THE ROLE OF SPORTS IN THE PENETRATION OF
URBAN CULTURE TO THE RURAL AREAS OF PERU

Gabriel Escobar M.

Pennsylvania State University

INTRODUCTION

One aspect of Latin American culture and society that has been
neglected by social scientists is the outstanding importance of competi-
tive sporting games such as basket-ball, volley-ball, and especially

soccer. The importance of soccer reaches from the local to the inter-
national level, beyond modern means of communication. Introduced to

Latin America by European and American migrants immediately after the

Wars of Independence, the game at first probably was played in British
mission schools in the capital cities of various countries and spread

from there to the local urban populations. From capital cities it dif-
fused to provincial towns and finally to the most isolated villages of
most of the countries.

At the national level, the playing of soccer, called in Latin
America futbol asociado, is offered to the public as mass entertainment,
and is served by a complex machinery that includes sporting fields both
publicly and privately owned, national and regional leagues of teams,
and clubs financed and supported by fans and educational institutions.
Public information is served by specialized sportswriters and broad-

casters. Public spirited persons are sought as patrons of clubs, and
politicians give their support to teams at election times.

At the international level, the Latin American Committee of

Foot-Ball organizes every year regional and international competitions
in different countries. The events are attended by thousands of fans,
and are eagerly followed in the press, radio and television. The pas-

sionate interest with which the events are followed and attended can be
illustrated by some dramatic examples. In 1953, while the Peruvian and

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the Brasilian teams were playing in Rio de Janeiro, many patients in the
Tuberculosis Sanitorium of Bravo Chico in Lima, Peru, suffered severe

collapse while they were listening to the events on smuggled radios hidden
under their beds. In 1963 in Lima, Peru, more than 300 people were

trampled to death in the stadium when an irate fan attacked the umpire

and the public panicked at the attempts of the police to prevent a riot.
In 1965, 8000 Chileans and 3000 Ecuadoreans "invaded'" Lima by plane and

bus to attend a match which was supposed to decide the national honor of
the competing teams.

In capital cities of every country, the National Leagues are
sponsored by the government and controlled by the Ministries of Educa-
tion. The professional teams are sponsored by clubs supported by con-
tributions from fans and money collected from the public. The players

are professionals who work for a salary and offer their services to the
highest bidder. The salaries they earn are probably somewhat higher

than the salaries of the average white-collar worker in Latin America.
The organization of professional soccer serves as a model and point of

reference for the playing of the game in the rest of the country and is
adhered to in the rest of the country. Informally, players and teams
become models to follow and cultural idols to imitate.

The importance of the game at the international and national

levels is indicative of the relevant place it occupies in Latin American
society today, serving many functions for individuals and groups from
the national to the local level. This can be very easily verified by

any casual observer in either villages or cities when he takes a casual
walk on the outskirts of town on a Sunday outing.

The study of professional soccer at the national or regional
level would reveal many interesting aspects of national culture and

society, but it would require a special project to follow all its impli-
cations. The purpose of this essay is to call the attention of social
scientists to certain aspects of the game and its organization, as its

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diffusion from the capital to provincial cities, towns and villages re-
lates to the penetration of urban culture into the rural areas of Peru.
The information used is of a general nature and it was gathered while
doing field work in different parts of the country at different times
during the last 20 years (see Escobar 1967; 1968).

For purposes of presentation, this essay will cover the fol-

lowing points: 1) the game of soccer as an indicator of acculturation to
urban culture and of levels of integration to larger social units;

2) the organization of soccer teams and games as a model for voluntary

associations and as a vehicle for the expression of leadership and social
mobility; and 3) the effects of the game and teams on the social struc-

ture of the community and its integration into the urban culture. It is

asked from the reader that throughout the essay he should keep very clear
the fact that the game itself and its organization, while they are re-
lated, constitute two different aspects that at times have to be dealt
with separately.

It has been shown in the introduction that in capital cities

professional soccer is highly organized and financed, supported by clubs
of fans and by sale of the game to the public as entertainment. In Peru,
the National Commission of Foot-Ball passes a set of rules for the play-
ing of the game and for field regulations, and establishes the classifi-
cation of teams for their participation in professional playing. This
set of rules is taken as a norm by all other sporting organizations

throughout the country. Since about 1850, the playing of the game has

diffused to the rest of Peru as a sport that is taught in schools as part
of physical education and is played in every public event that the

schools organize in their communities. From the schools it has passed to
the public, and soccer leagues that are formed in every provincial city,
following the regulations established in Lima. However, the important

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thing is that the game has diffused independently from its more complex
organizations and has become incorporated as a children's game in prac-
tically every community, sometimes displacing some other traditional

games such as bochas or the Basque ball game (pelotaris). The simplest

expression of the game is that of a group of children, in a more or less
disorganized competition, kicking a ball made of socks stuffed with rags
or wool. When the government or a missionary group has established a

school in the community, the children are organized in regular teams by
the teachers and the game is played during rest periods.    Sometimes

tournaments are organized for Sundays, and any field that is large enough
and has been set apart for the purpose is used. In the normal course of
events, what happens is that the children will continue playing the game
every day after school and will become organized more or less sponta-
neously following the leadership of the best players.

When the school has been in the community for a number of years,
a fresh crop of players is added to those who have already passed school
and the game becomes a normal entertainment event in the community. A
variable number of teams will be formed in the community and many young
adults will be active in the organization of the events. If the means

of communication allow it, the local teams will invite teams from other
towns to play. Eventually, if enterprising leaders (called dirigentes),
exist, the teams may form a league that includes various towns. A good
example of this was recorded in the town of Yunguyo, on the shores of

Lake Titicaca in 1959. Here an enterprising and public-spirited tailor
first had organized a league of nine teams in the town and then had

managed to convince a number of Indian communities to organize teams and

to donate some of their fields for playing and practice. Another example
was that of the province of Lampa, where the subprefect (that is, the

main political authority), who had been a professional player in Cuzco,
organized another league province-wide and even took his teams to other
provinces in the area. These two examples and many others show that,

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while communities tend to be self-contained and even isolated in other
respects, they become integrated into a larger social system when the

game of soccer is involved and that the complexity of their organizations
in leagues shows the level of absorbtion of education and urban culture.

At first the diffusion of the game was mainly through the

schools. In the last twenty years, roads have been constructed faster

than schools, and the game has been introduced also by the small trickle
of migrants who return from the cities to their communities. Soccer

leagues are found even in places where schools have not yet been intro-
duced. In this way, one aspect of urban culture has reached already to

the most isolated peasant communities in the highlands of Peru, and with
many effects on local culture and society.

II

The organization of the soccer game can be divided in three

aspects: 1) the learning of the game itself; 2) the organization of the
team and/or club; and 3) the organization of a league for tournaments.

Of the three, learning the game is the easiest. Many children learn the
game first by playing informally and gradually progress to being expert
players. The organization of teams, clubs and leagues requires other

abilities and incentives and the participation of other members of the

society. The enormous importance that the game has in Peru makes it an
eminently flexible and efficient vehicle for the training of individuals
and groups in tasks of leadership and organization for both corporate

living and the formation of voluntary associations. The ways in which
teams and leagues are formed are many, but the variations are mainly in
details and circumstances. For purposes of explanation, I will present
an hypothetical case of the formation of a team which could serve as a
model for explaining how these teams are formed and how they become
incorporated in clubs and leagues.

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A group of adolescents in school who live in the same barrio
in any town or village decide to organize a team. For this purpose,

they select as their leader the best player and organizer of the game

and they call him the dirigente. The dirigente, in addition to being a
good player, must also have some other fairly subtle qualities: he must

be able to command respect and authority, must be a good talker and must

develop gradually a quality that is called in Peru "social consciousness,"
which means more or less that the leader should be sensible to the de-
mands of public and social life that require altruism and high morals.

Under the direction of their leader, they decide in a series of meetings
the amounts of their contributions, the colors of the uniforms, the name
of the team, the periods for training, and other details. When they

consider that they are sufficiently trained, they send an invitation to
a rival team in another barrio and ask for a meeting to decide the de-

tails of an engagement. Delegates are appointed to discuss the date and
place of the engagement, umpires and judges are selected, and invitations
are sent to prominent citizens in the barrios and to friends and rela-
tives. A prosperous merchant or citizen is selected to donate a prize,

and whether he accepts or not, the match is played on the accorded date.

The first match is considered their baptism as a team and is

usually celebrated after the event. After they have played two or three
games, if they have proved their worth, they usually attract a following
of fans and a few voluntary sponsors may suggest that they become a club
and that they apply for membership in the league of their category. The
change from a team to a club requires more formal and complex organiza-

tion, which is usually provided by the sponsors and the fans of the team.
In a series of frequent meetings the members of the club and the team

appoint a President, a Secretary, a Treasurer, and a number of members-
at-large who take charge of the direction of the activities of the team
and club. In many cases, while the wave of enthusiasm is high, they de-
cide to write a body of statutory regulations and, usually, to extend

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the functions of the club to some other social and cultural activities
in addition to the game. The usual thing is that deliberations over

writing the statutes become so involved that the club will continue its

activities while following a set of informal unwritten rules that devel-
op according to the circumstances.

Depending on the success of the team, the support of the fans

and sponsors, and the attitude of the public, the continuity of the club
either will be assured for a time or will disappear after a short time.
In the large provincial towns where more or less stable leagues exist,

the continuity of the club will depend very much on its ability to retain
the good players who are tempted by offers from other teams or clubs.

In organizations with long standing, the players are usually spoiled, or
strong corporate pressures are exerted on them. The actual fact is that,
while interest in the game continues, in any community at any time there
will be a high turnover of clubs and teams, depending mainly on the turn-
over of adolescents and young men who pass from school to adult life.

With some changes, the organization of the soccer leagues

follows more or less the organization of the clubs, with the addition of
representatives of local municipal governments. At the level of both

the league and the club, the individuals who participate in its activi-
ties have been exposed to a model of organization that has proved its

efficiency and flexibility for the formation of voluntary associations
of more or less prolonged permanence. It has been observed that in

general the individuals who participate as dirigentes of teams and clubs
are usually energetic and mobile, and that in serving their apprentice-

ships in these organizations they develop abilities that are later appli-
ed in other aspects of their social, political or economic life, at the
same time that they transfer the organizational model to organizations
that serve corporate needs in their communities.

The importance of the model is such that probably the only

competition it may get is from the organizational model of the religious

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cofradias and the political sindicates. In the case of Peru, I can risk
the opinion that participation in the organization of soccer games in

small villages is one of the most important aspects in the background of
the individuals who have been migrating in a massive way to the coastal

cities during the last thirty years, as is shown in the information col-
lected in Lima by William P. Mangin and Paul L. Doughty in their studies
of migrant settlements in the city (Doughty 1967 and Mangin 1959; 1967).
Especially the information collected by Doughty (1967:15-21) tends to
show conclusively that the regional organizations of migrants are not

only modeled on the organization of the sporting club, but that they de-
vote a large part of their activity in the city to sponsoring soccer
events outside of the professional leagues.

III

The incorporation of the soccer game at all levels of Peruvian
society is obviously only one aspect of the diffusion of urban culture

to provincial cities and peasant communities. However, the interest and
the rapidity with which soccer is absorbed tend to show that it probably
fulfills some local needs and functions. While a more complete investi-
gation is wanting, some observations can be already recorded about the
functions it performs in small communities and provincial towns.

One function it seems to perform in many small towns is that
of facilitating the incorporation of outsiders who come to live in the
towns as school-teachers, policemen or merchants. One good example of

this was observed in the town of Nunoa in Puno during 1967. The govern-
ment had increased the educational facilities of the town by establishing
a secondary school that brought to town about 20 new young teachers.

Some of the teachers belonged to local families but most of them were

strangers. Their reception was at first cool, but the teachers organized
in the school two or three teams that were accepted into the local league.
At the same time, they organized a series of festive and ceremonial

79

events fitted to their school calendar and invited the local authorities
and representative mestizos. During the soccer matches and ceremonial
events, relations were generally cool and formal, but after the events

the teachers were invited to parties in people's houses and were engaged

in conversations in the plaza and stores through which they became famil-
iar with the town gossip and made known their desire to incorporate them-
selves. Thus they gradually built friendships and relationships with
the town's people and began to participate in the political and social

life. Some of the teachers who could not adapt to the town were trans-
ferred and replaced with others who were more sympathetic to the local
population.

In the same town, as an adjunct to education, the game of soc-
cer was also important in smoothing out class relations and as a help to
social mobility. The teams formed in the school included players of all
social classes and participation on the teams tended to give importance
to the best players irrespective of social position. Thus players of

Indian origin who were also learning to read and write in Spanish were
encouraged and allowed to participate in deliberations and events, and
were assured a higher measure of respect from the mestizos.

At all levels of rural society, the game of soccer seems to

have replaced many of the traditional elements of group differentiation,
identification and competition. Many of the local teams tend to show

strong barrio affiliations. Thus they become symbolic expressions of the
boundaries of local groups and the playing of the game channels in a

fairly peaceful way the traditional competition of barrios. This shows
many of the stresses in local social relations. In terms of inter-

community competitions, at the same time that teams tend to become sym-
bols of strong ethnocentric tendencies, the fact that they compete with
teams of other towns, on neutral ground, in the playing of the game at
the regional level, opens up the possibilities of identification with

communities of a larger area than their own hometowns, and of integration
with the urban culture that is gradually penetrating all of the country.

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CONCLUSION

The present essay has pointed out the importance of competitive
sports in Latin American culture and has concentrated mainly on various
aspects of this relating to the game of soccer and its organization in

Southern Peru. It has presented evidence to show the importance of soc-

cer as an index of acculturation to urban culture and as an organizational
model for the formation of voluntary associations, and it has provided

some examples of the way in which the playing of the game has effects on
the social structure of rural communities and regions.

REFERENCES

Doughty, Paul L.

1967    The culture of regionalism and the acculturation of peasants

into the urban life of Lima, Peru. Mimeo.
Escobar M., Gabriel

1967    Organizacion social y cultural del sur del Perui, (1959).

Instituto Indigenista Interamericano. Mexico.

1968    The socio-political organization of Nunoa.   In Paul T.

Baker, ed., Human Adaptation to High Altitude. Andean

Biocultural Studies, vol. 1, pp. 1-19. Pennsylvania State
University.
Mangin, William P.

1959    The role of regional associations in the adaptation of

rural population in Peru. Sociologus 9:23-35.

1967    Latin American squatter settlements: a problem and a solu-

tion. Latin American Research Review 2(3):65-98.

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