River Plate  0  Argentinos Juniors  1

It’s now been four days since the superclásico, the twice yearly clash between Boca Juniors and River Plate which Boca won 2-0. The newspapers are still full of it. There were front page photos of celebration that might have left a stranger to Argentine football thinking that Boca had just won the South American championship, rather than snuck up to 14^th place in the first division table.

And the defeat left River Plate in the depths of a crisis that makes the current Middle Eastern situation look like a minor tiff. In fact, the Argentine media carries far more coverage and analysis of the River Plate crisis than it does of the rift between Israel and the United States and Britain.

I think it’s fair to say that it’s a very self-indulgent media, pandering to the interests and the prejudices of its staff rather than the readership. There are two major newspapers. La Nacion, which is a conservative broadsheet aimed at those who own and run Argentina – the farmers and businessmen, the politicians, judges and football club owners. It’s the River Plate of the newspaper world.

Rivals - Clarin and La Nacion

Then there’s Clarin, the Boca Juniors of newspapers, which pretty much serves everyone else – it’s comprehensive, bulky, poorly designed and, at the moment, involved in a bitter dispute with the government which has skewed any objectivity it may previously have had in its political reporting.

There are other papers – Pagina12 which caters for the left-leaning intelligentsia, full of wordy, barely comprehensible, navel-gazing articles about human rights and the environment. Then there’s the tabloid Cronica which is wall-to-wall tits, bums, soap opera gossip, football and gory crime and car crash details. And there’re a couple of sensible, serious business newspapers, Ambito Financiero and El Cronista, which is printed on pink paper. Now where have I seen that before?

Then, of course, there’s Olé, a daily sports newspaper which mostly covers football but sometimes recognises that other sports exist. Now what’s that called? When you get those five tall blokes running around a small indoor pitch, trying to lob a ball through a hoop? And that other one where two people who grunt a lot hit a small ball over a net hoping the other one won’t hit it back. Both are sports which Argentina often does quite well at. The names will come to me in a minute, but probably not to Olé.

Argentines like nothing more than to sit in pavement cafes, their half-moon glasses perched intellectually on the end of their noses, reading newspapers and magazines.  An intrinsic part of the urban landscape is the kiosco or newspaper kiosk which you find on many street corners and often in between. They’re draped in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines. These metal boxes are often social centres where dog walkers, commuters and joggers stop to buy their paper and catch up on the neighbourhood gossip.

Source of all Knowledge

Because the canillitos, as the owners are known, know everything. They’re often a better source of information than the newspapers they sell, whose reporters rarely seem to stray far from Buenos Aires. And even in the city, they’re usually found lurking around government buildings, hunting in packs or sitting in cafes competing to see who can concoct the most convoluted opening sentences.

I know a couple of ex-journalists who said they left the profession since their bosses restricted what they could report and many of their colleagues were collecting envelopes stuffed with cash from their political or business ‘contacts.’

But there is also a fine tradition of investigative journalism in Argentina, most notably during the military dictatorship in the nineteen-seventies and eighties. And many reporters suffered for their integrity.  Among those on the roll of honour is the English-language Buenos Aires Herald which fearlessly reported on the human rights abuses being committed by the regime, until several of its leading lights were forced into exile. I worked there for a few months during more tranquil times and am not sure if I contributed to its decline, but unfortunately the paper is now languishing in the third division.

Another newspaper hero was Jacobo Timerman, the editor of La Opinion newspaper, who later wrote extensively about the kidnap and torture he suffered at the hands of the dictatorship. There were many others.

And it wasn’t all easy after the military stepped down either. One of the most notorious murders in later years was that of Noticias magazine photographer, José Luis Cabezas. In 1997, he managed to snap the dodgy businessman, Alfredo Yabrán, a man who prided himself on never having had his picture taken, ‘not even by the secret services.’

True Fan

Cabazas had also been investigating the protection afforded to a number of brothels by the notoriously corrupt Buenos Aires provincial police force. He was handcuffed, beaten and then taken to a remote spot where he was killed with two shots to the head.

Some of the usual suspects were rounded up and sentenced to prison but most in Argentina suspect that those who were really behind the killing got away with it. A campaign for justice, with the slogan ‘Don’t forget Cabezas’ continues to this day.

There seems to be little room in today’s daily newspapers for original, investigative reporting. But it does go on and usually reaches the kiosks and bookshops in the form of books written by high-profile journalists. The one at the top of the current bestseller list is El Dueño or ‘The Owner’ by Luis Majul – an expose of the dodgy dealings carried out, allegedly, by the former president Nestor Kirchner. Or Gustavo Grabia’s La Doce or ‘The Twelve’ about the Boca Juniors barra brava and its links to politicians. Like I said, you just can’t get away from Boca and River.

Argentinos Juniors caught River on the rebound from the Boca game, in the depths of a crisis when they had much to prove. But all that River managed to prove in this game is that they’re not very good. Argentinos really should have won by more but a fine goal by Ismael Sosa after twenty minutes was enough and a victory is a victory. This one leaves them in fourth place, five points behind the leaders, Independiente.

After their victory in the superclasico, Boca crashed 4-1 to lowly Chacarita Juniors. Both the giants of Argentine football now find themselves in deep turmoil. Life in the Middle East will go on. But the problem here in Argentina is really, really serious.