Argentina’s Soccer Passion

By Marie Trigona / ZNet.com / June 28, 2006 / original article

An old article, but still relevant.

The world cup is here. Until July 9th, 32 national teams will play for the Word Cup title. It is estimated that the World cup will draw five billion viewers world wide. Argentina is no exception to the frenzy. South Americans are the wildest about their soccer, with the highest TV ratings. Argentina’s passion for soccer is a cultural mainstay and part of national identity regardless of class backgrounds.

This year’s World cup tournament has brought back a wave of fervor for Argentina’s national soccer team. Argentina is expected to have a good chance at the World Cup title with super stars like Lionel Messi and Carlos Tevez, young soccer magicians leading the offense.

I just returned to Argentina in the height of this year’s World Cup fever. Fans’ passion for the sport has inspired even sports nerds like myself. During the recent matches, the streets of Buenos Aires have looked like a western ghost town with everyone shut in their homes or workplaces watching the game. International and national companies like Pepsi, Quilmes beer, Adidas have featured Messi and Tevez marketing their products. Local stores, bars and citizens have been plastered with Argentina’s national colors, sky blue and white. Every news broadcast (morning, noon, evening and nightly newscasts) feature special reports on the world cup. National politics and local events seem to have been frozen in time until the world cup ends and Argentina takes home the cup. With nothing else seemingly happening in the country, it seems logical to write about what Argentine’s know best, their soccer.

Soccer as socialism

At the turn of the 20th century, Anarchists and Socialists founded many of Argentina’s first soccer clubs. They sought the need to use soccer as a social and political tool for organizing. Anarchist historian Osvaldo Bayer has written extensively on anarchism and soccer. Argentina’s large Anarchist movements in the 20th century, influenced by the influx of European immigrants, were alarmed by the working class’ drive to go to the soccer stadium on weekends rather than ideological picnics or other cultural events. The movement’s daily anarchist newspaper La Protesta wrote in 1917 compared the effects of soccer with religion, writing “church and soccer balls: the worst drug for the people.” However, anarchists soccer ideology changed quickly.

One of the first teams Chacarita Juniors was founded on May 1, 1906 in an Anarchist library in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Chacarita. Anarchists had a clear vision. “Soccer is a socialist game. Everyone plays together with the objective of making it to the goal line, that is the triumph, that is the revolution. In soccer you learn how to act in solidarity. You can’t play alone, when someone is in a better position you have to pass them the ball.” They even discussed what would happen when the sport would become professionalized. When the anarchists would win a championship, all the prizes would go toward forming schools for children to learn the sport. Other clubs followed including the “Martyrs of Chicago,” a homage to the American workers hung for fighting for a 8 hour workday. In the 30's the clubs became appropriated by capitalist interests. The “Martyrs of Chicago” later became Argentinos Juniors: “We are Argentines, not anarchists” became the new nationalist slogan erasing the team’s proletariat history. Chacarita still sports red and black uniforms even though the club is run as a commercial team.

Soccer as nationalism

Until the 60's South America’s soccer teams remained inferior to Western European teams. With the upsurge of military dictatorships in the region, Latin America also emerged as leaders in soccer. Argentina won its first World Cup championship in 1978, in the height of the military brutal dictatorship (1976-1983). The coup’s first dictator, Jorge Rafael Videla hosted the 1978 World Cup as a media stunt to show the world that the military had popular support.

The 1976-1983 military dictatorship ushered in unimaginable methods of terror–drugging dissidents and dropping them from planes into the Atlantic Ocean in the “vuelos del muerte,” using electric prods or “picana”on the genitals of men and women who entered the clandestine detention centers, raping women and forcing husbands, wives, parents, brothers, and companeros to listen tot he screams of their loved ones who were being tortured. The dictatorship disappeared 30,000 men and women to wipe out working class resistance and implement the neoliberal economic model.

By 1978, the international community had heard the accounts of the dictatorship’s human right’s violations. An international campaign gained steam thanks to the determination of groups like the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. In the midst of criticism, the dictatorship decided to host the World Cup. Anyone who opposed the dictatorship risked being disappeared themselves. The dictatorship justified the tortures, kidnaping and executions as a “dirty war” against anti-nationalist, communist opponents. The mothers of Plaza de Mayo suffered the most aggression leading up to the World Cup. Three of the founding members were disappeared and murdered following the infiltration by Adolfo Astiz, a military officer, in 1977.

The 1978 World Cup cost Videla several hundred million dollars. Business tycoons who benefitted from the dictatorship’s neoliberal policies joined in the World Cup frenzy. The BAUEN hotel (currently under worker self-management) was constructed in 1978 for the World Cup, with government loans and subsidies.

Many ex-detainees held at the ESMA (Navy Mechanics School), one of the 400 clandestine detention centers, said they could hear the cheers as Argentina won the world cup while being tortured. The River Plate Stadium is less than a kilometer away from Argentina’s infamous and largest clandestine detention center. Some detainees gave accounts that they too cheered for Argentina while tied and blindfolded.

Home players beat Holland 3-1 in the final. Holland along with many nations threatened to boycott Argentina’s World Cup, saying “you can’t play soccer a thousand meters from a torture center.” The Holland players said openly they would not accept the World Cup trophy from hands of dictator Videla. The military coup used the World Cup to launch its own counter-human rights campaign with the slogan “Argentineans are right and human.” The dictatorship’s national pride campaign overshadowed any international criticism of human rights violations.

Soccer and image

Diego Armando Maradona, by far the best soccer player in history, led Argentina in taking the title again in 1986 during the World Cup in Mexico. Maradona from the working class neighborhood Fiorito, a shanty town in a southern Buenos Aires suburb continues as a soccer god for many worldwide. During the 90's Maradona began to slip in the midst of the golden neoliberal era of former president Carlos Menem. Maradona left the soccer world in 1994 with a drug addiction and weight problem.

As part of Argentina’s image recovery from the 2001 financial and political crisis, Maradona cleaned up his act and had gastric bypass surgery to lose weight. Once again, Maradona is Argentina’s national pride. The best soccer player in history has a tattoo of Ernesto “Che” Guevara on his arm and another of Fidel Castro on his calve. Maradona hosted a weekly national talk show, which broke tv rating records in 2005. Fidel Castro gave Maradona an exclusive interview in which the best soccer player in history pridefully showed the ‘comandante’ his tattoo. During the interview Maradona also promised the ‘comandante’ that he would protest against George W. Bush’s visit to Argentina during last year’s Summit of the Americas.

In popular culture, almost noone makes reference to the 1978 World Cup victory. Fans generally cheer, “we’re going to win just like in 1986!” Soccer, like any sport can be used to uphold authoritarianism and nationalism. The political punk rock band, Las Manos de Fillippi, wrote a song about the 1978 World Cup “La Selecion Nazzional.” The lyrics go: “The World Cup is another state ministry, while the education ministry makes you stupid, the World Cup nationalizes you.” Universally, the state has coopted the World Cup for national interests.

However, sports can also bring people together. It’s no wonder that bosses often ban employees from forming sports clubs or other leisure activities. The workers from the Zanon ceramics factory, occupied and managed by its workers since 2001, launched an interesting campaign during the World Cup. They printed a special ceramics title with the slogan: “Together we are playing for the world cup, together we fight for the expropriation of Zanon.” When the former boss at Zanon prohibited the workers from talking in groups of three or more, the workers began to organize against exploitive conditions in the plant by getting together and playing soccer. Today, the Zanon workers have organized their own soccer tournament inside their factory to create a recreation space and to create unity among the workers.

Marie Trigona forms part of Grupo Alavío. She can be reached at mtrigona@msn.com. For more information visit, www.agoratv.org

May Day Massacre - 100 years ago: Simón Radowitzky, Anarchist and Legend

By Trigona, Marie
http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3850


May 1, 1909. Police kill thirty workers in a South American city. The workers are gunned down and violently beaten during a protest to demand an eight hour work day and remember the Hay Market Martyrs. Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires, was the scene of this massacre targeting the anarchist-labor movement which proliferated throughout the region through the beginning of the 20th century.

One of Argentina's first unions, the anarcho-syndicalist Federacion Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA) organized the May Day protest in 1909, joining workers around the world mobilizing on May 1 to demand the institution of an 8-hour-long workday and commemorate the Chicago martyrs; Parsons, Engel, Spies, Fischer, executed by hanging at the hands of the United States government and Lingg, who committed suicide in his jail cell. Buenos Aires police commissioner, Coronel Ramón L. Falcón, legendary for his anti-anarchist and immigrant tendencies, gave the order to brutally repress the peaceful May Day protest.

Thousands of workers from the FORA began to mobilize in the late afternoon in Plaza Lorea, in front of Congress on May 1, 1909. Shortly before the speakers began, Coronel Falcón ordered police to break up the protest. The squadron mounted on horses, armed with clubs and bullets, attacked the unarmed anarchists. Those who could escape ran to inform of the police repression. A witness of the event, Dardo Cuneo gave the account from a separate socialist May Day act 20 blocks away, "among those who arrived from Plaza Lorea with the news of the police repression, was a young man...in his hand he had a blood stained scarf. 'This is the blood of the brothers and sisters who were killed,' he said in his foreign accent. Afterward it was discovered, when a newspaper published his photo, that the young man with a blood stained scarf clenched in his fist was named Simón Radowitzky" (Juan B. Justo, Editorial América Lee, Buenos Aires, 1943).


Simon Radowitzky

Six months later, a young anarchist named Simon Radowitzky took justice into his own hands - organizing a direct action against Coronel Ramon Falcon. He threw a bomb at the Coronel's coach, killing Falcon in the act. We can only assume that Radowitzky was deeply hurt by the bloodshed and deaths at the hands of the police. Knowing that Falcon would order future police repression against workers, Radowitzky wanted to prevent future bloodshed.

Radowitzky, of Russian origin and barely 18-years-old, was sentenced to life in prison in the Siberia of Argentina, Ushuaia. At his trial he admitted to throwing the bomb which killed Falcon. "I killed Colonel Falcon because he ordered the massacre of workers. I am the son of working people and a brother of those who have died fighting the bourgeoisie."

Anarchist historian, Osvaldo Bayer wrote a number of books and articles on Radowitzky, including Simón Radowitzky, ¿mártir o asesino?. Anarchists made several attempts for Radowitzky's release and organized an international campaign to "Free Radowitsky." Bayer writes that Radowitzky stood up to all humiliations in prison and defended his fellow prisoners who respected Radowitzky as a man jailed for defending his ideals. The campaign for his release continued until he was finally freed in 1930, after 20 years of hell and almost complete isolation. He was expelled from Argentina, taking Uruguay as his new home. When the Spanish Revolution broke out, he headed for Spain in 1936 to join the anarchist division on the Aragon Front. Radowitzky died of a heart attack on February 29, 1956 as a true internationalist in Latin America - far from his birth place Russia.

Simon Radowitzky left a tradition of anarchist-individualist action. After Radowitzky, came the anarchist expropriators, individuals who employed direct, violent means to undermine what they saw as an unjust, corrupt and violent political and economic system. Whether or not these actions were justified can be debated, but it must be taken into consideration the violent attacks that the state and state apparatus has imposed on the oppressed in order to judge whether violence should be used against the state as a method of defense or social revolution.


Tradition of State Violence

Brutal state violence against working class resistance did not begin nor end with the 1909 May Day massacre. The Argentine State implemented a number of measures in fear of growing manifestations of radical activity - particularly anarchism. Ten years after the 1909 massacre, four workers were killed by police in Buenos Aires, Argentina starting "la semana tragic" or the tragic week. On January 7th, 1919, military officers used deadly force against striking workers echoing the worldwide demand for an eight hour day and improved wages in the Vesena Iron Workers plant in the capital city. Two days after the start of the tragic week, the FORA mobilized hundreds of thousands of people into the streets. The military, police and company vigilante groups cracked down on the general strike as hundreds of workers were killed and more than 50,000 were arrested during the tragic week. Later in 1921, the Patagonia Rebelde took place, with the mass shooting of over 1,500 rural workers on strike in the southern region of Patagonia.

Argentina would see several military dictatorships after 1909. The most brutal being the 1976-1983 military junta which imposed absolute terror throughout the population. During the nation's darkest chapter, the dictatorship disappeared more than 30,000 people - students, labor organizers, and activists, victims of the military's unimaginable methods of terror. The military dictatorship systematized the practice of forced disappearances and torture with U.S. financial support and training. Like the previous massacres throughout the century, the military sought to wipe out political opponents and growing social movements in order to implement an economic model in line with the Washington Consensus. They didn't want radical organizers who would challenge the accumulation of foreign debt, reliance on foreign investors and foreign corporations' industrial takeovers.

The military dictatorship successfully implemented a neo-liberal order, but they were unable to prevent future movements from trying to undo neoliberalism. State violence and the killing of activists transformed Argentina's labor movement, but it has not destroyed it which leads us to where we are today.


Historic Memory and Resistance

On May 1, 2009, workers and social movements will return to Plaza Lorea the location of an event that changed the face of working class history and the life of Simon Radowitzky, where he saw his fellow comrades fall victim to police violence a hundred years ago. The utopian dreams of the anarchists of social revolution a century ago have dwindled but hope reigns.

Ramon Falcon has been memorialized with bronze statues and his name given to police academies and streets. During the 70's, military dictatorship named a plaza tucked in a residential neighborhood after Ramon Falcon. In 2003, a neighborhood assembly unofficially changed the name of the Plaza to "Che Guevara," which was decided in a popular vote in which over 10,000 people voted. Falcon's memorial statue located in an upper-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires has been destroyed on a number of occasions. Falcon's memory as an honorable police official can be erased, his memory as a brutal repressor will remain in the historic memory of the oppressed.

This May Day comes as a recession is begins to unfold in Argentina, since October 2008 more than 55,000 people have lost their jobs. During this financial crisis when capitalism is at its weakest, the revolutionary spirit of Simon Radowitzky lives in the struggle of women and men who continue to fight for a better world, a world without exploitation and oppression. Radowitzky is alive in the subway workers who are fighting to form their own union in Buenos Aires subways; the autonomous social movements fighting transnational companies polluting the Andes mountains; the anarchist groups of today; the worker occupied factories where over 10,000 workers are producing without bosses or owners and the many social movement practicing direct democracy and carrying out their own direct actions against capitalism.

Que viva Simon Radowitzky y los Mártires de Chicago!


Marie Trigona is a writer, radio producer and video maker based in Buenos Aires. She can be contacted at mtrigona@msn.com

Lucio, The Good Bandit: Reflections of an Anarchist

Lucio Urtubia

Lucio Urtubia could be described as a modern day Robin Hood, a man who stole from the rich to give to the poor. Lucio, a 76-year old Spanish anarchist and retired bricklayer carried out bank robberies, forgeries and endless actions against capitalism. His actions helped to fund liberation movements in Europe, the US and Latin America.Outspoken and charismatic, Lucio speaks like a true anarchist. When asked what it means to be an anarchist, Lucio refutes the misperception of the terrorist, 'The anarchist is a person who is good at heart, responsible.' Yet he makes no apologies for the need to destroy the current social order, 'it’s good to destroy certain things,because you build things to replace them.'

Lucio has old friends in the Southern Cone. Funds from the forgery operatives helped hundreds from revolutionary organizations exile and finance clandestine actions against the bloody dictatorships which disappeared ten thousands of activists, students and workers during the 1970'sthroughout Latin America. In Uruguay, funds from falsified Citibank travelers’ checks funded the guerilla group Tupamaros, in the US the black Panthers and other revolutionary groups throughout Europe.

During his recent visit to South America, Lucio stayed at the worker run BAUEN Hotel in Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires. He was astounded by the accomplishments of the workers without bosses. At the BAUEN hotel,workers are putting into practice workers autogestíon or self-management. Self-management has been a mainstay of anarchist thought since the birth of capitalism. Rather than authority – obey relationship between capitalists and workers, self-management implies that workers put into practice an egalitarian system in which people collectively decide, produce and control their own destinies for the benefit of the community. But for such a system to work, participants have to be hard working and responsible, one of the most important attributes a man or woman should have according to Lucio. 'The anarchist movement was built by workers. Without work we can’t talk about self-management, to put self-management into practice we need to know how to do things, to work. It’s easy to be bohemian.'

Lucio explains that his anarchism is based in his poor childhood in fascist Spain. 'My anarchist origins are rooted in my experience growing up in a poor family. My father was leftist, had gone to jail because he wanted the automony of the Basque country. For me that’s not revolution, I’m not nationalist. With nationalism humanity has committed a lot of mistakes. When my father got out of jail he became a socialist. We suffered a lot. I went to look for bread and the baker wouldn’t give it to me, because we didn’t have money. For me poverty enriched me, I didn’t have to make any effort to lose respect for the establishment, the Church, private property and the State.'

In Spain, fascism persevered 30 years after the end of World War II.Hundreds were placed in jail for resisting the Franco dictatorship.Anthropologists have estimated that from the onset of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936 to Franco’s death in November 1975, Franco's Nationalists killed between 75,000 and 150,000 supporters of the Republic.

Lucio exiled to France where he discovered anarchism. He had deserted the nationalist army and escaped to France. Paris in the 1960’s was a burgeoning city for anarchist intellectuals, organizers and guerillas in exile. It was there that Lucio met members from the anarcho-syndicalist trade union, Confederación Nacional de Trabajo (CNT). He was anxious to participate.

During his early years in France, Lucio met Francisco Sabate, the legendary anarchist and guerilla extraordinaire. At this time Sabate, otherwise known by his nickname 'El Quico' was the most sought after anarchist by the Franco regime.French police were also looking for Sabate, who led resistance against Franquismo. 'When I met Quico, I was participating in the Juventud Libertarias. They asked me if I could help Sabate, me an ignorant, I didn’t know who he was.' Sabate used Lucio’s house as a hide out. The young Lucio, listened to Sabate’s tales of direct action and absorbed whatever wisdom he had to offer, like methods for sniffing out infiltrators. 'I met guerillas that put me on the road to direct action and expropriations. Sabate taught me to lose respect for private property.'

Lucio Urtubia in BAUEN Hotel

It was then that Lucio began participating in bank robberies. 'There are no bigger crooks than the banks,' says Lucio in the defense of expropriation. '[This was the] only means the anarchist had, without funding from industry or government representatives to fund them. The money was sent to those suffering from Franco’s regime.' Student organizations and worker organizations received the funds to carry out grass roots organizing. In other cases the money was used for the guerilla actions against Franco’s regime, such as campaigns for the release of political prisoners in the nationalist jails. To save the lives of exiles, Lucio thought of a master plan to falsify passports so Spanish nationals could travel. 'Passports for a refugee means being able to escape the country and lead safe lives elsewhere,'he explains. Not only in Europe but in the US and South America,dissidents used false ID’s to lead their lives and direct actions.

In 1977, Lucio’s group began forging checks as a direct form to finance resistance. Lucio was essentially the 'boss' of the operation—he made,distributed and cashed the checks. The checks were harder to falsify than counterfeit bills. Lucio thought they should target the largest banking institution in the world, National City Bank. The distribution of the checks went to different subversive groups who used the funds to finance solidarity actions. Lucio explains that 'no one got rich' from the checks. Most of the funds went to the cause. All over Europe, these checks with the same code number were cashed at the same time.

Lucio’s master plan cost City Bank tens of millions of dollars in forged travelers’ checks. But many say a much larger sum was expropriated.City Bank was at the mercy of the forger, who had cost so much that the bank had to suspend travelers checks, ruining the holiday for thousands of tourists. At the time, people did not use check cards or credit cards. Lucio was arrested in 1980 and found with a suitcase full of the forged checks. In the meantime during Lucio’s arrest, Citibank continued to receive false travelers’ checks.

Citbank became worried. Representatives from the bank agreed to negotiate.Lucio would be released if he handed over the printing plates for the forged checks. The exchange was made, and Lucio became a legend for his mastermind plan. Although his life as a forger ended at 50-years-of-age, his life as an anarchist continued.

Lucio had always worked as a bricklayer. 'What’s helped me the most is my work, Anarchists were always workers.' Lucio–bricklayer, anarchist,forger and expropriator has left a legacy like his predecessors.'People like Loise Michel, Sabate, Durruti, all the expropriators taught me how to expropriate, but not for personal gain, but how to use those riches for change.' At 76-years-of-age he does not apologize for his actions. 'I’ve expropriated, which according to the Christian religion is a sin. For me expropriations are necessary. As the revolutionaries say, robbing and expropriation is a revolutionary act as long as one doesn’t benefit from it.'

Marie Trigona is a writer, radio producer and filmmaker based in Argentina.Lucio is one of the most fascinating people she has met in her experience interviewing people. She can be reached at mtrigona@msn.com