Latin Americans are passionate people, passionate about love, food, music, religion, and above all else futbol. It's a passion that one is born into. In Ecuador I was inducted into the cult of EMELEC, the team of my host family. Here in Buenos Aires, it's Boca Juniors, you're either for them, or you can get the hell out. Futbol carries with it a history and culture of fanaticism as old as the sport itself, with futbol stars taking on unrivaled idol status. Boca boasts Diego Maradona, known worldwide for his incredible goal in the World Cup of 1986, later as a shortlived TV star and more recently for his fall from grace into drug addiction. However, to speak ill of Maradona is akin to speaking ill of one's own mother, and will surely result complete in social isolation.
Needless to say, one of the first stops recommended by my Ecuadorian host family was La Bombonera stadium, home of the Boca Juniors, so when I discovered that there was a game scheduled this Thursday (yesterday) against a Colombian team (Cucuta) in the semi-finals of the Copa de Libertadores you can imagine I was thrilled. Getting tickets however would be a whole different story. I basically spent the last two days trying to organize a group of people to go, but when I came up with a pricetag for the seats ($130 pesos or about $43 US per person) I got a less than enthusiastic response. I figured it was a lost cause, but early yesterday morning my Colombian friend said that there were tickets being sold at the door for $30-60 pesos. It was 3:15 and the boxoffice opened at 4:00. I threw on my jacket, grabbed my Giua"T" and hopped a bus to La Boca. By the time I got there fog had decended on the city setting an erie mood in a neighborhood known to be less than friendly to strangers. Feeling completely out of my element, I asked a police officer where I could find tickets. While he asked a fellow officer a young Argentine came up to ask the same. I told him I was looking as well and we set of in search of the box office, the whole while him explaining to me the pantheon that was Boca Juniors. After doing a complete loop of the stadium we discovered that all the regular tickets had been sold out and we would have to resort to a scalpers offer of $60 pesos. Santiago, my new Argentinian friend, had only come with $25 pesos and assumed defeat. I offered to help him with the price of the ticket if we could negotiate with the scalper to lower the price since we were buying three (for the two of us and my friend). He kindly declined, saying that he couldn't accept my money, but I tried again, finally convincing him that he could be my personal guide to the game. Thrilled by the idea, he agreed that he could explain everything that was going on and commenced to do so emphatically. He explained that Boca had to score 3 goals today in order to go onto the finals of the Copa de Libertadores because they had lost 3 to 1 to Cucuta on their turf. He named all of Bocas top stars and gave me the numbers to look for on the field. I couldn't have paid for a better professional guide.
And it's a good thing that I had found Santiago too, because purchasing tickets was only the first obstacle, the next step was to find our way into the behemoth that is La Bombonera. Making another whole loop around the stadium, asking police officers as we went, we finally found the line to the popular section. While waiting, we received regular updates as to the status of the game from Santi's father by text message since he was watching at home where he heard that they were considering cancelling the game due to the weather. Futbol fans can be an irritable bunch, and don't like it when their teams lose, especially at home, or when there favorite passtime is cancelled due to weather. Without any word for certain we packed into gate 12, described to us by Santi as the home of a band of hooligans that refer to themselves as "La Doce" or "The 12" playing on the idea that they are the 12th member of the team (11 on the field, the 12th in the stands). Certain that we were going to die at the hands of an angry mob if the game was cancelled, my friend and I kept our mouths tightly shut.
Once inside it was a sight that is difficult to describe. Ticker tape and huge banners bearing the Boca colors blue and yellow stretched from the upper section to the field. Young men, hanging on precariously at best, shimmied along the tops of walls in order to hang more banners with players names and and the like. Cheer rousers led chants and passed blue and yellow balloons to the fans to be inflated. As game time neared and the stands slowly filled becoming a claustrophobics worst nightmare, I worried whether the guy that had just pushed his way in front of me and had settled his elbow sharply into my hip was going to stand there the whole game. Thankfully he moved on, meanwhile, the crowd was becoming more and more animated, shouting victory chants and your mama insults at the opposing teams goalie. At one point he got pegged in the shoulder with a wad of ticker tape and just lost it. Holding his shoulder, clearly in pain, the horde in the stands mercilessly took up a victory chant telling the goalie not to cry, "you don't have a goalie, you've got a crybaby." The game had yet to start...
Once the game commenced the fans in my section kept up a continuous bruhaha of chants, songs and cheers, groaning at each bad call from the ref, and gasping at nearly missed goals. Santi, although only attending his second game ever, knew all the chants and belted them at the top of his lungs. Finally in the last five minutes of the first half, Riquelme, Boca's top star, scored the first goal of the game off a beautiful penalty kick into the top corner of the net, soaring over both the wall and the diving goalie. The stands errupted at once, turning into one mass of jumping people. I felt the stands themselves shaking under me and I lost my balance landing all my weight on the person in front of me. As the crowd swayed the other way I righted myself with the help of an elbow to the gut. Everyone was estatic, Santi was near tears.
Two Boca goals and 45 mins later I had become accostumed to the shaking of the stands, the jumping of my neighbors, and the hand permanently rested on my shoulder. It had been an incredible experience, one that I promised Santi that I would never forget. On the way home, my friend and I caught a cab and exclaimed to the cabbie what a night it'd been at the game. We were partly thrilled to still be alive, but mostly filled with la pasion!
