A fan notes

Students new to the Spanish language are always amused to discover that the word for “fan” — as in the guy who buys the tee-shirt — is fánatico. In English, after all, we reserve “fanatic” for wild-eyed crazies — people who strap bombs to their chests, or send e-mails in support of Ron Paul… you know, lunatics.

When it comes to futbol though… maybe both senses of the word are correct. Via the always readable The Global Game (Soccer as a Second Language) I found a site that meshes a trinity of my favorite obsessions (Latin America, politics and futbol): Gramsci’s Kingdom. Not that I’m a great fan of Italian Marxist theorists of the early 20th century, but the site’s title comes from a quote (“Football is the open-air kingdom of human loyalty“) that neatly encapsulates the reality of Latin America.

Politics anywhere — and especially in Latin America — is as much theater and spectacle as anything. Throw in the color-coded tee-shirts (ever been to a PRD demonstration? It’s a sea of yellow tee-shirts) and the mass chanting and all you’re missing is “the wave.”

Reviewing a book on futbol in general, Antonio G. manages a nice little historical/political essay that riffs off the  UNAM Pumas:

…I want to draw everyone’s attention to one particular essay by a Mexico City-based anthropologist named Roger Magazine, entitled Football Fandom and Identity in Mexico: The Case of Pumas Football and Youth Football Club. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that this is probably the most kick-ass ten pages of academic writing on football ever.

…

If there’s a slight failing to this article, it’s that he doesn’t dwell sufficiently on Pumas’ intiguing past or that of Mexican football as a whole. The sport developed relatively late in Mexico. … The Universidad National Autonoma de Mexico’s sports teams had been initially been given their blue-and-gold colours by American sports coaches from, of all places, Notre Dame.

…Magazine’s central insight is that football supporters’ groups – known in Mexico as porra – belong ideologically to the Romantic movement. While they belong to the Age of Reason and exist to support teams which operate in the classic rationalist framework of a football league, their behaviour is driven by a love and passion which is fundamentally irrational. And he highlights the romantic nature of football support by showing what happens when a supporters’ group tries to modernize itself.

… True fandom, like Romanticism, is emotional, heartfelt and passionate and stands opposed to tradtional hierarchies and to democratic and scientific rationalism. It doesn’t matter if the team hasn’t scored for 800 minutes – we bleed for them nonetheless.

The loyalty this romantic attitude engenders is admirable, of course, but it clearly has its dark side, too. Romanticism can lead to a lack of critical space (it emphasizes the use of the heart, not the head) and an over-relaiance on charismatic leaders … And clearly, the attraction of being part of a supporters’ group lies in a deep tribal instinct which has echoes of in some of history’s less pleasant mass movements.

Fandom, like all romantic movements, lies with all its collectivist emotional baggage on a knife-edge between good and evil. And it’s a very thin edge indeed.