La Lepra vs. Instituto de Cordoba

Dan: Sorry I don’t have any pictures, but everyone always tells me to not take anything of value to a soccer game. I’ve been told to not even bring a phone. And it does feel a bit scary upon entering the stadium area. First of all, there are tons of young people, which is scary enough for a guy of my age, and many of them are chanting things that I assume are about soccer. We buy our tickets then go through 4 or 5 police cordons. At each police checkpoint, we are asked to show our tickets, and at some of them we are frisked. Today we didn’t get felt up at all, there being more troublesome-looking people to check than Federico, Turco and me, I suppose. There were cops on horses, cops with dogs, cops with riot helmets and shields. Oh yeah, and guns. I always wonder who is protecting the rest of the city when I go to a game – there are so many cops at the stadium. I always figured they were just keeping out contraband and keeping fans from one team from getting into stuff with the fans of the other team. But there weren’t any visiting fans to be seen today. It seemed to be a 100% Independiente Rivadavia (known as la Lepra) crowd. I suppose, who the heck would travel all the way from Cordoba to see the B-level team play another B-level team, risking life and limb to get through the local fans? Today I got a better idea of what the cops are for.

At about half time, the “barra bravo” (the super, mega fans of the team, who are often paid or at least get free tickets), having not been allowed to bring their drums into the stadium, decided to protest. This was going on outside the stadium. Soon there were loud explosions heard. I assumed it was fireworks. People in Mendoza always seem to be blowing up m-80s to protest or celebrate. But apparently what I was hearing this time was the sound of the police shooting hooligans with rubber bullets outside the stadium. People in the ‘popular’ section of the stadium, where I was sitting, started to move either 1) toward the edge of the stadium, or 2) away from the edge of the stadium. We were among those moving away, hoping not to get caught in any crossfire. The others were moving to the top of stadium to see the action going on outside the bowl. I don’t know where they got the projectiles, but somehow out of thin air these kids had rocks and big pieces of cement they were throwing over the edge of the stadium, presumably at the riot cops. There’s no jumbo-tron screen, so I don’t know what happened or if I was in the section that was suppose to cheer for the hincha or the cops. Eventually the the second half started, and the rest of the normal fans could continue to sing futbol-related songs and shout insults at the opposing team, the home team and the officials. The crowd tended toward comments about the sexual habits of the players and their mothers. There was a particularly precocious 8-year old fan in front of us whose comments I will always consider my primer of soccer obscenities. I won’t bother to translate for you. Since the cops were watching other things, many people decided it was a good time to move to the slightly more expensive ‘platea’ section. So we crawled under some barbed wire and watched the rest of the game from a better vantage point.

After the game, I saw a few of the sour fans spraypainting things against the general manager on the side s of their home stadium.

What? The game? 1 –1.

Oh, and there was a 4.1 earthquake during the first half. I didn’t notice a thing but one of my companions did. Lou said it was more evident in the apartment.