(Rich Tenorio)

Three barricades of riot police secure Barrio Avellaneda, forming three concentric rings over several square blocks. Wearing helmets, hard black boots, full-body bulletproof armor, and armed with shields, shotguns, and bludgeons, they wait on foot, on horseback, on motorcycle. Formidable and expressionless they pose, as area locals sit idly by stoops and storefronts, joking, smoking, drinking away a warm Sunday afternoon in the barrio.

The fanáticos are coming. They come from Núñez, Belgrano, La Boca, running headlong through streets dotted with oil drum fires, punching air, waving flags, chanting to the cadence of fight songs. But the noise they bring is a whisper against the thundering cacophony erupting from within the innermost ring of the police brigade, an Argentine Vesuvius spewing bedlam over a 10-block radius and laying to waste all other priorities for the day. It billows through the neighborhood without mercy, asphyxiating the air and overwhelming the streets, whipping up and down alleyways and in and out of windows. It swells, it charges, it rules: FUTBOL.

They are possessed from the moment they step off the colectivo, for it is Sunday, a day of worship, and they will perform their godly duties at the shrine of El Cilindro, the home stadium of Racing Club soccer team.

Three police checkpoints frisk them, but this is a token gesture at best. A shiv strapped to a shin or a pair of brass knuckles tucked inside underwear can easily pass undetected. Police don’t check these hiding places because they know what everyone else knows: such “minor” weapons are a better form of defense than having nothing at all. The stadium has no security of its own and police refuse to maintain order within its confines as rival fans’ hatred for cops surpasses even their hatred for each other.

A different sort of “frisking” ensues at the stadium gates. Too many people cram into six queues separated by tall metal barriers that lead the fans, like rats in a maze, to the turnstiles. The crowd crushes into the queues while everyone picks everyone else’s pockets, waistbands, and backsides.

Through the turnstiles, up the stairs and into the first level, directly behind the visiting team’s goal stand supporters of River Plate Soccer Club in la tribuna — the cheap seats. There are no actual “seats,” of course; just rows and rows of wide concrete steps upon which to stand, contained on either side by high barbed-wire fences followed by an empty buffer section separating la tribuna from the rest of the stadium.

The game is sold out but this has no meaning here. The stadium claims a capacity of 50,000 but this too is meaningless. Where there is room for one, there is room for 10 — a standard unwritten rule across Latin America. Bodies are packed so tightly that only two positions exist for one’s arms: at one’s side or above one’s head. When newcomers emerge from the stairs to squeeze into the section, when someone attempts to relocate from one spot to another, when someone coughs, sneezes or belches, physical space shifts and the crowd of fans sways accordingly to adjust for the displacement. Nevertheless, there is somehow still enough room to joke, laugh, sing, shout, shove, kick, scream, chant, punch, spit, swear, fight, mob, maim, destroy … 30 minutes to show time, and it’s impossible to move.

Only the strong

La Barra Brava — this is what locals call them. From Argentine slang, the rough translation is “the tough group” or “the strong group.” The colloquial translation is, simply, “hooligans.”

Every team, whether it wants one or not, has a network spanning hundreds, if not thousands, of hooligans, well organized and in contact with one another both inside and outside the stadium. Boca Juniors — Diego Maradona’s old team — supposedly has the worst. But pit any heated rivals against one another, in any divisional playoff, in a country where soccer is religion and both Barras will rise to the occasion.

A part-mafia-part-guerrilla disposition governs their behavior and operations — rumor has it that Racing Club’s Barra chief has a day job as a policeman. They pressure team management not just for free or discounted tickets to games, but exclusive rights to bring normally banned items into the stadium to show support for the team: fireworks, 100-foot banners spanning the upper and lower tiers, flags attached to long blunt objects. Every team’s management knows as well as La Barra Brava that failure to comply with the hooligans’ demands results at the very least in destruction of stadium property. If other teams concede, management certainly cannot afford to be shown up by the opposition, particularly when it comes to fan support.

Today, River Plate hooligans move about la tribuna with a sense of purpose, clearing pathways and readying props like stagehands before opening night.

A squat man is too slow to move out of a tall man’s path and is promptly punched in the face.

An old man leans anxiously against the railing at the stairway exit, deferring to anyone appearing younger and more able. Which means everyone.

A lanky man hobbles in on yellow metal crutches, stops, stands perfectly upright, and removes the rubber caps from the bottoms of his crutches. From within his apparently hollowed-out crutches an arsenal of flare sticks tumbles onto the ground.

Assembly lines of men coalesce spontaneously around him to distribute the flares in classic hub-and-spoke formation.

There isn’t a woman in sight.

A man with a lean and hungry look taps my roommate Josh on the shoulder and says something to him in Spanish. Josh and I had come to the game at the suggestion of our hostel owner, who told us if there was a match to see in Argentina, this was it. Right here is when I understood exactly what our hostel owner meant. Josh leans in and beckons the man to repeat what he said. The man repeats himself. Josh’s Spanish isn’t so great. Josh looks out over the crowd into the next section. Josh’s head whips back as he gets sucker punched.

His assailant leans over him, shouting, gesticulating wildly while Josh crouches, covering his eye. As with any outbreak of violence here, a space opens up for the boys to let off some steam and I immediately step between the two.

“Tranquilo,” I say, extending open hands to both of them, making no moves at retaliation and keeping my guard clearly down. “¿Cálma-te…si?”

I look down to check on Josh and then my jaw takes the sucker punch, then one from behind, another to my jaw, then my head — Is that three or four people punching me? My mouth fills with blood as a large man grabs me by the collar and drags me down the steps, his friend meanwhile attempting to kick me in the ribs. My feet stumble to regain footing as the acute sting of a just-opened wound shoots out like a spider web across my jaw while my tongue probes the broken flesh of my inner cheek. Other fists, kicks, and sticks strike my back, shoulders, and head. I don’t know who, where, or how many, and I’m really not paying attention anymore — I’m just looking for any way out of this before serious problems begin. Someone throws me against the barrier behind the goal. I spring up as fast as I can and haul ass out of there, crashing, thrashing, lurching my way into the next section. Nobody chases me. I climb up the rows amid concerned stares and two guys stop me.

“¿Todo bien?” they ask, one of them putting his hand lightly on my shoulder.

Right — let’s check the damage. Besides the cut in my mouth, my right kneecap feels off. My jeans are torn halfway down my leg and red splotches stain my shins. I run my hand over the golf-ball-sized swelling on the left side of my forehead. My nose and teeth are intact and my wallet is still in my pocket. My eyeglasses have somehow remained on my face. I wipe some more blood from my mouth and sweep my tongue around the piece of flesh that used to be part of my right inner cheek now flapping about inside my mouth. I try biting down — no problems there.

“Si,” I reply, “Bien.”

Stay in this section, they say, it’s safer —“Es más seguro.”

The game has yet to begin and I stand four rows down and 20 feet over from the nearest stadium exit. This is actually quite close, but with hundreds of rabid fans filling the space between me and freedom, I’m as good as lying in a mass grave. Even if I were able to make an escape, the police have locked the stadium gates — not so much an effort to keep us in, but to keep out the ticketless anarchists still in the streets.

I have no choice but to stay.

I stand with my feet at shoulder width, bordered on all sides of my body by other bodies. I consider striking up a conversation with my immediate inmates to gain some allies should any more “disagreements” erupt. But the noise from the shouting and singing is so painfully deafening that any conversation, even with a floating head one foot away from mine, is futile.

The players finally enter the arena. Smoke from the fireworks blankets the field like a fog.

Everyone in my section supports the same team, but this is hardly a reason to not fight with each other. Bursts of flying fists become as distracting as a light drizzle or an uninterested mosquito. As the fighters are separated, they kick, they flail, they spit on each other, they spit on the rest of us, and they talk trash, saying just as much with their postures, for body language among men at sporting events is truly international: “¡La concha tuya, cabrón! Pedazo de pelotudo …¡Te voy a romper el orto! Hijo de puta …”

During the next 30 to 40 minutes I witness five such exchanges. Then I stop counting.

We shall overcome

In grade school and high school, I played American football, and in college I played rugby. I still remember what it feels like to tackle and be tackled, with and without padding, to be sprawled beneath a human body or two or three or four, to feel a cleated foot kick my forearm that shields my face as I am stuck beneath a ruck. But those situations were child’s play. The pile-ups rarely exceeded six people and my fall was always cushioned by grass and mud.

In la tribuna, when someone falls, they fall on wide steps of cold concrete dirtied with blood, phlegm, beer, urine, cigarette butts, roaches (both the creature as well as the marijuana variety), lone shoes, burnt-out flares, and lost keys. Though I have yet to see it, I’m sure at some point these hallowed stands have also been graced with feces, semen, vomit, and entrails. For we are the visiting team’s supporters. We are not people; we are animals. And like all animals, when we get excited, we lose order.

The ball moves into scoring territory and the overanxious fanatics up behind you want a closer look. One leans on another who leans on another and before you can say, “avalanche,” the leaning turns into pushing, which turns into falling. The only warning you ever get is a split-second recognition of footsteps thundering down the sloping concrete behind you.

This warning comes too late.

By the time the alarm signal saunters across the appropriate synapses of the nervous system, there is already the cumulative momentum of hands, feet, faces, forearms, shoulders, elbows, and knees of not one, two, three, or four, but 70, 80, 90, 100 human dominoes on your back, neck, shoulders, waist, and legs as everybody topples together down the stands toward the goalposts. It becomes a human wave that goes not from side to side but from top to bottom, swelling, cresting, curling, and crashing down onto filthy concrete. This is not college rugby — the best defense here is to go with the riptide while quickly angling toward the sides. Fighting against the flow only achieves the same result as fighting a rip: total submersion.

I maneuver as best I can toward the top of the pile-on but I still have the collective weight of tens, if not hundreds, of people slowly bearing down on my left leg that is somehow tangled with someone’s arm and someone else’s neck. And because there was only a fraction of a second to prepare for this, my left leg will now bend in a way it was not meant to if I do not adjust it promptly. This requires me to remove my right knee from someone’s armpit that is wedged shut, and shove it directly into someone else’s face, while my butt wedges between a spine and an ankle, my elbow into a crotch. Some men moan and shout in pain while muffled cries for help rise up from bodies below.

From this jigsaw puzzle of body parts no one emerges without the help of others. As we pick ourselves up, winces and grimaces flash across our faces. The rest of the body parts are recovered and helping hands and shoulders are lent to those trapped at the bottom. An unfortunate few can no longer walk and are carried toward the stairs, their arms draped across the backs of others. I turn to a couple of people with whom I had been entangled.

“Todo bien?” I ask.

We take turns exchanging uneasy handshakes. One of them makes the rounds embracing each of us, as if in Catholic Mass, wishing peace be with us:

“Bien,” we all assure each other, nodding with forced smiles, “Todo bien.”

Postscript: Quite a few people who have read this story have asked me whatever happened to Josh. Fortunately, he made it out safely and we met up back at our youth hostel after the game. I’ve also been asked to add something about the hooligan situation in Argentina in the four years since this event took place. I haven’t followed it closely but I do know that an initiative began in 2003 to appease hooligan mayhem and to simultaneously promote Argentina’s struggling writers: small booklets featuring poetry, essays, and short stories were for a time handed out free at soccer matches to give fans something else to do during pre-game festivities and halftime. The effort seemed to work temporarily according to reports immediately after its introduction, but more recent accounts suggest that things may have returned to the ways of old.

Ulysses de la Torre