Rugby, Class, and the State in the Argentina (1940s-1950s) 1

Rugby, Class, and the State in the Argentina (1940s-1950s)1 Introduction On Sunday, August 29, 1954, President Juan Domingo Perón attended the match between the Argentine and French national rugby sides. Cheered by a packed stadium, before the game started the head of state walked to the pitch and greeted both teams. That the leader of a nationalist and populist regime2 would honour with his persona a ‘deporte extranjerizante’—a sport alien to the traditions and culture of the country—was all the more significant considering that the game took place at a critical point of the relationship between the government and the institutions of Argentine rugby.3 The year before, the government had intervened the Club Universitario de Buenos Aires (University Club of Buenos Aires, hereafter CUBA) on the grounds that its admission policy— restricted to university graduates—discriminated against less privileged social groups as well as women.4 Founded in 1918, CUBA was one of the oldest institutions that played rugby and remained for decades one of the most exclusive milieus of elite socialisation. The government dismissed the club’s authorities and appointed a comptroller to oversee its facilities and assets. The action aimed not so much at opening a leisure institution to a more mixed membership but disbanding what it perceived as a hotbed of oligarchical conspiracy. The same had happened with other elite institutions, such as the Buenos Aires Yacht Club and the city of La Plata Jockey Club. When on June 7, CUBA’s 1st division rugby team refused to play the scheduled match in protest the government-controlled Confederación Argentina del Deporte/Comité Olímpico Argentino (Argentine Confederation of Sport/Argentine Olympic Committee, hereafter CAD/COA) pressed the governing body for rugby union, the Unión Argentina de Rugby (Argentine Rugby Union, hereafter UAR) to punish the rebellious players. The disciplinary measures affected not only the squad involved—all its players were suspended—but the entire CUBA—no team under its name was allowed to compete in the UAR’s tournaments.5 The same year another conflict broke out, this time in La Plata, the capital city of Buenos Aires province. In 1952 its legislature had voted the renaming of the city as ‘Ciudad Eva Perón’, to pay homage to the recently deceased first lady. Other institutions bearing ‘La Plata’ in their name followed suit, such as the University Club of La Plata, which became Universitario Eva Perón. Refusing to play under the new name a group of players split and formed another club under the name ‘El Bosque’ (The Forest). Following the military coup that brought down Perón in September 1955 the new regime set up a committee to purge sports from any trace of Peronism, a process called ‘des-peronización’. Among the blacklisted 1 sportspersons was the entire basketball team and several male and female athletes, none of whom were allowed to participate in the Olympic Games of Montreal (1956). In its report the investigative body praised the ‘courage’ of rugby authorities for having preserved the autonomy and ‘purity’ of an ‘exemplary institution that had never received a subsidy from the public authorities’ nor had it ‘maintained any relationship whatsoever with the Peronist administration’.6 The truth, as we shall see, was quite different. The present article is part of a larger project on the social history of rugby in Argentina. In the pages that follow, I examine briefly its beginnings as a sport practised by British expatriates and the local elite, and its gradual expansion into the upper-middle and middle classes. I argue that the Peronist years (1946-1955) played a crucial role in this process as result of the direct involvement of the state in the promotion of sport. During that decade more rugby clubs and teams were created and participated in the different competitions than in any period before. Although this growth was partly the result of a more general process that affected all forms of physical recreation, rugby also became the target of specific government measures. In addition to the the sport’s quantitative growth I shall examine the coverage of rugby institutions and competitions in the official sports press; the granting of public subsidies to cover the travel costs of European touring sides, and the sponsoring of rugby squads and competitions by Peronist youth organisations, such as the Eva Perón Foundation.7 With some 130,000 players in all categories (2019), Argentine rugby ranks among the most widely practiced sports after soccer, together with basketball, volleyball, and tennis.8 National sides took part in all nine Rugby Word Cups to this day; won all editions but one of the South American Rugby Championship (since 1951), and participate in several international ongoing competitions— Super Liga Americana de Rugby (American Rugby Super League, professional), Rugby Championship, and Sevens. Yet we have no critical survey of rugby’s inception and development in the Argentine history. Unsurprisingly for the country of Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi, we have nothing compared to the historiography and debates that enliven the history soccer, although this situation is far from being limited to rugby. As a result, rugby has remained the territory of journalists—often former players themselves—and to a much lesser extent sociologists and anthropologists, but not historians.9 Broader social attention on the sport has concentrated on the international performance of national squads—‘Los Pumas’, ‘Jaguares’—and episodes of violent behaviour involving rugby players.10 Despite its visibility—TV broadcast and press coverage of local and international rugby matches; appointment of rugby ‘stars’ to public office; appearance of high-profile players in commercial adds—to the outsider rugby appears somewhat hard to decipher, 2 a war-like game played by machos prone to excesses or, alternatively, privileged men who think of themselves as natural bearers of amateurism’s moral virtues.11 The reasons for this may lie, partly, in the game’s own complexities, a fact that makes it, in the words of sports journalist Robert Kitson, a sport ‘not for everyone’ as it ‘offers more in the way of light and shade than any other team sport’.12 Partly too, societal (mis)perceptions, which often oscillate between self-serving myths and negative clichés, are rooted in the UAR’s historical attitude of keeping rugby at a safe distance from everything smacking professionalism, mass spectatorship, and ‘popular’. Adding to this is the fact that rugby failed to take deep roots in neighbouring countries, thus depriving it from the broader social attraction and intense emotions elicited by international sports contests. This ‘isolation’ made it difficult for Argentine players to improve their skills by playing against teams of comparable or higher level, forcing them to exhausting transoceanic trips to Europe and the Pacific. Imperial connections: the beginnings of rugby union Notwithstanding the few English-speaking schools that adopted it since the 1920s, Argentine rugby has always been and remains to this day an amateur club sport.13 Although British residents played a few scattered matches in the 1870s, the sport’s formal origins date back to the founding of the River Plate Rugby Championship in April 1899—forerunner of todays’s UAR. The clubs that set up what became the governing body of rugby union in Argentina were the Buenos Aires Cricket & Football, Belgrano Athletic, Lomas Athletic and Rosario Athletic. All four were locality-based clubs, situated in upper-class urban and suburban neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires and Rosario, the country’s most prosperous cities and home of the largest communities of British expatriates. All of the players bore English names.14 Rugby was practised by university students, young professionals, and employees of foreign (mostly British) firms, some of them coming to rugby after having achieved national and international renown in other sports.15 The game was intimately connected to the local upper-class world of the empire’s expatriates, its matches being regularly featured in the English-language press.16 A telling example of British influence on Argentine rugby was the impact of the First World War. In 1915 the departure of British subjects to Europe forced the UAR to cancel the championship for lack of players. Throughout the war the UAR organised special matches and social gatherings to raise funds for the British Hospital in Buenos Aires and the Red Cross. Another example are the tours of British and Commonwealth sides —in 1910, 1927, 1932 and 1936—and the annual match between the squads ‘Argentinos’ and ‘Extranjeros’ (foreigners), there latter almost entirely made up of British residents and played over three decades since 1908—except for the war years. Both occasions became can’t-miss-events of 3 the upper class calendar, a social engagement which anyone who was important never failed to attend, the heads of state included.17 For the upper class of Buenos Aires the union game was seen as a distinction-producing habit, a cultural bridge connecting the ‘Paris of South America’ to the ‘civilised’ centre of the Pax Britannica, much like the visits of Italian opera singers.18 In the first two decades of the twentieth century no more than ten teams played in the 1st or 2nd division tournaments, often some of them having to withdraw for lack of enough players. After the Great War the number of clubs and teams registered with the UAR jumped from 9 to 24 and from 8 to 61 respectively. This increase went hand in hand with the gradual decline of the number of British players and the concomitant ‘Argentinisation’ of the union game. The first teams made up of Argentine citizens appeared in the decade before the Great War.19 For the first time, in 1921 none of the British clubs qualified for the 1st and 2nd division finals. By the late 1930s, the lack of empire’s players forced the UAR to discontinue the match between ‘Argentinos’ versus ‘Extranjeros’, and replace it by a contest between teams from the capital city and the suburbs. A further development was the coming of professional soccer. Until the early 1930s monetisation in sports had been restricted to horse-racing and boxing. Soccer posed a different and potentially more serious problem because several rugby clubs also participated in the soccer championship.20 Although the UAR, upholding the principle of amateurism, announced that it would ban from membership any institution that practiced professional sport, in most cases it was the elite clubs themselves that opted out of soccer in favour of rugby. There were a few cases, however, in which the UAR did expel or deny affiliation to institutions that were already or would later become major soccer names.21 Playing for the nation, with the help of the state: the Peronist years (1946-1955) The coming to power of Juan Doming Perón in 1946 triggered profound political, social, economic and cultural changes. A combination of social justice, national sovereignty, appeals to ‘the people’, and authoritarian leadership, Peronism left its mark on every aspect of life. For the first time in the country’s history, the state directly intervened in almost all areas of public life with the aim of building a ‘New Argentina’. The regimen’s redistributive economic policies antagonised the traditional elites and large sectors of the middle classes, the more so as it made clear the attempt to bring the institutions of civil society under its control. Sport was no exception.22 Peronism sought to make it the spearhead of a policy aimed at improving the physical and mental fitness of the youth as well as a political instrument for buttressing Argentina’s international standing through the participation in athletic events.23 The government sought, not always successfully, to steer existing 4 bodies towards these goals, appointing trusted officials to head the CAD/COA.24 It also set up its own leisure institutions to mobilise the youth, such as the mass sports competitions for the youth organised by the Eva Perón Foundation.25 Peronism took an interest in all sports, the president himself being portrayed as the quintessence of the polyvalent sportsman—a cavalry officer, he was said to master eleven sports, including fencing, target shooting, and skiing. In addition to their hygienic and diplomatic functions, sports also served as a stage for enacting massive rituals in which people and leader came together to celebrate the unity of the nation. For the first time, sports became a state policy; it was included in the Second Five-Year-Plan (adopted in 1952) and was supplied with generous public subsidies.26 Despite its links with both British presence and the anti-Peronist opposition, rugby was treated no different from other sports. In fact, never before did the union game draw so many benefits from the state as under Peronism. One aspect that confirms this point is rugby’s quantitative growth. Between the 1920s and 1950s the number of players registered with the UAR grew from around 300 up to between 3,000 and 5,000.27 The same goes for the clubs and squads participating in different categories: in the 1930s there were 24 clubs and 65 teams, two decades later they increased to 45 and 214 respectively. We can see a similar progress in the proliferation of new divisions to accommodate different levels of technical skill and age groups. In the early 1920s matches were played only in 1st and 2nd divisions, in addition to the annual contest ‘Argentinos’ vs ‘Extranjeros’. In 1945 there were 20 teams in the 1st division, 10 in the 2nd, 30 in the 3rd, and 64 in the junior-age groups. Ten years later there were 30 teams playing in the 1st division, 9 in 2nd, 53 in 3rd, and 113 junior teams. By the late 1940s, during Perón first term (1946-1952), a typical season (April through October) totalled 650-700 matches in all categories, at an average of 60-50 games per weekend. To this we must add the Seven-A-Side, played at the end of the season, and the international matches (on this more later). Another significant development appears if we direct our attention to the origins and sociological composition of this growth. Partly, the increase in the number or players and teams took place within the oldest elite clubs themselves, whose prestige and technical level placed them in advantageous position for replenishing their pool of players.28 Rugby also expanded through the creation of teams made up of company managers, white-collar workers, and civil servants employed in commercial firms, especially banks and railroads, state enterprises and the bureaucracy. The case of the Beromama club illustrates rugby’s gradual breaking out of its traditional elite milieus. Founded in 1939 by residents of Buenos Aires’ westernmost districts and nearby suburbs, the club’s setting was the home of a population of blue- and white-collar workers, many of 5 whom were employed in the railroad yards and offices of the Western Railway. It started playing with the Catholic Rugby Federation (on this institution see below) until its affiliation with the UAR’s 3rd division two years later. After a successful nine-year campaign in 1950 the club was promoted to the 1st division, where it managed to remain for two seasons. Former players and historical accounts retell the following story about the club’s legendary origins: (…) We turned up by accident at the field of Pacific Railway club (…) At the end of the match the boys snatched the oval-shaped ball and brought it to (the town of) Liniers (….) In their hands the ball took a different meaning (because) playing rugby in 1939 was for the wealthy and respectable (…), and they were poor and wild. They decided to form a club. Beto, Roberto, Mango, Marcelo, Caro, Cucho and others gathered to pick a name (…) Beto became ‘Be’, Roberto ‘Ro’, Mango ‘Ma’, Marcelo ‘Ma’, Caro ‘Ca’, Cuchi ‘Cu’, and so forth; and so (they called) the club ‘Beromamacacumaospobichucaco’.29 The account that evokes the creation of Beromama—the shortened name with which the club would be eventually known—established a social demarcation with elite clubs. Its awkward name—formed by the first syllable of each of the founders’ names or nicknames—mocked the traditional rugby clubs with fancy English-sounding names, such as Buenos Aires Football & Cricket, Old Georgians, Old Philomatians, etc. Moreover, unlike the privileged boys of elite clubs, Beromama’s players were ‘poor and wild’. Being ‘poor’ meant not coming from the city’s chic neighbourhoods and bilingual private schools, a fact that was reinforced by Beromama’s lack of a playing field of its own. The statement ‘in their hands the ball took a different meaning’ suggests that these outsiders played the union game in a way that might not fit the ideal of the sporting gentleman. The references to the players’ social background may also be taken as a sign of the sport’s gradual ‘nationalization’ or ‘Argentinization’. Attendance to matches may give us another measure of rugby’s growth. Let us begin by stating the obvious: no other sport came close to the number of clubs, teams, players and massive viewership enjoyed by soccer. By the early 1950s the country’s main soccer teams attracted between 12,000 and 15,000 spectators per match. For rugby we have only partial figures because admission fees were charged only for the 1st division finals, the Seven-a-Side, the annual game between ‘Argentinos’ and ‘Extranjeros’, and the matches against foreign teams—proceedings from these events were the most important part of UAR’s annual budget. Before Peronism the highest turnout for a rugby match was during the 1927 visit of the British university team, which the local press put at somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000.30 In the early1950s the fee-paying rugby events 6 attracted between 7,000 and 9,000 spectators, at an average of 2,5000 to 3,000 per match.31 The tours of European teams in the 1940s and 1950s topped all previous viewership, with the French 1954 tour attracting the largest crowds ever seen in a rugby match, between 15,000 and 30,000 fans, a figure that largely exceeded the stadium’s seated capacity.32 Rugby was also played outside the UAR’s two main events, the Clubs Tournament and the Argentine Championship.33 In the 1940s and 1950s commercial firms and educational institutions, private as well as public, set up their own competitions. One of the most popular among the youth was the Inter-School Tournament (Torneo Intercolegial). This was an outgrowth of the the early matches played by a handful of private schools in the mid-1920s. Following their incorporation to the UAR’s activities in 1928 they became a regular event of the season until the Peronist government, always sensitive to the uses of sport as a means to reach the youth, placed it within the sphere of the National Department of Physical Education. By the early 1950s between 20 and 30 public and private high schools--all located in the city of Buenos Aires and adjoining suburbs—took part in the tournament. An even more popular variant was the Inter-School Seven-A-Side (Seven Intercolegial); it was played by 30 to 40 educational establishments and became so successful that in 1953 the government incorporated it into the Second Five-Year Plan.34 Although more limited in scope but equally significant of the growing enthusiasm for rugby was the varsity tournament (Torneo Interfacultades). It was organised by the Department of Physical Education of the University of Buenos Aires and played by squads of the schools of agronomy, architecture, engineering, law and medicine. Banking firms also developed their own competitions. Started in 1945 by the Banking Association (Asociación Bancaria) the Inter-Banks tournament gathered sides from the country’s major private and public banks.35 Unlike the trade-based initiatives that only lasted a few weeks, the only other alternative outside the UAR to play rugby all year round was the Federación Católica Argentina de Rugby (Argentine Catholic Rugby Federation). Set up by a French Basque priest, the “Liga Católica,” as it was popularly known, was not, strictly speaking, a confessional institution, although its founder probably hoped to use the union game to instil Christian values in the youth. Affiliation to the Liga was easy and affordable, unlike with the UAR, which required payment of an annual fee, recommendation from two member clubs, a playing field and adequate sanitary facilities. Although it could never compete with the UAR, the Liga fulfilled an important role by offering a structure and organisation that allowed small clubs that were unable to meet the UAR’s affiliation requirements to begin playing. In fact, clubs that would later raise to the UAR’s top divisions 7 started playing with the Liga; moreover, some played in both organisations. By the early 1950s the Liga had between twenty and thirty registered clubs in its 1st, 2nd, and 4th division tournaments.36 The regular coverage in the official press gave rugby a social visibility that had never enjoyed before. Until the late 1940s in addition to the main sports journal, the liberal weekly El Gráfico—published since 1919—, rugby fans could follow the season’s matches in the sports sections of the conservative journal La Nación and the English-language The Standard—main outlet of the British community. In 1949 a government-owned publisher launched Mundo Deportivo. This bi-weekly offered a much richer repertoire of sports life, featuring topics that never made it into the major publications--women’s athletic events, histories of clubs in lesser divisions, and reports on less well-known tournaments.37 In fact, despite its obvious function as an official propaganda outlet the narrative of the matches was generally devoid of ideological commentary and conformed to the standards of sports journalism. More importantly, it was through Mundo Deportivo that most sports fans—besides those directly involved—learned about those clubs, teams and competitions that were outside the UAR’s reach.38 In 1951 a group of rugby players from San Isidro Club—an institution located in the capital’s northern bourgeois suburbs—launched the first journal entirely devoted to rugby, the monthly Tackle. Among them was Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, who signed his articles with the pen name “Chang-Cho” (pig). Tackle was nothing comparable to either El Gráfico or Mundo Deportivo. It was an amateur initiative undertaken by a group of friends, with no editorial board or permanent staff, a combination of serious reportage with irreverent commentaries and thinly disguised moralising stories depicting rugby types and its male culture. Despite its short existence--one year (twelve issues)—Tackle is another example of the growing enthusiasm for rugby.39 Rugby not only benefitted from the broader enthusiasm generated by the government’s sports policy. The state also intervened to bolster its international reputation as well as expand its practice throughout the country. In the half century since the UAR’s creation the Argentines had played against foreign teams on five occasions. The first international match took place in 1910 when the British Lions visited Argentina as part of the Centennial celebrations (one-hundredth anniversary of the independence). Three other tours followed, two by British university sides (1927 and 1936) and one by the South African Junior Springbocks (1932). This situation changed under Peronism. In just six years four European squads visited Argentina: an Oxford-Cambridge varsity side with several internationals (1948), the French XV on two occasions (1949 and 1954), and the Irish national team (1952). The Argentines lost all but two matches—a win and a draw against the Irish. In 1948 Perón himself welcomed the British players in 8 the presidential residence; the following year he sent his personal aide as the government’s representative to the match against the French side. Despite the untimely circumstances of the Irish tour—shortly after the end of the official mourning period of Eva Perón death (August 1952)—the matches were not cancelled, although players wore a black ribbon and observed a two-minute silence before the start of the game. Two years later, when the conflict between government and opposition reached its peak, Perón himself attended the first match between the Argentine and French sides, personally greeting the players on the field. Peronism also facilitated the conditions for Argentine rugby to measure itself against neighbouring countries. Following a UAR’s request, the government agreed to host the I South American Rugby Championship in conjunction with the Pan-American Games, held in Buenos Aires in 1951. Here, the Argentines proved vastly superior to their Brazilian, Chilean and Uruguayan adversaries.40 Although they proved exhausting to the tourists, the matches against European sides were a huge success.41 They attracted fans in unprecedented numbers, even in mid-week matches; made the UAR financially solvent; gave a better picture of the strengths and flaws of Argentine play, and deepened the links between the locals and major rugby countries.42 Of the four tourist squads the French XV left the strongest impression. Almost all of the games they played drew ‘huge crowds’ to the Maldonado Stadium of the Buenos Aires Gymnastic and Fencing Club. In 1949 and 1954 the locals faced a style of play that was more offensive and rougher than the one they had learned from their British mentors. For many Argentines French rugby became almost a revelation, a door that opened them to a new concept of the game, one felt as better fitted to their ‘Latin’ character. French rugby was known for being exceedingly rough, even ‘violent’, a style of playing centred on the forwards, unlike the British ‘classic’ game based on the backs. The ‘Tricoleurs’ reputation was closely connected to the migration of French rugby from the elite clubs of the northern cities to the rural towns of the southwest. Unlike the upper-class, university-trained players that formed the British teams, as well as most of Argentina’s elite clubs, the French sides lined up men of humbler social backgrounds, drawn mostly from the small-town petty bourgeoisie and middle classes.43 Dazzled by the lavish reception and bourgeois lifestyle of their hosts, to the French Argentine rugby appeared a ‘snobbish sport, like golf or field hockey, practiced by a minority with English-sounding names’.44 Everyone in Argentina praised the physical power and tactical skill of the French, but there was also criticism of their ‘unrestrained tendency to play too rough’.45 Reacting to these views, the vice-President of the Fédération Française du Rugby, René Crabos called his Argentine hosts to abandon the ‘classic’ style based on the defence, and adopt the more aggressive way of playing of 9 the French.46 Impressed by what he had seen, Ángel Torres Viñas, coach of the 1st division Pucará club, defined himself as ‘a resolute admirer of the French way of playing’, which he found more congenial with the criollo temperament (temperamento criollo).47 Not everyone agreed. Reporting on a match between local squads during which unsporting play in the pitch was accompanied by spectators’ misconduct, Mundo Deportivo warned against a ‘revisionist mood’ that swept Argentine rugby, which the journal perceived in the tendency of some teams to play the French way, using any means at hand, ‘even those that are forbidden’. At the opposite end of the political spectrum, the liberal sports weekly El Gráfico expressed even stronger views, portraying the same match as a ‘disgrace for rugby’.48 The tour of overseas teams were for the UAR a cause for celebration as well as concern. Flying more than twenty players from Europe and housing them for a month raised dire financial questions. The UAR had a limited budget, its proceeds coming mostly from gate money and financial investments. Up until the late 1940s the strength of the local currency (peso) allowed the UAR to absorb the costs incurred by the British varsities and South African tours. This changed with the Keynesian and expansive policies implemented by the Peronist administration. With inflation running high—it jumped from 17,7% in 1946 to 38,7% in 1952—the exchange rate of the peso to the pound and the dollar widened, squeezing the UAR’s resources to the limit. By 1948 its budget could no longer cover transportation costs from overseas teams, which had to be paid in hard (foreign) currency. Accommodation costs, on the other hand, were kept to a manageable minimum by quartering players in the Hindú club’s luxurious facilities. The government agreed to defray the cost of air transportation through a combination of state subsidies and advanced payment of plane tickets, supplemented by bank loans, gate money, voluntary contributions, and fundraising proceeds.49 As more youth flocked to rugby the government realised its potential for instilling useful habits—capacity for teamwork, self-imposed discipline, obeisance to rules—as well the threat posed by a sport that recruited its followers largely among the social milieus that actively opposed Peronism. Accordingly, the government sought, on the one hand, to tighten the control over competitions involving children of school age, incorporating the Inter-School Rugby tournaments into the Second Five-Year Plan and placing them under the authority of the National Council of Physical Education—formerly they had belonged in the UAR’s structure.50 It also took tougher measures against clubs whose conduct it perceived as disloyal, shutting down the CUBA and banning its teams from participating in the UAR’s competitions. On the other hand, public authorities took steps to promote the diffusion of rugby outside its geographical core areas and 10 social milieus. For the tenth edition of the Argentine Championship (1954) it subsidised railroad tickets so that squads playing away matches could afford to travel to distant locations. By far the most ambitious measure to break the elite’s hold over rugby was the setting up of teams and sponsoring competitions outside the UAR’s structure. In 1954 the Sports Bureau (Division Deportes) of the Eva Perón Foundation recruited rugby coaches to teach the basics of the union game to young boys aged 12-17 who had not played it before.51 The beginners were grouped in six teams, two for each of the three age categories—12-13, 14-15 and 16-17 years—, all bearing names of historical figures, geographical features, and specimens of Argentine flora and fauna.52 In February 1955 these squads played a Seven-a-Side tournament in preparation of rugby XV matches that took place the following month as part of the Campeonatos Infantiles Evita and Campeonatos Juveniles Juan D. Perón.53 Started in 1948 as a soccer contest, these popular competitions later incorporated other sports, such as track-and-field, basketball, swimming, and water-polo. With some 200,000 participants they achieved a great success as a mass event for staging the government’s ideals of social solidarity and national unity.54 The rugby matches were planned as a preliminary test towards the inclusion of rugby in the Olympic Games for Children and Youth, scheduled for 1956 but cancelled as a result of the coup d’état that overthrew Perón’s government (September 1955).55 Conclusion It may be going a bit too far to claim, as a sports journalist and historian wrote, that the ‘desperonización’ carried out by the ‘Revolución Libertadora’ amounted to a ‘sportcide’, a ‘genocide’ of sport.56 The new regime did discontinue most of the Peronist initiatives, especially those seen as more ideologically tainted, like the competitions sponsored by the Eva Perón Foundation. With regards to rugby, the wiping out of everything that bore the mark of Perón and his government had ominous consequences for it cancelled a belated experiment that could have brought this sport to more socially diversified milieus. In the aftermath of the 1955 coup, in order to set its record straight before the investigative committee the UAR presented itself as a victim of the overthrown regime’s ‘totalitarian’ excesses, wilfully forgetting the extent to which rugby had benefitted from Peronist sport policy. Thereafter, the claim that portrayed the governing body of Argentine rugby as an institution that ‘never asked anything from the government’ became a self-comforting mantra.57 What the political caesura of 1955 did not stop was the continued growth of rugby, albeit at a mucho lower pace than before. The tours of four major European teams during the Peronist decade left a solid foundation for Argentina’s link with international rugby, with British, French and South 11 African teams returning almost every year. Moreover, as the UAR’s records show there were indications that rugby culture had undergone significant changes, some of which its authorities felt to be at odds with the traditional idea of the sporting gentleman. Chief among them was the ‘lack of amateur spirit’ and improper conduct of both players and spectators—failure to turn up at scheduled matches, unfair play, disrespect of the referee, improper behaviour of spectators. This malaise, which rarely appeared in earlier periods and intensified since the 1950s, suggests that the diffusion of rugby outside elite milieus transformed the way people played, watched and signified the game. As the number of fans, teams and clubs grew playing became more about competing and winning than showing glamorous individual skill to please the public. 12 Endnotes 1 Associate Professor. Department of Historical and Social Studies. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires. I want to thank Tony Collins, Philip Dine and Joris Vincent for their insights and suggestions. I follow Raanan Rein’s characterisation of populism as a style of governance based on charismatic leadership, and national mythologies that, through the mobilisation of industrial workers and the petite bourgeoisie, uses the state to modernise the country’s social and economic structure. Ranaan Rein, Peronismo, populismo y política: Argentina, 1943-1955 (Buenos Aires: Ed de Belgrano, 1998). 2 The notion of ‘deporte extranjerizante’ was widespread among ultranationalist milieus. Perón himself seems to have endorsed it, at least rhetorically, when he called for creating ‘a gymnastics and sport adapted to our people’. Santiago Ganduglia, El nuevo espíritu del deporte arge¡ntino (Buenos Aires: Secretaría de Prensa y Difusión de la Presidencia de la Nación, 1954). 3 Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, ‘Decreto 8552/1953’, June 27, 1953, and ‘Decreto 9037/1953’, May 3, 1953. 4 Unión Argentina de Rugby (hereafter UAR), Memoria y balance de la temporada de 1953 (Hereafter Memoria), ‘Club Universitario de Buenos Aires’; ‘Serious Charge Made Against CUBA’, The Standard, June 11, 1953. 5 Lucie Hémeury, ‘Le pact introuvable: Sport, péronisme et société en Argentine, 1946-1955’ (PhD diss., Université de Paris 3, 2018). 6 The primary (unpublished) sources for this article are the annual reports (Memoria) of the Union Argentina de Rugby. Published material include the Argentine sports weeklies El Gráfico, Mundo Deportivo and Tackle, and the French Midi Olympique and Le Mirror des Sports, as well as the sports section of the journals La Nación and The Standard. 7 Of the 130,000 registered players—of which 6,000 women—72,000 belong to competitive-age categories (over 15 years). In 2019 50,000 spectators attended the home matches played by the first national team (Los Pumas) and 120,000 the games by the second national squad (Jaguares). As of 2019 the UAR had 36 professional players in its payroll plus 26 on scholarships. See UAR, Memoria 2019, ‘Capacitación’. 8 13 On the history of rugby in Argentina see Eduardo A. Olivera, Orígenes de los deportes británicos en el Río de la Plata (Buenos Aires: J. L. Rosso, 1932); Hugo Mackern Historia del rugby argentino (1917-1930): La era de San Isidro. Gira británica de 1927 (Buenos Aires, n/d); Horacio Spinetto, ‘Ciento veinte años de rugby argentino’, Todo es Historia XXV, no. 94 (1992); Unión Argentina de Rugby, 1899-1999: 100 años. Unión Argentina de Rugby (Buenos Aires: M. Zago, 1999); Jorge Búsico and Alejandro Cloppet, Ser Puma: La apasionante historia del seleccionado argentino de rugby (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 2003); Ariel Scher, Guillermo Blanco and Jorge Búsico, Deporte Nacional: Dos siglos de historia (Buenos Aires: Emecé-Deportea, 2010); Juan C. Bertta and Gustavo E. Severo, Los secretos del rugby argentino (Buenos Aires: Argentinidad, 2012); Jorge Búsico, El rugido. Sudáfrica 1965: El nacimiento de Los Pumas (Buenos Aires: Club House, 2015); Alejandro Cánepa, Fuera de juego: Crónicas sociales en la frontera del rugby (Buenos Aires, Autores de Argentina: 2015); Claudio Gómez, Maten al rugbier. La historia detrás de los 20 desaparecidos de La Plata Rugby Club (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2015); Daniel Dionisi, Leyendas del rugby (Buenos Aires: Club House, 2019); Sebastián E. Perasso, El Interior. Historias de rugby (Buenos Aires: Club House, 2017). 9 Two recent episodes illustrate this point. In early 2020 a group of young rugby players bit to death an 18-year old of immigrant parents. Later in that year, just before the beginning of a Rugby Championship match against the All Blacks, the Argentine national rugby team, Los Pumas, failed to pay homage to the late soccer star, Diego Maradona. The attitude, which many regarded as an expression of elitist scorn for a popular icon and national hero, was all the more embarrassing since the New Zealanders themselves saluted Maradona’s memory placing on the pitch a tricot bearing Maradona’s famous number 10. To top this faux pas, bloggers discovered and made public racist twits made by some of the players (including the captain). On these episodes see Andrés H. Reggiani, ‘Rugby, elite y masculinidad. Una perspective histórica’, in Hombres en movimiento. Deporte, cultura física y masculinidades, ed. Pablo A. Scharagrodsky (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2020), 247-95. 10 Negative views are predominant among sociologists and anthropologists. However, these studies tend to construct their hypotheses upon evidence selectively chosen to fit previously held assumptions that are hardly distinguishable from popular clichés. As a result, they fail to grasp a rugby scene that is more complex and diverse than the handful of elite clubs in urban and suburban bourgeois districts on which this research is invariably based. See Sebastián Fuentes, Cuerpos de elite. Educación, masculinidad y moral en el rugby argentino (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2022); Juan B. Branz, Machos de versed. Masculinidades, deporte y clase en Argentina. Una etnografía sobre hombres de sectores dominates que juegan al rugby (La Plata: Malisia, 2018). Alejandro Cánepa’s book, Fuera de juego. Crónicas sociales en la frontera del rugby (Buenos Aires: Autores de Argentina, 2015) constitutes a salutary counterbalance that nuances conventional analyses. 11 Robert Kitson, ‘Rugby’s dazzling wizard Phil Bennett converted plenty to the oval ball’, The Guardian, June 14, 2022. 12 The first Argentine school that adopted rugby as its main outdoors (male) sport was Saint Georges’s College in 1921. Throughout that decade thirteen schools participated in rugby tournaments organised by the Liga Atlética Intercolegial (Inter-School Athletic League). After 1928 the UAR took over the organisation of school rugby. UAR, Memoria 1928. 13 Until 1908 the UAR’s annual reports were written in English; until the 1940s the majority of its board members bore English names, just like the lineups of the top divisions teams of elite clubs. 14 14 15 A breakdown by university education or occupation of the men—for whom we have data—who played for San Isidro Club between 1917 and 1930, when the club won all editions of the1st division championship, shows the following distribution: medicine (5), law (3), agronomical engineering (1), architecture (1), journalism (1), land survey (1), marketing (1). Some of them later held public posts in their fields of expertise. Before taking up rugby many players of San Isidro Club had earned a reputation at 1st division soccer (8), boxing (4, one gold medal at the 1928 Olympic Games of Amsterdam), rowing (4), track and field (3), sailing (2), tennis (1), water-polo (1), shooting (1). Mackern, Historia del rugby argentino, 214-32. 16 For example The River Plate Sport and Pastime (1891-1901) and The Standard (1862-1959). In 1908 the conservative José Figueroa Alcorta became the first Argentine president to attend a rugby match—the inaugural game between the teams ‘Argentinos’ and ‘Extranjeros’. In the 1920s and 1930s his example was followed by the Radical Marcelo T. de Alvear, and the military dictators, José F. Uriburu and Agustín P. Justo. 17 Olivera, Orígenes de los deportes británicos en el Río de la Plata; Mackern Historia del rugby argentino; Andrew Graham-Yoll, La colonia olvidada. Tres silos de tabla ingress en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Emcee, 2007). 18 The first all-Argentine teams were Facultad de Ingeniería (1904), San Martin Athletic Club (1904), Estudiantes Junior (1905), Asociación Atlética de Medicina (1906), Facultad de Derecho (1906), Gimnasia y Esgrima de Buenos Aires (1908), Racing Football Club (1911), Atlanta Athletic Club (1911), Estudiantes de La Plata (1912), and Atlético San Isidro (1917). On Argentine elite clubs, see Leandro Losada, ‘Sociabilidad, distinction y alta sociedad en Buenos Aires: los clubes sociales de la elite porteña (1880-1930)’, Desarrollo Económico 45, no. 180 (2006): 547-72; Sebastián G. Fuentes, ‘De la universidad al club: prestigio, élites y asociacionismo juvenil como reacción a la Reforma de 1918’, Diálogos pedagógicos 11, no. 21 (2013): 11-24. 19 Soccer became openly professional in Argentina when in May 1931 eighteen of the most popular clubs split from the Asociación Amateur Argentina de Football (Argentine Amateur Football Association) and formed the Liga Argentina de Football (Argentine Football League). See Julio Frydenberg, Historia social del fútbol. Del amateurismo a la profesionalización (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2017). 20 This was the case with clubs such as as Estudiantes de La Plata, Ferrocarril Oeste, Racing Club, and River Plate. UAR, Memoria 1949, ‘Ascensos y descensos’; Id. Memoria 1960, ‘Desafiliaciones’. For an early and nuanced consideration of the impact of professionalism on amateur sportsmanship, see Anibal Vigil, ‘¿Qué es un amateur?’ El Gráfico, Dec. 27, 1924, 4. 21 José Marcilese, ‘Sociedad civil y peronismo: los clubes deportivos en el período 1946-1955’, Recorde. Revista de história do esporte 2, 2 (2009). 22 On the relationship between Peronism and sports see María C. Pons, ‘Cuerpos sublimes: el deporte en la retórica de la Nueva Argentina’, in Políticas del sentimiento. El peronismo y la construcción de la Argentina moderna, ed. Claudia Soria, Paola Cortés Roca, and Edgardo Dieleke (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2010), 40-65 ; Lucie Hémeury, ‘Le pouvoir hors-jeu ? Football et péronisme en Argentine (1946-1955)’, Cahiers des Amériques latines 74 (2013): 55-74 ; id. ‘Le pacte introuvable’; Raanan Rein, ed., La cancha peronista. Fútbol y política (1946-1955) (San Martín: UNSAM, 2015); Raanan Rein and Claudio Panella, eds., El Deporte en el primer peronismo. Estado, competencias, deportistas (La Plata: Ed. de Periodismo y Comunicación, 2019). 23 15 In 1947 the Peronist regime merged these formerly autonomous institutions and placed them under the control of the National Council for Physical Education, an official body created in the same year to bring under the same roof all public and private sports organisations and competitions. Rodrigo Daskal and Daniel Sazbón, ‘Peronismo y deporte: El rol de la CADCOA’, in El deporte en el primer peronismo. Estado, competencias, deportistas, ed., Raanan Rein (La Plata: Ed. de Periodismo y Comunicación, 2019), 21-48. 24 On this typical institution of Peronism’s strategies of top-down popular mobilisation, see Néstor Feroli, La Fundación Eva Perón (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1990) and Claudio Panella, La Fundación Eva Perón: Imágenes de su historia (Buenos Aires: Fundación Eva Perón, 2015). 25 To give two examples: the CAD/COA’s annual budget jumped from 50,000 pesos (1943-1944) to 10,000,000 pesos (1950-1951); the subsidies received by the Eva Perón Foundation went from 950,000 (1949) to 3,000,000 (1952-1954). 26 Mackern, Historia del rugby argentino, 75; Souza, ‘Cincuenta años de rugby’, Mundo Deportivo, April 21, 1949, 46-7 27 28 Among the clubs that dominated the top categories in the 1940s and 1950s were Asociación Deportiva Francesa, Atlético San Isidro, Belgrano Athletic, Buenos Aires Football & Cricket, Curupaytí, Estudiantes, Gimnasia y Esgrima de Buenos Aires, Ferrocarril General San Martín, Hindú, Obras Sanitarias, Old Georgians, Olivos, Pucará, San Isidro, and Universitario de Buenos Aires. Pedro D’Alessandro and Hugo Ditaranto, La vera historia del Bero (Buenos Aires: Besana, 2001); Carlos M. Caron, La Majareta (o los 107 locos) (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1981). 29 ‘Magnificent Display by British Rugby Team. Record Attendance—12,000 spectators’, The Standard, July 31, 1927; ‘British v. All Argentines. Record Attendance at Palermo’, The Standard, August 22, 1927. 30 The figures for public attendance to rugby matches given by French correspondents appear inflated when compared to those given by the UAR and the English-language press. One possible reason for the discrepancy may be that local sources took into account the number of tickets sold for seated spectators, while the French correspondents included people standing on the sides of the pitch. In the mid-1930s the Gymnastics and Fencing Club of Buenos Aires (Gimnasia y Esgrima de Buenos Aires) built the first large rugby stadium in Argentina, which could accommodate up to 5,000 spectators, later increased to 16,000. UAR, ‘Gira británica’, Memoria, 1936; Id. ‘Estadio propio’, Memoria, 1965; Id. ‘Clubes y canchas’, Memoria, 1966. 31 Emilio Gálvez, ‘Les “Tricoloeurs” ont révolutionné Buenos-Aires’, Midi Olympique, September 7, 1954, 2. 32 The National Championship (Campeonato Nacional) was introduced in 1945 as a contest between teams of the different regional (provincial) unions. In the late 1940s there was one provincial rugby union, by the mid-1950s, seven. 33 Ricardo Souza, ‘Champagnat ratificó su gran calidad de juego’, Mundo Deportivo, August 17, 1950, 74; Id. ’XI Torneo Intercolegial’, Mundo Deportivo, July 20, 1950, 73. 34 16 The participating teams came from the public banks Central, Hipotecario (mortgage), Crédito Industrial, Londres, and Nación, and the British-owned Bank of London and South America. Ricardo Souza, ‘Sostenido avance del rugby interbancario’, Mundo Deportivo, February 16, 1950, 47; Souza, ‘Ingeniería ganó el interfacultades’, Mundo Deportivo, September 21, 1950, 64. 35 Ricardo Souza, ‘Federación Católica Argentina de Rugby’, Mundo Deportivo, January 5, 1950, 64. 36 Mundo Deportivo was the only publication that featured information on rugby played outside the UAR’s purview. Its print run could reach 220,000 and by mid-1955 it had published 330 issues. Alejandro Eujanian, Historia de las revistas argentinas, 1900-1950: La conquista del público (Buenos Aires: Asociación Argentina de Editores de Revistas, 1999); Matthew Karush, ‘National Identity in the Sports Pages: Football and the Mass Media in 1920s Buenos Aires’, The Americas 60, no. 1 (2003): 11-32 ; María Rodriguez and Valeria Añon, ‘Mundo Deportivo. El deporte en la gráfica estatal’, in Ideas y debates para la Nueva Argentina: Revistas culturales y políticas del peronismo. Vol. I, ed. Claudio Panella and Guillermo Korn (La Plata: Ed. de Periodismo y Comunicación, 2010), 229-54; Claudio Panella, ‘Mundo Deportivo: La mirada peronista del deporte argentino’, in La cancha peronista: Fútbol y política, ed. Raanan Rein (San Martín: UNSAM, 2015). 37 With the exception of the inter-school competitions, neither the UAR nor El Gráfico or the journals’s sports sections make any reference the Liga Católica and the competitions organised by university departments and the commercial firms. 38 On Che Guevara’s sporting interests, see Charles Parrish, ‘Building Character and Socialising a Revolutionary: Sport and Leisure in the Life of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’, International Journal of the History of Sport 31, no. 7 (2014): 747-59. 39 40 Argentina’s total score (points for /against) in all three matches was 157/3, Brazil 10/157, Chile 74/21, and Uruguay 75/25. UAR, Memoria 1951, ‘Torneo internacional’; Souza, ‘La Unión de Rugby organiza el Primer Torneo Sudamericano’, Mundo Deportivo, March 8, 1951, 82; Id. ’Se jugó el Primer Sudamericano de Rugby’, Mundo Deportivo, April 12, 1951, 83-9. The month-long (and even longer) tours of foreign teams forced sportsmen to play two, and sometimes three, matches in a week. The reason for such a packed schedule was the need to raise enough gate money to cover the tourists’ transportation costs. The British played nine games; the French ten in 1949 and 11 in 1954, and the Irish ten. The program included two matches between both national sides, plus additional ones between the visitors and the Argentine finalists of the previous season as well as squads from city, suburbs, and the provincial clubs. 41 ‘Thousands Watch First Match’, The Standard, August 1, 1948, 1; ‘Huge Crowd Sees France Win Their First Game’, The Standard, August 8, 1949, 5; ‘An Enormous Crowd’, The Standard, Aug. 12, 1949; ‘Huge Crowd Sees Close Game at Maldonado’, The Standard, August 29, 1949, 8; ‘Argentine XV Again Hold French to A Few Points (…) The huge crowd which has been much a feature of the French rugger tour in this country remained faithful to the end, turning up in perhaps bigger numbers than ever for the final match at Maldonado yesterday’, The Standard, September 5, 1949, 8. 42 17 Historians and sociologists agree that different styles of playing involved distinct class-based conceptions of manliness, whether the emphasis is placed on elegance of demeanour, self-control, physical strength, or group-solidarity. Pierre Bourdieu illustrates this point by explaining the changes undergone by French rugby after its migration from the northern cities and the Atlantic coast to the rural towns of southwest. He argues that the cult of manliness and team spirit with which the French lycéens and students of the Grandes Écoles associated the practice of rugby as it was played in English public schools was ‘reinterpreted’ by the peasants, employees and businessmen of the Midi. In this new social and cultural setting, he says, rugby became ‘distinctively plebeian’ in its taste for violence (castagne) and the cult of sacrifice’. Pierre Bourdieu, Questions de sociologie (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 2002), 188. See also Philip Dine, French Rugby Football: A Cultural History (New York: Berg, 2001); Anne Saouter, Être rugby : jeux du masculin et du féminin (Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 2000); and Christian Pociello, Le rugby ou la guerre des styles (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983). 43 44 Lucien Caron, ‘En Argentine le rugby est un sport snob!, But Club, September 12, 1949. 45 UAR, ‘Gira equipo de Francia’, Memoria 1949. Souza, ‘Rugby argentino a través del juicio francés’, Mundo Deportivo, September 15, 1949, 66-7. The French coach, Albert Cazenave, compared the British way of playing to ‘a beautiful speech read by its author’ while the French style ‘looks more like the speech a brilliant orator would improvise following his inspiration, without regards to any established rule, and mindful of the public’s reactions’. ‘Notre enquête sur le rugby français’, Midi Olympique, August 16, 1949, 3. 46 47 Souza, ‘Clima revisionista’, Mundo Deportivo, September 15, 1949, 66. Souza, ‘Club Pucará y Capital jugaron rugby “francés”’, Mundo Deportivo, August 25, 1949, 64-5; Free Lance, ‘Lucha dura y sin brillo’, El Gráfico, August 26, 1949, 4-5. 48 See ‘Informe de Tesorería’, Memoria y balance, 1948, 1949, 1952, 1954. It was in these financially dire circumstances that the links between rugby and private capital revealed their true importance. In 1927 the British railroads bankrolled a large part of the sum needed to cover the sea travel of the Oxford-Cambridge team. In 1948 the UAR obtained from the local branch of the Bank of London and South America a loan under favourable conditions which allowed to cover part of the the air transportation of the British guests. 49 50 ‘Es menester estimular la práctoica del rugby infantil’, Mundo Deportivo, July 1, 1954, 38-9. ‘La Fundación Eva Perón aportará al crecimiento de nuestro rugby’, Mundo Deportivo, August 19, 1954, 39. 51 The teams were named “Tacuara” (tree), “Pampero” (wind), “´Zagal” (lad), “Nahuel” (native Argentine name), “Mariano Moreno” (member of the first non-Spanish government), and “San Martin” (military leader of the war of independence). Souza, ‘Las mamás comprobaron que el rugby no es peligroso’, Mundo Deportivo, January 27, 1955, 24 52 53 Souza, ‘Campeonatos infantiles y juveniles de rugby’, Mundo Deportivo, March 31, 1955, 51. Guillermo Blanco, Los Juegos Evita (Buenos Aires: Ed. October , 2016); Claudio Panella, ‘Los Campeonatos Infantiles Evita: Entre la inclusión social y la socialisación política’, in El deporte en el primer Peronismo, 49-76. 54 18 Souza, ‘Rugby de “15”: Otro objetivo alcanzado por la Fundación Eva Perón’, Mundo Deportivo, March 17, 1955, 39. 55 Víctor García Lupo, Historia political del deported argentino (1610-2002) (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2004), 339-43. 56 57 ‘Ejemplo de una magnífica lección de humildad y fe’, La Nación, June 25, 1966. 19