Chaotic scenes erupted in Buenos Aires on Wednesday as a fan leapt from the stands to escape a hail of bottles, rocks and flying seats during a match between Chilean side Universidad de Chile and Argentina’s Independiente, underscoring the persistent problem of violence in Latin American football.
More than 100 people were arrested in the clashes, which left 19 injured, three of them seriously.
From Mexico to Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Ecuador, fan violence continues to overshadow the beautiful game in a region where football is a passion.
Despite laws passed over the past two decades in countries including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay – some carrying prison sentences – hooliganism remains rampant, with attacks and stadium brawls showing no sign of letting up.
So far this year in Chile, 12 matches were suspended due to violence, according to the players’ union.
In April, two fans died during a stampede outside a Santiago stadium before a Copa Libertadores match between local side Colo Colo and Brazil’s Fortaleza.
In Argentina, more than 100 people have died in the last 20 years; 157 in Brazil between 2009 and 2019; and 170 in Colombia between 2001 and 2019, according to academic and NGO studies.
“There’s an idea that stadiums are spaces where it’s legitimate to commit acts of violence, not just physical violence, but also racism and homophobia,” Argentine sociologist Diego Murze, author of the book Football, Violence, and the State, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
According to Murze, there is a “tribal logic that has always prevailed in football,” including a culture of provocation between fans that has “re-emerged in recent years.”
For many fans, “Football is a channel for frustration,” said Colombian sociologist German Gomez, author of Football and Hooligans, an Urban Phenomenon.
Gomez attributed it to “a poeticization of what a team’s victory means in the lives of these fans, which leads to that loss of emotional control when a match is won, and even when it is lost.”
Security has been stepped up at stadiums across the continent, with some requiring biometric identification for entry and installing video surveillance in the stands.
“In Argentina, they monitor you more in a football stadium than at the airport,” Murze said.
But the technology, while useful for identifying banned offenders, is often powerless to prevent violence by previously unknown individuals with masked faces.
Gomez accused Conmebol, South America’s football governing body, of being lax on violence, saying it does not “issue exemplary sanctions against football clubs because... closing a football club can mean significant financial losses.”
What more can be done?
In Argentina, visiting fans are not allowed at local first-division games. Several clubs in Argentina, as well as in Chile and Uruguay, were forced to play behind closed doors last year as punishment for fan violence.
Murze argued that clubs need to professionalize their security apparatus, as they currently “rely entirely on what the state and the police can do.”
Following the deaths of the two fans in Chile in April, the Chilean government ended the “Safe Stadium” program, an initiative created in 2011 to combat football violence, without success. The program prohibited drums and banners from stadiums and left stadium security in the hands of private individuals. The government has pledged to replace it with new rules for all mass events.
“Mitigating football violence in South America must be driven by actions that promote education and football culture,” Gomez said.
