Academic interest in the study of sports, both in the humanities and the social sciences, has risen considerably in recent years, resulting in new and innovative scholarly work that provides greater insight into the role sports play in society. While the effects of sports in the construction of national, class, and gender identities have been widely studied, as evidenced by a firmly established bibliography, there remains a lacuna in Latin American historiography with regard to the ethnic aspect of sports, even in immigrant societies like Argentina.
Raanan Rein's new book Fútbol, Jews, and the Making of Argentina constitutes an impressive attempt to fill that void and offers a groundbreaking study about the history of Argentina's Jewish community from a unique perspective. By focusing on the history of Club Atlético Atlanta, a football club located in the porteño neighborhood of Villa Crespo, Rein examines the intricate relationship between sport, ethnicity, and community in a Latin American context.
Divided into seven chapters, the book traces the history of Club Atlético Atlanta from its creation in 1904 until the present day. In the absence of any previous scholarship on this topic, Rein reviews the history of the club and its fans as a way of exploring the social integration of Jewish immigrants and their descendants into Argentine society. One of the author's contentions is that club membership provided immigrants with a significant sense of belonging while the club premises came to constitute a space for interaction between Jews and non-Jews, between Zionists and non-Zionists, and between affiliated and unaffiliated Jews—whether Ashkenazic or Sephardic. Thus, the history of the Jewish experience in Argentina, the book argues, cannot be written without taking into consideration the vital role played by Atlanta since it was established.
The book begins with a brief history of Jewish immigration to Argentina from the end of the nineteenth century until the mid-1900s. “From Gringos to Criollos: The City and the Jews” focuses on the challenges faced by east European Jewish immigrants and the greater sociocultural gap they had to overcome as compared to other immigrant groups like the Spanish and Italians, who found greater common ground, both linguistic and religious, upon arrival to the country.
A significant number of Jews first settled in the neighborhood known as Once and later in Villa Crespo, the Jewish neighborhood at the heart of Atlanta's story. Chapter 2, descriptively titled “The Cradle of Tango and Football: Villa Crespo and the Essence of Buenos Aires,” traces the footsteps of Jewish immigrants from the crowded garment district of Once to the more residential neighborhood of Villa Crespo. In those early decades of the twentieth century, the barrio would come to be known not only as a predominantly Jewish neighborhood but also as a place that embodied two of the country's most revered passions: tango and fútbol.
While the club's leadership searched long and hard for a definitive place to build its facilities, the team's itinerant ways soon earned them the nickname of bohemios, or “gypsies,” thereby playing to the myth of the “wandering Jew.” The trials and tribulations of Atlanta's arduous pursuit of a place to call home is the subject of the book's third chapter, fittingly titled: “‘The Wandering Jew’: Atlanta in Search of a Playing Field.”
The club's and the neighborhood's Jewish identity would not truly emerge, however, until the 1940s, as a result of the bitter conflict that ensued with Chacarita Juniors, a rival club that was driven out of Villa Crespo during that time. In chapter 4, “Villa Crespo: The Promised Land,” Rein examines how Jewishness was bestowed upon Atlanta and the barrio of Villa Crespo, not from within, but rather from the outside, reminding one of the experience of teams in Europe like Tottenham Hotspur, in North London, and Ajax in Amsterdam, both of whom came to be known as “Jewish” football clubs, owing both to location and the perceived identity of its followers.
In the turbulent 1940s, Peronism became the driving force in Argentine politics and would have a long and lasting effect in sports in general, and in soccer in particular. “In the Shadows of Peronism,” the book's fifth chapter, turns the reader's attention to the Peronization of sports in Argentina and to the way Atlanta and its leadership responded to what became both challenges and opportunities.
The 1960s are remembered as the “golden days” of Club Atlético Atlanta, mostly owing to the successful administration of León Kolbowski, the club's president, for most of the decade. Chapter 6 is hence devoted to this important figure in the club's history, his relationship with the Argentine Communist Party, and the inauguration of the stadium that bears his name. It was during his tenure that Jews became a majority in Atlanta's board of directors, forever giving the club its reputation for being Jewish in character.
The last chapter centers on Atlanta's fans, their habits and their rituals, as well as the stadium as a space for the creation of collective identities and a social imaginary. In “Victories, Fans, and Fight Songs,” Rein first outlines the club's ups and downs during the 1970s and 1980s and considers several factors that led to its deterioration and near demise (the club declared bankruptcy in the year 2000), among them the decline of neighborhood clubs in general, the weakening of neighborhood loyalties, and the commercialization of football in a globalized world. The second part of the chapter focuses on the racism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism that permeate every aspect of Argentine football, shedding light on the processes by which the antagonistic tensions between “us” and “them” are created, especially in material spaces such as soccer stadiums.
Following those seven chapters is an epilogue that makes an effort to explain alternative paths for the study of ethnicity as it relates to sports in the region. Somewhat disjointed and lacking a well-defined aim, this last section looks at the phenomenon of Club Deportivo Palestino in Chile as well as the representation of Atlanta in an Argentinean telenovela; it ends with a quote from the novel Mestizo, by Ricardo Feierstein.
On the whole, Raanan Rein's new book is an important contribution to the understanding of issues related to ethnicity, social integration, hybrid identities, and generational conflicts within the context of modern Argentina. Academic scholarship on football has remained surprisingly thin until recently, with notable exceptions found in the works by Argentine anthropologist Eduardo Archetti, a true pioneer in the field of sports studies, and sociologist Pablo Alabarces, who has authored and edited several books on the topic. Absent in all of their works, however, is the Jewish dimension in sports and for this Rein's new book deserves great recognition.
Fútbol, Jews, and the Making of Argentina is a methodologically sound book based on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, including archival sources (which include the minutes of the club's board of directors meetings as well as annual reports), data from questionnaires answered by more than fifty Atlanta fans, and dozens of interviews with fellow historians, journalists, and club officials.
This is a book that will be of great interest to both academics and the general public. Its readability is due in great part to the impeccable work of Martha Grenzeback, who translated the text from the original Spanish version, Los bohemios de Villa Crespo, first published in Buenos Aires in 2012. This is a path-breaking book that offers a fascinating and insightful account of how a sports team can become a vehicle for the expression of a modern Argentine and Jewish identity.
