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.
[Marcela Mora y Araujo]: Sometimes José would call me from prison. He’d call me collect.
[Silvia Viñas]: This is Marcela Mora y Araujo, the journalist who spent the whole day with José Barritta at the superclásico in April 1994.
[Marcela Mora y Araujo]: When he called me on the phone, it was to talk about books or movies.
[Silvia Viñas]: Marcela doesn’t remember exactly why he called the first time, but she does remember that they talked about everyday things. The conversations were a way to take their minds off things. That’s how they stayed in touch, talking every so often. Until…
[Marcela Mora y Araujo]: After a couple of years, I went to visit him.
[Silvia Viñas]: El Abuelo was serving his sentence in Devoto prison. He was afraid for his safety, so he asked to be housed in the famous Ward 49 bis. It was a section of the prison for high-profile inmates, very close to the entrance and with no contact with the other prisoners. To be there, you had to pay the prison guards «under the table.»
El Abuelo rarely left his cell, and he watched Boca’s matches on TV. When the cameras showed the stands, he could see that the barra members who were still free hadn’t forgotten him. But not in the way he would have wanted. In every stand where La 12 went, there were banners that said «Abuelo the Rat,» in other words, informant; or «Abuelo the Traitor» and «Abuelo the Snitch.»
His daughter, his sister, and his brother-in-law visited him regularly. And now, Marcela. She lived in London, but every year she spent several months in Argentina. So she took advantage of one of those trips and arranged the prison visit.
[Marcela Mora y Araujo]: I think it’s hard to have visitors in prison. So he really made an effort for it not to be a drag,, because otherwise nobody would want to come back.
[Silvia Viñas]: So that it wasn’t a «drag»: so the conversation wasn’t boring.
[Marcela Mora y Araujo]: He was the same incredibly charming person. Interesting, magnetic, curious. He asked a lot of questions. So the conversation was always very easy, because he’d ask, «What’s England like? What happened?» He read the news. «What does this mean?»
[Silvia Viñas]: But in other ways, he was a very different Abuelo from the one she had met.
[Marcela Mora y Araujo]: You could tell he was much thinner, and he had been in the hospital. So he was sort of in poor health, though not a serious condition. And I brought mate, I didn’t know what to bring, cigarettes. He didn’t smoke anymore, and he didn’t have any mate either. I had sort of a fantasy of doing a book, of him writing a book, of helping him get it published, of talking about more things, details of the violence in soccer, but this was someone who wasn’t planning anything anymore, I think.
[Silvia Viñas]: Even so, they stayed and talked, just like they did on the phone, for the hour and a half, two hours that the visit lasted. But while Marcela was chatting with Barritta inside the prison, outside, La 12 had been left without its leader.
[Gustavo Grabia]: A vacuum opens up in Boca’s barra brava. And the million-dollar question was: who was going to take it over?
[Silvia Viñas]: According to Gustavo Grabia, the journalist who specializes in barras, there was a group within La 12 that, ever since that superclásico in ’94, had been getting ready to take power when the time came.
[Gustavo Grabia]: Well, the group that tells el Abuelo, «This is going to end badly,» the group that splits off, is Di Zeo’s group.
[Silvia Viñas]: Di Zeo, in our previous episode we told you this name would be important. Rafael Di Zeo was a barra very close to el Abuelo. But he also had his own small group of barras who were loyal to him. And if he hadn’t been mentioned in this story before, it’s because he wasn’t at the main paravalanchas on that April 30, 1994. Neither Di Zeo nor his barras were with the group that left the stadium to go after the River fans.
[Gustavo Grabia]: They made the right decision, because otherwise that group would have been there in the cheap stands on the day of the Boca-River match, which ended with the two murders.
[Silvia Viñas]: In the years after the superclásico, as el Abuelo goes from being the great leader of La 12 to being considered a traitor, the battle for succession to the throne will play out. A long battle, with Di Zeo at the front, and one that will follow el Abuelo’s tradition: big business and a lot of violence.
From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, I’m Silvia Viñas, and this is «Superclásico 94.»
Episode 10: The King Is Dead, Long Live the King
The «power vacuum» left in La 12 after the ’94 superclásico, when el Abuelo and his top lieutenants ended up in prison, actually started taking shape much earlier. It began when el Abuelo, as we saw in the last episode, started losing legitimacy because of his barras’ violence.
[Gustavo Grabia]: Those people were already out of control a year earlier. It got out of hand. He couldn’t control them, but to hold on to his position, he always said, «I can control them.»
[Silvia Viñas]: Mariano Pagella continues the story.
[Mariano Pagella]: This is where two characters come into the story. We mentioned them in earlier episodes, but they had stayed in the shadows, one way or another. Gustavo Grabia introduces us to the first one:
[Gustavo Grabia]: The most important person in the La Boca neighborhood, as a political fixer as well as a barra, is Santiago Lancry, whose nickname back then was «El Gitano» Lancry.
[Mariano Pagella]: A «political fixer» is someone with connections to the government, like a lobbyist, but unofficial. El Gitano Lancry is the barra who worked security at the city’s Legislative Council.
[Gustavo Grabia]: He already had a lot of connections in the political world, so they come to him with the idea of «Calm this down for me and put together a stand for me,» because, on top of that, a stand like Boca’s can’t be left to fend for itself, because the result will be a war to see who keeps that loot.
[Mariano Pagella]: The strongest, most violent barra in Argentine soccer has to be kept under control. And, as we’ve said, by the early ’90s, el Abuelo wasn’t managing it.
[Gustavo Grabia]: It’s also true that there was no figure who could replace el Abuelo. Lancry didn’t want to be that figure. Lancry was like the power in the shadows.
[Mariano Pagella]: So, to carry out that request to «put together a stand,» Lancry starts talking to a group within La 12 that, while close to el Abuelo, isn’t part of the barras who are out of control. And he gives them a «recommendation.»
[Gustavo Grabia]: «OK, you guys step aside, because this will end badly for sure. And when this ends badly, we’ll still need someone to step in.»
[Mariano Pagella]: In other words, the idea was that when el Abuelo’s time as leader of La 12 came to an end, there would already be a group, separate from el Abuelo, ready to lead the barra. At the head of that group was a 32-year-old man (almost ten years younger than el Abuelo) named Rafael Di Zeo, along with his brother, Fernando. By 1994, Rafa was already a barra with a long history in La 12.
[Gustavo Grabia]: He’d been in Boca’s barra for many, many years. He joined in the ’80s with Manzanita Santoro, who was his neighborhood leader.
[Mariano Pagella]: And who had come into the barra with el Abuelo. Years later, Manzanita would become el Abuelo’s lieutenant, but at this point, the leader of the barra was still Quique El Carnicero. Manzanita and Di Zeo knew each other because they were from the same neighborhood, Villa Lugano. At that time, they were both about 16. When el Abuelo became La 12’s new leader in 1981, Di Zeo and his brother joined the barra, brought in by Manzanita. And little by little, they started down the path el Abuelo had opened a decade earlier. They formed a group of barras that always led the charge, took part in every clash, and, most importantly, won most of them.
[Gustavo Grabia]: And he keeps gaining power, to the point that he becomes an important part of el Abuelo.
[Mariano Pagella]: El Abuelo trusted him so much that Rafa Di Zeo was named «deputy secretary» of the Fundación Número 12, the structure the barra had set up to raise funds. And his home address was the foundation’s «headquarters.» That brings us back to 1994, with a very violent Boca barra and el Abuelo, its leader, unable to control it.
[Gustavo Grabia]: What they do is, well, «Let’s do damage control, since they can’t control themselves. Let’s make sure the group that we do think can take over the barra and keep up the political, union, police relationship with us, and that, that there are benefits for everyone, well, is ready to, if those guys fall… these guys take over.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Boca’s political contacts tell El Gitano Lancry that Di Zeo’s group has the most potential to lead La 12. Those contacts suggest that the group starts distancing itself from el Abuelo, as part of a long-term plan. But that outcome everyone could already sense coming, where everything would «end badly,» happened faster than expected. Because the double murder on April 30, 1994, led to the removal of the barra’s entire leadership. Suddenly, the perfect scenario for a changeover presented itself. But not all the members of La 12 were going to agree with this «new leadership.» We’ll take a break and be right back.
[Mariano Pagella]: So, let’s go over the situation. As we said, faced with el Abuelo’s loss of legitimacy in the early ’90s, Boca’s political contacts told Santiago Lancry, «El Gitano,» to plan a change of command. And they suggested that Rafa Di Zeo gradually separate himself from the out-of-control barras.
But the murders of the River fans after the superclásico in ’94 sped everything up. Within two months, el Abuelo and most of La 12’s leadership were locked up in Devoto prison. The few who weren’t caught had fled. The thing was, Di Zeo’s group still wasn’t strong enough to take command. So Lancry had to stay in charge. But there was a problem.
[Gustavo Grabia]: Lancry was a very exposed man, because he was almost the head of security. He didn’t have that title, but he was almost the head of security at the Buenos Aires City Legislative Council, which made it impossible for him to be the public face of Boca’s barra brava.
[Mariano Pagella]: What Gustavo is explaining means that much of the power Lancry wielded came precisely from staying in the shadows.
[Gustavo Grabia]: So, throughout that whole year, there’s a kind of interim period, with Lancry giving the orders, but with no visible head. Like, the idea was, «OK, let’s have a year of calm.» That year of calm was all of 1995, when the one running everything was Santiago Lancry.
[Mariano Pagella]: So the plan was to pull the barra’s strings without being a visible face, while he finished «training» the men who would be el Abuelo’s successors: the Di Zeo brothers, with Rafael Di Zeo at the head.
[Gustavo Grabia]: Around that time, Rafael Di Zeo starts working… Well, «working.» But they give him a job in the Buenos Aires city government. He’s now an employee of the city of Buenos Aires.
[Mariano Pagella]: A minor job, not a political one. It’s so he can get in and be there. For the access. That way, Di Zeo starts building his own ties to politics and to the different sectors of power connected to the barra, just as el Abuelo had.
[Gustavo Grabia]: The ties that used to be sort of hidden, and that were mostly handled by el Abuelo, now become Rafa Di Zeo’s.
[Mariano Pagella]: And these ties reach the very top of Argentine politics.
[Gustavo Grabia]: There’s a famous meeting in La Rioja where they take Di Zeo to introduce him as, «He’s going to be the boss of the barra.»
[Mariano Pagella]: La Rioja is a province in northwestern Argentina. And the meeting Grabia mentions wasn’t with just anyone.
[Gustavo Grabia]: Miguel Ángel Toma is going to be there, and the president at the time, Carlos Saúl Menem.
[Mariano Pagella]: Yes, La 12 was so important that Di Zeo was introduced as the barra’s new boss to the president of the country himself, and to Miguel Ángel Toma, a man Menem trusted deeply, with close ties to the intelligence sector.
[Gustavo Grabia]: They’re sort of already setting Di Zeo up as, «OK, this is going to be the guy.» And sure enough, in ’96, the guy ends up being Rafael Di Zeo.
[Mariano Pagella]: Di Zeo was now the new boss of La 12. At the time, Boca’s coach was Carlos Salvador Bilardo (who coached Argentina’s national team at the ’86 World Cup), and he often agreed to let Di Zeo and Lancry come to a practice or even join an asado with the players and club officials. That’s how Rafa Di Zeo consolidated his position, with two very important lessons he had learned from his predecessors. The first:
[Gustavo Grabia]: He had seen that Quique Ocampo’s mistake, and the reason el Abuelo ousted him, was not sharing what the barra brought in among many hands. He understood that he had to secure the loyalty of the whole second tier, and to do that, he had to distribute it better.
[Mariano Pagella]: The second lesson had to do with el Abuelo’s fall.
[Gustavo Grabia]: The other thing he understood is that he couldn’t let the barra get away from him. That if someone strayed from the line he drew, and that person got a couple of smacks upside the head and didn’t react, and made another mistake, he’d be cut loose. Something el Abuelo had never done.
[Mariano Pagella]: In other words, no more second chances: if someone doesn’t follow orders, he’s out of the barra and loses its protection. That’s how Di Zeo managed to keep La 12 in check for a few years.
[Gustavo Grabia]: Except for the La Boca group, who at this point believed el Abuelo would fall and they’d move up…
[Mariano Pagella]: By «the La Boca group,» Gustavo means another faction of La 12, made up of people from the La Boca neighborhood itself, where the club was founded and where the stadium is. They wanted power, and to run the barra. And they weren’t going to give up without a fight.
By the early 2000s, almost three years after the barras were convicted of the double murder, Argentine soccer was going through a very particular moment. While the economic crisis deepened across the country and inequality and poverty grew, in soccer, the exact opposite is happening.
[Gustavo Grabia]: Soccer enters a period of growth, but not because of Argentina, but because the soccer bubble starts to expand, with sky-high contracts from Europe to this part of the world. So money starts to flow in a way it never used to flow in soccer.
[Mariano Pagella]: It’s a time when players’ multimillion-dollar mega-contracts begin, and with the expansion of cable TV, many more matches are broadcast live on television. That means more money for the clubs. And with more money coming into the clubs, there’s more money available for the barra’s businesses. In theory, there would be enough income to share out and keep the peace between the two sides of the barra. But when the La Boca group asked Di Zeo for more benefits…
[Gustavo Grabia]: The answer is no, and I think the decisive battle that leaves Di Zeo at the head of the barra, and consolidates him at the head of the barra, is a battle precisely with the people from the La Boca group.
[Mariano Pagella]: It’s January 29, 2000, and the third Boca-River friendly of that year’s summer tournament is being played. Another superclásico, but at a neutral venue: the Estadio Mundialista in Mar del Plata, one of Argentina’s most popular tourist cities, about six hours from Buenos Aires.
The police operation is a big one, as at every superclásico, with a large number of officers. But of course, they were prepared for incidents between the two teams’ fans, not between fans of the same club.
Around seven in the evening, a group of 40 barras from Di Zeo’s group are at a choripán stand just steps from the stadium. At that moment, the «rebel» group, made up of barras from the La Boca neighborhood, arrives at the stadium along the main avenue and sees Di Zeo’s group. When they cross paths, they start insulting each other.
One of the rebel barras gets into his car. He pulls out a .38 revolver and starts shooting. The other side fires back. The police count at least 20 shots. Six barras are wounded. On one side, the head of the La Boca group is shot twice, in the chest and the armpit. And his son is shot once in the leg. On the other side, the most seriously wounded are two people very valuable to Di Zeo: Fernando, his brother, shot in the face, with the bullet going in through his nose and coming out through his left jaw; and Miguel Ángel Cedrón, a close friend and the head of La 12’s front line, critically wounded with a gunshot to the abdomen. He would die two days later in the hospital.
[Gustavo Grabia]: But in the end, the ones who go into the stadium (even with all those wounded on their way to the hospital), the ones who go into the stadium, it’s Di Zeo’s group, with Di Zeo at the head, and the others can never come back.
[Mariano Pagella]: Through violence, the new leader proved his legitimacy in the stands. Just like el Abuelo, almost twenty years earlier, when he took power from Quique El Carnicero.
[Gustavo Grabia]: And from then on, the power is firmly in Rafael Di Zeo’s hands.
[Mariano Pagella]: One last break, and when we come back, the final fate of el Abuelo.
[Archival audio, Journalist]: Do you remember José Barritta, el Abuelo, the boss of Boca’s barra brava, who was going to be in prison for 13 years? Well, he’s been released.
[Mariano Pagella]: It was December 17, 1998. Barritta’s lawyer had gotten the extortion charge thrown out. The reason was that the main victim, Antonio Alegre, Boca’s president at the time of the double murder, said he never felt extorted. Besides, the club’s leadership didn’t only hand out free tickets to the barra. It also gave them to journalists and special guests. So after 1,633 days in prison, el Abuelo was released on parole.
[Archival audio, Journalist]: We now have on the line the uncle of one of the boys who lost their lives when Boca’s barra brava attacked a River truck. Barritta is free today. Jorge, good afternoon.
[Archival audio, Jorge Cárdenas]: Good afternoon. How are you, Pizarro?
[Archival audio, Journalist]: And how are you all doing?
[Archival audio, Jorge Cárdenas]: Well, so-so. I just went to Oral Court No. 17, and the clerk confirmed to me that they’re letting him go. On parole.
[Mariano Pagella]: This is Jorge Cárdenas, the uncle of Walter Vallejos, one of the River fans who were murdered.
[Archival audio, Journalist]: Those signs you see there in the stadium, those banners that say «Abuelo the Rat,» is that because José Barritta turned in every one of his buddies, the ones who had been responsible for the killing of your nephew and his friend?
[Archival audio, Jorge Cárdenas]: Exactly. He came here to the court and, during the investigation, he told Judge César Quiroga that he had nothing to do with this, and that the ones who were in on all these violent acts were this guy, that guy, I don’t remember the names right now, but it’s like people put it crudely, that he, in quotes, sent all his buddies to prison. Now he got off, he’s out on the street, but the others have to do the twenty years, which I think is very good.
[Marcela Mora y Araujo]: When he gets out of prison, they invited me to an asado to welcome him.
[Mariano Pagella]: That day, Marcela sees that Barritta is no longer the Abuelo who stood on the main paravalancha at La Bombonera, leading the barra.
[Marcela Mora y Araujo]: He was a guy who was pretty weak physically, let’s say. He was very thin, he was pretty sick.
[Mariano Pagella]: Barritta spends his first year of freedom at a country house outside the city. Then he stays at the family home in San Justo, where he disappears from public places and doesn’t give interviews. Little by little, his health deteriorates because of the severe chronic pneumonia he’d been dragging along since prison.
[Marcela Mora y Araujo]: And he died shortly after that.
[Archival audio, Journalist]: El Abuelo, José Barritta, the former boss of Boca’s barra brava, has died of pneumonia.
[Mariano Pagella]: It was February 19, 2001. El Abuelo was 48.
[Archival audio, Journalist]: The well-known faces were missing from the wake. Only his closest relatives and old members of the barra came to say goodbye to el Abuelo.
[Archival audio, Fans]: José, beloved, La 12 is with you! José, beloved, La 12 is with you!
[Mariano Pagella]: In a video from that day, you can see a group, not very big, of about 40 fans carrying the coffin covered with a Boca flag.
[Archival audio, Fans]: José, beloved, La 12 is with you! José, beloved, La 12 is with you!
[Mariano Pagella]: The rest of the barras convicted of the superclásico double murder served their respective sentences. We only know what became of some of them.
Manzanita Santoro died in 2006, shot twice while resisting a robbery at his front door.
Corbacho Villagarcía was arrested again in 2014, once again for criminal association, and for selling counterfeit Boca membership cards.
Marcelo Aravena spent 12 years in prison and today is part of the barra’s inner circle, though not without having tried to take over the leadership by force and spending time in prison again. About another of the barras, we have more precise information.
[Marcelo Parrilli]: One day I’m leaving the office here, this office where I am now. It was a Saturday.
[Mariano Pagella]: This is Marcelo Parrilli, the victims’ lawyer at the trial. He doesn’t remember the exact date, but he does remember that when he left his office, he went to the corner to catch a taxi…
[Marcelo Parrilli]: I get in and say where we’re going. And the driver says to me, «Are you Doctor Parrilli?» And I say, «Yes.» «Ah,» he says, «I’m Cáceres Romero.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Freddy Cáceres Romero, also known as Bolita Niponi, the most dangerous member of el Abuelo’s barra.
[Marcelo Parrilli]: He says, «No, all things considered, even though you’re a River fan,» he says, «I consider you a good person.»
[Mariano Pagella]: While Niponi was in prison, he’d call Parrilli every so often to ask him about details of his case, because his lawyers were no longer in touch with him. So that «flaw» of being a River fan, just like during the trial, wasn’t so bad after all.
[Marcelo Parrilli]: When you’re in prison, having someone talk to you matters, let’s say. Well, to the point that he drove me and there was no way he’d let me pay, you know. He wouldn’t take my money.
[Mariano Pagella]: In 2008, Niponi was arrested again as an accomplice in a kidnapping for ransom and as a suspect in a murder, and in 2017 for armed robbery.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: It’s been 32 years now. He would have had his family, he would have had kids, I don’t know. These idiots cut his life short.
[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlitos is talking about Walter Vallejos, his buddy from the stands, who he was with at the superclásico that April 30, 1994, and with whom he climbed onto the mosquito trucks. Juan Carlitos married Walter’s sister, Verónica, who was deeply affected by what happened.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: It took her years and years, being in a bad way, really, really, really bad, wanting to kill herself, not wanting to live anymore. It took her years and years, and even today she hasn’t gotten over it.
[Mariano Pagella]: Juan Carlitos and Verónica had children, and now they have grandchildren. As often happens after a tragedy like this, your mind starts running through the variables, those tiny adjustments that seem unimportant at first glance, but that maybe could have changed fate.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: Even today, I talk with my wife and she says to me, «Why did you go that way?» What’d we get on there for? You know what I mean? If we hadn’t gotten on, or if those trucks hadn’t shown up. What would have happened?
[Mariano Pagella]: But above all that pain, there are also happy memories. Memories of a friendship built through soccer, the stands, and the fans.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: We went to the game, he left happy, River won two-nothing, they ran circles around them, River’s fans were celebrating. It’s not like he left sad, where you’d say, «He was sick, in a lot of pain.» No, hey, let’s remember him with joy, not with sadness. Today, after so many years, that’s how I remember him.
[Fernando Scalone]: After what happened to him, the next year, we went to play at La Boca again, and I went with my old man.
[Mariano Pagella]: Fernando Scalone, Walter’s best friend, who went to La Bombonera with his dad on the day of the superclásico, and they never met up with Walter.
[Fernando Scalone]: We didn’t even talk about it, because what were my old man and I going to say to each other? We knew each other so well, and we both went through the same pain, so it wasn’t something to talk about. We looked at each other and we already understood: what were we going to talk about? Everything had been said.
[Mariano Pagella]: Fernando still goes to games, but now he takes his kids, just like his dad took him. And in the years after the superclásico, he discovered something that still surprises him today.
[Fernando Scalone]: El Abuelo was here. Ten blocks from my house, he was. Without us knowing, he was holed up right nearby.
[Mariano Pagella]: El Abuelo had been hidden by «La Vieja» Santana, the head of Banfield’s barra, who also arranged his surrender at the court in Lomas de Zamora.
[Fernando Scalone]: La Vieja was a close friend of my dad’s. He and my old man got married in the same suit. Close friend. My old man used to hang out with Banfield’s fans.
[Mariano Pagella]: Fernando even ran into La Vieja on the last day of the trial. On the way out, when Boca’s barras wanted to beat them up.
[Fernando Scalone]: When I walked by, he said to me, «I’m gonna wring your neck.» And my mom went to La Vieja’s house: «What did you say to my son?» «What son?» «You told him that…» «No, that’s your son?» Unthinkable that he’d be right here so close, with so many places to hide.
[Mariano Pagella]: Coincidences, synchronicities, fate. We can call it many things. But whatever name we give it, sometimes, some things still surprise us.
[Fernando Scalone]: Today, March 28, would have been his birthday. Because we used to celebrate our birthdays together, since mine is tomorrow, March 29.
[Mariano Pagella]: Yes, while we were interviewing Fernando, he realized that on that very day, when he was remembering Walter and telling us about their friendship, Walter would have been turning 51. Sometimes it’s the stories that decide it’s time for them to be told.
[Archival audio, Di Zeo]: La 12 is number one in the world. This doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world. Today on the bus, I showed you the guy who runs Real Madrid’s fans in Spain.
[Archival audio, Journalist]: Yes.
[Archival audio, Di Zeo]: He comes here to learn.
[Mariano Pagella]: That’s Rafa Di Zeo, and the person he mentions is a member of the «Ultras Sur,» Real Madrid’s «barra brava.» The audio is from a 2006 TV report in which journalist Daniel Tognetti spent the whole day with Di Zeo. And it’s a good example of how La 12 evolved.
[Archival audio, Di Zeo]: This is like Harvard for barras.
[Archival audio, Journalist]: It’s the Harvard of barras?
[Archival audio, Di Zeo]: Sure, the Harvard of barras.
[Mariano Pagella]: During the early 2000s, Di Zeo realized La 12 could be even bigger, and like el Abuelo in the ’80s, he expanded its businesses, including a 15-day «intensive course» on how to run a stand and make it profitable.
[Gustavo Grabia]: They basically became businessmen, important businessmen. I mean, Rafael Di Zeo had cash-transport businesses, a whole bunch of real estate developments in Argentina, restaurants; they had finance companies. They’ve done spectacular business with the tour companies that bring tourists to see Boca. They charge them a fortune to take them to the stadium.
[Mariano Pagella]: Today, Di Zeo is still the boss of La 12, along with two other barras: Mauro Martín and, for a few years now, Marcelo Aravena too. The name may ring a bell: he’s one of the barras convicted of the 1994 double murder.
Di Zeo’s leadership has had many ups and downs and has been riddled with violence, but with a clear trigger: the superclásico of April 30, 1994. The double murder was the start of a path that reshaped the power of the barras, to the point of reaching beyond the stands. Di Zeo is banned from La Bombonera, and he’s La 12’s leader without needing to climb up on the main paravalancha.
He no longer works for those in power: he is the power. But that’s another story.
[Silvia Viñas]: Superclásico 94 is a podcast from Central, the series channel of Radio Ambulante Studios, and is part of the My Cultura podcast network from iHeart Radio.
This series was researched and produced by Mariano Pagella, Alejandro Marinelli, and Sergio Renna.
Mariano and Alejandro wrote the scripts, with editing by Pablo Argüelles, Daniel Alarcón, and me.
Fact-checking is 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 was done by Andrés Centeno with Óscar Luna.
Business development and strategic partnerships were led by Camilo Jiménez Santofimio. And Julián Santos and Eric Spiegelman provided 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 with Hindenburg PRO.
And before we go, three quick things. If you haven’t already, please go to your podcast app and follow Central, so you’ll find out as soon as we release our next series. It’s free, and it helps the app recommend us to more people. Also, subscribe to our newsletter at centralpodcast.audio/boletin. And while we report and produce our next series, listen to Radio Ambulante, El hilo, and The Moment, the other podcasts we make at our home, Radio Ambulante Studios.
I’m Silvia Viñas. Thanks for listening.