Brenda Elsey, fútbol chileno

The Independent Republic of Football: The Politics of Neighborhood Clubs in Santiago, Chile, 1948–1960 Brenda Elsey Journal of Social History, Volume 42, Number 3, Spring 2009, pp. 605-630 (Article) Published by George Mason University Press DOI: 10.1353/jsh.0.0158

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jsh/summary/v042/42.3.elsey.html

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SECT SECTIO ION N II LESISURE AND POPULAR FASHION FASHION

THE INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC OF FOOTBALL: THE POLITICS OF NEIGHBORHOOD CLUBS IN SANTIAGO, CHILE, 1948–1960 By Brenda Elsey

Hofstra University

Introduction Across Latin America, and indeed the world, football has shaped national, ethnic, and gender identities. Idealized types including the youthful Argentine pibe and pibe and clubs such as the Afro-Peruvian community’s Alianza Lima carried social significance beyond the realm of sports.1 In the 1950s, amateur sports clubs in Sant Santia iago, go, Chil Chilee crea create ted d a magn magnet etic ic icon icon of the the popu popula larr barrio or neighborhood neighborhood footba football ll player player.. Thi Thiss figure figure became became a charism charismati aticc symbol symbol of workin working-c g-clas lasss ingenu ingenu-ity and class injustice. The following article argues that amateur clubs and their football football hero played an important important role in political political struggles. struggles. Popular neighborneighborhood clubs integrated working-class men into urban politics, connected them to parties, and served as sites of political critique.2 In this way, they contributed to democratizi democratizing ng the political sphere. Moreover, Moreover, by exposing exposing the corruption of professional clubs and the material deprivation of working-class communities, amateurs tore away at the perception that sports were fair and neutral. Barrio footballers often criticized class inequalities through claims to a more “honorable” masculinity. masculinity.3 Their barrio hero represented an alternative construction of masculinity based on one’s physical labor, creativity, solidarity with other workers, and political militancy. Despite the ubiquity of football in Latin America, little historical work has focused on its relevance to politics in the region.4 Scholars who have studied football, or sports more broadly, often limited their inquiry through binary categori goriza zati tion onss of popu popula larr cult cultur uree as resi resist stan ance ce or domi domina nati tion on.. Th Thee spec specte terr of nati nation on-alist fervor and the involvement of notorious dictatorships in football prompted a leading historian of the region to conclude that its, “chief significance has been its use by the elite to bolster official ideology and to channel social energy in ways compatible with prevailing social values.”5 Anthropologists and sociologists sociologists have been less dismissive, dismissive, paying greater greater attention attention to the relationship of football to gender, racial, and national identities.6 The present article contributes to the historiography in connecting football, as popular culture par excellence, to broader political processes. It rests upon an analysis of clubs as civic associations, mediating between formal and informal politics. Interdisciplinary discussions surrounding civic associations have been reinvigorated by the work of social scientists such as Robert Putnam and Charles

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Tilly, yet there are few studies of these organizations in Latin American historiography.7 Studies focused on macro-level analysis and formal politics have often bracketed local dynamics in their analyses of political change.8 This article argues that football clubs contributed to radicalization in working-class neighborhoods, within and beyond the electoral sphere. It begins with an analysis of San Miguel, a center of barrio football in Santiago. The article moves to examine the relationship between amateur and professional clubs in national organizations. Professionals, led by corporate executives with strong connections to the state, sought to de-politicize and de-localize football in order to create a profitable business. Their attacks on the “Marxist” amateurs and the conflicts that ensued, shaped the ways in which footballers and their fans understood political divisions. The 1950s were crucial years in Chilean politics, in which a tripartite split between the right, center, and left emerged. By the end of the decade, Chile was one of the few countries in the world where Socialists and Communists could realistically hope to take power through electoral means. This was suprising considering that the growth of support for the Communists took place during a decade-long prohibition of the party. In addition, the disintegration of the Popular Front, a center-left coalition which had controlled the executive during the 1940s was seen by many as a major setback for leftist parties. Radical barrio leaders responded to these national developments with renewed attention to local civic associations.9 These organizations supported Communist and Socialist parties through neighborhood activities, during electoral campaigns, and within unions. Amateur football clubs were among the largest and most politicized of these neighborhood organizations. In the process of developing a relationship to politicians and labor organizations, they pressured leftist parties to include access to recreation, public space, and health education in their agendas. The history of football clubs was intimately related to urbanization, the implementation of fixed work schedules, and expanded leisure opportunities. Football clubs first appeared in Santiago during the 1880s, introduced in port cities by British immigrants. Enthusiasts created clubs within factories, unions, schools, and ethnic associations, but neighborhood clubs were the most numerous. Ranging from dozens to thousands, members wrote constitutions, constructed clubhouses, and organized season schedules. The grandest amateur clubhouses included medical clinics and ballrooms. As Santiago’s population grew from around 500,000 in the 1920s to around 2,000,000 by the end of the 1950s, civic associations helped new migrants adjust to urban life.10 This wave of migration intensified struggles over land use and forced many residents into shantytowns. These makeshift neighborhoods appeared so quickly that they became known as callampas or mushrooms. Social scientists have identified shantytown residents as key actors in the political radicalization of the working class in Santiago.11 In these new neighborhoods, football clubs provided important spaces for sociability. Clubhouses and football fields, alongside plazas and schools, marked the borders of neighborhoods. For many residents, clubs embodied the history of their neighborhood and its character. One director explained, “Without football a group of people cannot be called a community.”12 The process of creating community identities, albeit changing and unstable, constituted an important political practice

THE INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC OF FOOTBALL Figure 1

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in shantytowns. Very few positive images of the poor appeared in newspapers, literature, and movies.13 Mainstream media portrayed these neighborhoods as havens of delinquency and evidence of a country in crisis. In contrast, amateur clubs stressed that their members, despite facing economic inequalities, were healthy, civically conscious, and talented. Making Machos and Shaping Citizens in San Miguel Just south of the city’s center (see Figure 1 above), the sprawling municipality of San Miguel was known for its militant workers and macho footballers. In reference to the neighborhood’s distinctive character, Socialist politician Mario Palestro called it the “Independent Republic of San Miguel.” During the 1950s, barrio clubs participated in campaigns to acquire utilities, housing, and public space. In the process, they strengthened their relationship to unions and local politicians. Popular clubs rejected the model of amateurism promoted by the Chilean elite, which valued restraint and diffidence. The idea that men from San Miguel were macho, in their sexual prowess, political militancy, and in the arduousness of their labor, was central to the barrio football icon they created. This icon provided the left with a magnetic symbol that contained a multilayered criticism of inequalities. Moreover, barrio clubs broadened traditional notions of what constituted political issues to include recreation and cultural practices. In their appeals for government support, amateur footballers expressed their belief in the capacity of clubs to develop young men into future leaders. Delegates from San Miguel to the national Chilean Football Federation warned that without public support for barrio football, civic life would suffer. In an open letter to the Director of the State Department of Sports, one leader explained that, “The rowdy peach fuzz of the barrios protect and provide for the future. Each neighborhood must have its club, up and running. There, they make snot-nosed kids into machos. And Chile can save itself, by believing in its children.”14 Making boys into machos, as directors phrased their mission, meant teaching young players proper forms of behavior in social situations with other men, a sense of responsibility, and commitment to their communities. Older club members hoped to generate enthusiasm among youth for their community projects. One director explained that, “while [clubs] do not provide adequate means to live, [without them] it would be impossible to obtain the social tranquility of the neighborhood.”15 Story telling, practical joking, nicknaming, drinking, and playing provided opportunities to build intergenerational relationships and impart neighborhood lore. Clubs created and preserved local histories through their yearbooks, trophy cases, and libraries at their social seats. They linked San Miguel’s success in sports to its importance in Chilean textiles, metal works, and meat production.16 Barrio directors claimed that the physical demands of working in these industries sharpened their players’ athletic abilities. Football matches in San Miguel were public performances where players could “prove” their superiority over men who often had power over them in other spheres.17 Footballers often attributed their dribbling, endurance, and creativity to their working-class upbringing. The notion that workers’ barrios would cultivate ideal citizens and that a

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humble background prepared young men for athletic competition contrasted with prevailing attitudes toward the urban poor. For many, San Miguel’s shantytowns symbolized the problematic development of the capital. In the 1950s, San Miguel claimed over 100,000 residents. Urban planners who hoped to preen Santiago into South America’s most modern city were exasperated by the municipality’s unruliness.18 Government projects that relocated squatters from the city’s center to San Miguel further strained resources and pushed residents to peripheries.19 Reporters who visited the area portrayed its shantytown dwellers as lazy, perverse, and delinquent. “Sympathetic” social workers implied that cramped housing conditions led to improper sexual relations and moral depravity among the poor.20 Unionized Football Clashes between organized labor and employers drew national attention to San Miguel as a “hot-bed” of political conflict.21 Relationships between the workplace and surrounding communities encouraged the emergence of a militant working-class identity. Union sports clubs and football matches strengthened the connections between members’ work and home lives. For example, the football club of MADEMSA, a large metal factory, attracted fans without any affiliation to the company. Approximately thirty metalworkers founded Club Deportivo MADEMSA in 1937; twenty years later membership had grown to over one thousand.22 Although membership was limited to factory workers, thousands of residents followed the club avidly, around the city and even to provincial areas. According to one fan, although MADEMSA was, “formed exclusively of workers,” it was better known as a neighborhood than a factory club.23 Officially MADEMSA’s sports club was autonomous from the union; in practice, however, membership in the union was mandatory to participate in the club. Many workers who began as sportsmen in Club MADEMSA went on to leadership positions in the union and vice versa. The union paper, El Músculo publicized the club’s events and was distributed throughout San Miguel. Union and neighborhood newspapers provided crucial publicity for barrio football matches. Their coverage connected readers who also met in the stands, around the radio, on the shop floor, and in the corner bars. Local media coverage boosted the prestige of standout football players in their communities. Furthermore, in contrast to national publications such as the weekly Estadio, these papers criticized government agencies, professional clubs, and newspapers for their lack of support for barrio sports programs. Journalists for union and neighborhood newspapers were attentive to class hierarchies in their biographical pieces of footballers. They highlighted features of players’ lives, such as economic migrations, that working-class readers would have likely experienced. Articles about MADEMSA player Carlos Orrego, for example, described his impoverished childhood at length. Born into poverty in the small town of La Calera, Orrego attended just a year of primary school, which he described as a luxury. He was forced to leave school to work in the limestone mines after the death of his father. El Músculo explained that, “As a good patriot and citizen he voluntarily presented himself for duty, completing his military service in a regiment of the capital.”24 The poor disproportionately

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completed their military duty, and many readers would have identified with Orrego’s trajectory. Unions and working-class associations routinely criticized elites for evading military service. Labor leaders often cited this as evidence that “real” patriotism flourished among working-class men. In addition to Orrego’s experience of material deprivation as a young man, his economic migrations were also common experiences among workers. In the 1920s he moved from La Calera, lured by salaries at El Teniente copper mines. At El Teniente he served as captain of the football club Unión Cordillera. He also played basketball and ran in the 100, 200, and 400-meter races. El Músculo described Orrego’s “all-around” athleticism as part of a worker-sportsman tradition. They rejected the idea, dominant in the mainstream media, that moral values of amateur sportsmanship were intrinsic to British or bourgeois culture. The attention to Orrego’s experiences at the copper mines drew attention to his connection with the birthplace of the Chilean labor movement. Sports journalists for union papers frequently credited barrio footballers that migrated from copper mines and nitrate fields with bringing class-consciousness to the city. Local papers in San Miguel heaped praise upon Carlos Orrego for his political activities. This differed from the mainstream press, which lauded football’s ability to transcend ethnic, class, partisan, and regional differences. Football clubs played a key role in Orrego’s integration to life in the capital. Once in the capital, Orrego’s reputation as a talented footballer had helped him to land a job at MADEMSA. In addition, he joined San Miguel’s oldest barrio football club, Carlos Walker Martínez, where fellow members introduced him to local political circles. Orrego was subsequently elected to San Miguel’s city council. One writer remarked that, “As Generals wear medals and decorations for battles won and services rendered to the country, [Orrego] shows other achievements: Secretary General of the Metal Workers Union, President of Carlos Walker Martínez [San Miguel’s oldest football club], President of the Cooperative of Employees and Workers of MADEMSA, director of various sports clubs in the neighborhood, and member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Party.”25 The circuitous relationship among unions, clubs, and local politics made women’s marginalization in these arenas all the more difficult to challenge. Despite the frequency with which sports clubs and unions shared members and leadership, sportsmen guarded their independence. They repeatedly voted to maintain distinctions between the two entities.26 Football directors feared that if they merged with the union, they would lose their capacity to collaborate with diverse groups in the community. Club members believed that the setting of the sports club needed to be distinct from the union, even if the membership was the same. In part, this was an attempt to avoid the pitched battles that political parties waged over the control of unions in San Miguel.27 A variety of parties from the center-left participated in club directorates, including Radicals, Christian Democrats, Socialists, and Communists.28 Amateur clubs insisted on recreation as a right of the working class beginning in the 1910s, but it was not until the 1950s that national labor organizations paid attention to these demands. Clubs like MADEMSA demonstrated that football could become a pillar of neighborhood identity, heighten the union’s profile in communities, and bolster a sense of class solidarity.29 As a result, the national


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labor confederation, the Confederación de Trabajadores de Chile (CTCh) positioned themselves as an intermediary between workers and state agencies at the neighborhood level. They helped clubs to obtain modest assistance from state agencies, including the Department of Information and Culture. In addition, the CTCh convened a Commission on Workers’ Sports and Culture. This commission collaborated with government officials to build Sportsmen’s Houses, where workers could hold meetings, play games, and relax.30 Young labor leaders, in particular, attended matches and promoted the construction of stadiums in workers’ neighborhoods.31 In elections for union officers, experience in neighborhood football clubs proved beneficial. Campaign publicity treated club leadership as a demonstration of candidates’ strength of character and civic concern. For instance, the CTCh supported the candidacy of Alejandro Gallegos as the President of the Transportation Workers’ Union in part because he had directed and played for a barrio football club. Unionists considered his experience in sports as key to his success in building consensus among members.32 Gallegos was the first candidate in the union’s history to win a majority of votes and many attributed his popularity to his experience in neighborhood football. In their campaigns to control public space and acquire basic utilities in their neighborhoods, barrio clubs welcomed the support of the CTCh, and its successor, the Central Unica de Trabajadores (CUT). When the Public Housing Corporation, CORVI, announced its plans to transform stadiums and football fields into housing units, amateur clubs launched a series of protests. The CUT publicly supported the protests, explaining, “It is more necessary than ever to strengthen the unity of the Chilean youth in defense of their just right to recreation within their scarce economic means.”33 Football clubs argued that CORVI’s plan would create higher density housing, which would hurt their communities. In response, the Football Association of San Miguel drafted a design with alternative sites for the housing projects to protect the few public spaces in popular neighborhoods. Drawing on decades of experience, these barrio clubs circulated petitions, investigated land claims, met with government officials, and organized demonstrations. Club leaders criticized CORVI for not arranging running water or electricity in the proposed housing units. After nearly a year of wrangling over the plan, CORVI agreed to scratch the project. Barrio Clubs and Local Politics In the 1950s barrio football clubs broadened their political activities and experimented with new types of organizations. Fifteen clubs in San Miguel formed a lobby group named, “Footballers of the 8th District.”34 The decision of these clubs to organize according to their electoral district demonstrates their knowledge of politics and their belief in political channels as effective means to address community problems. They sought to create new recreational spaces, identify sponsors for poor players, and design an urban plan for San Miguel that would promote “healthier socialization.” Ultimately, the clubs hoped to build strong relationships with all politicians representing the 8th District. They argued that their neighborhoods deserved preferential consideration because working-class

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residents experienced physical strain from manual labor and high levels of youth delinquency. Equally as important, however, was the exceptional talent that these clubs claimed could be found in workers’ barrios.35 In neighborhood associations, Socialists, Communists, Radicals, and Liberals collaborated with one another in ways that would have been unimaginable at the national level. Most of the clubs in the Footballers of the 8th District affiliated with leftist parties, and the group had declared the Communist Party newspaper, El Siglo, as their official publication. They also publicly endorsed political candidates, almost always from leftist parties. During elections, they opened their clubhouses for speeches and debates. Despite this apparent partisanship, the Footballers of the 8th District insisted that it was a multi-party coalition. They even incorporated the Rangers Football Club, which was connected to the right-wing Liberal Party.36 This was remarkable considering that the Liberal Party’s insistence on the prohibition of the Communist Party and exile of its leaders. Following the official ban on Communism beginning in 1948, party leaders focused on civic associations and local politics with renewed vigor. This strategy contributed to the growth in the party’s popularity during the ten-year proscription. In San Miguel, as in many of Santiago’s working-class areas, Socialist and Communist Party politicians formed strong relationships with football clubs. Socialist politician Mario Palestro was one of the men responsible for building ties between parties, the local government, and football clubs. Palestro began as a train worker in San Miguel, participated in the labor union, and went on to become a popular politician. His outspoken radicalism and fierce defense of workers’ rights drew national attention. Palestro believed in the power of civic associations to change communities and develop workers’ consciousness. To that end, he organized sports clubs, youth orchestras, and theatre troupes. After having served as a city councilman and mayor of San Miguel from 1949 until 1953, he was elected to Congress. He was re-elected until the military coup of 1973. Amateur football clubs mobilized in support of Palestro and praised his political activities.37 Despite scarce resources, hundreds of football clubs in shantytowns and squatter settlements sent Palestro decorative certificates commemorating his involvement in their organizations.38 In his memoirs, Mario Palestro reflected at length on the role of sports in San Miguel’s civic life, identity, and politics. For Palestro, barrio clubs were essential to raising young men with confidence to confront the authorities, including patrons and police. He had joined the barrio football club Unión Condell at a very young age. Palestro recalled the importance of the club in shaping his connection to the community and his sense of class solidarity. Most of Condell’s members worked in the meat packing plants and butcher shops that surrounded the Public Slaughterhouse in San Miguel. He recalled how spectators used matches as a vehicle for creative expression. In their chants and songs, fans insulted the opposing team’s masculinity, profession, and talent. For Unión Condell’s fans, the physical demands of working meat packing plants and butcher shops were evidence of this superior masculinity. Fans made references to meat, knives, bulls, and other symbols of their industry to underscore the physical fortitude and sexual prowess of their players. As unionists, squatters, and leftist militants, club members faced regular ha-


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rassment from the police. Barrio players’ belief in their physical condition shaped their responses to these intimidating experiences. For Palestro, his athleticism enabled him, “to escape unscathed from the skirmishes with police that were occurring every day in Santiago. And it was natural that it would be this way since the Greens (nickname used to describe the militarized police or carabineros) were not in permanent training like me.”39 Athletic agility gave Palestro and his friends the confidence to confront the authorities. As mayor, Palestro opened the municipality’s offices to barrio clubs for meeting spaces free from the threat of harassment. He also supported their efforts to transform unused lands into public parks and football fields.40 The effervescence of amateur football in the 1950s challenges the assumption among scholars and fans that professionalism turned football players into docile spectators.41 In San Miguel, the popularity of professional football did not end the importance of amateur clubs, numerically or qualitatively. Residents recalled barrio players from the era as “legendary” and “famous.” Club members asserted that at any moment dozens of their players could have joined a professional squad, but were too honorable and independent to sell their talents. Palestro recalled, “Marticorena, the Arenas brothers, and so many others, could have been stars of any professional team,” however they were, “irrepressible bohemians who could never be subjected to the discipline of the professional club.”42 Barrio clubs had attained such status that Palestro pointed to his relationship with them as evidence of his continued commitment to the working class. He reminisced that after the legislature closed, “I spent the weekends celebrating victories in the neighborhood clubs or lively parties in celebration of club anniversaries, humble, simple, but full of friendship and warmth.”43 Campaigns for public space, housing, cooperatives, and utilities strengthened the relationship between football clubs and leftist political parties. For example, in 1957 a devastating fire in San Miguel drew attention to the precarious conditions of shantytowns in the area. Seeking shelter, shantytown dwellers, or pobladores, were temporarily housed in the Municipal Stadium of San Miguel. The picture of impoverished families gathered together in a site intended for enjoyment prompted harsh criticism of the Ibáñez government’s failure to alleviate the housing crisis. The stadium provided a central location from which residents planned a toma, or illegal land seizure of terrains in the western part of San Miguel.44 Thousands set out from the stadium to take part in this toma, which created the community known as La Victoria, with support from the Catholic Church, Communist Party, Football Association of San Miguel, and municipal officials. Football clubs in La Victoria served as vehicles of integration, storehouses of local history, and centers of organizational experience. The names of clubs commemorated important historical events in the community. Club 30th of October, for example, was named in honor of the date of the La Victoria toma. Abel Ojeda, one of the founding residents, emphasized the importance of football in squatter settlements, where building social solidarity was an urgent task.45 Ojeda’s house was barely standing when he founded the first football club in La Victoria. The establishment of football clubs, local stores, and parishes contributed to residents’ sense of their community’s permanence. Moreover, Abel Ojeda claimed that through football La Victoria overcame its reputation as an

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impoverished neighborhood of delinquents and land thieves. He recalled, “At first [other barrios] beat us, but we began to go every afternoon to the field in the market and practice for about two hours, and with that we began to win and they respected us.”46 Soon clubs from La Victoria won championships of San Miguel, then metropolitan Santiago. More importantly for Ojeda, players from La Victoria represented the positive values of the community through their fair play. La Victoria’s residents resisted police actions against the community and government threats to destroy the settlement. Their success inspired dozens more land occupations in San Miguel. In the context of these tomas, claims to urban space were charged with political meaning. One of La Victoria’s football clubs, Deportivo La Posada, launched a project to transform abandoned properties into football fields.47 This project required research of land ownership records, knowledge of the legal system, and formal petitions to the municipality. Unlike petitions from working-class clubs in the 1920s, which employed narratives of national decline and flagging masculinity, clubs in La Victoria asserted that they were essential to restoring Chile’s reputation abroad. They declared that the national team’s honor depended upon the talented players from barrio clubs, without whom the team could not hope to win. In addition, the clubs emphasized that working-class neighborhoods had a right to access public space for recreation. Conflicts erupted frequently between barrio clubs and local landowners hostile to land occupations. In 1959 Luis Ochagavía, from one of San Miguel’s traditional aristocratic families, erected a barrier with armed guards that blocked La Victoria’s access to the municipal stadium.48 Although the Football Association recognized that the road was within Ochagavía’s property boundaries, they cited the barrier as a violation of the public’s rights to the stadium. They claimed Ochagavía’s attempt to cut off access to the stadium proved that he did not consider them “human.”49 After football clubs convinced Mario Palestro and members of the city council to intervene on their behalf, Ochagavía agreed to remove the guards and open the road. Football clubs linked squatter settlements and established barrios to agricultural areas undergoing urbanization. In the 1950s, the Football Association of San Miguel held matches on farmland, in squatter settlements, and in wellestablished urban districts. Agricultural workers’ clubs sent delegates to the association’s monthly meetings. In the association, delegates worked on projects with firefighters, teachers’ associations, and choral groups.50 In 1952, association leaders estimated that 40,000 residents in the south of San Miguel alone belonged to sports clubs.51 While this number may be inflated, given that the total population of the area could not have surpassed 100,000, the director’s estimate illustrates the high profile of clubs in these communities. Barrio clubs spearheaded efforts to acquire utility services for their neighborhoods. In the shantytown Miguel Dávila, the Cooperative of Construction Workers formed the community’s first football club.52 Drawing upon their technical skills and industry connections, the cooperative built an elaborate headquarters. With the help of the Football Association of San Miguel they attained permits, water, and electricity for the club’s facilities. This know-how benefited


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the community’s efforts to attain public services. For example, the club organized efforts to improve transportation in their community, that hitherto had been without public bus service. Backed by the Football Association and the municipality, the footballers convinced the bus company to extend their routes. The support of the municipal politicians and the ultimate success of their campaign encouraged barrio clubs to seek resolution to their problems through political channels. Amateurs vs. Professionals: The Barrio Clubs on a National Stage Amateur football’s boom was not a spontaneous occurrence experienced in isolation, but rather a collective event. As in San Miguel, barrio clubs throughout the city organized to acquire urban services, create public spaces, and build relationships with local politicians. In the process, they pushed their unions and political parties to broaden their goals for workers in the realm of recreation and culture.53 Barrio football clubs celebrated the creativity, civic engagement, and resilience of working-class sportsmen. Professionals attacked amateurs for their “politicization” of the ideal footballer. The effervescence of football in shantytowns and squatter settlements empowered working-class directors in the national Chilean Football Federation. In the Federation, amateurs and professionals profoundly disagreed on the role of the state, market, politics, and women in football. Their arguments reflected a broader process of political polarization, as well as the ways in which everyday struggles over football shaped members’ understanding of politics. Amateur club members imagined themselves as a counterpublic, a distinct community among the mass of Chileans interested in football.54 They claimed their clubs were truly democratic because of their participatory culture, inclusiveness, and roots in the poorest sector of society. They spoke with one another through local media and radio, and face to face at organization meetings, bars, and matches. Barrio directors believed that the universal appeal of sports enabled them to overcome the ideological divisions of other civic associations. To their surprise, neither the state agencies that oversaw physical education nor professional clubs were enthusiastic about the growth of barrio football. Professionals reacted with hostility when amateur delegates suggested that public resources should be devoted to encouraging mass participation in sports. Amateurs took pride in the internal organization of their clubs and the active involvement of rank and file members. The ethos that members be engaged participants meant that club leadership underwent intense scrutiny. Barrio club members demanded that directors be “one of them,” in other words, figures that could be approached, criticized, and replaced. When directors lapsed in their duties or became estranged from the membership, they faced chastisement. For example, members accused club directors in the western neighborhood of Las Barrancas of creating a “dictatorship” and removed them from their positions mid-term.55 Cases such as these attest to members’ knowledge of club procedures and their willingness to closely monitor officers. They rejected the paternal figure of the upper-class director, common in the first half of the century. Part of barrio clubs’ appeal was their fraternal character. Club histories characterized

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founders as friends and neighbors, and not for instance, as local business owners. The model director shared the hardships of club members and lived side-by-side with them.56 Amateur club statutes expressed the strong attachment members felt to their institutions and their commitment to a democratic structure. Often numbering over forty pages, statutes provided safeguards for recalling directors or reallocating powers to a general assembly.57 They laid out the format of meetings in detail, including how many times each member could speak and for how long, the process of elections, and the distribution of assets in the event of the club’s demise. The Minister of Interior demanded a standardized format for statutes in clubs’ requests for legal status, but most clubs did not elect to file for government recognition. This did not mean, however, that club members objected to rules. Newspaper accounts show that members cared about club rules and debates over how to interpret them occurred frequently. The formality of clubs reflected members’ desire to create lasting institutions that would survive them. Often founders organized clubs to commemorate deeply personal experiences, such as the death of a loved one. The structure of professional clubs and the practices of their directorates contrasted sharply with those of amateurs. Professional directors, typically business owners and wealthy patrons, felt threatened by amateur football’s political activities. Professional directors had connections to the governments of Carlos Ibáñez (1952–1958) and Jorge Alessandri (1958–1964), as well as to high-ranking legislators. Professional club directors and conservative journalists criticized the growth of “Marxist” influence in amateur football. When barrio clubs began to vie for power in the Football Federation, professionals attacked their leadership abilities and their youth programs for producing undisciplined players. Officially, amateurs and professionals shared power in the Football Federation equally, but in practice professional clubs dominated the organization.58 This asymmetrical relationship developed slowly, beginning with the formation of the professional league in 1933. At first, little differentiated amateurs and professionals, as even in the 1950s many professional players kept their jobs outside of football. Over time, the professional association adopted rules and practices that segregated their clubs from amateurs. Professional clubs changed with their emergence as important business enterprises. The international growth of professional football raised expectations of clubs’ profitability. Directorships accrued greater power and they increased membership rosters from a few thousand to over ten thousand. Professional clubs remained technically cooperative in their ownership, but directors who invested fortunes in club elections and projects wielded disproportionate influence. Clubs altered their statutes to consolidate decision-making power in the directorship. Thus, rank and file members of professional clubs had less of a role in their governance. Professional football’s merchandising, centralized structure, andbarras, or organized fan clubs, repulsed many amateur sportsmen. In addition, professionals participated less in the barrios where they had originated and moved to the upper-class neighborhoods in the northeastern part of the city (where almost all their headquarters are today). However, professional clubs continued to recruit most of their players from popular barrio programs. Their refusal to invest in these programs created resentment among amateurs.


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Professional football clubs maintained a mutually beneficial relationship with the country’s leading newspapers and sports magazines. Mainstream publications focused almost exclusively on professionals or international amateur competitions, such as the Olympic Games. Clubs invited sympathetic journalists to club events and arranged interviews with star players. National newspapers and professional clubs shared personnel (professional directors often held executive positions in publishing), economic interests, and social activities. Major dailies like El Mercurio had little incentive to cover amateur sports since the market was geographically segmented, making the reading public difficult to target. Their journalists barely disguised their contempt for the popularity of barrio clubs. El Mercurio’s reporters blamed the poor performances of the Chilean national team on the independent and “anarchic” nature of amateur clubs.59 Without mainstream publicity, alternative media, particularly the Communist Party’s El Siglo, was pivotal to the boom in barrio football. In addition, amateur clubs created neighborhood newspapers and radio programs. They collaborated with local schools, civic associations, and municipalities to pool resources. These newspapers and radio programs generally lasted less than a year, but they provided a forum for ongoing conversations among amateur clubs and their supporters. Notable exceptions included the popular barrio show, “Voice of Quinta Normal,” hosted by amateur football director Antonio Leiva from 1936 to 1960 on Radio Cervantes.60 The persistence with which clubs began local newspapers and radio shows illustrates their importance to sportsmen. In these publications, barrio directors publicized their activities, described their matches, and featured local stars.61 Clubs saved these papers in their makeshift libraries as a way to preserve local history. Professionals and mainstream journalists defined amateurism in a manner that conveyed their belief in the interdependence of a “free market” economy, individual liberties, and democracy. El Mercurio described the professional director as, “A true ‘amateur,’ in love with his sports’ duties. He dedicates his free time, accepting with pleasure work that would earn a hefty salary under other circumstances. And when their club flounders economically, he supports it with the necessary funds from his own pockets.”62 The practice of directors offering financial support to professional clubs created a barrier that prevented most members from serving as directors. Instead of analyzing how this changed the nature of club governance, sports writers uncritically praised professional directors for donating their time and money. Professionals and their supporters worried that the “naiveté” of working classfootballers left them vulnerable to the appeal of leftist parties. Sports writers from El Mercurio and La Nación created frightening caricatures of Soviet sports programs. They warned that the Socialist and Communist parties in Chile would create the same types of institutions if given the opportunity. They categorized amateurism as part of Western, liberal values as opposed to the authoritarian system that Soviet athletes suffered under. One sportswriter described the Soviet Union as, “A functional country, in which each man is designated for a position; it does not have space for the amateur.”63 The conservative press warned sports fans that the ties between Marxist unions and leftists would destroy football, one of the culture’s great spaces of liberty. These warnings reflected the growing polarization among Latin American cultural producers that emerged in the Cold

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War period. As literary critic Jean Franco has chronicled, artists, journalists, and writers who criticized the authoritarian nature of the Soviet Union defined “freedom” as “freedom of the marketplace.”64 According to professionals, the hardship experienced by barrio clubs and in working-class neighborhoods more generally, was part of an otherwise beneficial process of economic modernization. When amateurs accused professionals of exploiting young barrio talent, professionals responded that amateurs simply misunderstood the market. They explained the situation was, “without responsible parties, without authors that have proposed things happen this way. It is this way because the public has its preferences. The incredible thing is that the amateur directors forget the reasons that determine the state of things.”65 Professional directors charged amateurs of creating false class animosity among footballers. They argued that the merchandising in football and increased ticket prices were a healthy part of football’s transition to a mass entertainment.66 One journalist explained, “Money does not stain. On the contrary, it indicates success.”67 As clubs from working-class neighborhoods began to dominate the amateur organizations in the 1950s, conflicts between amateurs and professionals intensified. In 1952 they waged a public battle over the election of the president of the Football Federation.68 In previous elections, professional delegates nominated the president and expected the approval of amateur delegates. For the first time, amateurs refused to support the professional candidate and nominated their own, Ernesto Allende. The professional directors were shocked. They complained that their financial importance to the Federation justified their greater power in the organization. Amateurs countered that professionals monopolized state resources for private pursuits, at the expense of the poor. The deadlock in votes between amateurs and professionals ended in the victory of Allende, since the rules stipulated (as amateur directors knew quite well) that in the event of a tie, the oldest candidate would win.69 The Communist Party organ, El Siglo, strengthened the ties between the party and amateur football clubs. El Siglo’s writers popularized the working-class barrio football icon in cartoons, editorials, and reports on matches. This icon offered leftists, not only Communists, a positive model of working-class creativity, talent, and honorable masculinity. In addition, the paper helped generate enthusiasm for amateur events and fostered inter-barrio relationships through their sponsorship of tournaments.70 Amateurs used publicity provided by El Siglo to criticize professionals and state agencies. Party representatives encouraged footballers to understand their conflicts with professionals and the state within a framework of class struggle. In turn, footballers pressured party leaders to view recreation and public spaces as central needs of the working class. Barrio clubs drew upon the paper’s support to pressure businesses to open their sports facilities to local residents. They also worked with El Siglo to create sports’ goods cooperatives and demand tax-exempt status for such goods.71 Through these activities, barrio clubs influenced a young generation of party militants that clubs were “organic” bases of political organization.72 Government bailouts for professional clubs infuriated amateurs and pushed them further from the centrist Radical Party, which had first mobilized their support in the 1920s. One of the earliest examples took place in 1949, when club Colo Colo’s stadium project ran into financial troubles. Radical Party Sen-


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ator Angel Faivovich introduced legislation, supported by President Gabriel González, to provide them with substantial funds.73 Despite its wealthy directorate and financial improprieties, Colo Colo carefully managed its image as the club, “of the people.” Their frequent tours of the provinces and skillful “branding” of the sixteenth-century Mapuche military leader Colocolo, played an important role in building their popularity. Colo Colo’s membership topped 30,000, making it the most powerful club in Chile.74 Amateurs pointed out that despite the populism of Colo Colo, their directors came from the highest economic sectors. Worse yet, the club had befriended “enemies of the people,” a reference to their close relationship with President González, who had outlawed the Communist Party. Amateurs’ belief in the superiority of working-class players surfaced in their everyday analyses of style and performance. They described working-class players as more decisive, stronger, and mentally agile. Professional players, often cultivated in neighborhood clubs, echoed the discourse of amateurs. In interviews, football players linked their athletic skills to their humble beginnings. Daniel Torres, who began playing in the northern city of Antofagasta, attributed his football skills to the necessity of responding to difficult life challenges. Torres explained, “You know how the fields are in the north the play is hard, be75 cause the people are hard, because the life is hard.” These stories identified material hardships and physical labor as important to the development of rougher, more powerful men. Their refusal to be dominated by other men was a central feature of their stories and a characteristic of the barrio football icon. Historian Thomas Miller Klubock found a similar connection in the mining communities of El Teniente in Chile, where football, “contributed to the general construction of a combative masculine identity based on a sense of personal strength and resilience.”76 For amateurs, these qualities produced players with a heightened sense of the game, better dribbling skills, and a physically aggressive style.77 Mainstream journalists could not deny that most talented professional players came from working-class clubs. They begrudgingly admitted, “It has become something of a tradition that footballers have their start in barrio clubs, which are seedbeds, this situation seems natural if we consider the strikingly popular character of this exciting sport.”78 Instead of applauding these barrio sports programs that typically operated on a minimal budget, journalists complained that they encouraged the “rebellious nature” of players. Estadio conceded that working-class players were astute ball handlers, but judged that their lack of discipline crippled the national team. Journalists often described the talent of popular players as natural, rather than the product of strategy or hard work. For example, the magazine wrote of Norton Contreras, a star of Barrio Eugenio, “He played by instinct, without thinking of what he was doing. And it all came easily, without great effort.”79 Rather than celebrating his effective ball handling, the article commented that this natural ability, common among workers, only encouraged his “laziness.” Conservative journalists, critical of barrio clubs’ political ties and leadership in national football organizations, rewrote the history of football to exclude the participation of working-class clubs.80 Nostalgic articles invited readers to imagine idyllic afternoon matches in which a handful of cultured Europeans and Creoles enjoyed the outdoors in harmony. They romanticized the stoic nature

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of “old cracks,” that never argued with referees or cried at their defeats. In an article that contrasted the popularity of football with its aristocratic past, Estadio focused on the life of Lord Burghley, Conservative Party politician and avid sportsman. The magazine characterized Burghley as, “the first and original model of the British ‘sportsman,’ correct to the point of exaggeration, stubbornly amateur, gentlemanly.”81 They declared that leftist activism and the divisions it created between professionals and amateurs endangered the values men like Burghley brought to football. The writer explained, “The political agitation of our time threatens to introduce elements unrelated to sport.”82 Professional directors bemoaned the mass participation on and off the field that barrio leaders celebrated. They blamed violent working-class spectators’ violence for low stadium attendance during the 1950s, rather than high-ticket prices or alienated fans.83 Complaints of increasing violence in the stands had been a constant refrain of sports journalists since the 1910s.84 However, mainstream publications blamed the supposed recent influx of working-class players with an upsurge in physical confrontations during matches. A brief glance at previous years of their own publications would have made it clear that due to a steady increase in fines to players and stricter regulations of physical contact, violence had indeed declined. When accusations of corruption emerged during financial crises of professional clubs, directors blamed the materialism of working-class players’ for driving up salaries. This rhetoric only escalated when professional players attempted to organize a union. Fictional serials, articles, and fotonovelas were replete with moral tales of footballers who reconciled with their parents, police, teachers, and coaches after a misunderstanding.86 Serial dramas often portrayed a player who had to choose between a more lucrative contract with a new club or loyalty to his first club. In the end, these characters accepted lower salaries out of obligation to their clubs.87 Biographical sketches of players sent didactic messages about the relationship between workers and their bosses. One such piece featured star player Juan Toro. Toro worked and lived at the Yarur textile company complex, even after being contracted by Audax Italiano. Lest any young reader dream of escaping a life of blue-collar employment through sports, the writer bluntly explained that, “football is ephemeral and only work endures.”88 Photographs of Toro beaming next to his workstation in the factory conveyed the benevolence of a company known for its staunch resistance of unionization and exploitation of workers.89 The Yarur factory owners were also directors of the professional football club Palestino and held high positions in the Football Federation. Professional club directors used similar anti-union tactics, including fines, sanctions, and propaganda, in their negotiations with factory workers and players. Women and Football As the history of San Miguel barrio football illustrates, male sociability was important to the role of clubs as sites of political recruitment and in fostering the creation of intergenerational relationships. Barrio clubs constructed a model of masculinity that championed rebellion, class solidarity, and community responsibility. This celebration of hyper-masculinity was not accompanied by a height-


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ened fear of women’s participation. While the barrio icon and the mentoring relationships that clubs encouraged were decidedly male, a vocal group of amateur directors emerged that embraced women’s participation in football. As early as 1950, one director boasted that women’s football had “increased the prestige of our neighborhood.”90 Advances in sports, these directors claimed, would translate to political achievements for women. The position of these directors was at odds with the mainstream press, which blamed feminism, and its perceived feminizing effect on male players, for the Chilean national team’s losses. Professionals and conservative publications were hostile to women’s participation in football as fans. Furthermore, they questioned the femininity of any woman who would be interested in playing football. This case may be suggestive rather than conclusive, but the decidedly “macho” barrio clubs were more open to women’s participation than their more elite counterparts. By the mid-1950s, the environment for women’s football improved following the impressive performances of female athletes and the activities of the Chilean feminist movement. Barrio footballers were questioning traditional notions of honor, often based on men’s authority over women and children. Supportive directors saw their encouragement of women’s sports as part of a modernized concept of honor. One director explained that, “Honorable is he who lives within his economic means, that cares for his dignity that conscientiously fulfills the duties of his profession, whatever they may be; that works for justice.”91 Furthermore, he advised players to show, “respect and consideration for your wife as a partner in life, not as someone only dedicated to serving the needs of the home.”92 For this group of directors, women’s subservience was not necessary to establish men’s honor. Their confidence in working-class masculinity and honor contrasted with lawmakers and medical professionals who were anxious about the state of workers. In 1953, ex-Olympian Sergio Ojeda organized a congressional committee to promote sports. He explained in a speech to the legislature that sports would help to revitalize the “Latin race,” threatened by “sexual impotence” and “neurosis.”93 Amateurs showed little interest in working with Ojeda, which resulted in the committee’s rapid demise. Women’s participation in neighborhood sports clubs had begun in the 1920s, when young single women created sections of tennis, ping-pong, and basketball within clubs. In the 1930s and 40s, some clubs’ statutes outlined sports that could be organized by women, but football was never among them. Often club statutes categorized women’s membership with children (just below young men between 9–16 years of age). This allowed them access to club facilities without “voice” or “vote.” Women created football teams in clubs of shantytowns and squatter settlements more often than in established working-class neighborhoods. Las Atómicas and Las Dinamítas, the first women’s football teams to capture widespread attention, formed in the early 1950s in the shantytowns of San Miguel. When sports magazines, such as Gol y Gol, reported on the matches between Las Atómicas and Las Dinamítas, they received dozens of requests from women’s teams who sought competitors.94 As participants, women re-signified the traditional rituals of clubs. For example, women footballers used the annual election of a Spring Queen as a fundraising opportunity for their teams. Others changed the contest, which was essentially a beauty pageant, to a “Sportswoman of the Year” competition.95

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Figure 2

This cartoon from “Nato” invites the reader to feel Cachupín’s frustration with women’s insistent chatter and relief when he shuts them up.96 Estadio, October 26, 1952, 2.

Conservative publications discouraged women’s presence in clubs, advocated the strict separation of men and women, and stressed the importance of aggression in athletic development. In 1958 Estadio published a letter, which blamed the effeminate qualities of Chilean footballers for their poor international standing.97 The editors praised this as the most salient explanation of losses to neighboring Argentina and Peru. The letter described Chilean players as lazy and passive. To truly bring shame upon them, the writer summarized the national team’s play as, “feminine football.”98 These analyses equated femininity with indecisiveness and weakness; therefore, while women may have benefited from football, they had nothing valuable to contribute. These journalists connected footballers’ loss of masculinity to broader indications that the boundaries between men and women’s activities were being blurred. Right-wing journalists were explicitly hostile toward women football fans


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and players.99 Women’s participation in football clubs threatened male domination of family resources for recreation, male sociability, and the political capital of sports. Almost weekly Estadio featured comics with punch lines based on women’s lack of understanding of football rules and terminology or their unreasonable demands on men’s leisure time. Violence toward women in these cartoons was intended to be humorous. A typical example shows two women, one the wife of the comic strip’s main character Cachupín (See Figure 2 above). The women’s conversation interrupts the radio transmission of a football match.100 Cachupín becomes increasingly agitated and attempts to stop them from talking. Their conversation is transcribed in the cartoon as “bla bla” or meaningless prattle, accompanied by exaggerated hand gestures. The brunt of the joke occurs when the man binds the women’s mouths, hands, and feet, just as the radio announces a penalty kick in the match. Coverage of women’s football sparked bitter debates among readers.101 Amateur club directors wrote to newspapers in defense of women’s participation in football and to encourage publications to continue their coverage. One reader sent in photos of female boxers and football players from the 1920s as a challenge to critics who warned of the potential health hazards of women’s sports activity.102 Barrio directors who advocated women’s football drew upon Marxist and feminist arguments to defend their position. For example, one director emphasized that women’s improved physical condition could help repair the physical damage that centuries of poverty inflicted on the poor.103 He explained traditional notions of women’s domesticity were antiquated methods to gloss over exploitation. Furthermore, he pointed out the advantages of “women’s liberation” for men, who needed modern, active companions. His editorial urged women to play sports as part of feminist practice and suggested that men would respect women more if they competed on the field. Barrio directors saw the accomplishments of their own clubs as political milestones for the working-class. Conclusion In October of 1949, barrio football clubs organized a demonstration in the city’s center, calling for the 1950s to be the “decade of the amateur.” Observers reported, “The streets and plazas near the Palace of La Moneda remained filled the whole day.”104 Club directors hoped to draw attention to the disparities in recreational opportunities and the quality of life in poorer districts. Writers for Estadio admonished the demonstrators, claiming that, “Sportsmen do not have a taste for marches of a political nature. The love for sport manifests itself in other forms not in massive demonstrations.”105 Forty years earlier, nearly to the day, sportsmen held a similar rally, which drew widespread support from even the most conservative sectors of the press. The shift from upper-class to working-class leadership, the barrio directors’ leftist politics, and the criticism of socioeconomic inequalities prompted the difference in reaction to the two marches. As the demonstrators hoped, the 1950s was in many ways a decade of amateurism. Enthusiasm for barrio clubs and numbers of participants grew steadily. Clubs received greater support from local politicians, labor unions, and leftist parties. Drawing upon their organizing experience and social relationships, foot-

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ballers broadened the scope of their activities to participate in struggles over housing, the creation of cooperatives, and installation of basic utility services. They formulated criticisms of state agencies that had neglected the problems of their communities. At the first national congress of amateur clubs held in 1953, economic disparity was a central theme. One leader explained, “We cannot nor should we continue supporting this enormous poverty and this bitter indifference of the authorities.”106 In the process they redefined the model sportsman as a working-class hero, engaged with local politics. The battle lines had been drawn between those who embraced professionalism as part of economic modernization, capitalism, and progress and the amateur footballers that criticized its materialism and corruption. Issues including women’s participation, the use of state resources, and class inequality were points of contention between footballers. Ideas about the proper places for political expression were also at stake. Professionals clung to the once dominant notion of sports as transcendent of political differences. Amateurs connected disparities within sports as part of broader class hierarchies. In addition, barrio clubs sought to expand leftist political agendas to include recreation. Moreover, as clubs mobilized their political connections and skills in community betterment campaigns, they affirmed their faith in political channels to resolve everyday problems. For barrio footballers, political activism was not an imposition of Marxist parties, but a legitimate struggle for community improvement and social justice. The popularization of the barrio football icon marked profound changes in the politics of amateur clubs. The idea that the working-class was a repository of talent, strength, and ingenuity was a radical one. This idol reflected the activities and relationships barrio clubs forged within their communities. Politicians from the Socialist and Communist parties and labor organizations lent crucial support to clubs in their campaigns. At the same time, football clubs provided an important base of support for leftists and contributed to their influence among civic associations. Furthermore, the barrio footballer became an important way in which class injustices were framed on a national scale. For conservative journalists and professionals, the barrio clubs’ control of the Chilean Football Federation was democracy at its worst. The “unsophisticated masses” controlled one of the most powerful social organizations in the country. In the process, they had created a magnetic symbol of what their leadership could offer. Department of History Hempstead, NY 11549-1000 ENDNOTES Generous support for this article was provided by the Social Science Research Council, Tinker Foundation, and the American Association of University Women. I would like to thank Yvie Fabella, Paul Gootenberg, Thomas Klubock, Temma Kaplan, Pablo Piccato, Joan Steele, the New York City Latin American History Workshop participants, and anonymous readers of the JSH for their suggestions on earlier versions of this article.


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1. See Eduardo Archetti, Masculinities: Football, Polo and the Tango in Argentina (Oxford and New York, 1999) and Rory M. Miller & Liz Crolley (eds), Football in the Americas: fútbol, futebol, soccer (London, 2007). 2. This is at odds with cases in which scholars have emphasized sports as important in the political miseducation of workers. See for example, Robert Wheeler, “Organized Sport and Organized Labour: The Workers’ Sports Movement,” Journal of Contemporary History 13 (1978): 191–210. Cases in which organized sports became vehicles for political integration include, Paul Dimeo, “ ‘With Political Pakistan in the Offing . . . ’ Football and Communal Politics in South Asia, 1887–1947,” Journal of Contemporary History 38 (2003): 377–394 and C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary (Durham, 1993). 3. Archetti, Masculinities and Jim McKay, Michael A. Messner, Donald F. Sabo (eds), Masculinities, Gender Relations, and Sport (Thousand Oaks, CA, 2000). 4. Latin America was notably absent from a recent issue of the Journal of Contemporary History dedicated to “Sport and Politics.” See Journal of Contemporary History 38 (2003). 5. Robert M. Levine, “Sport and Society: The Case of Brazilian Futebol,” Luso-Brazilian Review 17, (1980): 233–252. It should be noted that Levine recognizes that at times football has acted as a vehicle of social mobility. 6. A cottage industry of edited volumes has developed in the last twenty years with contributions from around the world, including Gary Armstrong, Richard Guilianotti, and Nicole Toulis (eds), Entering the Field: New Perspectives on World Football (Oxford and New York, 1997). In Latin America, see Miller and Crolley (eds), Football in the Americas. Joseph Arbena’s, Latin American Sport: An Annotated Bibliography 1988–1998 (Wesport, CT, 1999) is a good place to begin assessing this mini-boom’s impact on Latin America, which has disproportionately focused on the Caribbean. Some pioneering works include, Archetti, Masculinities, Roberto da Matta, John Drury, trans., Carnival, Rogues, and Heroes: An Interpretation of the Brazilian Dilemma (Notre Dame, IN, 1991), Janet Lever, Soccer Madness (Chicago, 1983), Tony Mason, Passion of the People? Football in South America (New York, 1995), Eduardo Santa Cruz, Crónica de un Encuentro: Fútbol y Cultura Popular (Santiago, 1991), Steve Stein, Lima Obrera, 1900–1930 (Lima, 1986). 7. For an excellent review of this literature in Latin America see Carlos Forment, Democracy in Latin America, 1760–1900 (Chicago, 2003). Influential studies of the historical relationship among democracy, cultural practices, and civic associations in Latin America, especially rich in the nineteenth-century, include Forment, Democracy in Latin America, Peter Guardino, In the Time of Liberty: Popular Political Culture in Oaxaca, 1750– 1850 (Durham, 2005), Pablo Piccato, “Public Sphere in Latin America: A map of the historiography,” Working Paper, Columbia University, 2006, http://www.columbia.edu/ pp143/ps.pdf, accessed May 2, 2007, and Hilda Sábato, La Política en las calles (Buenos Aires, 1998). Deborah Yashar’s work has criticized assumptions of a positive correlation between civic associations and democracy in, “Democracy, Indigenous Movements, and the Postliberal Challenge in Latin America,” World Politics 52 (1999): 76–104. 8. Miguel Angel Centeno and Fernando López-Alves (eds), The Other Mirror: Grand Theory Through the Lens of Latin America (Princeton, NJ, 2001). For a discussion of the dominance of national level analyses in the region’s historiography, see Joel Wolfe, “The Social Subject versus the Political: Latin American Labor History at a Crossroads,” Latin American Research Review 37 (2002): 244–262.

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9. The failure of the Popular Front governments to address concerns of amateur clubs, as well as anomalies in electoral districting encouraged barrio clubs to focus their efforts on municipal rather than national politics. I explore the contentious relationship between football clubs and the Chilean state in, Brenda Elsey, “Promises of Participation: The Politics of Football Clubs in Chile, 1909–62,” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York, Stony Brook, 2007). According to Ronald H. MacDonald, Santiago represented around 30% of the national population by the mid-1960s, but it had merely 10% of Senatorial representation. McDonald showed that from 1947 through 1965, presidents Gabriel González, Carlos Ibáñez, and Jorge Alessandri purposefully postponed the publication of census results that would have forced a re-districting in favor of working-class areas. See Ronald H. McDonald, “Apportionment and Party Politics in Santiago, Chile,” Midwest Journal of Political Science 13 (1969): 455–470, 467. 10. This meant that at least one in four Chileans lived in the capital by the end of the 1950s. Simon Collier and William Sater, A History of Chile, 1808–1994 (NY, 1996). 11. The study of the politics in shantytowns during the 1940s and 50s has been neglected, despite a significant body of scholarship that analyzes them in later years. An exception is Mario Garcés, Tomando su sitio: El Movimiento de Pobladores de Santiago, 1957–1973 (Santiago, 2002). In particular, this literature has demonstrated the importance of women as political leaders in neighborhood organizations. See Cathy Schneider, “Mobilization at the grassroots: shantytown and resistance in authoritarian Chile,” Latin American Perspectives 18 (1991): 92–112; Teresa Valdes, “El movimiento de pobladores 1973–1985: la recomposición de las solidaridades sociales,” in Jordi Borja, (ed.), Decentralización del estado: Movimiento social y gestión local (Santiago, 1987), 263–319. 12. “La Cisterna y el Deporte,” La Tribuna (La Cisterna), 23 July 1950, 6. 13. Even the descriptions of poor communities by “sympathetic” social workers are judgmental and sensational, see Mario Garcés, Tomando su sitio. Other popular icons include the huaso, or Chilean cowboy, which Creole literature exalted. However, the huaso was rooted in the countryside, see Patrick Barr-Melej, “Cowboys and Constructions: National Representations of Pastoral Life in Post-Portalian Chile,” Journal of Latin American Studies 30 (1998): 35–61. For studies of working-class identity and its emergence in the Northern regions and mining communities see Thomas Miller Klubock,Contested Communities: Class, Gender, and Politics in Chile’s El Teniente Copper Mine, 1904–1948 (Durham, 1998) and Julio Pinto V., Trabajos y rebeldías en la pampa salitrera (Santiago, 1998). 14. Juan Moreira, “Oiga Comandante Kolbach,” Barra Brava, 3 January 1944, 3. 15. El Vocero (San Miguel, La Cisterna, La Granja), 31 March 1946, 4. 16. For a classic account of San Miguel’s textile workers and class identity, see Peter Winn, Weavers of the Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism (New York, 1986). 17. Interview, Patricio Piola de Andraca, Hernán Carvajal, Jaime Nieto (Santiago, December 2004). Although members commonly characterized football clubs as an escape from women, they sought their attendance at matches by offering them free admission. Women increased the intensity of the competition on the field. 18. La Comuna, (San Miguel) 1 November 1947, 1.


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19. Social scientists, including Manuel Castells, who conducted surveys of shantytowns in the 1960s found that they were not primarily inhabited by recent rural migrants, as was often assumed, but by families who had lived in an urban setting at least ten years. See Howard Handelman, “The Political Mobilization of Urban Squatter Settlements. Santiago’s Recent Experience and Its Implications for Urban Research,” Latin American Research Review 10 (1975): 35–72. 20. Garcés, Tomando su sitio. 21. Developers tried repeatedly to attract greater numbers of wealthy residents, but the slaughterhouse, penitentiary, and armaments factory dissuaded many elite from relocating there, see Armando de Ramón, Santiago de Chile (Santiago, 2000), 209. 22. El Lucerno, 21 November 1959, 4. 23. Ibid. 24. El Músculo, March 1950, 8. 25. Ibid. 26. “Antecedentes . . . ,” Vida Obrera: Fanaloza Carrascal, 15 January 1954, 1. See for example the synopsis of this decade long conflict in the Carrascal factory club. 27. Klubock, Contested Communities, Miguel Silva, Los Sindicatos, los partidos y Clotario Blest: la CUT del ’53 (Santiago, 2000). 28. El Músculo, June 1953, 3. Whether due to lack of interest or success, conservative parties did not forge relationships with barrio clubs. 29. “Informe de la Comisión de Deportes y Cultura,” CTCH, January 1947, 8. 30. Ibid. 31. “La Asamblea de la juventud trabajadora,” Vida, May 1955, 1. 32. “Estampas Sindicales,” CTCH, February 1948, 2. 33. Vida, January 1956, 8. 34. Diario Ilustrado, 23 November 1952, 18. 35. El Siglo, 28 April 1953, 7. 36. La Tribuna (Sector Sur), 15 October 1950, 2–5. 37. Mario Palestro, La República Independiente de San Miguel (Santiago, 1998). 38. Palestro and his daughters guarded many of these despite frequent ransacking of their house during the Pinochet dictatorship. The Fundación Palestro in San Miguel houses dozens of these. The intricacy of the diplomas and the care with which they were created is a testament to the affection members had for Palestro and their clubs. 39. Ibid., 111.

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40. Concurso de Historias de Barrios de Santiago, (ed.), Voces de la ciudad (Santiago, 1999) and Palestro, La República Independiente de San Miguel, 108. 41. For further discussions of spectatorship and participation see Eduardo Santa Cruz, Origen y futuro de una passion and Jorge Iturriaga E., “Aunque ganas o pierdas,” Working Paper, Santiago, 2005. 42. Palestro, La República Independiente de San Miguel, 110. 43. Ibid., 109. 44. Garcés, Tomando su sitio. 45. Identidad Grupos Memoria Popular, Memorias de La Victoria (Santiago, 2003). 46. Ibid., 17. 47. El Lucerno, 19 December 1959, 8. 48. El Lucerno, 21 November 1959, 6. 49. Ibid. 50. La Hora, 5 May 1951, 8. 51. Clarín de la Cisterna, September 1952, 2. 52. La Voz del Poblador (Población Miguel Dávila), 17 September 1953, 4. 53. Boletín de Resoluciones de la Agrupación de Pobladores de Chile, December 1957, 1. 54. I am borrowing here from Michael Warner’s concept of counterpublics, see Publics and Counterpublics (Brooklyn, NY, 2005). 55. La Voz de las Barrancas, November 1949, 3. 56. “El Dirigente Deportivo,” Sector Norte, 9 September 1950, 5. 57. Only a few of the statutes of popular clubs remain in their entirety, but are preserved in club yearbooks and local newspapers. See for example, Club Atenas, Revista Aniversario (Santiago, 1958) and Club Deportivo Subercaseaux, El Compañero (San Miguel, 1948). The National Amateur Football Association provided a model for statutes and regulations, Estatutos y reglamentos de la Asociación Nacional de Fútbol Amateur (Santiago, 1954). 58. The National Amateur Football Association reported 100,000 members, if accurate this means that roughly 6.25% of adult male Chileans belonged to a club affiliated with the organization, see Asociación Nacional de Fútbol Amateur, Congreso Nacional de Fútbol Amateur (Santiago, 1953). This is quite a rough estimate since the adult male population statistics were calculated in 1950 and classified adult as 19 years or older, see Instituto de Estadísticas Chile (CEPAL), Chile: Proyecciones y Estimaciones de Población (Santiago, 2005), 37. The numbers of footballers outside of ANFA were much higher, since most amateur clubs could not afford affiliation. As previously cited, in 1950, newspapers in San Miguel estimated 40,000 men belonged to football clubs.


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59. Jr., “Aficionados,” El Mercurio, 24 June 1958, 3. 60. El Campeón, 25 October 1959, 10. Unfortunately, records of the show have not been located. 61. El Campeón, 18 September 1959, 2. 62. El Mercurio, 21 February 1960, Archivo J. Edwards Bello, w/o page number. 63. Jr., “Aficionados,” El Mercurio, 24 June 1958, 3. 64. Jean Franco, The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City (Cambridge, 2002), 56. 65. Estadio, 15 March 1962, 1. 66. Pepe Nava, “Carta a un viejo lector,” Estadio, 13 April 1956, 3. 67. Ibid. 68. El Siglo, 20 June 1958, 11. 69. See El Mercurio, 31 December 1953, 23 and El Siglo, 29 December 1952, 7. 70. El Siglo, 2 February 1953, 1. 71. El Siglo, 6 February 1953, 4. 72. Estatutos de las Juventudes Comunistas de Chile: aprobado 1958 (Santiago, 1961). 73. Archivo J. Edwards Bello, La Nación, 9 February 1949, 10. 74. Club Colo Colo, Historia del Club Colo-Colo (Santiago, 1953), 83. 75. Estadio, 10 January 1953, 4. 76. Klubock, Contested Communities, 186. 77. Francisco Mouat, Cosas del Fútbol (Santiago, 1989). 78. Carlos Barahona, “José Donoso,” Barrabases, 2 September 1958, w/o page number. 79. Ticiano, “Figuras del Recuerdo,” Estadio, 14 February 1953, 31. 80. “El Fútbol Profesional Requiere una Vasta Reforma,” El Mercurio, 21 February 1960 (without author or page, see Archivo J. Edwards Bello). Working-class associations in Santiago had been established as early as 1905. The novel development was the leadership role of working-class clubs in national associations, not their participation. See Elsey, “Promises of Participation: The Politics of Football Clubs in Chile, 1909–1962.” 81. Pepe Nava, “Protipo del Sportsman,” Estadio, 17 February 1951, 4. 82. Ibid., 6. 83. El Mercurio, 21 February 1960, Archivo J. Edwards Bello, w/o page number.

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84. Sport i Actualidades, 28 June 1912, 1. 85. See newspaper and government records of a match between Colo Colo and a team from Talca in 1928 that resulted in mass arrests. The violence startled the Intendent of Talca, as well as the National Director of Physical Education, Lieutenant Osvaldo Kolbach, “Los Domingos,” Los Sports, 23 November 1928, 8; Intendencia Santiago, Archivo Nacional, Comunicaciones Recibidas, Nov.–Dec. 1928, ARNIT, isan, v. 627, No. 1681. 86. Guido Vallejos, “Cuando Papa no quiere,” Barrabases, 13 June 1961, w/o page number. 87. See Barrabases, 1959–1961, an affiliate of Estadio tailored to a younger audience. 88. Barrabases, 14 July 1959. 89. Ibid. 90. La Tribuna (La Cisterna) 23 July 1950, 6. 91. La Opinión de Conchalí, September 1954, 6. 92. Ibid. 93. Cámara de los Diputados, Boletín de las Sesiones Ordinarias, Sesión 27, July 1953 (Santiago, 1953), 1310–1312. 94. Gol y Gol, 6 March 1963, 4. 95. La Voz del Poblador (Población Miguel Dávila), December 1953, 1. 96. Estadio, October 26, 1952, 2. 97. Estadio, 10 October 1958, 1. 98. Ibid. 99. Estadio was published by Editorial Zig-Zag, closely related to El Mercurio. 100. Estadio, 26 October 1952, 2. 101. Gol y Gol, 15 May 1963, 4. 102. Gol y Gol, 9 January 1963, 5. This is a very suggestive letter; however, the first evidence of women’s football clubs that I could locate was from 1950. In interviews conducted in October 2004, ANFA directors recalled women’s football beginning in the 1970s. 103. M.H.S., “El Deporte en la Mujer,” Clarín de la Cisterna, September 1952, 6. 104. “El Desfile,” Estadio, 22 October 1949, 2. 105. Ibid. 106. Asociación Nacional de Fútbol Amateur, I. Congreso Nacional de Fútbol Amateur, 11.

Brenda Elsey, fútbol chileno

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