By David Rusk

with thanks to Diego Bouche Ocampo, Gregory Rusk and, especially, Doug Barnes for thoughtful comments and editorial assistance

This is my second Letter from Buenos Aires, reflecting on my recent month-long visit. The first was sub-titled "A Visit to El Nuevo Gasómetro," the stadium of San Lorenzo, my Argentine club, for a Copa Libertadores game. It focused on the gameday experience.

This second letter is written in the spirit of Franklin Foer’s "How Soccer Explains the World." Argentine society and politics and Argentine soccer culture are inextricably interwoven. In this letter I will trace my personal experiences and observations over 25 or 26 visits that I have made in 55 years of marriage to Delcia Bence Spinosa, a porteña (native of Buenos Aires). Beyond family visits and tourism I am well read in Argentine political and economic history. I have thought a great deal about how a country that in the 1920s was one of the world’s dozen wealthiest countries has declined over 85 years to almost Third World status. And its domestic soccer scene has declined as well. In this story there are cautionary lessons for our contemporary American scene – sporting and political. I invite B&RU readers to constantly be thinking of parallels in American history, particularly in the current presidential campaign season.

And I apologize for its length. For that reason I have broken this letter into two posts. Part A: Villa Miseria is about one-third Argentine soccer, two-thirds Argentine social and political history. Part B: Barra Brava is the reverse: two-thirds soccer, one-third social and political commentary (Argentine and American). Soccer fans can get the gist of both by reading only Part B. Those deeply concerned with not only what happens at RFK but also at the polls this November are encouraged to read both.

But here’s the bottom line for those that don’t read further. Many Americans may admire and even envy the fervent supporters groups that surround Argentine soccer. I don’t. The soccer culture in the United States is much healthier for our sport and for our country than is Argentina’s soccer culture.

Part A: Villa Miseria (2016)

My nephew Diego had warned me that Bajo Flores was "a very rough section of the city" (see Letter I). And, indeed, as we drove up to El Nuevo Gasómetro on the north side of Avenida Perito Moreno, just across the avenue behind an eight foot wall loomed a large villa miseria (literally, "miseryville"). The shacks were built of unfinished concrete blocks or large, hollow, red bricks, wood, tin, and other scrap materials. Plumbing is non-existent with potable water being supplied through communal pipes; electricity is often tapped illegally from the grid. In the land-scarce city the shacks rise up precariously decade by decade on top of each other. At many points the villa opposite San Lorenzo’s stadium had reached three stories.

There are many such villas in Bajo Flores, the city’s poorest neighborhood. Beyond nostalgia, the club’s Return to Boedo movement (see Letter I and this video) reflected a concern that Bajo Flores has become just too unsafe for the club to prosper there. (None of the club’s other offices and sports venues are located in Bajo Flores.) The socios (club members) want their stadium to be back in the solid working class neighborhood of Boedo where San Lorenzo was formed in 1908. For discussion, see this video

Villas were unknown decades ago. Growing urban poverty is a reflection of Argentina’s long term economic decline. In 1929, Argentina ranked 11th highest in GDP per capita behind only the USA, Switzerland, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Canada, Belgium, and France. Among the countries whose GDP per capita Argentina outranked at the end of the 1920s were Germany, Sweden, Austria, Norway, Italy, and Spain.

By 2013, in GDP per capita, Argentina had slumped to 58th out of 192 countries (most of which didn’t exist as independent nations eight decades before). Within Latin America, Argentina had been passed by neighboring Uruguay and Chile.

The explanation for Argentina’s economic decline is perplexing. "There are four types of countries," Nobel Prize-winning economist Simon Kuznets once famously remarked, "developed, underdeveloped, Japan and Argentina."

Let me lead B&RU readers through my own experiences covering 55 years – two-thirds of those eight decades – and how Argentina’s economic decline interacted with Argentine fútbol.

Buenos Aires – Land of Promise (1961)

I had first gone to Buenos Aires in June-August 1961 to marry Delcia. We met and began "going steady" when she was an AFS foreign exchange student to my senior class in Scarsdale (NY) High School, a wealthy suburb of New York City. After a year back in Argentina, she returned to join me at the University of California at Berkeley. Now, two years later we were to be married August 24 in a double ceremony with her older sister Monica and Carlos (Lalo) Bouche Ocampo, son of a well-known and much beloved Argentine journalist.

Two weeks before our wedding I was invited (along with the entire family) to attend my first soccer match ever – the Superclásico between River Plate and Boca Juniors on August 6. (How’s that for starting at the very pinnacle of club soccer fandom!) River’s stadium, El Monumental, was filled with 80,000+ passionate fans – most exploding in ecstasy when River’s Pepillo scored the tying goal in the 83rd minute of a 2-2 draw. (Not that I remember these details but isn’t Wikipedia wonderful!) It was an exciting spectacle but my sport was rugby (see Letter III to come). Two things struck me about the experience:

• The clubs’ names – River Plate (1901) and Boca Juniors (1905) – reflect the very British origins of soccer in Argentina as do other club names like Newell’s Old Boys (1903), Racing Club (1903), All Boys (1913), and others. Indeed, I learned that the definition of an Argentine (an upper middle class Argentine, at least) is "an Italian who speaks Spanish, acts French, and thinks he’s British."

• Looking back, I cannot recall seeing a single commotion or hearing any hint of anxiety at that time about going to a fútbol match – even one as filled with passionate rivalry as River-Boca.

Argentina (certainly within our family-social circle) was in a hopeful mood. After 31 years of military-dominated or Peronist rule, the new civilian president was Arturo Frondizi of the Unión Cívica Radical Intransigente (UCRI) – despite its fierce-sounding name, a center-left party with a long democratic tradition. (UCR had led Argentina through the 1920’s, which, in my eyes, were Argentina’s golden years.) In 1961 Argentina was a country endowed with tremendous resources – one of the planet’s most fertile agricultural zones; every natural resource, including oil and gas (except iron ore); spectacular scenery ranging across 13 different climatic zones; and a highly literate and energetic people. If there was anti-American sentiment, it was based on resentment some Argentines felt that they were the natural leaders of Latin America and not the United States (that had just launched, for example, JFK’s Alianza para el Progreso).

This giant city felt safe. In late evening Delcia and I would go out to see a downtown movie, grab a #10 colectivo (microbus) a half block from the family apartment, get off at Calle Lavalle (a pedestrian-only street dedicated to movie houses and restaurants), dodge through a heavy crowd, find the movie theater two-thirds full for the transnoche (after-midnight show), weave again through all the exiting movie-goers two hours later, wait in line for a post-movie snack at the Palacio de la Papa Frita, board the #10 again, and while returning to our apartment, see respectable women walking city streets alone at 3 am – and all this on a weekday night!

There were villas, but relatively few, mostly scattered on the city’s outskirts, and largely invisible. I visited a villa, riding on the back of a motor scooter of a student I had met at an American Embassy-hosted round table between Argentine student leaders and 29-year old Edward M. Kennedy, who was on a tour of Latin America to boost his foreign policy credentials in advance of being elected to JFK’s vacated Senate seat (temporarily filled by another family member).

Buenos Aires – Fraying around the Edges (1965)

We returned in July 1965 with 18-month old Gregory toddling around and Patrick already on the way. The military had ousted President Frondizi seven months after our wedding. They feared that Frondizi was tilting too much toward the proscribed Partido Justicialista (Peronist Party) that had been outlawed when the military overthrew Perón in September 1955. During the previous decade Perón and his charismatic wife Evita had perfected the art of whipping up los descamisados ("the shirtless ones") through mass rallies that had all the aura of frenetic barras bravas at a soccer match. (See this video for example.)

This military coup in 1963 had maintained the appearance of civilian control, allowing the election of Dr. Arturo Illia (Unión Cívica Radical del Pueblo) in October 1963. Illia’s political power, however, was weak, having obtained only 25% of the popular vote. (The still-proscribed Peronists cast 21% blank ballots.)

I remember going with Lalo to the Caballito neighborhood to see his club Ferro Carril Oeste (Western Railroad) of which Lalo was a socio (member) It was another sign of the British origins of Argentine soccer. The earliest soccer players were managers and workers in the British-run railway system as still reflected today in the names of railway-origin clubs which, in addition to Ferro (1904), include Rosario Central (1889), Ferrocarril Midland (1914), and Talleres (railroad maintenance shops) de Cordoba (1913).

More memorable was my going to a rugby match between Los Pumas, Argentina’s national team, and a French club. The tribuna (bleachers) were so packed that we had to stand sideways to watch the match. Los Pumas completely outclassed the French. But what I truly remember was exiting the stadium in an already tightly packed crowd when some chanting young men began to push forward, further compressing the crowd. To be trapped in a crowd pressed so tightly that I couldn’t move, knowing that to fall or to be pushed up against a wall or locked gate could result in death by suffocation, was terrifying. (Three years later over 70 stampeding Boca fans were crushed to death against Puerta 12, a locked gate, at the end of a River-Boca Superclásico. What caused the stampede – whether burning River banners had dropped into the exit way or River fans were driving Boca fans into the confined space or stadium police were doing the same in anger because Boca fans had been throwing bags of urine at them – was never determined by a three-year official inquiry.)

Another memory was going with my father-in-law, Dr. Carlos Bence, out to visit the small ranch in which "Papi" had invested his savings from his medical practice. The farm was located about 75 miles from Buenos Aires and 11 miles from Lobos, the home of the Spinosas, my mother-in-law’s clan and, coincidentally, Perón’s birthplace. Coming back at night on literally a milk train, I remember that the electric lights only worked when the train attained a certain speed. As it slowed for the next stop, the lights would become dimmer and dimmer and I would have to hold the Argentine novel I was reading closer and closer to my eyes until we would sit in total darkness at the station; the process would be reversed as we pulled out. And forget about going to the restroom – just a small compartment with a hole cut out of the floor through which you could see the tracks and ties passing.

The cause of such dilapidated railroads? Through a decade of economic depression and six years of war the British had no money to improve British-owned railroads in a far-away country and thereafter no interest whatsoever in doing so under Britain’s post-war Labour government. So, in 1946, with probably little choice, newly-elected President Perón had nationalized the British-owned railroads along with most other foreign-owned public services. But that miserable train ride from tiny, rural Estación Antonio Carboni to giant Estación Constitución in Buenos Aires was evidence that the Argentine state, whether under Peronists, military dictators, or center-left Radicals, had also not been investing to improve rail service.

Mar del Plata (December-January 1969-70)

Our growing family (now Gregory, Patrick, and Monica) returned to celebrate Christmas in Buenos Aires (in mid-summer) and then go to Mar del Plata, the great Atlantic resort city, where Papi and Mami Bence had rented an ocean-side house for a month’s vacation for everyone at the beach. It was a wild time with grandparents, two sets of parents, and seven children (ages 6 months to 8 years old) plus a couple of maids-cooks in the one house. The long days at the beach left no time for Lalo and me to take in any exhibition soccer matches in Mar del Plata to which almost all sporting and cultural events adjourn during the summer vacations. (In those days Mar del Plata’s year-round population of 350,000 ballooned to over 2 million during the beach season.)

However, the political scene had changed again. The military had ousted President Illia in June 1966 and taken direct control. Ominously, but receiving little media attention, a leftist terrorist group, the ERP (Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo, or People’s Revolutionary Army), a Trotskyite-Maoist-Guevarrist movement, had begun attacking army barracks and police stations. (By mid-1976, ERP and the Montoneros, another urban guerrilla group, would kill 1,335 soldiers and police.)

Buenos Aires – Terrorism and the "Dirty War" (July-August 1977)

The David and Delcia Rusk family did not return to Argentina until mid-1977. We couldn’t. The urban terrorist movement had grown so extreme that, though the typical American tourist would be safe enough unless being just in the wrong place when a bomb went off in a supermarket, theater, or restaurant, the Rusk family name was deemed too tempting to kidnappers (though my father was now simply a law school professor and there had never been any wealth in the Rusk family). So during those years Argentina would come to New Mexico to which we’d moved in 1971 and where Gregory and Patrick became pioneering youth soccer players.

Terrorism touched our circle once during that period. One of Delcia’s friends had her apartment invaded by leftist kidnappers. (She had opened the door to the doorman only to find the kidnappers concealed to the side with drawn guns.) "Choose which one of your children we take," they said to the terrified mother of four. Before the agonized women had to make a "Sophie’s choice," her 10-year old son volunteered "I’ll go." He was released several days later on the outskirts of Greater Buenos Aires. (We never asked whether or not any ransom had been paid. The record ransom publicly acknowledged was $12 million paid for the life of Victor Samuelson, an Exxon executive. Most kidnappings, however, ended in the hostage’s death, including former President Pedro Aramburu.)

Deciding that the policy of proscribing the Peronist Party and keeping Perón himself in exile (in Franco’s Madrid) wasn’t working, the military allowed full and free elections. A Peronist stooge was elected, resigned, and Perón, having returned, after new elections (with 62% of the vote) assumed the presidency in October 1973. His third wife, Isabel Martinez de Perón, was Vice President – a post denied to his famous and much-idolized second wife, Evita, in 1952.

The very day of Perón’s return signaled the prospective failure of a re-enfranchised Peronism to bring civic peace. Peronism had largely split into two factions – on the left, ERP and Montoneros; on the right, the Peronist labor unions of the Confederación General de Trabajo (CGT). As Perón’s plane landed, a bloody shooting war erupted between the two factions awaiting him at the Ezeiza International Airport, leaving (according to official reports) 13 dead and 365 wounded or injured in the crowd stampede.

Siding with his right-wing union supporters, Perón himself launched efforts to suppress Peronist left-wing revolutionaries. When he died eight months later, "Isabelita" (a former nightclub dancer Perón had met in exile in Panama) became president. Anti-terrorist activity increased under Isabelita, but was ineffectual. In March 1976 the military deposed and exiled Isabelita and a military junta took full power. It then scaled up the "Dirty War" in which the Proceso "disappeared" 8,961 victims (as documented by an official investigation thereafter) or up to 30,000 (as claimed by some human rights organizations).

State terrorism is the most terrible terrorism of all. Undoubtedly, the "Dirty War" was extended far beyond pursuing actual urban terrorists to seize non-terrorist critics of the military junta in general and even to settle personal scores, including with amorous rivals. I don’t defend it.

But the civic anarchy in Argentina that triggered the "Dirty War" is unknown to most Americans. And I ask myself: if in the 1970s, at the hands of revolutionary leftist groups, there had been not one but hundreds of Patti Hearsts kidnapped for ransom, not one bombing of a University of Wisconsin laboratory (killing one person) but dozens of public buildings bombed (killing hundreds), if there had not been just six members of the Symbionese Liberation Army in a fiery shootout in Inglewood, CA but that North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana had been under the control of a terrorist army – if those had been the conditions in the United States in the 1970s, what would we Americans have demanded (and tolerated) to have our government restore a measure of civic peace and safety?

In any event, Buenos Aires was now deemed safe enough from terrorist activity that our family returned for two months in mid-1977. (My own visit was cut short as I had to return to campaign for election as mayor of Albuquerque.) Two observations:

• There was still such a general atmosphere of personal safety from street crime that we were comfortable having 13-year old Gregory walk several blocks alone to a new friend’s party, beginning at 10 pm, and giving him keys to re-enter our building and apartment about 3 am when he returned.

• Nobody would talk politics.

  The World Cup of 1978

  Like Hitler and the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, the military dictators saw Argentina’s hosting the World Cup in 1978 as an opportunity to showcase the country and their leadership. Their repression of the Montoneros and ERP had been so thorough that there were no terrorist incidents throughout the month-long games.

  On the field, however, was a slightly different story. To reach the final, Argentina would have to beat Peru by at least four goals to nose out Brazil. Peru collapsed in the second half and the albicelestes won 6-0. In Buenos Aires all Argentines flooded the streets and plazas, jumping up and down and chanting "El que no salta es brasileño!" ("Whoever’s not jumping is a Brazilian") The following Sunday Argentina beat Netherlands 3-1 in extra time to win its first World Cup. (Delcia and I listened to the BBC broadcast of the final over a short-wave radio while at a Rusk Family Reunion in rural Cherokee County, GA.) See this video for highlights of final match..

  The rumor mills (particularly in Brazil) were rife with charges that the military dictatorship had bribed Peruvian authorities to have the Peruvian team throw the match. The rumored bribe consisted of either a) delivering a large grain shipment to Peru by Argentina and unfreezing a Peruvian bank account held by the Argentine Central Bank, or b) sending 13 Peruvian dissidents seeking asylum in Argentina back to Peru, or c) bribing the Peruvian team directly. No incontrovertible evidence was ever produced for any of the three rumored deals.

  Albuquerque: The World Cup of 1986

  My mayoral duties (1977-81) precluded any family trips to Buenos Aires and, thereafter, we all focused on a two-family reunion to celebrate our dual 25th wedding anniversary in Albuquerque in August 1986.

  That period also coincided with the World Cup. Now in their 20’s, nephews Ignacio and Diego came to the USA for several weeks to tour around the USA, always stopping to catch Argentina’s progress to the finals on TV. The Bouche family was re-united in the Los Angeles airport, watching Argentina win its second World Cup between planes, while the Rusks cheered in Albuquerque.

  It was the Diego Maradona World Cup. Most talked about was the quarter-final between Argentina and England (just four years after the Las Malvinas/ Falkland Islands War). In the 51st minute Maradona, disguising his move as a header, punched the ball with his left fist into the goal. La mano de Dios (Hand of God) goal was the ultimate expression of Argentine viveza – an untranslatable word that combines cleverness with audacity. See video of Hand of God goal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ccNkksrfls

  Just four minutes later Maradona scored again on a 60-yard run through the entire England defense. The Goal of the Century was a classic example of Argentine destreza (skill). See video of Goal of the Century. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKUYPZvOdUs

  Thirty years later it is hard to know which quality Argentines admire more – Maradona’s viveza or destreza – but the Hand of God is certainly cited more often.

  Buenos Aires – Falling Apart (December-January 1988-89)

  Nothing worked. During the scorching, dripping summer days a giant metropolis of 12 million was enduring mandatory power blackouts eight hours a day (rotated among neighborhoods and split into two four-hour periods so that refrigerators would not completely defrost). The nationalized power agency wasn’t producing enough electricity.

  The nationalized telephones didn’t work. From the family apartment we tried to call a downtown travel agency to book a vacation in Bariloche, the gorgeous Andean resort; we couldn’t raise them. So we walked a dozen blocks only to find the office closed for several hours because that zone was blacked out. Returning later, we spent four hours while the travel agent tried to raise a line to Bariloche to book our hotel.

  The water supply didn’t work. Arriving in Bariloche, the desk clerk informed us that the hotel was without running water while the nationalized water company tried to repair some old pipes.

Beginning in 1946, Perón had nationalized vast sectors of the economy. In the intervening decades, every regime – whether military or civilian, Peronist or Radical – expanded the statist sector. State enterprises provided patronage jobs, contracts for politically friendly businesses, and, frankly, untold opportunities for graft and corruption. By 1988-89, about 45% of the nation’s GDP was generated by the state-run sector.

And the money! In 1983, the military junta, totally discredited by Argentina’s debacle in the Malvinas War, turned over power to an elected civilian government of Radical President Raúl Alfonsín. Alfonsín was undoubtedly an honest man, but his Radical administration was unable to garner enough support from the Peronist-controlled Congress to deal effectively with the country’s toughest problems – above all, constant inflation. During 1988-89 hyperinflation reached an annual rate of 4,924%! Shopkeepers wouldn’t even post prices on goods as the value of the "austral" (which had replaced the peso) dropped hourly.

Though he was already 15 years in his grave, Argentina’s constant inflation could also be charged to Juan Perón’s nationalization of the Central Bank in 1946. That action allowed the now state-owned central bank to fund government deficits by just printing more money – a practice on which every regime relied to fund ambitious plans and avoid hard choices (like raising taxes and fees and cutting services).

Buenos Aires – Turning a Corner? (1990s)

Having moved from Albuquerque back to Washington and with Mami and Papi Bence of such advanced ages that they no longer traveled, we began to go the Buenos Aires almost yearly. In the early and mid-1990s, under Peronist President Carlos Menem (1989-99), Argentina seemed to have turned a corner. Menem veered 180 degrees from Peronist orthodoxy, re-privatizing most state enterprises and many public services. Telephones, utilities, railroads and airlines, etc. worked again, but, in retrospect, privatization opened new doors to greater corruption. (Menem has now been convicted of embezzlement, receiving bribes, and arms trafficking.)

A serious by-product of privatization, however: with now- privatized, former state enterprises cutting payrolls by one-third to one-half, unemployment and poverty soared and villas miserias proliferated. For the first time I began to see beggars on the street. (I had seen only one beggar in three months in 1961.)

Menem also temporarily halted inflation by convertibilidad, tying the restored Argentine peso to the US dollar and defending the 1:1 ratio through Central Bank dollar purchases. However, throughout the decade American productivity grew much more rapidly than Argentine productivity; as a result Argentine exports became more and more expensive and foreign imports progressively cheaper. By 2000-2001, Argentine industry would collapse, triggering the country’s gravest economic crisis ever.

By the 1990s, Delcia and I were also veteran soccer dad and soccer mom, having watched Gregory and Patrick in hundreds of youth and high school soccer matches and, for Gregory, indoor soccer with the semi-pro Albuquerque Gunners and outdoors with the immortal New Mexico Chiles of the American Professional Soccer League. (Gregory would go on to make his career as a soccer coach at youth, high school, and collegiate levels, primarily coaching women.) So our visits to Buenos Aires were filled with more soccer experiences – some of which I’ll relate in Part B: Barra Brava.