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]: Police officer: It’s a male, young, and no more information.
Journalist: The age isn’t known? Or the name?
Police officer: No, that either.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: I grabbed my head. I said: «That’s Walter.» «What?» my mom says. «That’s the guy who went with us.» «No, you’re crazy.» «Yes, Mom, yes…»
[Silvia Viñas]: Juan Carlos Cáceres, Juan Carlitos, is one of the River fans who went to the superclásico against Boca on April 30, 1994. We met him in the previous episode. His friend Walter Vallejos was with him for the whole match, and they climbed together onto one of the “mosquito” trucks—the ones that transport cars—to get away from the fights and stampedes outside the stadium. But when Boca fans started shooting at the trucks, they got separated in the chaos, and Juan Carlitos never saw Walter again. Until he got home and turned on the TV.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And I recognize him by his sneakers. Because he was covered with a black bag. «It’s Walter. It’s Walter. I have to go to his place, everyone there must be freaking out. Or maybe they don’t know.»
[Silvia Viñas]: His mom tells him no, that he’s crazy, he shouldn’t go. So Juan Carlitos thinks of another friend he went to the stadium with. Would he have seen the TV? Would he have found out that one of the dead is Walter?
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And that’s when I get changed. Bam, bam. I finished getting changed, and I left.
[Silvia Viñas]: Juan Carlitos walks to his friend’s house.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: «Hey, it’s this guy, man, what’s this?» «Let’s go to his place.» «You think so?» We were afraid of the reaction –we didn’t know what to sayto the father, to the mother.
[Silvia Viñas]: At that moment, they begin to have doubts: if the family doesn’t know anything, how do you break the news that their son, that their brother, is dead? What reaction could they face? But Juan Carlitos is determined. They get into his friend’s car and drive about twenty blocks to Walter’s family’s house.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: And once there, it was very sad to see the mom, really broken. The sisters, really broken. Inconsolable.
[Silvia Viñas]: Walter’s family already knew what happened; they had also recognized him by his sneakers when they saw on television the same images that Juan Carlitos had seen.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: I approached the aunt. No, no, I didn’t dare approach the mom –I didn’t dare. Not the dad either, no, I didn’t dare at that moment because they were devastated. I managed—I approached one of the aunts. I told her, «I was there.» «What do you mean you were there?!» because she also kind of got angry too, you know? And I tell her, «No, ma’am, calm down, we know him, we’ve been going to the stadium together for ages…»
[Silvia Viñas]: In the news, some of the first reports talk about a “clash” between the two fan groups.
[Archival audio]: When fans from both teams allegedly attacked each other with rocks and gunfire on Ingeniero Huergo Avenue…
[Silvia Viñas]: Walter’s aunt, angry, demands an explanation from Juan Carlitos.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: «Tell me, what happened?» You know, like that. I tell her, «Calm down, there was no clash, we had nothing to do with that. Nothing to do with it. You’ll see, nothing to do with it, nothing to do with it.»
[Silvia Viñas]: That «nothing to do with it» that Juan Carlitos repeats, about there not having been a «clash,» is going to become one of the key points of the case. And one of the people who will be in charge of clarifying this is a prosecutor.
[Paula Asaro]: My name is María Paula Asaro, I’m a criminal prosecutor, and at the time of the death of the two River fans, I was assigned to this case.
[Silvia Viñas]: At that time, Asaro was a young prosecutor, just starting. She had no idea she would take part in a case with national reach and that would turn out to be one of the biggest challenges of her career.
[Paula Asaro]: I didn’t feel like this would have the significance it took on as the days went by. I mean, it was like a phenomenon that hadn’t, hadn’t been experienced before.
[Silvia Viñas]: In this episode, we’ll revisit the first days after the crime: where the justice system starts to get involved, the media picks up the story, the families say goodbye to their loved ones. And we answer a question that, at the time, starts coming up everywhere: How did the barras bravas come to have so much power?
From Central Series and Radio Ambulante Studios, I’m Silvia Viñas, and this is «Superclásico 94.»
Episode 2: Brokers of Fervor
[Archival audio]: Journalist: Did the operation reach this area, or how far did it go?
Police chief: No, not this far.
Journalist: Number of people arrested?
Police chief: We don’t have that yet. We’re taking witness statements and questioning people…
[Paula Asaro]: I found out about the crime precisely because I was watching the match. I’m a Racing fan, but well, it was a Boca-River match. The truth is everyone watches it. And a few minutes later, well, what had happened started coming out on television.
[Silvia Viñas]: Today Paula Asaro is a well-known prosecutor, with some very important cases under her belt. But on April 30th of ’94, she was 28 years old and had been sworn in as a prosecutor only six months ago.
[Paula Asaro]: Being a prosecutor at that time, well, we were all very young –we’d all been instruction secretaries not long before.
[Silvia Viñas]: Mariano Pagella continues telling us.
[Mariano Pagella]: This «instrucción» that Asaro mentions is the first stage of a judicial investigation in Argentina. The law says that evidence must be presented to justify a case going to trial. That’s what «instruction prosecutor’s offices» are for.
[Paula Asaro]: When we got to the crime scene, it was chaos. It really was total chaos.
[Mariano Pagella]: About 24 hours had passed since the shooting. Police from the 22nd precinct, in the La Boca neighborhood, preserved the entire scene. It’s a very busy area because it has direct access to the port, so having part of the avenue closed off creates a complicated situation, with people passing by on their way to work and onlookers.
[Paula Asaro]: I had been at crime scenes before—I don’t know, a homicide, five stab wounds. There had been complicated incidents. But this was the first time I found myself at a scene that was literal chaos. I felt very small, thinking, «how are we going to get this organized?»
[Mariano Pagella]: The prosecutor’s office’s goal is to work with the police to reconstruct as faithfully as possible what happened. But of course, this isn’t an ordinary crime scene. Everything happened over hundreds of meters, in just a few minutes, with the trucks taking multiple shots, and with the fans ducking for cover and running in every direction.
[Paula Asaro]: Nobody knew where the shots had come from, how they’d done it, how it had happened. I mean, getting a handle on things amid that chaos was hard. People would come up to you. People who were there would come up to you offering to be witnesses, or they’d say: this happened, that happened.
[Mariano Pagella]: So one of the big challenges becomes telling apart rumors from what actually happened.
[Paula Asaro]: And that’s when we started to get a sense that this was going to be a huge case, right? We went to every location to build a picture for ourselves: how the mosquito trucks moved through, where things were located.
[Mariano Pagella]: Bullet casings were recovered at the scene.
[Paula Asaro]: They started collecting the projectiles, I mean, the bullets…
[Mariano Pagella]: Several of those bullets left marks on walls on the riverside. Based on their trajectory, ballistics experts concluded they had all been fired in the same direction. No weapons were found on the fans who died either, and several witnesses to the shooting say they didn’t see anyone armed on the trucks. In other words, the River fans didn’t shoot.
In total, there were 10 people wounded, three of them seriously. Altogether, they received around 15 gunshots. And then there are the two who died.
Walter’s body was found on the corner of Huergo and Brasil. The autopsy determined he died from multiple traumatic injuries and internal hemorrhaging: the theory is that he fell from the truck—or maybe jumped, as many others did in the midst of the panic—and was run over by a vehicle coming up behind, or by the truck’s own rear wheels.
Three blocks away, the second body was found: Ángel Delgado’s. He had no identification on him, so he was registered as “NN”, meaning an unidentified person. Ángel was shot three times: in the hand, in one buttock, and in the stomach.
As Asaro and her team gather evidence and talk to witnesses, they start realizing this wasn’t a «clash» between fans. There was something premeditated. An armed group waited for the defenseless River fans to pass by so they could gun them down.
[Paula Asaro]: Somehow the families of the dead, of the wounded—who were a great many—started to show up. Well, they wanted answers.
[Mariano Pagella]: And among these family members who start mobilizing once the initial shock passes, there’s a mother searching for her son.
[Dionisia Delgado]: That day was terrible for me. I wouldn’t want to relive that day.
[Mariano Pagella]: Dionisia Delgado, Ángel’s mother. We’ll follow her search after a break.
[Mariano Pagella]: Dionisia Delgado always goes back to the day of the superclásico and the fear that her son Ángel would go to that match. That very morning, she hesitated over whether to call him and ask him not to go.
[Dionisia Delgado]: I went over to the phone and said, «Should I call or not?» And ask him not to go to the match. That was my idea. «I’d better not call, because he’s going to say to me, ‘you’re a pain, what a nag.'» It’s like a mother has a sixth sense, it seems.
[Mariano Pagella]: Ángel was killed when he was 25 years old. Dionisia remembers that he loved math, it was like a game to him. When he was in school, he always helped his classmates prepare for exams.
[Dionisia Delgado]: He was like a special person. He’d come help me do things, side by side. He liked, um, getting together, dancing. He was very family-oriented.
[Mariano Pagella]: He also really liked drawing. He wanted to be an electronic engineer, so he could fix things around the house. But above all that…
[Dionisia Delgado]: His passion was River. He always went out wearing the River jersey, the River sneakers. It used to make me so mad that he liked going to the stadium to support the «machine,» because that’s what he called them, «the machine,» because River never lost back in those days.
[Mariano Pagella]: As we mentioned in the previous episode, at the time it wasn’t unusual for there to be some kind of disturbance at a match, whether with the police or between rival fan groups.
[Dionisia Delgado]: I’d tell him, «Don’t go, come home early.» He’d tell me, «Mom, do you know when and how and where we’re going to die?» he said to me. «You don’t know, so let me,» he told me, «enjoy myself, live my life. I work, I study, I don’t hurt anybody.»
[Mariano Pagella]: In the weeks leading up to the superclásico, River won a match by a landslide while Boca tied and left the field booed by their own stands. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so crazy that River’s «machine» might break that eight-year streak without a win at La Bombonera. So, as the days went by, the anticipation kept building. Everyone knew the superclásico was always a «heated» match, and on top of that, River was playing away. Finally, Ángel made a promise to Dionisia.
[Dionisia Delgado]: He told me that would be the last time he went to the stadium, so that I wouldn’t worry anymore. He told me, «Let me be, because I’ve never been to the bostero’s stadium…»
[Mariano Pagella]: Meaning, Boca’s fans.
[Dionisia Delgado]: «…and I want to see the bosteros‘ stadium. I’m going to wear the ugliest clothes I have to go, and I’m going without any ID.»
[Mariano Pagella]: The idea was to dress plainly so as not to attract attention, and not carry a wallet or ID so as not to lose them jumping in the stands, or to have them stolen. This was extremely common at the time. So that day, Ángel asked at work if he could leave early…
[Dionisia Delgado]: The manager gave him permission. The owner wasn’t there. Because the owner told me afterward, «If I had been there, I wouldn’t have let him go.» But it seems that day was just meant to be his day.
[Mariano Pagella]: Ángel lived with two other friends in an apartment on Ecuador Street, in Buenos Aires. And on the Saturday of the superclásico, when the match ended…
[Dionisia Delgado]: My husband says to me, «Let’s stop by Ecuador Street,» he says, «to congratulate Ángel Luis, since his machine won.» «No,» I told him, «let’s go home, he’ll be with his friends,» I said, «having a wild time over there.»
[Mariano Pagella]: They decided not to stop by, so as not to be a bother. They went to sleep without knowing their son was dead. Sunday came and it was a day like any other, until in the afternoon, around four, five o’clock, the phone rang.
[Dionisia Delgado]: My husband’s mother calls. She said to me, «Dioni, I’m so sad.» I said, «why, Estela?» «Because those two kids, they say they died, two innocent kids, they could have been my grandchildren.»
[Mariano Pagella]: Dionisia didn’t understand what she was talking about. What dead kids?
[Dionisia Delgado]: And then, I made the connection, and I called Ecuador Street.
[Mariano Pagella]: She called the apartment where Ángel lived with his friends. One of them answered.
[Dionisia Delgado]: «No, he didn’t come home to sleep last night.» And I said to him, «And why didn’t you let me know he didn’t come home?» Right away we got in the car, we went around to hospitals and clinics, and we couldn’t find him. Then we asked a police officer, and he said, «You should go to this police station.»
[Mariano Pagella]: So they go to the police station handling the case.
[Dionisia Delgado]: We went there. When they showed me the clothes, that’s when I fainted. Because those were his clothes.
[Mariano Pagella]: The days and months that followed were very hard for Dionisia. She even attempted suicide at one point.
[Dionisia Delgado]: It’s like something inside you dies. We already know a child isn’t really ours –he belongs to life, but you want to have him anyway, even if just from a distance. To say hi, hug each other now and then. And all of that was over.
[Mariano Pagella]: Dionisia began receiving psychological care, and above all, support from her family. But no one could replace Ángel, her only son.
[Dionisia Delgado]: And during that time, I dreamt about him. He tells me, «Mom, I don’t belong to this world anymore. And you’re going to have another child.» Then, about two months later, I got pregnant. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t tell anyone until I’d had all the tests done.
[Mariano Pagella]: Two years after that April 30th, Hugo was born.
[Dionisia Delgado]: And here I have him. That one, he sent him to me from heaven.
[Mariano Pagella]: A few days after finding Ángel, Dionisia Delgado and her family say goodbye to him. The family of the other murdered fan, Walter Vallejos, does the same.
[Fernando Scalone]: And we were in shock. Something so recent, we couldn’t believe he was there in a coffin. We were all just like, this can’t be happening.
[Mariano Pagella]: Fernando Scalone, Walter’s best friend, whom we heard from in the previous episode. The wake is held at Walter’s family’s house, in his bedroom. Throughout the whole day, friends and family come by to say goodbye to him. Among them is Juan Carlitos.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: I saw the mom, I saw the dad, I saw the siblings, just devastated. It could have happened to me, and it would’ve been the same, you know, just in a different family.
[Mariano Pagella]: The next day, in the morning, they take the body to the cemetery.
[Fernando Scalone]: We did a raffle, we made a banner… Huge, I don’t know, it’s like six meters, I don’t know. And that day a friend from around the corner brought a bus. And we all went to accompany him to the cemetery with the banner on the bus, all of us dressed in River gear, singing.
[Mariano Pagella]: That’s how they say goodbye to their friend, celebrating as if they were still with him in the stands. Decades later, the grief over his death will still be there, present. Above all, one image stayed etched in Juan Carlitos’s mind to this day.
[Juan Carlos Cáceres]: The mom was in bad shape, really bad. She didn’t want to drink water. She didn’t want to eat, the mom wanted to die. The mom wanted to go with her son.
[Mariano Pagella]: That mom Juan Carlitos mentions is Walter’s mom, Carmen Cárdenas. Those first days after the superclásico were full of sadness and pain, of course. But very soon that sadness turned into resolve, into raising her voice.
[Archival audio]:
Journalist: Carmen Amelia Cárdenas, who’s here next to me. She’s the mother of Walter Darío Vallejos, one of the boys who was killed.
Carmen: Well, Walter was 19 years old. He worked at a gas company, and when he didn’t have overtime there, he went to work at a produce store. I’ve been divorced for six years, and it was him who supported the household.
[Mariano Pagella]: We’re listening to Carmen, who has since passed away. But we have this recording from a widely watched news program at the time, broadcast less than a week after the crime. In the image, there’s a table. On the right side sits Mónica Cahen D’Anvers, the journalist interviewing her. Carmen is in the middle. And on the left, we see Juan Carlitos, then 24 years old.
[Archival audio]: Juan Carlitos: I looked out, I saw two guys in Boca jerseys shooting at us, and I heard screaming up on top of the truck. To this day I can’t sleep because it’s a nightmare.
[Mariano Pagella]: Behind them, standing, there are four young guys. One of them is Fernando, his best friend.
[Archival audio]: Carmen: It’s a senseless slaughter, because my boy was a clean kid, a hard worker. And then some nobody comes along and kills him in cold blood, just because, without even knowing him, without knowing, without even having anything against him, without even knowing who he was. He came and shot him and killed him.
[Mariano Pagella]: Carmen and Dionisia, Ángel’s mom—whom we met earlier—make the rounds of the media: television, radio, newspapers. And the constant coverage in those first days sparks outrage, accusations, anger, but above all it consolidates into a demand.
[Archival audio]: Journalist: The only thing I hope is that you can ask these sick people, this barra brava that nobody seems able to put a stop to… Still, there has to be a way to do something.
[Mariano Pagella]: «There has to be a way to do something» about the barras bravas, the journalist says. Because, at the time, the violence and corruption surrounding them get pointed out again and again in the media.
[Archival audio]: Death came to the streets of Buenos Aires. The barras bravas case. Barras bravas and politicians. The barras bravas and power. The problem with the barras bravas is much more serious than sporadic outbreaks of violence. These are soccer’s barras bravas.
[Mariano Pagella]: The superclásico double murder seems to be the last straw. That pressure to «do something,» will keep growing, and it is felt especially in the prosecutor’s office handling the case, where prosecutor Paula Asaro, whom we heard at the start of the episode, works.
[Paula Asaro]: We felt like the press was giving it more significance than we had given it ourselves. We had no idea it would reach the proportion it did as days went by.
[Mariano Pagella]: The prosecutor’s office and the police station work on the initial investigation. The police station identifies witnesses and new evidence, and the prosecutor’s office is in charge of taking statements and analyzing everything.
[Paula Asaro]: It was overwhelming. The situation was really overwhelming. I’ll never forget that in those first days I didn’t sleep. I mean, I’d get home at five, six in the morning, rest a little, and the next day I had to be back. At the time, they constantly called you on the landline. I mean, they’d call from Clarín, from La Nación, from every newspaper– they’d call the prosecutor’s office phone, and they’d call the courthouse phone.
[Mariano Pagella]: Because beyond what was known about the wounded and the two dead fans, a kind of competition to get more scoops began.
[Paula Asaro]: Different media outlets started keeping watch, so that, for example, when you walked in, the press would start coming at you right away. I mean, there was no way to shake the press off you.
[Archival audio]:
Journalist: What exactly is needed for public opinion to know for sure who fired those shots that tragic afternoon?
Asaro: Well, I’ll say it again: we’re under case secrecy…
[Mariano Pagella]: This is Asaro, speaking with a journalist at the entrance of the Palacio de Tribunales, where the prosecutor’s office is located.
[Archival audio]: Asaro: And well, there are deadlines so that, in due course, the indictment can be issued.
[Paula Asaro]: When we started taking depositions and statements, we’d take them at three in the morning, at four in the morning, I mean, after midnight, because otherwise you couldn’t get into the building. I mean, because of the crowds, because of the press. We didn’t sleep because it was this terrible adrenaline.
[Mariano Pagella]: While the prosecutor’s office is still trying to piece together the puzzle of what happened, the newspapers, television channels, and radio stations don’t let up. And some are already starting to focus on a group with a strong presence in Argentine society.
[Paula Asaro]: This was being pinned on the barra brava. That’s what the media outlets were saying. It was like a phenomenon that hadn’t been experienced before.
[Mariano Pagella]: We’ll take a break and be right back.
[Gustavo Grabia]: When I start working on the topic of violence in soccer, what I realize is that, unlike what was said in the media—that they were groups of misfits, outside the system—they were actually very much inside the system, I mean, they were a fundamental part of it because of their political, police, judicial, and sports connections.
[Mariano Pagella]: Gustavo Grabia is a journalist, and starting in the ’90s, because of this case, he began delving into the world of violence in Argentine soccer. Over the years, he has published several books specializing in what he calls «barra journalism.» Something he already knew about as a fan.
[Gustavo Grabia]: I was a huge fan of a soccer team, Ferrocarril Oeste, and I used to travel on the barra’s buses when I was young, as a teenager. In other words, I knew the web of connections a little bit. So I realized there was a story to tell that went completely beyond what happened on the soccer fields. It was a portrait, in a way, of what was happening in Argentina as a whole.
[Mariano Pagella]: The barras bravas are considered a phenomenon that started in Argentina, not because this is the country where violence in soccer was invented, but because the barras developed a series of very distinctive characteristics compared to other violent groups in soccer worldwide.
To better understand how all this came about, it’s necessary to know the history of how the barras emerged.
Since the professionalization of Argentine soccer at the start of the 1930s, fans who were a bit more «worked up» than the rest were already being identified. They’d fight with rival fans, throw objects onto the field, that kind of thing.
In Argentina, there are records of deaths from soccer violence going back around 100 years. Among the first recorded cases is that of two Boca fans who died in 1939 from police gunfire during a clash. One of the victims was a 9-year-old boy.
By then, somewhat more defined groups of fans who were a bit more aggressive than others were already starting to form, but it’s not until the late 1950s that they’ll start being known as barras bravas.
[Gustavo Grabia]: The term «barra brava» enters Argentine popular culture in 1958, stemming from one specific event. There was a match being played between Vélez and River at Vélez’s stadium. And, in the middle of the match, a situation arises, building tension between the visiting fans and the police, and then a clash breaks out.
[Mariano Pagella]: The visiting fans were River Plate’s, who had already been forming a fairly strong group for some years. The situation escalated very quickly, with River fans storming the field. The police reacted and began a brutal crackdown that ended with them firing tear gas canisters to disperse the fans.
[Gustavo Grabia]: And when all that smoke clears, what you see is that the great majority of people have left the stadium because of the effects of the tear gas, but in the visiting stands a lifeless body is left behind, which was the body of Alberto Linker.
[Mariano Pagella]: Alberto Linker was a Boca fan who was friends with River fans, so he went along with them to watch the match. Today this is somewhat unthinkable, but back then it could happen that a fan would go with friends to watch a match involving their rival, just because he felt like it. He died from the impact of one of the gas canisters, which fractured his skull.
Up until that point, deaths from violence in Argentine soccer had been sporadic. In fact, in the previous 15 years there had only been one. But in this case, the fact that it was someone unaffiliated with either fan group, and that it was caused by what the media called «violent fans, worked up, with primitive instincts,» generated greater outrage and gained a lot of attention. After Linker’s death, a new category, separate from traditional fans, starts to be identified more precisely: the barras bravas.
[Gustavo Grabia]: From then on, the press starts talking forcefully about the barras bravas to refer to this phenomenon of soccer violence that was just beginning and was starting to claim its first major death.
[Mariano Pagella]: As the years go by, these groups continue to grow and start evolving. And between the mid- and late ’60s they took a leap.
[Gustavo Grabia]: That’s when the first barras started forming, for Boca, for River, for the biggest clubs. And they’re the ones who start getting certain favors from club leadership, like free entry to the stadium, which is an important point for understanding them as, basically, the brokers of that fervor.
[Mariano Pagella]: «Brokers of that favor.» That’s how one of their fundamental traits was consolidated: their relationship with club leadership. But there’s also another ingredient added, according to Gustavo: starting in the ’60s, there’s a rise in street violence, with fights between gangs to decide who runs the neighborhood.
[Gustavo Grabia]: I want to be the one all the girls look at. I want to be the one all the guys admire. I want to be the one everybody has to ask permission from to walk down this block.
[Mariano Pagella]: Since every neighborhood has its club, a connection starts forming, growing stronger and stronger, between the street violence that existed in those neighborhoods and soccer. And the stadium becomes the ideal place to show off that strength. For example, the neighborhood of Avellaneda has two very big clubs: Independiente and Racing.
[Gustavo Grabia]: If I picture myself in Avellaneda, I’m the boss of Avellaneda, so I’m a Racing fan, and I’m going to outdo Independiente’s fans by stealing their banners, and I’m going to create a space where it’s validated that I’m the most important barra in that area.
[Mariano Pagella]: Little by little it starts to become normalized that the stadium stands and the surrounding areas are the setting for fights on match days, whether going in or coming out.
[Gustavo Grabia]: It starts as a seed in the late ’60s and explodes mainly in the ’70s, and the ’80s is maybe the decade that sees the largest number of barras fighting each other to prove to the other that they’re what’s often called around here the «capi di tutti capi.»
[Mariano Pagella]: The boss of all bosses. It’s an Italian expression that comes from the mafia and is usually used to refer to whoever has the greatest influence and power within a group. And in the case of the barras, being the «capi di tutti capi» meant being just one thing:
[Gustavo Grabia]: The biggest, the most powerful fan group in Argentine soccer.
[Mariano Pagella]: So by the time the ’90s arrive, the barras bravas are already big, powerful, and they’ve also acquired their other distinctive traits:
[Gustavo Grabia]: Here in Argentina, the phenomenon is very unusual, because the barras of every club have ties to a political party, to a local political boss, to a union.
[Mariano Pagella]: For example, there have been cases where two unions competed for a position of power and turned to barras from different teams to stir up a confrontation. Or times when a government wanted to break up a protest without using police repression, and turned to barras to infiltrate the crowd and stir up unrest from within. In exchange, the barra gets money, favors, and connections.
[Gustavo Grabia]: And that’s what makes the Argentine barras so unique: they’re inside the system, but not the soccer system—they’re directly inside the Argentine political system.
[Mariano Pagella]: So, we have a phenomenon that begins with a death, that of the fan Alberto Linker, and from there it starts evolving, slowly. Until, by the time the ’90s arrive—where this series starts—the barras are already an everyday topic, in the media and among people. But not all barras are alike. Generally, the biggest teams are the ones with the most powerful barras. And among those barras, there’s one that stands out.
[Gustavo Grabia]: La 12 is clearly Argentina’s ultimate barra brava, because it was the one with the most connections throughout this whole world I’m describing.
[Mariano Pagella]: La 12, Boca’s barra, which, on April 30, 1994, was led by one of the most important bosses in its history.
[Gustavo Grabia]: I think his fate was already sealed, because his last name was Barritta. His name was José Barritta.
[Mariano Pagella]: José Barritta, or «El Abuelo» [«The Grandfather»], as he was known. El Abuelo marks many turning points for La 12. In terms of organization, business dealings, and also in terms of violence.
[Gabriel Canay]: Insults come and go, us with Boca’s fans, them with us, this and that. And suddenly shots are heard.
[Mariano Pagella]: The story of La 12, El Abuelo’s rise to power, and the battle that changed all the rules. All of this in the next episode 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 Christian Krom and Fernando Guarini of the River Plate Fan Subcommittee.
The editors were Pablo Argüelles, Daniel Alarcón, and me.
Fact-checking was by Ana Prieto.
Mariano did the sound design, with original music by Nicolás Pagella, who also composed the series’ theme song. Martín Cruz was in charge of sound mixing and mastering.
The series’ graphics and art direction are by Diego Corzo. Digital production was by Andrés Centeno with Óscar Luna.
Business 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 on 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.