The following English translation was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence and has been reviewed and edited by our team for accuracy and clarity.
[Archival audio]: This is one side of this súperclásico: joy, overflow, emotion. River won two to nothing here at La Bombonera…
[Silvia Viñas]: It’s Saturday, April 30, 1994. River Plate has just won the superclásico against Boca Juniors, its historic rival. It’s a special victory because they won away, at Boca’s stadium, after eight years.
[Fernando Scalone]: We sang. We were happy. Thrilled. Well, after all the celebrating, the stands started to empty out. We started to leave, singing.
[Silvia Viñas]: This is Fernando. At the time, he was 19 years old, and like most matches, he went with his dad. After the superclásico, they leave the stadium with hundreds of River fans. Fernando and his dad head toward the bus stop to go home.
[Fernando Scalone]: When we started walking, we must have gone 400 meters, 500 meters, we see two empty «mosquito» trucks go by. Completely empty.
[Silvia Viñas]: In Argentina, the trucks that transport cars are called «mosquitoes.» They’re the ones with a two-tiered metal structure, very long, more than 20 meters. They can carry up to 10 cars.
[Fernando Scalone]: I say to my dad, «uh, look, a bunch of kids are going to hang off this truck to get away.»
[Silvia Viñas]: Fernando doesn’t know it at that moment, but his prediction is completely accurate.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: We couldn’t get on the first truck because other people got on- it filled up right away. We did get on the second truck. There must have been at least 50 guys there.
[Silvia Viñas]: Juan Carlitos is Fernando’s friend. He’s a bit older, he’s 24 at the time. They live in nearby neighborhoods, and since they’re both River fans, they became friends going to the stadium. But to that match, they went separately. So while Fernando is heading home with his dad, Juan Carlitos is with other fans on those trucks.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: We got on the mosquito to leave, because the idea was to leave, so, «let’s go, we’re getting on.» That’s how it was.
[Silvia Viñas]: They move slowly. As they make their way through the blocks, more and more River fans climb on. It’s an improvised victory pilgrimage that lasts about six or seven blocks, until they reach the intersection of Huergo and Brasil avenues.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: When I see the action, that a group comes out, to me it seemed like they were going to throw rocks at us, you know?
[Silvia Viñas]: A group of Boca fans, throwing something toward the trucks where the River fans are. Seconds later, when the truck Juan Carlitos is riding in passes by that group, he’ll find out that what they’re throwing aren’t rocks at all.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: To me, it was an execution.
[Silvia Viñas]: That day there were dozens of fans on those trucks. More than 30 years later, none of them have forgotten what happened at that intersection of Huergo and Brasil.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: I curl up into a ball, and you could hear gunshots: pim, boom, boom, boom, boom.
[Silvia Viñas]: Some stayed silent for years about the horror they lived through that day. Others carry the memory marked on their bodies.
[Diego Buenaño]: I was in a lot, a lot of pain. So, right there I realized it wasn’t a rock that hit me, that it was… that it was something else.
[Silvia Viñas]: And for others, that day represents an ending. The day something changed and was never the same again.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: The screams of the guys. That’s what I have in my head. The guys screaming.
[Silvia Viñas]: Argentine soccer is known worldwide for its players, with superstars like Messi and Maradona. For its clubs, like River, Boca, Independiente, and many others that achieved worldwide fame. And for several years now, the fans have joined that expansion.
Juan Carlitos and Fernando, whom we met earlier, are fans. They follow their team everywhere and create a community in the stands. In international matches for a club, or with the national team in tournaments like the World Cup, Argentine fan groups tend to draw attention. They can generate admiration for their passion, and also rejection for some chants and attitudes. But they likely won’t leave you indifferent. And it’s undeniable that wherever they go, their presence is felt—they’re heard louder than other fan groups, as if they were playing at home everywhere, in any part of the world.
But behind those fans, something else is hiding. Another group that is now inseparable from Argentine soccer: the barras bravas.
[Archival audio]: They are soccer’s barras bravas. Barras bravas and politicians. The barras bravas and power.
[Silvia Viñas]: We’re talking about almost mafia-like organizations that do business outside and inside the stadium, and control everything that happens in the stands, and often within a club as well. And just like the clubs and their fans, they also expanded around the world.
[Gustavo Grabia]: In Mexico, until the 1990s, you could go to the stadium with both sets of fans mixed together. And today they’ve adopted a model quite similar to the Argentine one. In Colombia, the barras have organized themselves around the business they learned here in Argentina—the commercialization of barra products.
[Silvia Viñas]: All this growth of the barras and their international expansion has a turning point: that Saturday, April 30, 1994. What happened at that superclásico wasn’t just another act of violence, even though Argentine soccer, by that point, had already recorded more than 150 deaths.
[Paula Asaro]: When we arrived at the crime scene, it was chaos.
[Silvia Viñas]: It was a hinge point that changed the power relations within the barras.
[Daniel Vesselizza Randi]: «Go to hell, all of you. You don’t know what you did.»
[Silvia Viñas]: It sparked one of the most intense police manhunts of that time.
[Horacio Caride]: In a fairly makeshift shack was the person everyone was looking for.
[Silvia Viñas]: And it led to a trial that changed the history of Argentine soccer…
[Gustavo Grabia]: It was like being in front of the trial of Don Corleone.
[Silvia Viñas]: Over the course of these 10 episodes, you’re going to learn everything that happened that day. We’re going to get into the stands and the world of the barras bravas, their connections to power, to the clubs, and to the fan groups. But above all, we’re going to trace the repercussions that day had in the lives of many people, from fans who only wanted to cheer on their team to entire families who didn’t even get on those trucks.
[Fernando Scalone]: They say these things happen to good people. And that’s what happened that day.
[Archival audio]: The match ended two to two. River scored two goals, but we killed two of them.
[Silvia Viñas]: From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, I’m Silvia Viñas, and this is Superclásico 94. Episode 1: The Double Murder.
[Archival audio]: Journalist: Good afternoon, how’s it going, maestro? Boca fan: Boca wins today, dear.
River fan: I wanted to tell you that today we’re going to beat Boca. And today we win easily, walking away three, four to nothing.
Boca fan: 20 years of Bombonera, look, 20 years we’ve been coming to cheer for Boca. Boca, heart and soul.
Journalist: And you’re not worried, like, that there’ll be trouble, River?
Boca fan: Never.
[Silvia Viñas]: Let’s transport ourselves to that Saturday, April 30, ’94. And the one who’s going to tell us this story is Mariano Pagella, who produced this series along with Alejandro Marinelli and Sergio Renna. They’ve been working on it for more than a year, based on a huge archive of Sergio’s, with photos and documents collected since that very year, ’94. Here’s Mariano.
[Mariano Pagella]: It’s a beautiful autumn day, sunny, but not oppressively hot. The perfect day for this superclásico. River fans snapped up all the available tickets within a few hours. And among those who managed to get them are three fans. We’re going to start with the first one, whom we already heard: Fernando.
[Fernando Scalone]: My name is Fernando Scalone. And that day I was at the stadium watching the superclásico, at La Bombonera.
[Mariano Pagella]: La Bombonera is Boca Juniors’ stadium, one of the biggest soccer clubs in Argentina. It’s called that because the stadium has a rectangular shape and the stands are almost vertical, so it looks like a box of chocolates [«bombonera»]. It’s in the south of the city of Buenos Aires, in the La Boca neighborhood. Yes, that’s where the club’s name comes from. It’s one of the most important tourist spots in the city. These are streets with a lot of history because of their closeness to the port and for being an emblematic tango spot.
Fernando has been a River fan for as long as he can remember. And whenever he goes to watch matches at the stadium, his best friend goes with him, someone very important in this story: Walter Vallejos.
[Fernando Scalone]: Walter and I met as little kids. Aside from his mom and his sister, I was the closest to him. I was his brother, his friend, there was no one else.
[Mariano Pagella]: Fernando and Walter are neighbourhood friends. They played on the same soccer club team, and Fernando often stayed to eat at Walter’s house. This friendship grew over the years, bound by something special: their fanaticism for River. They shared everything. Their first River jersey? They bought it together. Fernando was dating a girl, and Walter was dating her sister.
[Fernando Scalone]: We spent birthdays together, we had barbecues together. Our birthdays were March 28th for him and the 29th for me, so we’d celebrate them as one shared birthday. It was pure friendship.
[Mariano Pagella]: The superclásico that Saturday, April 30, is a highly anticipated match. Even though River hasn’t won at La Bombonera in 8 years, they’re on a very good streak, and Boca is going through a rough patch. So expectations are high.
At that time, Fernando and Walter are 19 years old. They agreed to go to the stadium together, but Walter doesn’t show up. It’s getting late, so Fernando decides to go alone. There, outside La Bombonera, his dad is waiting for him.
[Fernando Scalone]: So I ask him, «Where is he? Did you see him?» He told me no, «we were together, but the police chased us and we got separated.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Back then the police exercised very aggressive control at the entrances to public events, under the excuse of fighting against drugs. At concerts and soccer matches, pat-downs, shoving, beatings, or even rounding up groups of people and holding them overnight were normal. So maybe it’s not so strange that there’s no sign of Walter.
[Fernando Scalone]: «Uh,» I tell him, «well, let’s go in, we’ll see him inside then.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Fernando and his father go into La Bombonera and climb up to the visitors’ section, which is already quite full. They choose their spots. But Fernando is still uneasy; he wants to find his best friend, Walter. Because that’s what they’re there for—to enjoy the match together, like always.
[Fernando Scalone]: So I tell my old man, «stay here, I’m going to walk around a bit and see if I spot him, see if I can find him so he can come sit with us, like always.»
[Mariano Pagella]: He makes his way through the crowd. But he doesn’t find Walter. Instead, he finds another friend they have in common.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: We were kids who went to watch River on Sundays. And that’s how I met Walter, who was younger than us.
[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlos Cáceres, or Juan Carlitos, as his friends call him, is the second fan in this story. At that time Juan Carlitos is 24 years old and knows Fernando and Walter through River.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: Walter and I knew each other from the stadium. Everything was fine, we knew each other from there and from the neighborhood. He loved River, that’s the truth.
[Mariano Pagella]: Fernando asks Juan Carlitos about Walter, and he says he thinks he saw him around, but he’s not sure. The stands are already bursting with people.
[Fernando Scalone]: «Why would you go looking for him now?» Juan Carlitos said to me. «What’s the point of looking for him?—look how many people there are. You’ll see him on the way out.» And he convinced me.
[Mariano Pagella]: He’s right. It’s ridiculous to look for him at that moment; they would talk later, at home, calmly. So Fernando goes back to where his dad was.
And down on the field…
[Archival audio]: Ladies and gentlemen, the Argentine soccer superclásico is about to begin.
[Mariano Pagella]: The referee starts the match and the ball begins to roll.
[Archival audio]: Gamboa, going for Ortega, McAllister’s with him, here comes Orteguita, watch out, River looking for the first goal, Ortega, Ortega, Ortega. Cedres! Boca saved once again…
[Mariano Pagella]: What we’re hearing is the actual TV broadcast of the match.
[Archival audio]: Sodero comes out, Rivarola marks him, what are you doing, guys? That’s a penalty!…
[Diego Buenaño]: It starts off with a penalty against us, so already, you know, you always say, «ugh, here we go again.»
[Mariano Pagella]: In the completely packed River section, we find the third fan we’re going to follow: Diego Buenaño.
[Archival audio]: Martínez! He saves it, ladies and gentlemen, diving…
[Mariano Pagella]: Around that time, Diego is 21 years old. He remembers that match perfectly. He’s with his group of friends, with whom he follows River everywhere.
[Archival audio]: Orteguita, a great goal, gooooool…!
[Diego Buenaño]: But anyway, after that the match was all River…
[Archival audio]: Goal for River, the «Burrito» Arnaldo Ariel Ortega…!
[Diego Buenaño]: We really enjoyed the match. Honestly it was a great game and it was awesome.
[Archival audio]: River keeps looking for the second one with Toresani, off the post, goal, Crespo goal, Crespo goal, Crespo goal, Goooooooaaaal…!
[Mariano Pagella]: Finally, with two goals in the second half from Burrito Ortega and Hernán Crespo, historic figures in Argentine soccer who were just starting out at that time, River manages to break that eight-year curse of not winning at La Bombonera.
[Archival audio]: The Argentine soccer superclásico went to River Plate.
[Mariano Pagella]: So it makes sense that their fans stick around for a while in the stadium celebrating.
[Fernando Scalone]: Well, after all the celebrating, the stands started to empty out. We started to leave singing.
[Mariano Pagella]: This is Fernando, whom we heard at the beginning. Remember he always used to go watch River with his best friend, Walter. But that day they couldn’t make it.. Because of the crowds and bad luck.
[Fernando Scalone]: Up until that point we hadn’t found him. We hadn’t seen him.
[Mariano Pagella]: What Fernando doesn’t know is that during the match Walter did manage to find Juan Carlitos, their mutual friend, and that now they’re celebrating together. But of course, they have no way to communicate. Keep in mind that at that time there weren’t that many cell phones. The number of people leaving the stadium is enormous, a tsunami of fans covering everything to the horizon. So Fernando scans the faces of the crowd around him, hoping one of them will be his friends. But nothing. Walter and Juan Carlitos don’t turn up. So Fernando and his dad walk toward the bus that will take them home.
But outside La Bombonera, very close to the stadium, the first flashpoints of conflict between River and Boca supporters begin. The two fan groups have separate entrances and exits, but apparently a group of Boca fans went over to the River exit and fights broke out.
It’s hard to know who’s your ally or your enemy. Many are without their jerseys on; and those who do have them on cover them up to avoid getting hit with a rock by a rival fan.
Juan Carlitos and Walter, Fernando’s friends, find themselves facing that chaos. Here’s Juan Carlitos.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: You see a… a mess, a stampede. People running. We kept walking toward the Riachuelo.
[Mariano Pagella]: Like most people, they’re trying to cover the four blocks leading to the Riachuelo, the river that borders the southern part of Buenos Aires. They’re hoping that by that point people will be more spread out. But they barely manage to go a couple of blocks when…
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: You hear shots, which at the time I thought were fireworks, those famous three bangs. And no, it turns out there had actually been a couple of real gunshots and people scattered.
[Diego Buenaño]: We heard what we assumed were gunshots, they were like explosions.
[Mariano Pagella]: This is Diego, the third fan we met. He and his friends are also leaving the stadium and hear the same blasts as Juan Carlitos. But at that moment they do think it could be gunshots.
[Diego Buenaño]: And so we stopped and turned back to try to go around a bit and then try to cut through another street.
[Mariano Pagella]: Diego’s group had come by car, but they’d parked it very far from the stadium. So they decide to change route and cut through one of the cross streets to head north, toward the port area. They need to get out of there. Now.
A break, and we’ll be back.
[Mariano Pagella]: OK, let’s place ourselves in the scene for a moment. Fernando and his dad are already several blocks away from the stadium. They don’t see any of that chaos: the fights between Boca and River fans are very close to La Bombonera. They manage to catch a colectivo, the bus, and head home.
Meanwhile, Diego and his friends keep walking, trying to get away from the disturbances.
[Diego Buenaño]: We stopped at a kiosk to buy a drink. And while we’re there, one of the guys who was with us sees people starting to climb onto some trucks, there were two or three.
[Mariano Pagella]: Dozens of River fans are climbing onto mosquito trucks, the ones we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, that transport cars. They’re empty and moving slowly along the avenue that runs the length of the Riachuelo.
The drivers, frightened by the wave of people starting to climb on, barely manage to roll up their windows and lock the doors: they know there’s no way to get them to get off.
And for Diego and his friends, this is the opportunity they’d been looking for to finally get out of the La Boca neighborhood.
[Diego Buenaño]: It was far, we had to run, I’d say 100 meters. I was exhausted, and two of the guys start running toward the truck. And we looked at each other like that and said: let’s go. And we started running. We caught up to it and got on.
[Mariano Pagella]: Diego and his group climb onto one of the trucks. A friend climbs up to the upper level. Diego and the others stay in the back, almost hanging off. Remember these trucks have an enormous two-tiered metal structure. On the ground, along the sides, there’s a base where the cars go up. But the rest of the structure, including a good part of the floor, is hollow, like scaffolding. So they have to position themselves however they can and hold on tight.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: Let’s go on that one, let’s get on here!
[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlitos, who’s with Walter, also sees the trucks approaching.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: We couldn’t get on the first truck because other people got on, it filled up right away. We did get on the second one. We got on the mosquito to leave, because the idea was to leave, get out of there, because we saw the riot police coming too, so we saw people getting on to avoid trouble. No one said anything about the first truck and then the second one came along and we got on. We were able to get on, so we did. There must have been at least 50 guys there.
[Mariano Pagella]: The trucks continue on their way, driving along the Riachuelo.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: That whole stretch we went through was deserted. No one. Just the trucks.
[Mariano Pagella]: It’s around 6:15 in the evening and they’re passing through an area with little activity, where there are a lot of warehouses and mechanic shops. They’re already several blocks away from La Bombonera. And they reach the intersection with Avenida Brasil. This avenue marks the end of the La Boca neighborhood and the start of Avenida Ingeniero Huergo. Remember this intersection well: Brasil and Huergo. At that crossing there’s also a railway line, which forces the trucks to slow down a bit.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: I’m there, Walter’s there, and other guys too. And ahead of us, maybe 10 meters at most, was the other truck, also loaded with people. When I see the action, that a group comes out, to me it seemed like they were going to throw rocks at us, you know?
[Mariano Pagella]: When the first truck passes through that intersection between Huergo and Brasil, from the second truck Juan Carlitos sees, in the distance, a group of Boca fans appear. They had been hiding behind a building, on the left side of the avenue.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: «Look, there they are, man! They wrecked the first truck with rocks.»
[Mariano Pagella]: At that moment the first truck speeds up, crosses the intersection, and keeps going straight. The second truck, where Juan Carlitos is riding with Walter, and where Diego is also riding with his friends, reaches the same spot just a few seconds later. Here’s Diego.
[Diego Buenaño]: And that’s when we started to see people ducking down, and so on. And I started to hear the impact of what I thought were rocks hitting the metal of the truck. I heard: pin, pin, pin, pin, pin. But a lot of them.
[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlitos also sees something, but doesn’t quite understand what’s happening.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: You could see flashes, but I thought they were the three-bangers, those fireworks with three shots. I think the driver himself… the one driving the truck we were on saw it more clearly, more plainly, that they weren’t three-bangers, that they were gunshots.
[Mariano Pagella]: The truck speeds up and crosses the tracks at full speed. The movement is so abrupt it shakes the whole structure. The fans grab onto whatever they can. Then the truck swerves hard to dodge the group of Boca fans that had appeared.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: When it turns, well, I curl up into a ball and you could hear gunshots: pim, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
[Mariano Pagella]: This is how Diego remembers it:
[Diego Buenaño]: That’s when the truck speeds up and I feel something hit me like a rock on the side of my body, above the waist. But nothing, no pain. I just felt like something had hit me.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: It was a flash that lasted for –I don’t know how long, a minute, 10 minutes, but it was right as it turns, makes a curve, and they shoot the hell out of us. They shot the hell out of us. And that’s when I lose track of the others. Of all of them.
[Mariano Pagella]: In the middle of the chaos, Juan Carlitos doesn’t know where Walter is.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: To me it was an execution.
[Mariano Pagella]: One last break, and we’ll be back.
[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlitos is alone, separated from his friends, from Walter. When the truck finally slows down, he takes the chance to jump off. He’s three blocks from where they were shot at. Around him there are dozens of fans who also jumped off the truck and are running looking for shelter.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: I ran with a guy who was wounded, who had a bullet wound in one arm and a graze on his neck, into a warehouse that’s there.
[Diego Buenaño]: And we started running.
[Mariano Pagella]: Diego and his friends also got off the truck. They need to get to the car they’d driven to the match in, which is several blocks away.
[Diego Buenaño]: I don’t remember how much I ran, but it wasn’t much, must have been 20, 30 meters, and I told them, «I can’t run anymore.»
[Mariano Pagella]: His waist hurts a lot. He thinks it’s from the rock that hit him on the truck.
[Diego Buenaño]: I do remember at some point looking at my side where it had hit me and seeing smoke. And that’s when I think I realized something more than a rock had hit me.
[Mariano Pagella]: It’s a bullet. With his friends’ help, Diego sits down at the entrance of a building. The pain above his waist keeps getting worse and worse. While some go to get the car, another one of his friends, a medical student, stays with him.
[Diego Buenaño]: And he tells me, «don’t worry, if anything I can help you with the bullet.» I mean, we were all like something out of cowboy movies, thinking you bite down on a piece of wood, take a swig of whiskey, and pull the bullet out with tweezers. Unfortunately the bullet was on the other side, so it was more complicated than that.
[Mariano Pagella]: While Diego waits, bleeding more and more, Juan Carlitos is still holed up with the wounded guy in a warehouse, until the caretaker shows up.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: «No! What are you doing here?» I tell him, «look, he’s wounded!» «No, leave, leave.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlitos begs the man to at least call an ambulance for the wounded fan. But the man kicks them out.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And when we go outside, of course, the guy looks to the right and over there on the corner it was… it was total chaos. You could still hear blasts, I don’t know if they were gunshots, but it was total pandemonium.
[Mariano Pagella]: That chaos is the intersection of Huergo and Brasil. The first ambulances had started to arrive.
Meanwhile, Diego is still sitting at the entrance of a building, wounded. He’s bleeding a lot and the pain from the gunshot is becoming more and more unbearable. Luckily, his friends soon arrive with the car.
[Diego Buenaño]: I sit up front. Poor guy, I must have stained the whole car. And then a police officer stops us, at some traffic light or on the street, and tells us, «no, no, if you’ve got a gunshot victim, go to Argerich.» And they send us to Argerich.
[Mariano Pagella]: Argerich is a public hospital located in La Boca, three blocks from where everything happened. So they head the car in that direction, moving slowly amid more and more police officers. They reach the hospital. Diego gets out of the car with great difficulty and goes in to be treated. There’s already a lot of activity there. That’s where they discover that one of their friends is wounded too. A bullet went in and out through his arm. With the adrenaline of the moment, he hadn’t even noticed.
[Diego Buenaño]: They took my statement at the hospital. First a police officer came, and then a police officer came with a forensic expert. I think everyone who’d been shot had ended up there, we were eight in total. The bullet entered above my waist and went straight through my whole body and ended up lodged on the other side, right on the other side. It made an almost straight line. It punctured my intestine three times and went in and out of my liver. They operated on me and, well, I made it through.
[Mariano Pagella]: Meanwhile, Juan Carlitos is still out on the street. Remember, they’d kicked him out of the warehouse where he’d tried to take shelter. He gets separated from the wounded fan. He’s disoriented, almost in shock. And he thinks about his friends, about Walter.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: I don’t know if they stayed on the truck, because honestly that’s how it is, I don’t know. So I start running.
[Mariano Pagella]: He decides to look for a way out of that area, and the only option he can think of is an avenue behind Boca’s stadium. To get there he has to go back through the area where he saw the fights between fans—that is, through where he’d tried to escape by getting on the trucks.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And I start running. And on the corners there were Boca guys, with sticks. I imagined, «well, this is for beating people, they see a River jersey and they’ll go after him with clubs.» And the first thing that came out of me was, «man, here comes la gorra, here comes la gorra,» so they’d let me through.
[Mariano Pagella]: «La gorra» — meaning the police.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And I got through.
[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlitos gets on the first bus heading toward his house. He’s shaken, scared, confused. As soon as he gets on he realizes the driver has the radio on and they’re talking about what happened. So he stays in the front seat, to listen closely.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And on the radio they were describing what supposedly had happened, they said, «clash between the barra bravas,» and I said, «no, what clash? Nothing like that. We were fans. All of us, fans.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlitos’s trip home takes more than an hour. It’s already past eight at night when the bus reaches his neighborhood. He feels sick, he has a knot in his chest. He doesn’t know if Walter made it back from the stadium.
[Archival audio]: Several wounded who were taken to Argerich hospital just minutes after the end of the clásico between River and Boca.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And well, I got home and my mom: «hey, those sons of bitches! Did you see, the kids, apparently there are deaths?» «No, mom, I’m going to take a shower.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Several news outlets have already arrived on the scene and are showing the first footage on TV. But Juan Carlitos doesn’t want to know anything about it. He wants to shower and try to release the tension. He gets in the shower and, when he comes out, his mom calls him: on TV they’re showing that someone was killed.
[Archival audio]: Police officer: It’s a young person, but we haven’t identified them yet.
Journalist: Would it have been from a gunshot?
Police officer: Apparently he has, he would have a gunshot wound to the hand.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And when I look, the first one I see is Delgado and I tell her, «mom, I saw that guy.» «What?» she says. «I was on that truck, mom.» Ugh, here we go again, another scolding. Poor thing, my mom.
[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlitos recognizes him because he’d been standing next to him on the truck. His name is Ángel Delgado.
His mom gets angry, gets upset, tells him he can’t go to those matches anymore, that they’re too dangerous. Juan Carlitos wants to go to his room and try to forget about that day. He leaves the living room, but his mom calls him again: on TV they’re saying there’s apparently another dead fan.
[Archival audio]: Police officer: It’s a male, young, and no more information.
Journalist: The age isn’t known? And the name?
Police officer: No, neither.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And I recognize him by his sneakers. Because he was covered with a black bag. When I saw the sneakers, I grabbed my head. I said: «That’s Walter.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Walter Vallejos. His friend. And Fernando’s best friend.
Fernando, remember, hadn’t managed to find Walter that day, despite trying before and after the superclásico. And he also didn’t see the chaos of the fights, or everything that Walter and Juan Carlitos went through on the trucks.
[Fernando Scalone]: I was totally disconnected. I said, «well, we celebrated, I’ll go see him tomorrow, the day after. He’ll be happy.»
[Mariano Pagella]: After the match, Fernando was invited to a barbecue. He has no idea about everything that happened. He assumes Walter left the stadium at some point and that’s it. So, after eating, Fernando comes home late, at night. And there they tell him that Walter’s mom called about 20 times, because Walter never came home.
[Fernando Scalone]: «How strange, he must be locked up. I hope he’s not there in La Boca. Maybe they picked him up, got him because he had long hair.»
[Mariano Pagella]: As we said before, at that time it’s not unusual that if there’s some kind of disturbance at a soccer match, the police start rounding people up and hold them overnight, to release them the next day.
[Fernando Scalone]: And well, I went to bed. The next day I woke up to the news: that in the footage, his sister had recognized his sneakers. And that’s when it hit me, that’s when my world fell apart.
[Mariano Pagella]: The deaths of Walter Vallejos and Ángel Delgado are only the beginning of this story. A story that not only changed the world of soccer in Argentina but also impacted many people in different ways. For Ángel Delgado’s mother, for example, it meant an endless search.
[Dionisia Delgado]: He was like a «John Doe,» because he hadn’t brought any ID with him, nothing.
[Mariano Pagella]: For a young prosecutor it meant a professional challenge.
[Paula Asaro]: It was the first time I had to take part in a scene that was literal chaos. There was no way to get the press off your back. Statements had to be taken; they were taken at three in the morning.
[Mariano Pagella]: And running through all these stories, one constant: the power of the barras bravas…
[Gustavo Grabia]: What the Argentine barra brava has is a relationship with power — not only with sports management, but with local political power, with unions, with pressure groups that don’t exist anywhere else in the world.
[Mariano Pagella]: All this in the coming episodes of Superclásico 94.
[Silvia Viñas]: Superclásico 94 is a podcast from Central, Radio Ambulante Studios’ series channel, and is part of iHeartRadio’s My Cultura podcast network.
This series was produced by Mariano Pagella, Alejandro Marinelli, and Sergio Renna.
Special thanks to Centrojas for sharing part of the archival material for this episode.
The editors were Pablo Argüelles, Daniel Alarcón, and me.
Fact-checking by Ana Prieto.
Mariano did the sound design, with original music by Nicolas Pagella, who also composed the series’ theme music. Martín Cruz was in charge of sound mixing and mastering.
The series’ graphics and art direction are by Diego Corzo. Digital production by Andrés Centeno with Óscar Luna.
Business development and strategic partnerships were led by Camilo Jiménez Santofimio. And Julián Santos and Eric Spiegelman gave us legal support.
Carolina Guerrero is the CEO of Radio Ambulante Studios.
At iHeart, the executive producers are Arlene Santana and Leo Gomez.
Radio Ambulante Studios produces and mixes its podcasts using Hindenburg PRO.
You can follow us on social media as centralseriesRA and subscribe to our email newsletter at centralpodcast.audio.
I’m Silvia Viñas. Thanks for listening.