Travel by VandalBus!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about violence in Argentine football and why nothing's being done to stop it. After that, new violent incidents have continued and the media have taken note and labeled the "new" situation as VIOLENCIA EN EL FÚTBOL, and some politicians have made sure that their excuses are heard. Then some players of the Gimnasia y Esgrima club admitted that they'd been threatened by the barra brava of Boca Juniors. One of them, at least, said on the record that one of the barrabravas had told him he was going to get shot in the leg if he didn't stay put.

Gimnasia and Boca had had a match in September suspended in mid-time because of violent incidents; the second half was played afterwards, and Gimnasia lost 4-1, rather obviously on purpose. As a result, Boca, already hovering around the top of the championship scores, took a step ahead of all the other teams. The threats were known and the match was so blatant bought up that a judge called Gimnasia's players, coach, staff and managers to declare what had happened. Gimnasia's president Juan José Muñoz, who gained notoriety precisely because he was the cause of the Boca-Gimnasia suspension (he went into Boca's lockerroom in the mid-time and threatened Boca's coach to kill him), denied everything: the boys didn't tell me anything, I don't think anybody threatened anybody, it's all OK as far as I know. The players and the staff said more or less the same and tried to escape the journalists' notice.

The only result of this was the Ministry of Security of Buenos Aires Province has announced that police guard operations will no longer be set up to "custody" the attendants of football matches that travel from one place in the province to another in buses. That is, no longer will hundreds of security agents be taken from their due place to smooth out the depredations of intoxicated mobs that basically hijack public-use buses. The MoS has even suggested that they might deny police custody to the stadiums during matches, which amounts to suspending them altogether.

Similar measures were timidly proposed in Santa Fe Province, where the issue is no less grave, but our enlightened authorities have other ideas. It's well-known that when one of their teams, Unión and Colón, plays, the hinchas board buses without paying, rob the other passengers, make the driver stop whenever they feel like getting more wine from stores, get high on all sorts of drugs, and leave the bus half-destroyed. The solution: give them a special bus service! I almost choked on that one. The municipality of Santa Fe and the police organized this for last weekend. They claim it went well..., the police only had to arrest nine people.