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The Boca Juniors Flag
taken from across the stadium - we were allowed in the home section. looks a little claustrophobic, doesn´t it?when i came to southamerica, I didn´t even know all the rules to futbol(thats soccer to us gringos) and frankly just didnt find it that exciting. that changes after you experience first hand the energy of a latin american futbol game. the matches here are really more like controlled riots where, incidentally, some soccer happens!
ºº aside on violence here: public violence is just part of the culture here in latin america, and is very shocking at first - i recently saw a guy running for student government at my university get beat to a pulp by another party ON TV OVER UNIVERSITY POLITICS. there was also a full-on riot at one of the soccer games after a bad call, which the fans of the two teams decided to pick up where they left off at a boxing match later that night. additionally, most of the time no one gets arrested and no one stops the fight till its over, like in the student government fight.
anyway, one sunday Daniel, an argentine who is my host families´sort of handyman, but who is my age and is pretty cool, took me and some of the girls that live in the
riot police on the field
boca junior game, rosario families´other apartment to a Boca Juniors away game in Rosario. The Boca Juniors are one of the best clubs in southamerica, and are from the barrio La Boca, which is a blue collar and slightly dangerous neighborhood in Bs As. As such, their fans have a reputation for being the rowdiest around. They didnt disappoint. The team from Rosario wasnt very good, and Boca probably sent more fans than the home team. Unfortunately, Boca only recieved one end zone (the end zones are crappy and fenced off with barbed wire bc they are the cheap seats while the sidelines are for the season ticket holders. also, fans are not allowed to sit in each others sections because of fights, and after the game they dont open the gates to let out the home fans until all the visitors have left). The section was rockin - almost all the fans were male (surprise!), shoving, jumping up and down, climbing the fences and beating drums. The entire upper deck was swaying. Luckily an unexciting 0-0 game, so no riot.
Rosario - 3rd or 4th largest city in Argentina, though doesnt seem like it, much cleaner and nicer than BsAs. Over-looking the
beautiful rosario
along the banks of the river paraná - a tributary of the plata Rio Plata, its one of the prettiest cities here and is home to most of the country´s war and military monuments. The most interesting of which is the memorial to the Faulkland Islands (Malvinas) War. It reads (see photo) ´Malvinas, forever belonging to Argentina´ (every map i´ve seen here also lists the islands as part of the country). Needless to say, its kind of a sore spot for argentines.
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