Soccer and Dictators
This chapter examines the history of the politicization of soccer by dictators. As Markovits and Rensmann argue, “Throughout the twentieth century, dictatorships of various kinds utilized the charismatic power of sports for their own, often nefarious, causes.”[1] Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Franco explicitly used sport to serve the nation, dominant ideology, party, and leader. Dictators-in-waiting could also engage in extreme cruelty to advance their political cause. The radical Somali Islamist group Al-Shabaab, which controlled large areas in the southern part of the country and harshly imposed Sharia law, killed seventy-six people in Uganda who gathered to watch the World Cup finals on television in July 2010.
Despite the use of soccer by dictators throughout history, Eduardo Galeano points out how some brave soccer players in the Ukraine resisted Nazism and paid with their lives:
A monument in the Ukraine commemorates the players of the 1942 Kiev Dynamo team. . . . During the German occupation they committed the insane act of defeating Hitler’s squad in the local stadium. When the game was over all eleven were shot with their shirts on at the edge of a cliff.[2]
This chapter highlights the numerous ways in which authoritarian and totalitarian regimes have used soccer to teach “constructive values” such as improving health, morals, and discipline, reducing crime, assisting developing economies, enhancing notions of community and cooperation, and promoting patriotism and extreme forms of nationalism.[3] The lesson of this chapter is the way soccer has been used to maintain existing power elites, even authoritarian forms of governance. In this chapter, I travel from the Latin American military dictatorships of the 1970s to Franco’s Spain (1939–1974) and Fascist Italy (1922–1943) to underscore the ways soccer has been used to advance the imperatives of dictators. It should be noted that it is not merely authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that have utilized soccer in order to maintain the status quo. Politicians and generals of all political stripes have used soccer in order to promote the maintenance of existing regimes. Today it is almost ritualistic to see presidents, prime ministers, or monarchs at important international soccer matches.
Nonetheless, it should be pointed out that soccer has its limits in terms of conserving the status quo. Today military governments are a thing of the past in most of Latin America. Moreover, political elites might seek to construct and mold identities through soccer, but it does not mean that that they are always successful; that their politicization schemes are durable in the long term; or that ordinary people and soccer fans do not resist naked displays of the politicization of soccer. Chapter 4 explores the various ways movements in civil society have sought to use soccer as a vehicle to transform individuals and communities.
Picking a great number 2 was a difficult task. There are many excellent defenders who wore the number 2 shirt. The best number 2s are known for their galloping and overlapping runs from the back, as well as their dangerous crosses into the penalty area.
While Brazilian stars Djalma Santos and Carlos Alberto, or El Salvador’s Roberto Rivas could have been good choices for the number 2 shirt, I chose the retired Chilean international defender Don (Sir) Elias Figueroa. He played professional soccer in Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, and the United States from the late 1960s until the early 1980s. Figueroa wore the jersey numbers 2, 3, 5, and 7. Figueroa had exceptional defending skills, which led the great Pelé to call him one of the greatest defenders of all time and the best in Latin America.[4] Pelé also included Figueroa in his list of the 125 best living soccer stars of all time. Franz Beckenbauer, one of the greatest sweepers of all time, paid a fitting tribute to Figueroa when he called himself “Europe’s Figueroa.”[5] Thus, there is no doubt that Figueroa was one of the greatest defenders in soccer history.
Figueroa approved of the military dictatorship, or remained silent during the Augusto Pinochet regime, even as some star players from the Chilean national team were being harassed by the dictator. Along with the rest of the Chilean political right, as well as other famous Chilean athletes such as former tennis stars Patricio Cornejo and Hans Gildemeister, Figueroa openly campaigned for the pro-Pinochet “Yes” side in the 1988 referendum on the military regime.[6] Pinochet was commander-in-chief of the Chilean army from 1973 to 1998 and president of the military government junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981. The referendum took place on October 5, 1988, but was defeated and meant that the transition to Chile began and constitutionally Pinochet could not stay in power until 1997.
The soccer website Ferplei points out that the Chilean soccer idol Figueroa would have been all too willing to be an “executioner” in the service of the Pinochet regime and would be marked by his open support for the authoritarian regime.[7] Writing in Marca.com, Miguel Ángel Iara points out that Figueroa was ideologically “close to the military regime,” while another Chilean international Carlos Caszely openly campaigned against the Pinochet regime in the 1988 referendum and could declare that Pinochet’s leftist predecessor Salvador Allende had his “defects,” but was a “good person” that “wanted to make Chile a great nation.”[8] As a result of his leftist ideals, Caszely’s mother was arrested by the Pinochet regime and tortured.[9] Alberto Quintano, an international defender on the Chilean national team who played with Figueroa and Caszely, insisted that Caszely was left off of Chile’s 1978 World Cup team for his political views, and afterward the players even refused to talk about Caszely because of fear of the authoritarian regime.[10]
It is rather instructive that in 1970 Pelé was investigated by the Brazilian military dictatorship for suspected leftist sympathies and his support for the release of political prisoners. Yet Pelé did not really get seriously involved in political resistance struggles against the Brazilian military regime. In chapter 4, I explore the case of Brazilian soccer star Sócrates and his bold democratization campaign against his country’s military regime in the 1980s.
Refusing to get politically involved is the rule for most soccer players under dictatorships. Military regimes invoke a climate of fear and silence, thus weakening the possibilities of political resistance through sport. Some Chileans might rightfully criticize Figueroa for remaining silent while even professional soccer players and their families were being tortured. At other times in the transition to democracy during and after the 1988 referendum, Figueroa blatantly appeared a supporter of the Pinochet regime.[11] One Santiago-based newspaper called Figueroa one of the “100 most famous figures” to support the pro-Pinochet “Yes” side in the 1988 referendum.[12] Osvaldo “Arica” Hurtado was another soccer player that openly backed the dictatorship in the 1988 referendum.[13] The aforementioned paper also asked whether the two Chilean soccer players, in conjunction with famous politicians, actors, singers, and businessmen, were “passive accomplices” to the horrors of the Pinochet regime.[14] In any case, by maintaining a low profile politically during the Pinochet regime, Figueroa was able to receive national honors and international awards. It is true that in the context of a more democratic Chile, he has not received the same recognition as he did during the dark years of the military junta. After his retirement, Figueroa also became a FIFA Player for Peace. For a player that certainly did not promote the peace and well-being of his Chilean compatriots that were being tortured and “disappeared” under the military junta, is this really an appropriate honor?
Elías Ricardo Figueroa Brander was born on October 25, 1946, in the Chilean Pacific port city of Valparaíso. Built upon numerous steep hillsides overlooking the Pacific Ocean, it is called “the Jewel of the Pacific.” The city’s unique labyrinth of streets and cobblestone alleyways allowed it to gain UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 2003. Valparaíso is ironically the birthplace of both Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Marxist leader ousted by Pinochet and the military junta on September 11, 1973.
Figueroa is considered the best Chilean soccer player of all time. At an early age, his doctor told him that he would not be able to play any sports because of breathing problems and polio, but this only made Figueroa more determined to become a world-class player.[15] After his polio diagnosis, the young Figueroa even had to learn to walk again. Along with Bobby Moore, Franz Beckenbauer, Daniel Passarella, Gaetano Scirea, and Franco Baresi, Figueroa is perhaps the greatest modern defender ever to play the game. He could play with ease as a commanding sweeper, or as a right-sided defender.
Figueroa played for many clubs during his long, illustrious career, including his hometown Santiago Wanderers, Brazil’s Internacional, and Uruguay’s Peñarol. Figueroa made forty-seven appearances for Chile, including a record three World Cups in non-successive tournaments: 1966, 1974, and 1982. The selection of an ageing Figueroa for the 1982 World Cup was criticized by sectors of the Chilean media.
Figueroa was known for his elegant style of play. He was certainly an uncompromising defender, yet his playing style was generally clean. Looking back at the footage of the 1974 and 1982 World Cups, what is striking about Figueroa is his calmness on the ball coming out from the back. Those that know and play the game understand that it is not always easy to know how much time we have on the ball, especially when opposing players are breathing down your neck and looking to pounce on an error! Figueroa was calm, able to cleanly win a ball from a decisive tackle and then start a menacing counterattack. Despite his pro-Pinochet support, Figueroa was a gentleman on and off the pitch.
Figueroa began his long career with Chile’s Santiago Wanderers in 1964. Yet his best soccer moments were as foreigner in Brazil, which was then ruled by a military dictatorship. He is a hero to SC Internacional (Porto Alegre) fans in Brazil. While playing for SC Internacional, he twice won the Bola de Ouro, the Brazilian Player of the Year award, in 1972 and 1976. He was also the winner of the prestigious South American Footballer of the Year award three times in a row in 1974, 1975, and 1976. In his tenure with SC Internacional, the team won a stunning seven domestic titles. Figueroa was also named Best Player in Uruguay in 1967 and 1968 while playing with Peñarol. Near the end of his career with club side Palestino, he was even voted Best Player in Chile in 1977 and 1978. Everywhere Figueroa went he touched gold. He won domestic titles with every team he played for in various countries. Figueroa played his final season with Santiago-based Colo-Colo in 1982. He also retired from the Chilean national team in 1982. Figueroa spent the 1981 season with the Fort Lauderdale Strikers of the now defunct North American Soccer League.
Let us open this section with the sad story of Joe Gaetjens (1924–1964), a Haitian immigrant to the United States on a scholarship at Columbia University in the 1940s. Gaetjens would make soccer history. Gaetjens played for Brookhattan in the American Soccer League, where his performances first caught the eyes of U.S. soccer officials. Although Gaetjens never received U.S. citizenship, he played all three games for the USA in the 1950 World Cup in Brazil and was the goalscorer in the USA’s stunning 1–0 upset against England in Belo Horizonte. There is a famous photograph of Gaetjens with a beaming smile being paraded around the field by joyous Brazilian fans. After the World Cup, Gaetjens moved to France, where he played with Racing Club de Paris and Olympique Alès. Gaetjens then moved back to Haiti and even played for Haiti in a World Cup qualifier against Mexico in 1953. He continued to play domestically with Etoile Haïtienne.
Although Gaetjens was not interested in politics, he would soon discover the cruel realities of military dictatorships. Gaetjens had the bad luck to be a relative of Louis Déjoie, who lost the 1957 Haitian presidential election to the dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier. Some of Gaetjens’s brothers were also associated with a group of exiles in the Dominican Republic who wanted to stage a coup d’état.[16]
Duvalier declared himself Haiti’s “president for life” on July 7, 1964. While most of the Gaetjens family fled the country, Joe Gaetjens stayed behind. He did not think that the new dictatorship would care about an athlete. He was wrong and he paid the heaviest price: arrested by the Tonton Macoutes secret police, Gaetjens was presumably killed by the regime. His body has never been found or recovered.
As the Gaetjens story demonstrates, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are indeed brutal vis-à-vis the politicized and non-politicized alike. In addition, these regimes have openly manipulated soccer and sport in general in order to maintain the status quo, project a positive regime image (even as they were systematically jailing, torturing, or killing citizens), or to demonstrate a sense of superiority vis-à-vis other ideological systems and nations.
John R. Tunis recognized the way dictators used sport as an instrument of policy a long time ago in a piece he wrote for Foreign Affairs in 1936.[17] Tunis posited that dictators use sports for three main purposes: 1) to keep people (the young in particular) “occupied” and “happy”; 2) for propaganda purposes (that is, to demonstrate a superior race, nation, or ideological system); and 3) to create men who are capable of defending “the fatherland.”[18] Joseph Stalin, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952, was the first dictator to “discover” the importance of sports. Stalin argued that physical conditioning was a duty of all Soviet citizens in order to “repel external attacks.” For Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, sports could be used in order to “militarize the nation,” create “good soldiers,” and demonstrate “the superiority of the race” and sanctity of Fascist principles.[19] Under Mussolini, sports and soccer ceased to be mere leisure activities and became government functions. Mussolini made it obligatory to join a national sport, leisure, and cultural organization called Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (National Recreational Club).[20] As early as 1926, the Fascist Party controlled the Italian Olympic Committee. In this way, Mussolini was able to transform all sporting activities into a “grand national industry.”
Dictatorships have also touched contemporary soccer players. One case is instructive. He was a right-sided defender for both Arsenal and Cameroon’s national soccer team. His name is Laureano Bisan-Etame Mayer (b. 1977), but he is commonly known as Lauren. He is a retired defender who was born in Equatorial Guinea. He played for Arsenal from 2000 to 2006, making 159 appearances for the club. He was part of the great Arsenal team of the 2003 to 2004 season, which went undefeated and won the Premier League title. In 2000, he played for Cameroon and won the Olympic gold medal in Sydney, Australia. Lauren not only faced great adversity due to political circumstances under a dictatorship, but he was fortunate to even be born:
His father, Valentin Bisan-Etame, was a politician in Equatorial Guinea and dared to speak out against the country’s psychotic dictator, Francisco Macías, in 1977. It was a brave thing to do: Macías impaled his enemies’ heads on poles, banned the use of the word “intellectual” and hailed Hitler as “the savior of Africa.” His crimes were so bad he was given 101 death sentences when brought to trial in 1979. Valentin was imprisoned and sentenced to death for his comments but managed to escape to Cameroon with several of his children and his wife, who was pregnant with Lauren. “If our family hadn’t escaped, I probably wouldn’t have been born,” Lauren said. His trials were not over though: his family moved to Spain where he and his 14 siblings had to survive in Seville’s tough Montequinto district.[21]
Writing in a 1985 issue of History Today, Duncan Shaw explains how the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco was on hand to watch Spain’s national soccer triumph in 1964:
On June 21st, 1964, an ecstatic crowd of 120,000, awash in a sea of red and yellow, cheered and applauded Generalissimo Francisco Franco as he stood up to leave the Madrid summer evening gathering. This was no mass rally of political affirmation that the dictator was leaving, but a football match. Spain had just beaten the Soviet Union in the Final of the European Nations’ Cup; so much more than just a football victory: a triumph for international co-operation over Cold War hostility, but, conversely, perhaps also a triumph over the old Red enemies of the Civil War.[22]
Shaw also points out that the mainstream Spanish press was giddy with national enthusiasm after beating their ideological enemy, the Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union:
The conservative ABC newspaper was moved to comment the following day:
After twenty-five years of peace, behind the applause could be heard an authentic support for the Spirit of July 18th. In this quarter of a century there has never been displayed a greater popular enthusiasm for the State born out of the victory over Communism and its fellow-travellers. . . . Spain is a nation every day more orderly, mature and unified, and which is steadfastly marching down the path of economic, social and institutional development. It is a national adventure.[23]
Spain today is a soccer powerhouse. They were World Cup winners for the first time in their history in 2010, while also capturing successive victories in the 2008 and 2012 European Nations’ tournaments. However, Spain’s only other notable soccer victory came in 1964. From 1938, when he became prime minister, until his death in 1975, Franco skillfully politicized soccer after many international triumphs achieved by Spanish teams. Franco was a loyal fan of Real Madrid CF, which won the European Cup numerous times under his reign: 1955–1956, 1956–1957, 1957–1958, 1958–1959, 1959–1960, and 1965–1966. Between 1953 and 1964, Real Madrid’s legendary player was the Argentinean-born Alfredo Di Stéfano, who scored a remarkable 246 goals in 302 appearances for Real Madrid. King Alfonso XIII, the Spanish monarch from 1886 to 1931, also realized the political importance of Spanish soccer. In 1920, King Alfonso XIII bestowed the title Real (Royal) to the Madrid-based soccer club. Real Madrid is today one of the most famous and richest soccer clubs in the world.
The 1964 triumph against the Soviet Union was important for the Franco regime as Spain was “regarded as the last bastion of fascism by a hostile outside world.”[24] In short, the 1964 Spanish victory provided Franco with “a means of purifying his foreign image, of painting a lighter picture of Spain to replace that of a brutal dictatorship,” writes Shaw.[25]
During his reign, Franco received backing from Juan Antonio Samaranch, a major Spanish and Catalan sports administrator and diplomat. Samaranch was the president of the International Olympic Committee from 1981 until 2001, “had been a career fascist,” and “a minister in the government of the murderous Spanish dictator Franco.”[26] When he passed away in 2010, his funeral was attended by members of the Spanish royal family. They had forgotten that as a sports journalist for La Prensa he was dismissed in 1943 for criticizing the supporters of Real Madrid CF after its 11–1 drubbing of FC Barcelona.[27] Samaranch later joined his family’s lucrative textile business and would become the second longest-serving president of the International Olympic Committee.
It is rather interesting that while Franco could have some success in improving the image of Spain as a result of the national team and Real Madrid victories, his politicization of soccer did not help him domestically. Franco clearly identified with Real Madrid, a team he portrayed as popular and the “pride of the nation” after it won six European titles during his reign. It was no accident that Santiago Bernabeu, the president of Real Madrid, was a soldier in the Francoist military forces during the civil war. Shaw points out that politicians close to Real Madrid could win political favor with the regime: “In order to make progress in their careers, ambitious junior ministers and army officers jostled to get themselves noticed at Real’s magnificent Bernabeu stadium, cheering on Madrid against some provincial also-rans.”[28]
Franco’s support for Real Madrid fit well within his authoritarian structure of governance and centralism, which concentrated all power in the capital city. As the Catalans and Basques rejected the authoritarian centralism of Franco and remembered his harsh military policies against the regions in the context of the Spanish civil war (1936–1939), they used soccer as a way to express animus for Franco’s Real Madrid. CF Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao became the de facto clubs of Catalan and Basque nationalisms, respectively.
Under the Franco regime, it was forbidden to speak any other language but Castilian Spanish, to fly a regional flag, or even to hold a meeting with more than seven people.[29] Flying the Basque or Catalan flags could get you imprisoned or tortured. As a result, the home matches of Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao “became regular expressions of anti-Franco regionalist sentiment.”[30] Every Spanish soccer fan knew that wearing the red and blue colors of Barcelona, or red and white of Athletic Bilbao, meant support for Catalan and Basque regionalism, autonomy, or even outright separatism. They also knew that if you put on those jerseys, you were expressing popular protest against the Franco dictatorship. Shaw points out that Athletic Bilbao “became a pole of resistance to Francoism right across the country.”[31] Bucking the trend of signing rich superstars from around the world, Athletic Club Bilbao players today are all Spanish citizens and largely of Basque origins. The English first name for the club, Athletic, rather than the Spanish Club Atlético (like Atlético de Madrid), also highlights the English roots of the club and its disdain for the Spanish.
Owing to their shared political ideology and cultural backgrounds, the Latin American military generals of the 1970s also utilized soccer in order to maintain the status quo, strengthen national loyalties, and cleanse their reputations as authoritarian brutes. It was in Argentina and Chile in the 1970s that the right-wing military dictatorships became infamous for their “disappearances,” in which thousands of leftists, liberals, and other “anti-national traitors” were taken from their homes or from the streets and never seen again. The torture techniques of these regimes were cruel and unusual, as political dissidents could be dropped from planes into the ocean. It is estimated that about 30,000 people disappeared in Argentina under the reign of the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, while Chile’s Pinochet, after a 1973 CIA-assisted coup, saw close to 3,000 disappearances and over 30,000 torture victims. As a result of the excesses of the Pinochet regime and the coup against leftist leader Salvador Allende, the Soviet Union broke relations with Chile. They also refused to play in Chile’s national stadium in a qualifier for the 1974 World Cup, insisting that the stadium was used as a “concentration camp” during and after Pinochet’s military coup.[32]
Ryszard Kapuściński, the author of The Soccer War, highlighted the politicization of soccer by a collection of different Latin American military regimes from the 1960s until the early 1980s. In a sardonic tone, Kapuściński quotes an exiled Brazilian colleague after Brazil’s third World Cup victory in 1970: “The military right-wing can be assured of at least five more years of peaceful rule.”[33] Markovits and Rensmann correctly point out that the Argentinean military junta gained “much-needed legitimacy” after the national team triumph in the 1978 World Cup.[34] More ominously, Kapuściński underscores the dual use of some Latin American soccer stadiums: “In peacetime they are sports venues; in war they turn into concentration camps.”[35] He also points out that in El Salvador the national stadium has been used to carry out televised, nation-wide assassinations against political opponents. Roberto Rivas (1941–1972) was a right back from El Salvador. He played for Alianza (San Salvador) in El Salvador, where he won two domestic titles in the 1960s. He was a member of El Salvador’s national team at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. Alianza retired his number 2 jersey after Rivas died in unusual circumstances, either an accident or a suicide.[36] Rivas was an excellent defender and he lived under a military dictatorship that was involved in the infamous “Soccer War” in 1969. Keep Rivas in mind when I discuss the Soccer War in chapter 3.
Janet Lever highlighted how the Brazilian military government of the 1960s used the national game of soccer (or is it the national religion?) in order to instill in its inhabitants a notion of the nation’s vast geographical terrain.[37] Since many remote regions of Brazil were unknown to its citizens, the 1969 Sports Lottery was implemented by the military regime in order to enhance national consciousness, raise funds for social projects, and include soccer results from distant provinces. Some commentators have also suggested that in the early 1980s the Brazilian military regime sought to “whiten” the image of the distinctively multi-racial national soccer team in order to win favor with the West. The Brazilian national teams of 1982 and 1986 were two of the most talented teams in the history of soccer not to win the World Cup. They were certainly not fully “whitened”—a near impossibility in multi-racial Brazil. Any attempts to completely “whiten” Brazilian national teams would have meant the loss of soccer legends such as Didi, Djalma Santos, Pelé, Jairzinho, Cafu, Roberto Carlos, and many more black or mixed players.
Some of the greatest number 2s in the history of the game have played for the Brazilian national team, including Djalma Santos and Carlos Alberto. These two Brazilian legends won World Cup trophies in different decades. Both Brazilian number 2s played under military dictatorships. Djalma Pereira Dias dos Santos (b. 1929) was known by his legions of fans as Djalma Santos. Santos had incredible longevity as he started for the Brazilian national team in four World Cups in 1954, 1958, 1962, and 1966. He was thirty-seven when he was chosen for the 1966 World Cup, ahead of the highly rated and younger Carlos Alberto. He won two World Cups in 1958 and 1962. He is undoubtedly one of the greatest right backs the game has ever known. In 2004, Santos made Pelé’s list of the top 125 living soccer players of all time. In defense, Santos could also support the midfield and forwards with surging runs down the flank. As the Brazilian military dictatorship began in 1964, Santos lived under the regime for six years of his playing career as he retired in 1970.
Carlos Alberto Torres (b. 1944) is a retired Brazilian international and one of the most highly rated defenders of all time. He was the captain of the Brazilian national team when they won the 1970 World Cup. He scored one of the greatest team goals in World Cup history in the finals against Italy. He had the honor to be selected to the World Team of the Twentieth Century, despite only appearing in one World Cup. Alberto did not participate in the 1974 World Cup due to a knee injury and played several qualifiers for the 1978 World Cup, but retired before the tournament began. He ended his career with the New York Cosmos in 1982. Carlos Alberto was also selected by Pelé as one of the top 125 greatest living soccer players of all time. I could have selected Carlos Alberto since his playing days from 1963 to 1982 coincides almost exactly with the Brazilian military dictatorship.
In Argentina, military generals were notorious for their politicization of soccer. Long before the policy of disappearances practiced by the military junta in the 1970s and 1980s, General Juan Peron’s largely working-class supporters would rally around Buenos Aires-based Boca Juniors with spontaneous chants: “Boca y Peron, un solo corazon” (Boca and Peron, one single heart).[38] Peron was later exiled in a bloody military coup in 1955 and his supporters were prevented from seeking public office. His wife, Isabel Peron, was also unseated by military generals on March 24, 1976. Led by General Jorge Videla, the man credited with the term “disappearances,” the military junta would remain in power until 1983.
In 1978, the military junta led by General Videla staged the World Cup and was rewarded with a brilliant 3–1 triumph against the Netherlands in the decisive final game. On July 5, 1978, Videla received the Argentinean coach Luis Menotti at the national residence to celebrate the World Cup victory. A few days earlier he would disingenuously tell the BBC that it is true that he attended eight World Cup matches (admittedly a “high number” of matches), but that he did not attend the matches for “political motives” because “it would be wrong to capitalize on a triumph that belonged to all.”[39]
The hero of the 1978 World Cup victory was the long-haired Mario Kempes, nicknamed El Toro (The Bull), the leading goalscorer of the tournament with six goals, including two in the finals. In a prolific career, Kempes scored twenty times for his country and represented Argentina in three World Cups in 1974, 1978, and 1982.
While Kempes was the star on the pitch for Argentina in 1978, off the pitch it was the military generals that were orchestrating the show. While the Argentinean economy was in shambles with high unemployment, weakened manufacturing and agricultural sectors, and the banning of major labor unions, the junta was spending money on trying to win the World Cup for the first time ever for Argentina. It is estimated that the military generals used 10 percent of their budget to stage the 1978 World Cup,[40] the implication being that no less than victory was satisfactory for the junta.
Brian Glanville points out that winning the World Cup allowed Argentina’s generals to obfuscate the regime’s horrific record of disappearances, systematic torture, and widespread human rights violations.[41] However, the scripted control of the 1978 World Cup in order to legitimize the military junta and the nation had its share of critics. Argentina reached the finals only after a dubious 6–0 victory against Peru. They needed to win by a large margin of four goals in order to advance to the finals against the Netherlands. A margin of four goals in World Cup soccer is indeed substantial. Peru was not a shabby national team. There were popular feelings that Argentina and Peru colluded in order to get the desired result. Conspiracy theories insisted that the Peruvian goalkeeper was born in Argentina, Peru was dependent on Argentinian grain shipments, and there were allegations that the Peruvian and Argentinean militaries conspired. Although nothing has been proven, many Latin Americans cried foul play and insisted that the Argentinean military junta needed the World Cup win in order to “clean” their image both at home and abroad.
Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini ruled Italy with an iron fist from 1922 to 1943, until he was ousted by the Fascist Grand Council. His motto was the chilling “Believe, obey, and fight,” which meant “Believe, obey, and fight” for Mussolini, the Fascist Party, and a militaristic conception of the Italian nation. He helped create a new ideology called fascism in 1919, which was revolutionary, totalitarian, ultra-nationalistic, expansionist, and by 1938 virulently anti-Semitic. While the Fascist regime lasted just over twenty years, it will be forever associated with racism, chauvinism, colonialism, war, totalitarianism, and the silencing of political opponents.
Like the Argentinean military junta and the authoritarian Franco regime, Fascist Italy politicized national soccer matches. Fascist Italy was even more politicized than these aforementioned authoritarian military regimes. A distinction needs to be made between authoritarians like Videla, Pinochet, and Franco, on the one hand, and totalitarians such as Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.[42] Both authoritarian and totalitarian regimes were brutal toward their political opponents, while in some phases of their regimes some authoritarians like Franco engaged in more systematic terror than totalitarians such as Mussolini. Mussolini inaugurated a new totalitarian ideology, which did not exist in previous historical epochs. Totalitarianism implies the complete control of civil society by the state, including sporting activities. Authoritarians leave some areas of civil society free of the state such as church and business elites, which might find favor with the regime. Authoritarians are in general more conservative and less radical than totalitarians, who want to create “new men,” a revolutionary new society, and believe that all state forces should be marshaled in the service of the nation or race. Totalitarians generally erect a new, secular “political religion,”[43] while authoritarians pay more respect to traditional religion. In terms of managing the economy, totalitarians are, in theory, more revolutionary than authoritarians, insisting that a “developmental dictatorship” is good for the nation and that capitalism must be restrained for the public welfare.[44] Fascist totalitarians rejected traditional models of politics and longed for a revolutionary “third way” beyond capitalism and communism, as well as liberalism and socialism.
Given the totalitarian character of fascism, it was within the DNA of the Italian Fascist regime to utilize soccer as a way to highlight the glories of the Italian nation. Unfortunately, the Italians, who won the World Cup in 1934 and 1938 under the reign of Benito Mussolini, could count on important moral support from the father of the World Cup, the Frenchman Jules Rimet.[45] Mussolini’s interventionism in soccer was blatant. He followed the rule of dictatorships as “monopolies of thought” and often action. Shortly before the 1938 finals in France, the Italian dictator sent an ominous telegram to the Italian coach: “Win or die.”[46] Following Juan Villoro’s insight that the eleven named players in the starting lineup represent a “tribe” distinct from their eleven opponents, what mattered for the Italian “tribe” and Mussolini was winning at all costs.[47] Playing against the Brazilians in the finals, the Fascist Italian press saw the World Cup victory in racial terms as the triumph of the “genius” of the “Italian race” against the “brute force of the Negros.”
For Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, and the Latin American military generals, soccer was used as a blatant political tool. Although they had less state control than Mussolini or Hitler, the military generals in Argentina prevented journalists from speaking negatively about the 1978 World Cup or criticizing the national team coach Cesar Luis Menotti.[48] In holding the 1978 World Cup, the military regime received full support from then-FIFA president João Havelange.
An exponent of the “total soccer” of Dutch manager Rinus Michels in the 1970s, Johan Cruyff won the prestigious Ballon d’Or three times in 1971, 1973, and 1974. In 1999, the IFFHS named Cruyff the European Player of the Century and he finished just behind Pelé in the World Player of the Century poll. One of the greatest players in the history of soccer, Cruyff missed the 1978 World Cup after guiding the Netherlands to a second place finish at the 1974 World Cup. Cruyff refused to participate in the 1978 World Cup because he insisted that Argentina’s military junta was systematically torturing people and making its own citizens “disappear.” This is what Cruyff claimed back in 1978. The human rights situation under the Argentinean military junta was grave, as U.S. president Jimmy Carter gave his support to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights to travel to Buenos Aires in 1979 in order to investigate the military regime. In 2008, however, Cruyff’s initial reason for missing the World Cup and retiring from international play were thrown into doubt when he told the Catalunya Ràdio journalist Antoni Bassas that his family was involved in a kidnapping attempt in Barcelona a year before the tournament.[49]
Many people admired Cruyff’s stance against the military dictatorship until his 2008 interview with Antoni Bassas. Then admiration turned to doubt. Cruyff had used the military dictatorship in Argentina as an excuse to miss the World Cup, when in reality he could have been more honest about the kidnapping attempt on his family and stated that he was fearful of a similar incident in Argentina.
The Cruyff story highlights how soccer players both within and outside military regimes find it difficult to swim against the tide of the politics of the day. Living under the ambit of military regimes is another story. Elias Figueroa lived under the military dictatorship in Chile during a part of his playing days. He also lived under the Brazilian military dictatorship while turning SC Internacional into a household name in Brazil. While the majority of Chilean players found it difficult to speak out against the horrors of the military junta (including Figueroa), there were other players that risked far more than Cruyff by speaking out against the regime. These included Chamaco Valdes, Chamuyo Ampuero Lepe (imprisoned by the regime), and the brilliant forward Carlos Caszely, who played in the 1974 and 1982 World Cups. Caszely openly criticized a military regime that could be so cruel as to threaten his mother and friends with death. He was a Communist supporter of the democratically elected Salvador Allende government, which was ousted by the military junta in 1973. Caszely was the only Chilean player that refused to salute the Chilean dictator.[50] In reference to the beginning of the Pinochet military regime, Caszely remembers “a sad country,” a “silent” country, a country “without laughter,” and the feeling of “darkness.”[51] Why Caszely was not killed is an interesting question, but one assumes that Pinochet had begrudging admiration for the Chilean forward because he was a national icon. In forty-nine international appearances for his country between 1969 and 1985, Caszely turned in many dazzling performances and scored an impressive twenty-nine goals.
Without a doubt, Figueroa remained silent during the Pinochet military regime in order to survive and maintain his privileges as a player. Yet what he did during Chile’s transition to democracy is more instructive and demonstrates his pro-authoritarian leanings. On May 27, 2005, Chile’s La nación reported that Figueroa gave his support for the referendum held on October 5, 1988, which was a mandate on whether the Chilean population wanted the continuation of Pinochet’s military regime.[52] Recall that Figueroa’s international teammate Carlos Caszely campaigned for the “No” forces. In the referendum on whether Pinochet could stay in power until 1997, 44 percent of Chileans said “Yes” and nearly 56 percent said “No.” The referendum and its result were historic because they began the transition toward Chilean democracy. It is rather interesting that in the aforementioned La nación piece, the claim is made that Figueroa was less recognized in his own country in the democratic age after the fall of the military dictatorship.[53]
Figueroa was not alone in lending his support to the military regime. Ivo Basay, the Chilean coach of the famous Colo-Colo club and later Santiago Wanderers, could opine that “Pinochet was a very necessary man in a certain moment in the history of Chile.”[54] Basay was expressing a common sentiment among those on the right (including one held by Elias Figueroa) that by coming to power the anti-Communist Pinochet regime had prevented worse horrors akin to the gulag system of the Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union. The great Russian dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitysn argued that the gulag was a systematic and state-led system of “corrective labour camps” that saw 50 million people pass through its brutal conditions from 1918 until 1956 when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s Reign of Terror.[55] Thus, it was no surprise that in an interview long after his retirement Elias Figueroa gave the following answer to this question: “How can sport assist in the creation of a world in peace?”[56] Figueroa’s answer is telling because it could have been voiced by the generals associated with the Pinochet regime: “Sports is the best recipe against drugs, alcohol, and all those things. A sporting nation spends 25 per cent less on health.”[57] As Figueroa expressed interest in becoming a Chilean parliamentarian in 2013, he was undoubtedly conscious of his pro-Pinochet past and thus stated: “What interests me more than politics is the social and sports.”[58]
In contrast to Figueroa, one would assume that world peace includes both “negative peace” (that is, the absence of violence or war) and “positive peace” (that is, “the integration of human society,” including the abolition of poverty and racial discrimination).[59] Pincohet’s Chile saw neither “negative peace,” nor “positive peace.” A more comprehensive peace might be assisted by ending the monopoly of violence of authoritarian military regimes, feeding the hungry and poor, undermining violence against women, fixing our profound environmental problems, or reconceptualizing an economic system based on greed rather than the common good. Politics did not take away from the genius of Figueroa on the soccer field. Yet lesson two attempted to highlight that given the politicization of soccer from Mussolini and Franco to the Latin American military generals, soccer is following Shankly’s insight a “matter of life and death.”
As a footnote to our story about Elias Figueroa, the retired Chilean soccer star was chosen as ChangeFIFA’s candidate to clean up FIFA following the scandal-hit 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids.[60] Figueroa claimed that he wanted to change professional soccer, particularly the perception of deep corruption in the FIFA hierarchy. In a somewhat surprising move on March 31, 2011, Figueroa decided that he was not ready for the job to replace Sepp Blatter at the helm of FIFA in such a “short period of time.”[61] Did this decision have anything to do with the futile sense that FIFA’s corruption woes were too big to handle? Or Blatter’s authoritarian tendencies? Or perhaps with fear that Figueroa’s brilliant soccer career would be overshadowed by focus on his dark past as a supporter of Augusto Pinochet’s military junta?
Andrei S. Markovits and Lars Rensmann, Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 8.
Eduardo Galeano, Soccer in Sun and Shadow, trans. Mark Fried (London: Verso, 2003), 35.
See, for example, Joseph L. Arbena, ed., Sport and Society in Latin America: Diffusion, Dependency and the Rise of Mass Culture (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988) and Joseph L. Arbena, “Sport and the Promotion of Nationalism in Latin America: A Preliminary Interpretation,” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, no. 11 (1992): 146–148.
FIFA, “Figueroa, Chile’s defensive commander,” FIFA, 2012, http://www.fifa.com/classicfootball/players/player=49415/index.html (23 July 2013).
Ibid.
The Clinic Online, “Los 100 rostros del Sí,” The Clinic, http://www.theclinic.cl/2012/07/30/los-100-rostros-del-si/ (25 November 2013).
Diego Bastarrica, “Los futboleros que ‘querían’ ser los albaceas en el testamento de Pinochet,” Ferplei, 25 abril 2012, http://www.ferplei.com/2012/04/los-futboleros-que-querian-ser-los-albaceas-en-el-testamento-de-pinochet/ (25 November 2013).
Miguel Ángel Iara, “Caszely, el goleador que plantó cara a Pinochet,” Marca, 2011, http://www.marca.com/reportajes/2011/12/el_poder_del_balon/2012/03/27/seccion_01/13328
81843.html (25 November 2013).
Ibid.
Lamula, “El fútbol chileno y Pinochet: El goleador Carlos Caszely fue incómodo para la dictadura militar,” Lamula, 9 November 2013, http://lamula.pe/2013/09/11/el-futbol-chileno-y-pinochet/albertoniquen/ (25 November 2013).
Lorena Venegas and Alfredo Peña, “A 25 años del plebiscito del 88 que derrotó a Pinochet: Los 100 rostros que estuvieron en la campaña del Sí,” Cambio21, 4 October 2013, http://www.cambio21.cl/cambio21/site/artic/20131002/pags/20131002180358.html (25 November 2013).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
FIFA, “Figueroa, Chile’s defensive commander.”
Leander Schaerlaeckens, “Chasing Gaetjens,” ESPN, 26 February 2010, http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world-cup/story/_/id/4937012/ce/us/real-story-1950-world-cup-hero?cc=3888
&ver=global (24 October 2012).
John R. Tunis, “Los Dictadores Descubren El Deporte,” Foreign Affairs En Español 6, no. 3 (Julio–Septiembre 2006): 235–245. Originally published in Foreign Affairs (July–August 1936).
Ibid., 236.
Ibid., 239.
Ibid., 240.
Paul Doyle and Tom Lutz, “Joy of Six: Footballers who have overcome humble beginnings,” The Guardian, 3 September 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/sep/03/joy-six-footballers-humble-beginnings (12 October 2012).
Duncan Shaw, “The Politics of ‘Futbol,’” History Today 35, no. 8 (1985), http://www.historytoday.com/duncan-shaw/politics-futbol (22 August 2012).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Andrew Jennings, Foul! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote-Rigging and Ticket Scandals (London: Harper Collins, 2006), ix.
El País, “La larga carrera de un hombre polifacético,” El País, 21 April 2010, http://deportes.elpais.com/deportes/2010/04/21/actualidad/1271834520_850215.html (23 July 2013).
Shaw, “The Politics of ‘Futbol.’”
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Manuel Gameros, “Las goles de la FIFA,” Foreign Affairs En Español 6, no. 3 (Julio–Septiembre 2006): 124.
Ryszard Kapuściński, The Soccer War, trans. William Brand (London: Granta, 1990), 159.
Markovits and Rensmann, Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture, 8.
Kapuściński, The Soccer War, 166.
Blog Cuscatlán, “Alianza F.C. Entre Los 10 Mejores,” 9 October 2009, http://cuxcatla.blogspot.mx/2009/10/alianza-fc-entre-los-10-mejores.html (23 July 2013).
Janet Lever, “Sport in a Fractured Society: Brazil under Military Rule,” in Joseph L. Arbena, ed., Sport and Society in Latin America: Diffusion, Dependency and the Rise of Mass Culture (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1988), 85–96.
David Goldblatt, The Ball Is Round: A Global History of Soccer (New York: Penguin, 2008), 266.
Fausto Pretelin Muñoz de Cote, “El imperio global de fútbol,” Foreign Affairs En Español 6, no. 3 (Julio–Septiembre 2006): 137
Stefan Szymanski and Andrew Zimbalist, National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 2005), 73–74.
Brian Glanville, The Story of the World Cup (London: Faber and Faber, 1993), 211.
Juan J. Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000).
Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion, trans. George Staunton (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).
A. J. Gregor, Italian Fascism and Developmental Dictatorship (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979).
Pretelin Muñoz de Cote, “El imperio global de fútbol,” 134–135.
Ibid., 135.
Juan Villoro, Los once de la tribu (México, D.F.: Nuevo Siglo, 1995).
José Vales, “Argentina: mas que un deporte, herramienta política,” Foreign Affairs En Español 6, no. 3 (Julio–Septiembre 2006): 159.
Legends of the Game, “Johan Cruyff,” Legends of the Game, http://legendsofthega.me/beta/cruyff/index.html (16 November 2012).
Ángel Iara, “Caszely, el goleador que plantó cara a Pinochet.”
Ibid.
La nación, “Hasta temas políticos aborda la biografía de Elías Figueroa,” Nación, 27 May 2005, http://www.lanacion.cl/noticias/site/artic/20050526/pags/20050526210233.html (27 August 2012).
Ibid.
El Mostrador, “Ivo Basay: “Pinochet fue un hombre necesario en cierto momento de la historia de Chile,” Elmostrador, 5 October 2011, http://www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/pais/2011/10/05/ivo-basay-pinochet-fue-un-hombre-necesario-en-cierto-momento-de-la-historia-de-chile/ (28 October 2012).
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, trans. Thomas P. Whitney (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).
Sebastian Leiva Rodriquez, “Entrevista a Elías Figueroa Branden,” Fundacion Asciende, 2010, http://www.fundacionasciende.com/publicaciones-de-fundacion-asciende/entrevistas/196-entrevista-a-elias-figueroa-branden (27 August 2012).
Ibid.
My translation. Rodrigo Ogalde, “Elías Figueroa está interesado en ser candidato a diputado por San Antonio,” soysanantonio, 7 March 2013, http://www.soychile.cl/San-Antonio/Politica/2013/03/07/159096/Elias-Figueroa-esta-interesado-en-ser-candidato-a-diputado-por-San-Antonio.aspx (25 November 2013).
Baljit Singh Grewal, “Johan Galtung: Positive and Negative Peace,” 30 August 2003, http://www.activeforpeace.org/no/fred/Positive_Negative_Peace.pdf (7 September 2013).
Mark Bisson, “ChangeFIFA Urges Federations to Back South American Legend’s Challenge to Blatter Presidency,” World Football Insider, 29 March 2011, http://www.worldfootballinsider.com/Story.aspx?id=34235 (28 October 2012).
Rodolfo Arredondo Sánchez, “Elías Figueroa baja candidatura a la FIFA por falta de apoyo,” Suite 101, 31 March 2011, http://suite101.net/article/elias-figueroa-baja-candidatura-a-la-fifa-por-falta-de-apoyo-a46773 (16 November 2012).