Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Clubes de fútbol en tiempos de dictadura

2020; Duke University Press; Volume: 100; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-8178655

1527-1900

Joshua Nadel,

Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America

This important if inconsistent edited volume offers a look inside football (soccer) clubs in Argentina, providing insight into how they could act as either a bulwark for or an alternative to the country's military government. The contributions complicate the question of complicity and resistance by highlighting how clubs served as spaces where people lived their daily lives. As such they were complex sites that included regime supporters and opponents, including some who were eventually disappeared. In this sense, the volume is an important contribution to understanding how parts of Argentine society continued to function with something approaching a veneer of normalcy during a period of intense state terror.The book is organized into two parts. Part 1 contains four chapters, whose authors seek to explain fluctuations in club membership and attendance (Mariano Gruschetsky), the 1978 World Cup and the effect of transnational protest in Argentina (Raanan Rein), and efforts to intervene in clubs to both limit democracy and gain popularity (Franco Damián Reyna and Jorge Vidal Bueno). The inclusion of Bueno's chapter on Chile, the only one to address events outside Argentina, gestures to the possibility for more comparative work, given that Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay were all under military rule at some point in the period.Notable is Gruschetsky's contribution. That club membership rose while game attendance declined suggests the value of sports clubs—as major civic institutions—in helping Argentines navigate the challenges of daily life in the period. The clubs, in Gruschetsky's analysis, may have acted as a space of refuge. At the same time, he suggests that clubs need to be considered as relatively autonomous entities “with their own logic” separate from the national politics (p. 35). Reyna's examination of efforts to incorporate Club Atlético Talleres into the top-flight league highlights the local and regional challenges faced by the military government in expanding its influence and legitimacy while pointing to the persistence of democratic practices within club structures. All these contributions point to the major themes explored in part 2: clubs' role in daily life and in maintaining some level of normalcy, how clubs reflected social tensions while also seeking to maintain their own internal logic, and military interventions in club activities.The book's second part examines these themes via specific clubs during the dictatorship. Contributors explore clubs big and small, all in either the city or the province of Buenos Aires. Contributions like Julio David Frydenberg's on Club Atlético Independiente and the rise of Julio Grondona or Rodrigo Daskal's on Club Atlético River Plate reveal internal club politics linked, either implicitly or explicitly, to military leaders and their allies. Both essays offer tantalizing detail and ambivalent conclusions.Many of the chapters are based almost exclusively on club Memorias y balances and membership records, offering granular insight into the specific club in question and noting which members had ties to the military and which did not. But the essays rarely move beyond the individual club to look at the broader political context. Those chapters that work best, such as Alex Galarza's on Boca Juniors' failed effort to construct a new stadium and sports complex, with an amusement park and restaurant, highlight how the politics of clubs and of the country at large interacted. Adolfo Res's contribution on Club Atlético San Lorenzo de Almagro and the loss of its stadium highlights how conflicts with the government intersected with internal club turmoil. Of special note is the chapter by Ariel Scher, Julián Scher, and Diego Urbaneja, which focuses on Racing Club and its diverse membership. The chapter encapsulates many of the book's themes, including what it meant to have both regime supporters and opponents in the same club. Their contribution is important for another reason as well: it offers some analysis of women fans and club members.Indeed, for all the volume's insights, the almost total omission of women club members or a gendered understanding of club membership is a major flaw. Some, though not all, clubs differentiated between male and female members, which may make a gendered analysis more difficult. However, we know that women and girls attended clubs and participated in their non-soccer-related activities. Many were fans of soccer. Women were also affected by the political situation—as political actors and activists, mothers, wives, daughters, and disappeared. The contributions by Scher, Scher, and Urbaneja and by Rein on Club Atlético Atlanta are two exceptions, but there is much work to be done on this front.Overall, the book highlights that the military government, even though it essentially took over the Argentine Football Association, was unable to bend individual clubs to its will. Within clubs a form of democracy continued to function, as these civic associations dealt with internal as much as national politics. As such, this book demonstrates the persistence of quotidian life in a way that challenges the simple dichotomy of acquiescence and resistance as an explanatory tool, showing that daily life—whether under military rule or not—is vexed with contradictions. For this alone, the volume—in spite of its major blind spot in regard to gender and women—is a valuable resource.