Just days before the World Cup...
...But Argentines a knew better...
...ization was being interpreted as concentrated wealth and as the loss of political is, say 'sold out' in Portuguese...
...Brazil's inclusion alludes a longstanding local rivalry...
...And nothing else...
...Poverty throngs of protestors folded into the mix...
...This allowed Quilmes' our flag that we are defending/Let's show the world that main competitor Isenbeck to launch an aggressive ad together we'll do it...
...s The placement of England at the top of the survey con- r firmed that the English rivalry trumps all others in the b worldview of Argentine soccer...
...Something had biting Isenbeck ad showed the blue and white Quilmes happened to the country, but "market operators" reverted bottle cap superimposed on the central sphere of the to magical invocations, to the possibility that the old Brazilian flag...
...In addition to the orga- quent Radical Civic Union government to bring those nized rank and file of unions and political parties, were responsible for the dictatorship to justice during the groups of young people doggedly trying to penetrate the democratic transition...
...A Repsol-YPF character $2.5 million in marketing and publicity...
...This time it intent of maximizing profits...
...and fled the Casa Rosada in a helicopter...
...The cere(throw them all out)-the all-encompassing tag-line that mony tried to incorporate and pay homage to the human emerged from the December 2001 protests in repudiation rights groups, but the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo of the entire political class-had shyly retreated to an were not allowed to participate---a glaring omission no electoral renewal where the "old Peronism" succeeded one wanted to take responsibility for...
...2 The corporate ads also perpetuated n the wish that a triumphant team would weld the political, social and economic rifts of Argentine society, for their t own economic self-interest of course...
...Instead, it M depends on the private consumption of the market's mer- 1 chandise...
...Under ce Menem, its privatization was wrought with turbulence a and corruption...
...Citizenship and identity are not won through P consumption, a lesson they had learned the hard way v through their own experience of widespread exclusion s, and impoverishment...
...This weakness was exacerbated by fence of the plaza, the sole object of desire...
...executive...
...The use of soccer in building a national narrative really took off in the 1960s, but gained particular momentum during the military dictatorship of the 1970s and the coinciding World Cup to which Argentina played host in 1978...
...The explosion came on December 19, 2001...
...The "contamination" of soccer with politics and politics with soccer reappeared briefly but prominently with the invasion of Iraq...
...The most obvius interpretation is political: Argentine sports desires iere driven by anti-imperialist tendencies...
...I was living in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Congreso, a few blocks from the national parliament building...
...al., Ftitbol, identidad nacional y hegemonia en una Argentina global...
...The subsequent mass lay-offs and rise in ew prices sparked some of the most severe social crises ad under Menemismo...
...We sell beer...
...The December 2001 crisis and the June 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan allowed me to revisit that historical analysis...
...the French supermarket chain Carrefour, Coca-Cola, another company explained, "They can tell you that Visa, Adidas, the beer company Quilmes, and the oil and everything is bad, that the future is in some other place...
...Back at the steps of Congress, I stub- the withdrawal of the state, which had historically been bomly insisted on mentally evoking the crowd in the the undisputed arbiter of Argentina's national narrative, stands of a soccer game...
...being that Bush would be provoked to same year...
...We're Argentines, and The list is suggestive...
...Not surprisingly, this hypothesis was always ttributed to others...
...The entire Plaza de sumers, but not citizens...
...Not only did the Argentine neoliberal Argentine player Gabriel Batistuta scoring a goal against Nigeria at the 2002 World Not only did the Argentine neoiberal Cup...
...Naturally, Macri was later defeated because bomb the field of their adversary...
...The resounding expectations in the realm of occer coincided with an imminent apocalypse regarding verything else...
...In the event of elimination, so it went, the almighty power of soccer would lead the combined forces of indignant ahorristas and enraged piqueteros to social revolution and culmiate in the lynching of the political class in the Plaza de 4ayo...
...McDonald's, in one ad pleaded for a goal in order to have "at least Gillette and MasterCard were also big advertisers...
...and a change in expectations- acteristics of a modem society...
...The news cooled the climate on the streets, which had the indelible marks of an uprising: looted stores and defaced multinational establishments like a McDonald's that had been set on fire...
...Some of the players participating in the cereNot long after the World Cup, the middle classes seem- mony-particularly Julio Ricardo Villa who played in ingly recovered from their original indignation and cau- that World Cup and Claudio Morresi, the brother of a tiously withdrew from public protests, a far cry from desaparecido-wanted soccer to acknowledge the their previous street militancy...
...On the one hand, soccer was p Argentina's failure at the World C confirmed the disconnect between s and politics...
...Despite its status as a symbol of ,ty the displacement of national industry by foreign capital, Ict Repsol-YPF mounted a huge publicity campaign during he the World Cup that announced, "When the national team al- plays, we all play...
...The All the companies steered their advertising efforts with satellite cable company Direct TV paid $400 million for the commonplace triumphal nationalist narrative regardtransmission rights to Argentina, Chile, Colombia, ing soccer, but in ads for this World Cup it was impossiMexico, Uruguay and Venezuela...
...With out on" something...
...Sadly, the events of December had flanked on one side by the Casa Rosada, the seat of the also left 25 dead...
...The book traced the way soccer had been used as an indispensable tool in the construction of Argentine national narratives in the 20th century...
...the task was left to two distinct actors...
...keting strategies in the run-up to the 2002 World Cup...
...In the same article, the journalist reminded the reader hat 80% of Argentines believed the political, economic nd social situation would get worse and 70% qualified president Eduardo Duhalde's performance as "bad or ery bad...
...In that displacement-soccer practic being adopted and placed in new contexts to produ new meanings-appeared the only possibilities for weakened and peripheral civil society to construct n( narratives of national identity...
...and the United States, I 12...
...Something had changed in Argentina and soccer's role did not escape that transformation...
...the body language, arms shaking public services owned by multinational conglomerates...
...And rather than the politiPablo Alabarces is a professor of popular culture at the School of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires and at the Center for Argentine Studies (IFCH-UNICAMP Brazil...
...Since ad the 1950s, YPF had been the shining star of Argentina's - state-owned companies, and on top of being a regulatory lar instrument for state control of gas prices, it was also cones sidered a symbol of Argentine self-sufficiency...
...Tear gas finally gave way to bullets...
...C The surveys were overwhelming: Argentina will v win the championship...
...The stories c told by the mass media seemed just another product, a e mere vicarious tale...
...Vol XXXVII, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 2004 33REPORT ON SPORT AND SOCIETY 0 0 0 ums and at road blockades with the unemployed workers called piqueteros...
...Quilmes was particularly relentless with its out...
...A sports success would have surely been well cer field...there's water...
...A championship game had temporaneity, but at the same time analyzed its been cancelled over the unrest, so they told me they were weakness in articulating a successful narrative of national at the protest to "sacarnos la leche'" to vent, or "take it identity capable of producing new social practices...
...In closing, the ad pro'ut claimed, "Isenbeck...
...Soccer had assumed this unsuitable role largely because of a weak civil society and the crisis of coherent, modem national narratives...
...How do you victorious in soccer's field of play-could narrate the Vol XXXVII, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 2004 35REPORT ON SPORT AND SOCIETY sense of nationhood dimmed by the demands of the x International Monetary Fund and Washington...
...and even the words of And seduced by a false modernity, the upper- and midthe songs were superimposed on the typical melodies of dle-classes who had travelled the world and surrendered the stadiums...
...a growth in progressive discourses and political dimensions unrelated to sports-permitted exemplified by the recent nullification of amnesty laws Argentina to recuperate some of the long forgotten charregarding the Dirty War...
...Still, a success in soccer implied a magcal solution to the political crisis...
...the colors, a sea of economy concentrated in foreign hands, and privatized white and baby blue...
...Advertisers Soccer had served as a national narrative par kept this "new" Argentine interpretation of globalizationatthe heartof theirmar- excellence during the neoliberal joyride...
...Repsol, Spain's privatized state oil company, he acquired YPF in 1999...
...But the third was more surprising, because there was virtually no chance that the United States would win the World Cup...
...In the end, soccer was properly and decidedly subordinated as a central element of Argentine political life and put in its proper place...
...It is from the disintegrated commuhe nities that relied on employment with YPF that the di- piqueteros emerged...
...rhythmically along with chants...
...He is the author of FOtbol y Patria and several other books on sports, soc- cer and society...
...Despite the wishes and the attempts who frantically dedicated themselves to analyzing of prominent sports figures and the mediocre interpretaevents, the crisis produced a healthy re-politicization of tions of the media, the crisis--one of strictly economic the public sphere...
...Mundial Corea-Jap6n 2002...
...YPF, more than just a sponsor, is an autonomy, and not as an illusory access to global symbolic goods...
...by the end of the day police had killed five people...
...cization of soccer, we witnessed the soccer-ization of politics, relegating discussions of the National to a question of sports and sporting events...
...seen as a way out of the problems and as a chance for n a definitive social reconciliation...
...In sum, the up counter-prophecy predicted that a poor occer showing at the tournament would result in a definitive social explosion...
...Besides a sharp rightful place: Politics are once again just politics and increase in work for my colleagues in the social sciences soccer only soccer...
...34 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON SPORT AND SOCIETY December's events had resuscitated national symbo among them the flag and Argentine soccer jerseys...
...Indeed, throughout the 1990s the only unified chorus of a national narrative seemed to be in soccer...
...Abandoned by both the opposition and his own party, De la Rfia resigned at 5 p.m...
...But an instance of this last example also shows that tribalism has apparently returned...
...e The mass media became a recurrent target in January ic protests, indicating that the general public was also dis- t tancing itself from journalistic discourses...
...At the start of the war, fans of Col6n, a team from the city of Santa Fe, displayed a huge banner during a game against Uni6n, a rival from the same city, that said, "Hey Bush, there's oil in Argentine fans hold their heads in disbelief as they watch their team's defeat in the Uni6n's soccer field"-the message 2002 World Cup...
...2. L. Cicalese, et...
...1 The experiment left industry uncompetitive national team's soccer jersey, the resemblance was and devastated, the working-class sentenced to unemirrefutable: It was the cheap standing-room-only bleach- ployment or underemployment in the informal sector, an ers of an Argentine soccer stadium...
...SOCCER AND THE RETURN OF ARGENTINE POLITICS 1. L. Cicalese, M. E. Curto, B. Presman, Fsitbol, identidad nacionaly hegemonia en una Argentina global...
...The first is the Galvanized by Cavallo's resignation, the demonstra- mass media, an institution that produces stories with the tors came back for more the following day...
...c- The case of Repsol-YPF is particularly telling...
...One sumptive calm of peripheral capitalism...
...They broke sidewalk tiles to accumulate an arsenal of projectiles, exhibiting their remarkable accuracy, and on their faces they wore lemon-doused handkerchiefs to resist the gases...
...Translated from Spanish by NACLA...
...Which loosely translates into, "They're so stupid/let 'em take the state of siege/and shove it up their ass...
...imperialism...
...The something to be happy about...
...Clearly, these the shift of Peronist populism to a conservative revolu- youths were seasoned veterans of urban combat through tion in 1989 with the swearing-in of Carlos Menem, ini- their frequent confrontations with police at soccer stadi- tiating the neoliberal onslaught...
...Conflictos multiculturales de la globalizacidn, (M6xico: Grijalbo, 1994...
...Today, Argentina is a society that more than crisis, the waters have calmed down for now...
...Most journalists, recalling the dictatorship's end of Argentina's World Cup aspirations confirmed the influence even on sports, downplayed the World Cup disconnect between sports and politics...
...I imagined a mobilization of indignant ahorristas--the collective name of mostly middle-class individuals with frozen bank accounts, which rendered their life-savings captive at insolvent banks...
...Belonging" and "Argentineness" depend on ti individual acts of consumption, where each "makes a cit- 1 izen" of themselves...
...no one would ever accept that interretation as their own...
...Then, after a deadly of political reasons rather than any related to soccer...
...Countries that respondents said they did p not want to win the tournament were telling: r England, 33...
...Although I was on a top floor, I began hearing the cacophonic clank of pots and pans being beaten...
...Looking up at levels more than doubled to over 50%, nominal unemthe broad staircase of Congress loaded with demonstra- ployment reached 25% with more than 40% real unemtors, many waving Argentine flags and wearing the ployment...
...Also see N. Garcia Canclini, Consumidores y ciudadanos...
...gas company Repsol-YPF...
...The article described ow at a meeting between provincial governors and the 'resident, the governor of Santa Fe province, Carlos ,eutemann, told Duhalde: "We have to fix the corralito ,roblem, because if we get eliminated from the World Cup and we haven't solved the problem of the corralito, there is no telling what will happen to the country...
...Que se vayan todos" national context in which the Cup was won...
...willing to validate such political recognition...
...On balance, however, the 2001 protests cannot be The crisis and its consequences restored things to their interpreted in such a pessimistic way...
...We prefer to keep our jerseys on...
...Because of the economic joyride it was a chauvinistic and pretentious one, instead of the plebeian, "national-popular" narrative of previous decades...
...The climax of this process came in the mid-1980s with the simultaneous emergence of soccer icon Diego Maradona and the extremist neoliberalism of the Carlos Menem government, which I term neoconservadurisimo...
...t( According to the discourse of the multinationals, the s concept of belonging to the nation is not defined by par- 1 ticipation in institutions or decision-making, nor in o acquiring certain rights or civic duties...
...Coca-Cola's slogan official sponsors of the Argentine national team included ridiculously suggested, "For us to hug each other again...
...What's more, 7% of those interviewed preferred Brazil as an alternave victor if Argentina were eliminated and 14% Jruguay, disclosing a sense of solidarity in which contiental ties superseded local rivalries...
...Basically, the explanation lies in the never Proven, but often accepted, premise that links soccer and Politics in a relationship of cause and effect...
Vol. 37 • March 2004 • No. 5
