Soccer and Society, with Paul Alabarces In recent weeks, the judicial authorities and the Mayor of Medellin have been the subject of some criticism for the decisions made around the sanctions to the bar In the South, Atletico Nacional, and Rexixtenxia North, Deportivo Independiente Medellín, for acts of violence ending tournament featuring the Mustang Cup 2008. Also, have also been known, through different media, the judicial decision in which eight fans of DIM were sentenced to ten years in prison with the right to appeal the death of a fan of Nacional. However, eight followers of the latter, another judge granted home detention in holding that pose no danger to society. What is the message we are sending the municipal government, headed by Alonso Salazar, and judicial authorities to call that city hooligans?
Alabarces In an interview with Paul, a specialist in the analysis of popular culture and one of the founders of the sociology of sport in Latin America, who is also author of the book Chronicles of Stamina (2004), Football and homeland. Football and the narratives of the nation in Argentina (2008), among others, talked about the phenomenon of violence in Argentine football, its appearance, its environment and the role society plays Argentina in front of it.
Juan Diego Valencia What time is the phenomenon of hooligans in Argentina?
Paul Alabarces: The height, the explosion of the hooligans in Argentina, coincides with the end of the dictatorship. During those years there is a process of clandestine relationship between the leaders of the bars, sports leaders, sports officials and political leaders. All this comes to light at the end of the dictatorship, say for the possibility of public appearance. What allows this outbreak, the framework of legitimacy of that action, is the violation of basic contract of the monopoly of violence at the hands of the State who had been raped during the dictatorship by the State. The homology hooligans played by the task force model in Argentina. Ie clandestine paramilitary groups and military responsible for the illegal repression during the dictatorship. I do not speak of a linear playback, talk white bars that occupy these spaces and assume the tasks of these clandestine groups. That is, the bars do not kidnap nobody, not shoot anybody, do not torture anyone, do not pull anyone from a helicopter. What happens is that a group of boys leaves, surrounding a technical and say, "I think you you have to go, and obviously the coach is going." In that sense, white bars are fully visible to society because they perform also entirely legitimate activities inside and outside of football culture. That is, a guy feels important because it is part of a bar while no more line to be treated by a doctor, for that matter the individual acquires legitimacy in society by being a member of a crowd.
JDV: "In 2008 about 10 people died in violence surrounding the Colombian football, how was the situation of violence in Argentine football?
PA: In Argentina, the statistic is very misleading because in one incident, which happened about 40 years ago at the Estadio Monumental River Plate, there are more than 70 dead. Until that event, much as the crow flies, the dead totaling 20. Today, the story tells of something like 230 or 240 dead in argentino1 football history.
JDV: How has acted Argentina justice against those responsible for these acts of violence?
PA: The hooligans are not guilty of acts of violence. Ultimately it is the arm of a culture shaped by two things: the endurance and corruption. White bars, finally, what they do is tell the Argentine football, "Why do we look?, If we are as corrupt as you all claim our part in the business." For example, a case of such exploits last year (2007) with an internal bar River Plate, who leaves behind the murder of Gonzalo Acro. What's on there? Any dispute or a dispute symbolic power of prestige? No, there were a lot of money involved because the River Bar negotiated with the leadership of the club a percentage of the transfer of their players because blacks had received illegal funds to travel to World Cup 2006, they had Official entries trafficked worldwide. That's a spectacular phenomenon of corruption where the bar berates a football institution saying you are corrupt, we, us in exchange for participating in this what we do is shut our mouths, stimulate, shake, etc.. etc.
JDV: How investigates the problem of violence in Argentine football?
PA: No major funding to investigate the association football violence. Since 1990 there have been only two doctoral theses. In the mass media does not investigate, or that depends on the media. Journalists are very intelligent, very sensitive, very readers, but most prefer the status stigmatizing, ie the segmentation of the problem. It says, "is a problem only for a certain group called hooligans who are all irrational, beasts, wild animals, black, and you have to do is delete them and solve the whole problem." It shows ignorance and complicity. The academy has a legitimacy and autonomy system certainly much better than journalism is not a member of Julio Grondona, president of the AFA, in terms of television rights, or a member of the Minister of the Interior, now in charge of the Ministry of Justice and head of security, who was also mayor of the city of Quilmes therefore responsible for the barra brava of Quilmes Club for twelve years. Around the relationship between means and academia, in recent years something has changed. Our voice, that of the academy, is sought and approved. For example, some people in a bar approached me and told me: "You do not know me, he!, But I heard it."
JDV: In this regard, what role society plays in this phenomenon?
PA: The same guy who claims the punishment on the facts of a bar, which is celebrated with another. That's the world of the legitimacy of violence, no recognition of the problems, there is hypocrisy. My fight public argument, because every so often there is a death, that is not a phenomenon of exceptionality but a logic which organizes the whole football culture in Argentina: the stamina. In terms of British sociology subculture could call it a very organic structure of every practice. And speaking of that there is only white bars, this is all assets of Argentine soccer fans, as those who show endurance in combat or those who demonstrate the endurance encouraging his fighters.
In Argentina there is an organization called Save the football that works with another called
"Families of victims of football" (Favifa). Save the football is run by a young woman who had severe incidents with a club bar and Mariano Berges, a lawyer and former judge. Favifa was created by the mother of a murdered child in the Copa America 1995, held in Uruguay. These organizations allow greater dissemination of ideas and alternatives to the phenomenon as I am increasingly pessimistic about the possibility of state action in this regard, I am more convinced that the responsibility goes for the fans assuming as civil society actors. Every time I believe more in the capacity of civil society self-organization and empowerment. In football too. In England, the British Confederation of fans, was structured as a civil society organization. With great force. There is a stigma in Argentina for the young of the popular classes who are said: "logical that these people can do if given the head." And this phenomenon is similar to that happened from British sociology when he said on the subject: it is rude young, working class, excluded civilization processes.
JDV: From 2007se year AFA discussed in a plan called the Census of fans, in addition to the rigorous implementation of various laws that seek to reduce violence around the football, what is your opinion about this?
PA: Argentina is commonplace and is copied to the British. What I do is study, and that's what the British did. In Argentina, you have all the fans sitting with them identified that is done one by one, a terrible social discipline. Po contrast, the British began the Tyler report, organized as a democracy deserves a commission charged with investigating the slaughter of Heysel in 1985 while playing the final of European Cup, and the Belgians gave him the academic research to Lobaina University, not the police, and for example in Argentina nobody read the Tyler report. All I can say is that the first thing to do with the phenomenon of football hooliganism is to study. One wonders if we know what we mean when we relate the theme of social classes with football, in the case of Argentina is very clear: there are obviously very popular bar, but we also found that one of the worst bars the most violent of Argentine football, the Club Atletico River Plate, is an upper middle-class bar. To do research to know which sectors of society are involved in the phenomenon, and then doing anthropological work, ethnography in the swollen.
JDV: What these studies would yield results?
PA: The first version given by the British after the slaughter of Hillsborough was that it was a muskrat of the hooligans. However, the investigation reveals that the fault lay in front of the police mishandling of the mass movement, terrified by the hooligans, that is the paranoia of hooligan killed 96 people. This idea of \u200b\u200bparanoia makes us think they are all criminals.
On the contrary, we must make a democratic recognition of the rights to the fans: the entry of flags, the use of musical instruments and the income of fireworks in the sense that when it is legalized can be controlled if not could cause a tragedy. In addition, a contract must be submitted democratic, legitimate and legal groups between the head of the bar and the police commissioner to reach an agreement on what can and can not do the bar, for example, make them know their democratic duties as are not kill people, not attack the players, among others.
JDV: Finally, what do you think needs to be done to address this phenomenon?
PA: One of our findings is that national policies are needed, of a purely democratic, and football has become such a force in the society because, among other things, is the best example of democratic imagination in modern society. For example, the rich against the poor, the weak against the strong, where anyone can win. However, football has become profoundly undemocratic: the strongest wins consistently, known scandals of corruption, money involved, perks, etc.
Finally, the solution of the problem of football violence, ultimately, is more democracy, more democracy radically. In this way, I try to reclaim the old eighteenth-century liberal ideology that every individual is innocent until he is proven otherwise. Even in football, the treatment of violence suggests that every spectator is a criminal. The problem is that you can not democratize the social relations but the fully democratic. So I say you can not start a process without intervening these sporting bodies.
interview on Sunday February 22, 2009.
JUAN DIEGO - NORTH REXIXTENXIA
