Bolivar Ramirez2018

Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 37, No. 5, pp.
582–597, 2018
Antioquia’s Regional Narratives

and the Challenges of Professional
Football in Medellín during the
1950s and 1960s
INGRID J. BOLIVAR-RAMIREZ
Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia
This article examines the challenges sportswriters and footballers faced in

Antioquia (Colombia) during the 1950s and 1960s when trying to make
of professional football a legitimate job and spectacle. Because in Colom-
bia neither the nation-state nor collective actors participated directly in
professional football and the tournament involved teams from several
regions, the history of these challenges illuminates the varying political
and cultural conditions under which professional football developed,
reveals footballers’ agency to promote the sport, and demonstrates that
professional football became a field in which different actors contested
and forged regional narratives.
Keywords: Colombia, football, footballers, regionalism, regional narra-

tives.
Medellín, Colombia’s second largest city and the capital of Antioquia department, is
well-known today as one of the main hubs of Colombian professional football. The
Medellín-based club Atlético Nacional provided the majority of the players for the
Colombian national football teams participating in the 1990, 1994, and 1998 World
Cups and has won more international titles than any other Colombian team, including
(twice) the most important club-based competition in South America, the Copa Liberta-
dores. However, today’s hegemonic popularity of men’s professional football in Medellín
conceals the cultural struggles that players, journalists, and organisers led during the
1950s and 1960s in order to turn the sport into a legitimate profession or pastime for
Antioqueños, as people from Antioquia are known. Indeed, players and sportswriters
encountered the scepticism of the public and regional authorities when they attempted
to re-conceptualise professional football, turning it from a practice that was deemed to
lack the traditional moral values associated with Antioquia, into a new activity through
which Antioqueños could continue to demonstrate their supposed superiority over other
Colombians.
From the early decades of the twentieth century, in the context of the reorganisation
of the national space as a result of the development of the coffee-growing regions and
the textile industry, Antioqueños began to be depicted as industrious, family-focused,
© 2018 The Author. Bulletin of Latin American Research © 2018 Society for Latin American Studies.
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
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Antioquia’s Regional Narratives and the Challenges
austere, work-oriented, white, and able to carry out challenging projects, such as the
colonisation of the Colombian west (Roldán, 2003; Vélez, 2013). Those stereotypes
came together in, and were reinforced by, what historian Mary Roldán calls the
‘hegemonic regional project’ of Antioquia (Roldán, 1998: 6). This project – discussed
below – celebrated the humbleness of rural life while promoting a deep distrust of
urban life and its novelties, pleasures, and perils. It was under these adverse conditions
for sports and urban spectacles that football players and journalists attempted to draw
people’s attention to professional football in Medellín, Antioquia’s capital.
This article examines these cultural struggles through the reconstruction and analysis
of specific events, during which different actors contested the meanings of professional
football in Medellín. These selected events are: the campaign to build the Atanasio Girar-
dot Stadium between the late 1940s and early 1950s; the emergence of Independiente
Nacional, a new professional football team from Medellín, founded in 1959 by Colom-
bian players; and finally, the debate about the challenges of becoming a professional
footballer according to the narratives of the young Antioqueño players who also worked
in prestigious Medellín-based companies in the 1950s and 1960s. The analysis relies
upon a range of different primary sources and a mixed methodological approach. Sport-
ing journals (Cátedra, Vea Deportes and Estadio) and private and public collections of
documents were used, as well as interviews with journalists, coaches and players. The
combination of these sources enabled the reconstruction of the specific struggles and
also made it possible to locate them within the broader context of the social and cul-
tural history of the region. Through conducting oral histories with 52 Colombian players
from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s it was possible to understand why their decision to
become professional footballers challenged and contested dominant regional narratives
about Antioqueños being work-oriented people.
These events provide the opportunity to analyse three crucial processes: first, the
varying political and cultural conditions under which professional football began to
be consolidated as both job and spectacle; second, the agency and cultural initiative
that footballers and sportswriters demonstrated for drawing people’s attention to
professional football; and finally, these episodes illuminate the complex ways in which
professional football affected how people imagine regions, and their associated ‘ways
of being’ and ‘ways of belonging’(Putnam, 2014: 402–403). Indeed, this article argues
that the practice of professional football began to generate a broader re-conceptualising
of regional identity in Medellín and Antioquia in ways in which scholars have hitherto
ignored.
The ‘Hegemonic Regional Project’ of Antioquia: Whiteness

and Productive Work.
Since the 1850s, when the small government-sponsored Chorographic Commission
began its scientific travels through different territories of the republic of New Granada
(today’s Colombia), the existence of diverse regions has been a determining element in
Colombian history and political imagination. Historian Nancy Appelbaum has shown
how the importance of regions and regional identities in Colombia is the result of
specific political and cultural projects, rather than a natural expression of geographic
features, as had previously been thought. She also claims that it was in the midst of the
nation-building process that regional and racial hierarchies became pivotal elements in
Colombian history (2007: 35–41; 2017: 53–54; similar to the argument for regionalism
© 2018 The Author. Bulletin of Latin American Research © 2018 Society for Latin American Studies
Bulletin of Latin American Research Vol. 37, No. 5 583
Ingrid J. Bolivar-Ramirez
in Brazil made in Muniz, 2014: 15–19). These regional and racial hierarchies derive
from a classification scheme that established causal bonds between topography and
character. According to this schema, the highlands, inhabited by white, honourable and
vigourous people, were the environment that could allow for a civilised life, whereas
the lowlands, populated by blacks, Indians and mixed-race individuals, were ‘a grave
for the white race’ (Appelbaum, 2017: 93).
Antioquia occupied a privileged position in this scheme. The Commission depicted
Antioqueños as ‘white, entrepreneurial and civilised people’ and although the officials
produced some paintings of black people in the main square of Medellín, the verbal
narrative insisted on whiteness and the weakness of slavery in the area (Appelbaum,
2007: 35–42; 2017: 77–82). Scholars have analysed this tendency to attribute white-
ness and industriousness to the people from Antioquia in contrast to the black and
indigenous communities living in the surrounding lowland areas (Wade, 1997; Roldán,
1998; Vélez, 2013).
Since the early 1920s, references to the virtues of ‘the Antioqueño race’ and the
qualities of ‘mountain people’ – another name the group received – became prevalent
in public discourse. Building on the success of the textile industries concentrated in
Medellín and the long tradition of interclass cooperation and patronage, such narra-
tives explained regional growth and progress by references to the supposedly white
‘Antioqueño race’, its religious commitment, entrepreneurial ingenuity, family-oriented
character, and honourability. Repeatedly evoked by historians, politicians, and local
intellectuals, articulated in history books, chronicles, political discourses, and reaffirmed
via everyday narratives, these elements came to characterise the ‘hegemonic regional
project’ of Antioquia and the leading role of its capital, Medellín (Roldán, 1998: 6; Vélez,
2013). Innovative entrepreneurs, enthusiastic workers, and extensive families of settlers
opening the agrarian frontier incarnated Antioquia’s regional and racial leadership. In
this project there was neither ideological space nor political need for the inclusion of
sporting practices as a field for Antioqueños’ self-expression. These local adverse condi-
tions for the development of the sport in Antioquia were reinforced by the circumstances
under which professional football began in Colombia.
Political Conditions, Footballers’ Agency and New Regionalisms

In Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile, professionalism began during the 1930s, in
the context of the expansion and consolidation of the nation state or, at least, of polit-
ical openings and opportunities for collective actors such as workers, urban dwellers,
or immigrants (Nadel, 2014). Some of those collective actors had their own teams in
the professional leagues and the majority played in the capital cities of the nations in
question.
In Colombia the history was different. The regional league established in the
Caribbean city of Barranquilla arranged for Colombia to join FIFA much later than
other countries, only in 1934. Football organisations from the capital Bogotá and from
other cities reacted against Barranquilla’s leadership. During the 1930s and 1940s
diverse associations tried to establish the professional national championship but faced
both a lack of state support and the resistance of regional leagues. In 1948, a few months
after the assassination of liberal politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, and at the beginning
of the social revolution widely known as ‘the Violence’, it was a private institution,
authorised by the government, that launched the professional national league. Ten
584 Bulletin of Latin American Research Vol. 37, No. 5
teams, representing six cities, which included Bogotá, took part in the inaugural com-
petition. Professional football therefore developed in a charged political atmosphere
in which ingrained ideas about Colombian people as ‘barbarian’ and ‘savage’ reached
new audiences because of political violence (Braun, 2015: 378–382). Approaches to
Colombians’ primitivism hinged on pessimistic perspectives on the racial backgrounds
of the national population, and this paved the way for the controversial hiring of foreign
footballers. These negative representations of popular sectors, alongside the emergence
of professional teams backed by individual patrons, put football in a highly ambiguous
place that can be contrasted with the more receptive scenario that professionalism
encountered in other countries (Frydenberg, 2011; Elsey, 2012; Kittleson, 2014).
The history of Colombian professional football illuminates how under specific politi-
cal conditions, sport-related actors could be accused of dubious practices and values, and
how conflicts went beyond classic tensions between amateurism and professional foot-
ball. The experiences of the Antioqueño players and organisers are particularly striking
in this context. They had to confront a deeper and more extensive regional mistrust of
those activities that were held to be unproductive and controversial. Besides this, foot-
ballers and organisers had to cope with accusations against professionalism as a ‘dishon-
est’ business, something that produces ‘repugnance’ and ‘poverty’ (Cátedra, 14 October
1952: 11–12). Those complaints emerged in different circles (Uribe, 1973) but were
broadly publicised every two weeks by the journal Cátedra. Published since 1944 under
the editorship of football promoter Jesus ‘the Priest’ Burgos, Cátedra systematically
criticised the ‘disorder’ created by ‘sports pirates’ (Cátedra, 31 January 1953: 3). Burgos
was an authoritative voice because he was involved in the history of the most important
teams in Medellín, including the oldest, Deportivo Independiente Medellín (Gallego,
2011: 53–59). In Cátedra, Burgos described the history of Antioqueño teams, empha-
sising how the teams’ owners and philosophy changed constantly and without taking
into account amateurism’s legacy in the region (Cátedra, 15 February 1953: 4; 16 May
1953).
Under those inauspicious circumstances, and in the face of indifference or hostility
on the part of the regional authorities, it was footballers themselves who supported
professional teams, and expressed their interest in representing Medellín in the national
professional tournament. Footballers’ and sportswriters’ cultural initiatives deserve our
attention precisely because neither the state nor collective actors promoted professional
football at this time.
Another crucial issue these episodes shed light on has to do with the bonds between
cultural processes of regionalism and the practice of professional football. Current anal-
yses of regionalism in Latin America assert that not only literature and music but also
cinema, television shows and academic production count as cultural practices through
which people learn how to imagine diverse regional communities (Muniz, 2014; Britto,
1964; Weinstein, 2015). Researching the invention of the Brazilian Northeast, Muniz
argues against assigning accustomed hierarchies of cognitive and political value to the
materials, and recommends ‘not distinguishing a measure of worth to a film versus a
poem, a song versus a journal article’ (Muniz, 2014: 12). Based on the experiences of
Antioqueño players, this article proposes that professional football demands a similar
status: football has to be seen as a meaningful cultural practice through which different
subjects, but particularly players, challenged and changed predominant narratives, ways
of being and of belonging to their regional communities.
Whilst it is novel for the Colombian case, several scholars have analysed how foot-
ballers’ biographies intertwine with different aspects of their societies. Studies about
Garrincha (Helal, 2000; Leite, 2014) and Friedenreich (Curi, 2015) show how issues of
race, working-class culture, models of masculinity, social origins, and the specific period
and team in which players developed their careers had a profound influence on the tra-
jectories of those famous players. Kittleson (2014), Astruc (2014), and Nadel (2014) also
draw on footballers’ biographies in their exploration of different conflicts and cultural
dynamics surrounding this sporting practice elsewhere in Latin America. This article
builds on their findings but focuses on an issue that remains underexplored in all of
these studies: how professional football brought about changes in regional, as opposed
to national, identity.
The Stadium: A ‘Crusade’

On 19 March 1953, after two decades of intense public campaigning led by politicians
and journalists, the Atanasio Girardot Stadium was inaugurated in Medellín. Named
after a Colombian revolutionary leader who joined Simon Bolívar and fought in the
Independence Wars before being martyred in 1813, the ‘Atanasio’ was the result of a long
‘crusade’ that featured several generations of young Antioqueño men. Previously, these
youths had had to play football on private and remote pitches, and attend professional
games in the inadequate Libertadores ground (Cátedra, July 1944; Serna, 1993: 60–62).
For some sportsmen the situation seemed unbearable, especially given that the capital,
Bogotá, had enjoyed public and relatively well-equipped stadiums since the mid-1930s,
as had Medellin’s rival cities Cali and Barranquilla.
Building a stadium in Medellín required a real ‘crusade’ because not everyone agreed
that mass sports and sporting spectacles were morally correct practices, or worthy of the
authorities’ support. Although football had begun to be promoted as a pastime among
organised workers back in the early 1930s, the sport continued to have a contested role
in city life, as was demonstrated by the episodic interruption of the amateur tournament
between 1934 and 1936, the slow growth of football clubs during the 1940s (López,
2004: 87–90), and the lack of financial support to the regional football team represent-
ing Antioquia in the National Games during the 1940s and 1950s (Serna, 1993).
Another factor that lent the stadium project the air of a ‘crusade’ was the per-
spective that influential actors had about professional football as a spectacle devoid
of the moral and material benefits that had allowed the ‘Antioqueño race’ to achieve
national prestige (Cátedra, 1951–1953; Zapata, 1979). Narratives about Antioquia’s
predominance revolved around work as something that developed moral, physical,
and material qualities. It is not a coincidence that only in the early 1930s, thanks to
the combined efforts of Acción Católica (Catholic Action), and workers’ institutions,
did Antioqueño entrepreneurs begin to include organised sports as part of their labour
politics (Mayor, 1979; Farnsworth-Alvear, 2000). Until that moment, neither state
authorities nor employers had planned which activities to promote among those work-
ers who would benefit from the new legislation on labour conditions and free time
(Mayor, 1979).
Acción Católica did not have an explicit discourse on sports, but building on the
organisational trajectory of the workers and the political debates triggered by the ‘social
question’, it was able to generate public concern about the importance of having ‘honest’
practices of recreation and avoiding ‘dissolute’ amusements (Mayor, 1979: 42). Catholic
support for the organised practice of sport among workers did not, however, immedi-
ately cancel out public scepticism.
Journalists reflected extensively on the complex relationships between Antioqueños

and the practice of popular sports since the early 1930s. According to Miguel Zapata,
‘traditionalist and routine-oriented people from Antioquia’ could not understand
how hard-working individuals could engage in sport. Entrepreneurs, well-established
families, and also groups of migrants from the countryside looked on sport with
surprise, distrust, or even antipathy. Sporting practices were not considered part of
the idiosyncratic ways of being that had made Antioqueños the most ‘industrious’
and diligent community in Colombia (Zapata, 1997: 67–69, 209–212). Zapata
built his knowledge about Antioqueño society through his experiences as an organ-
iser of football and cycling events since the late 1930s and thanks to his work as
an energetic journalist. In the late 1940s, he was the founder and editor of the
innovative sporting journal Estadio; in the early 1950s, he was the director of the
sporting pages in the most important Medellín newspaper, El Colombiano. From
1958 until the mid-1970s, Zapata led El Clarín, a famous radio programme that
brought together debates around politics, sports, and urban issues (Zapata, 1979;
Velásquez, 2003).
Zapata shared this dynamic scene with other journalists and sports promoters such
as Jesús Burgos and Antonio Henao. Journalists were very active at this time for they
combined different positions and established their first professional association in 1952,
Cicrodeportes (Circle of Sports Writers), (Velásquez, 2003: 13–19). In the magazine
Cátedra, Burgos denounced the ‘disastrous’ conditions under which sportsmen and fans
had to attend the matches (Cátedra, 15 July 1944: 1). When publishing interviews with
some ‘figures’, Burgos asked them explicitly about the spaces where they had trained
and played in the city, and proposed a debate about the ‘Atanasio’ as a space for both
professional and amateur players (Cátedra, 30 May 1953: 4–5). Some footballers took
advantage of the opportunity and declared their support and interest in having a new
stadium (Cátedra, 31 July 1944:4). Antonio Henao, a regular contributor to Cátedra,
and a supporter of Burgos, had begun his career as a radio journalist in the 1930s. Using
his positions in the Antioqueño League of Football, the radio station Voz de Antioquia,
Cátedra and the liberal newspaper El Correo, Henao promoted the stadium-building
process, and denounced the growing tendency to hire foreign players (Cátedra, October
28, 1944: 4; Velásquez, 2003: 51–62).
Through those different outlets (magazines, radio broadcasting, and the promotion
of teams and tournaments) journalists promoted public debate about the role of pro-
fessional football in Medellín. Under Zapata’s and Burgos’s leadership, El Colombiano
and Cátedra actively intervened in the campaign promoting the construction of a new
stadium, publishing articles in which organisers argued that because Medellín was the
industrial capital of the country, enjoying its reputation as a crucial manufacturing cen-
tre, and represented the ‘drive’ of Antioqueño people, it required a modern stadium as
an ‘issue of racial pride’ and ‘an expression of the grandeur of the Antioqueño race’
(Serna, 1993: 13–40, 60–62).
Envisioning the stadium-building process as a new expression of the ‘incredible’
achievements of the ‘Antioqueño race’ aroused public support and confidence. The pub-
lic practice of sports might be controversial but the role of people ‘from the Highlands’
as pioneers and leaders in Colombia was beyond discussion. By the early 1950s, overlap-
ping references to the regional and racial pride of the Antioqueños had become common
sense and plausible elements in public discourse thanks to the dramatic improvement
in the department’s economic and social conditions (Roldán, 2003). The ‘hegemonic
regional project’ of Antioquia benefited from material advances, while the ‘Golden Age’
of the textile industry reinforced ideas about Antioqueños as particularly apt to invent
money-making strategies (Medina, 2007).
The Catholic Church’s concern with workers’ free time came together with the energy
of entrepreneurs to stimulate sporting activity in the region. Yet even despite this, and
the efforts of journalists and sports promoters to change public discourse about football,
it was still not always recognised as legitimate. In March 1965, for example, 12 years
after the stadium’s inauguration, ‘the Stadium Man’, Jacques De Bedout – the Medellín
Treasury Secretary who had guaranteed the public funding to finish the Atanasio project
in 1953 – called for a ‘new crusade’. In an extensive interview, he once more explained
why he had the ‘certainty’ that sport ‘contributes to the improvement and progress of
the Antioqueño race’ (Vea Deportes, 1966: 14–15).
But that ‘certainty’, the confidence in sports as a practice that would enrich Antio-
queño society, continued to be unattainable and young men from Medellín interested in
becoming footballers had to cope not only with their relatives’ scepticism but also with
people’s open disapproval and criticism. In different social circles, people continued to
see professionalism as a ‘dishonest’ spectacle, a ‘pirate business’ that did not contribute
to the region’s improvement. However, the journalists and De Bedout were not alone in
their sporting campaigns. Footballers themselves had to defend professional football in
Medellín against the threat of teams closing down due to lack of funding.
Independiente Nacional: Footballers as Cultural Agents

In March 1958, Medellín’s professional football teams, Deportivo Independiente
Medellín (DIM, Sporting Independent Medellín) and Atlético Nacional (AN, National
Athletic), disappeared from the national league. Neither private industries nor local
authorities backed the teams and sportsmen denounced the ‘worrying situation’ (Serna,
1985: 108–110). The lack of public support was not new: DIM had disappeared from
the tournament in 1952 and 1953 while AN was absent from the first part of the 1956
and 1957 campaigns. In both cases, the teams’ managers alleged financial troubles, the
clubs changed owners or sponsors, and players endured economic instability. While the
teams’ names may have been preserved after these upheavals, there was no institutional
continuity. Owners and sponsors of both teams changed several times during the 1950s
and 1970s (Gallego, 2011), and this institutional instability was one of the reasons that
professional football was seen as a ‘pirate’ and ‘dishonest’ activity.
From the two teams that had folded, a group of footballers emerged to keep
Medellin’s place in the professional tournament. Retaining the spot required the pay-
ment of private fees and sporting rights known as la ficha (team card). Using their own
capital and networks, footballers decided to found a new football team that they called
Independiente Nacional. Well-known footballers, such as Barranquilla-born Efraín ‘the
Alligator’ Sánchez and Buenaventura-born Delio ‘Wonder’ Gamboa, joined famous
Antioqueño players Humberto ‘Turrón’ Álvarez, and Ignacio ‘The Crazy’ Calle in the
foundation of the new team. Álvarez and Calle had been champions of the professional
tournament with Atlético Nacional, back in 1954.
In June 1958, the players sent a letter to Rafael Betancourt, the municipal mayor of
Medellín. In the letter they criticised the ‘adverse circumstances football has to confront
in our milieu’, expressed their desire to represent Medellín in the national tournament,
and asked Betancourt how much it would cost to rent the stadium. The players wanted to
be exonerated from paying the fees and declared that they ‘trusted in the local authority’
to obtain financial support (AHM, Alcaldía, T. 123 fo. 323). On 16 June 1958, Betan-
court answered the letter. Lamenting the situation, the mayor declared that he ‘could
not help the players’ and that the ‘fiscal situation of the municipality’ prevented the
authorities’ involvement in the issue (AHM, Alcaldía, D. 123 fo. 324).
The footballers’ letter, signed by twelve members of the new team, shows their organi-
sational and financial initiative, which aimed not only to found a new professional team,
but also to embrace the complex set of responsibilities associated with representing the
city in the professional tournament. In their message, footballers claimed that their team,
Independiente Nacional, was a ‘genuinely Colombian team’, able to represent the region
in the professional competition. They had the ‘moral support’ of journalists such as Zap-
ata and Burgos, who maintained that the future of Colombian football depended on the
opportunities given to national players and proposed restrictions in the number of for-
eigners that could play in each team. Journalists and footballers admired the talent of
some foreigners but resented how they displaced national players from the teams (Cát-
edra, 1953; Burgos, 1998). The birth of Independiente Nacional claimed a place in the
regional narrative by presenting the footballers themselves as hardworking, austere and
as committed to the region as other workers.
In 2009, the Antioqueño leader of this initiative, Humberto Álvarez remembered
what a scandal the decision to found a new team had caused. According to him, the
footballers called their new team ‘Independiente Nacional’ as a way of criticising the situ-
ation in which football found itself in 1959. They emphasised ‘independence’ against the
football managers who always treated Colombian footballers with disdain. ‘Nacional’
remained in the team’s name because footballers wanted to express their patriotism and
the confidence they had in their own value as players in contrast to the pre-eminence
foreigners had achieved in Colombian football (Café Caracol, 2009).
Álvarez also stated that Antioqueño footballers ‘had to pay in order to play’, because
neither the authorities nor any private patrons would support their dedication to the
sport and their decision to represent Medellín in the professional tournament. The foot-
ballers had to divide the income produced by the match-day admission tickets. Once
the stadium rent had been paid, and the players’ wages accounted for, the income was
exhausted. Although not everybody in the city agreed that football was a legitimate activ-
ity, or that it was a social space in which regions needed to be represented, the players’
determination to create their own team and to maintain Medellín’s place in the tourna-
ment created inconveniences for the authorities and for hegemonic models of regional
identity.
In the first part of the twentieth century, Colombian society was led by a small circle
of educated men who served as politicians, lawyers, entrepreneurs and writers, and they
tended to show little interest in connecting with ‘popular’ sectors (Braun, 2015: 30–45).
Antioquia was led and represented by old men. Industrialists and engineers were entitled
to assume the task and they did so through the construction of powerful bonds with
other men and families from different social sectors. Catholic, familial, and capitalist
networks overlapped, articulating and connecting people from different social classes,
and helping to sustain the ‘hegemonic regional project’. The project prevented workers
from establishing unions, relied upon the social legitimacy associated with the Catholic
Church, and praised cooperation among classes (Mayor, 1984; Roldán, 1998).
In this context, the 1958 footballers’ initiative to found Independiente Nacional
and to represent Medellín in the professional tournament was daring. Reflecting on his
experience in this team, Delio Gamboa remembered that people scorned the players,
Álvarez faced public disapproval, and several footballers were afraid of entrepreneurs’
sanctions. Born in Buenaventura on the Pacific Coast and supported by his parents,
Gamboa discovered that the players’ ambition questioned social roles in Antioquia.
Some of his teammates had previously played with the permission of their bosses,
but creating a new team seemed to challenge that authority and traditional power
relations.
Asked about this episode, footballers Rodrigo Ospina, Dario López and Alejandro
Brand talked about the changes in regional bonds. They all recognised the sporting tal-
ent of Humberto Álvarez but also tended to think that he was arrogant when promoting
the players’ initiative. Humility, not arrogance, was an important way of being Antio-
queño, expressed as being ‘deeply’ grateful to the bosses, obedient to their superiors’
advice, proud of being involved in industrial tasks, and committed to a productive
job whilst avoiding controversies and scandals. The case study of the biography of
Rodrigo Ospina illustrates how professional football favoured changes in those ways
of being, but were also fused with traditional understandings of correct behaviour and
belonging.
Footballers but also Workers: Rodrigo Ospina

Journalists, players, and fans recognise that Rodrigo Ospina was ‘an institution of Antio-
queño football’, the reference to the ‘institution’ signifying someone whose achievements
transcended particular organisations and established a notable standard. In this section
his career is explored as a case study to show the ways in which football brought about
changes in regional identity. Born in Medellín in 1932, Ospina scored the first goal in
the newly inaugurated Atanasio Girardot stadium in 1953, played in two teams (the
Selección Antioquia and Coltejer) widely loved in his region, and became the symbol
of the ‘Golden Age’ of amateur football in the city (Zuluaga, 2005: 154–158; Med-
ina, 2007). The Selección Antioquia has represented the department, as a political unit,
in the Colombian National Games organised every four years since 1928, and also in
the Amateur Football Tournament every year from 1938. Coltejer, on the other hand,
was the team that represented the textile factory with the same name in the competitive
amateur tournament held in Medellín.
Rodrigo Ospina won several titles with those two teams and played for them at
a time when it was generally accepted by public opinion that Coltejer represented
Antioquia’s manufacturing leadership, and that Antioquia’s industrial base constituted
a modernising force in Colombian history. After a long and respectable life as a
worker in Coltejer, Ospina secured his pension, his status as a symbol of Antioqueño
working-class accomplishments, and as a key contributor to the development of amateur
football.
When reflecting on his own story as worker and footballer, Ospina insists on the
importance of the 1950 National Games when Antioquia were crowned champions and
he became a well-known footballer at the national level. In the midst of the celebrations,
the young footballer Ospina was approached by a mature and very distinguished man
he immediately recognised as Carlos J. Echavarría, the owner and manager of Coltejer,
the textile factory Ospina worked for and one of the most important Colombian compa-
nies. According to Ospina, this prominent industrialist congratulated him on the team’s
victory and said that they both had in common a double pride: being Antioqueños and
being sportsmen. In Ospina’s words, ‘Echavarría was immediately very affectionate with
him’ and opened all the company’s doors. The double pride these two men shared was
exceptional and represented a departure from previous norms. As we have seen, being a
sportsman was still not generally considered a respectable way of being Antioqueño, and
Antioquia’s authorities usually refused to lend financial support to sporting delegations
attending national events. In 1950, when Ospina and Echavarría met, the only financial
support that sportsmen from Antioquia enjoyed came from what journalists and small
businessmen collected through raffles and civic campaigns (Serna, 1993: 83–85).
It is also telling to note that neither Ospina nor the other players interviewed remem-
bered or knew about the lack of official support the Antioquia Delegation to the National
Games had endured, not only in 1950 but also in other events. In the players’ narratives,
Antioquia’s participation in amateur tournaments did enjoy official support; it was pro-
fessional football, they remembered, which was marginalised. It is striking that they
have no memory of this, precisely because it shows the extent to which players from
Antioquia have internalised the idea that being footballers and workers is not only per-
fectly possible but also a legitimate incarnation of Antioquia’s social values. As we saw
before, the simple practice of sport generated public resistance which they had to over-
come, and the idea of sport as a realm in which Antioquia needed to be represented
provoked doubts and scorn.
The lack of official support for the Antioquia delegation in the 1950 National Games
adds meaning to the encounter between Ospina and Echavarría: two men of different
generations and social classes met outside the workplace and celebrated the sporting
triumph of their native land. They both went to the National Games with their own
resources, without the backing of the authorities. In this situation both men felt them-
selves to be outsiders. They encountered each other thanks to their shared interest in
sport, an interest that during the 1950s continued to be a marginal concern for many in
Antioquia.
At the time, Echavarría was 48, 30 years older than Ospina. One of the founders
of the influential Asociación Colombiana de Industriales (ANDI, Colombian Associ-
ation of Industrialists) in 1940, Echavarría had been national men’s tennis champion
eight times, and had promoted the establishment of the Tennis League in 1934. In 1950,
Echavarría was the manager of Coltejer, director of the Tennis League, and one of the
few industrialists interested in sports. Echavarría had learned about the importance of
sports while studying in the United States, but he encountered resistance when he tried
to promote sporting practices in Colombian industries (Deporte Gráfico, 1967: 58–59;
Zapata, 1997: 209–212).
Taking advantage of the old and complex relations of patronage and clientelism that
linked mature men with young workers in Antioquia (Mayor, 1984: 277–281), Echavar-
ría took Ospina under his wing and exposed him to a particular understanding of sport
as a kind of discipline and as a way of learning about hard work. Ospina had not only the
personal experience but also the incentive to learn. His maternal grandfather was a tailor
who was very proud of the textile history of the city. By entering Echavarria’s patronage
network, Ospina could acquire not only economic stability but also social standing and
family protection. Scholars have shown how textile entrepreneurs in Antioquia medi-
ated citizens’ access to public services as well as urban public policy around diverse
issues, including housing, health and public education. Working in Coltejer opened up
an extensive network of services without embracing collective ways of action as unions
or cooperatives. Furthermore, prevailing narratives established that textile workers were
contributing to the progress of the national industry, and to the leading role that Antio-
queño factories played in that process. These narratives also portrayed textile workers
as a ‘good catch’ for young women (Farnsworth-Alvear, 2000).
Ospina’s story allows us to see how football, industrial work, and regional pride
intertwined in the specific conjuncture of the 1950 National Games. His encounter with
Echavarría and the ‘double pride’ they shared had an enduring impact on Ospina’s tra-
jectory both as a worker and as a footballer. Between 1950 and 1955 Ospina was invited
to play football in professional teams. Although he was curious about competition at
that level and proud of being acknowledged by coaches and players, he did not want to
lose the stability and social standing he had achieved as a worker and the advantages he
enjoyed as a footballer from a company. Ospina took advantage of his personal bond
with Echavarría and sought the entrepreneur’s advice. The footballer vividly remem-
bered what Echavarría told him when the Argentinean Adolfo Pedernera, coach of the
famous Bogotá-based team Millonarios, came to visit and invited him to play in that
team: ‘Don’t accept, Rodrigo, professional football is a flower that lasts for just one day;
it is a pirate business, an adventure’. In addition to showing his deep distrust of profes-
sional football, Echavarría persuaded Ospina to stay in Coltejer: ‘Rodrigo, if you behave
well here, you will have a job for life. Train yourself, gain qualifications, and you will
be promoted’. Football was ephemeral and risky; Coltejer provided stable conditions.
Behaving well meant obedience to one’s superior.
In 1954, Ospina confronted a challenging situation. Some of his old friends played
for the DIM and required a footballer with Ospina’s characteristics, at least dur-
ing two decisive matches. Ospina told the story to Echavarría and the entrepreneur
talked directly with the DIM’s owners, negotiated on Ospina’s behalf the wages and
labour conditions, and allowed the footballer to become a professional player just for
these games.
After listening to Ospina’s captivating stories about his bond with Echavarría, I asked
him again how he reached his decision not to play professional football. He seemed
to have had everything: official invitations, talent, curiosity, and even a famous uncle
who had made a living as a footballer in an amateur team. Ospina’s answer illumi-
nated additional elements of the cultural struggles faced by footballers. After declaring
how important his boss’s advice was and how grateful he felt, Ospina explained that he
rejected professionalism because he ‘took responsibilities early on in life’. At the 1950
Games, he was already married. He ‘had a wife and a family to look after, a set of respon-
sibilities that he could not assume if he became a professional footballer’. During our
encounters, Ospina systematically compared his stability in Coltejer with the ‘perils’ and
‘losses’ of some friends: those who abandoned their jobs in Medellin’s factories and went
to play professionally had to confront the ‘avalanche’ of foreign players. In 1950 alone,
177 of the 339 players enrolled in the national professional tournament were foreigners
(Estadio, 17 June 1950:12). Antioqueño players had to cope not only with economic
instability but also with financial discrimination. Both dynamics were held to be new
and negative for them.
Ospina’s recollections are revealing of the means through which professional football
came into conflict with legitimate ways of being Antioqueño. Scholars have shown how
much importance family responsibilities and being a productive worker have had in
definitions of respectable manhood in Antioquia (Gutierrez, 1996). Although he was
young, Ospina was already married and proud of being a worker in the textile sector.
The status this brought him would be endangered if he were to become a professional
footballer. The stability and wage levels were the principal burden for Ospina, who saw
himself as the main provider for his household, but other elements of what made a
respectable man were also at stake. In addition to being the economic mainstay of the
household, Antioqueño married men were expected to spend most of their free time with
their family rather than with their friends. Physical company and moral support were
articulated as well-known features of the husband’s duties.
Antioqueños’ attempts to fulfil those social expectations were therefore hampered by
some organisational features of the professional tournament in Colombia. In contrast to
other Latin American countries, in which professional football teams were concentrated
in the capital or in the two biggest cities, the tournament in Colombia included teams
representing nine widely dispersed urban centres and their respective departments (as
political regions are known in the country), necessitating lengthy trips to play in matches.
This institutional aspect of competitive football reflected the country’s late and pecu-
liar demographic growth and urban development (Goueset, 1998: 3–7). It made con-
siderable demands upon men who worked as footballers, who had to be willing to
undertake internal migration, as their potential employers were situated in diverse cities.
In addition to this, footballers had to travel constantly and, in some cases, very long dis-
tances, to play the games, a factor that struck Argentinean footballers who played in
Colombia between the 1950s and 1970s. They constantly complained about the geo-
graphical organisation of the tournament, for they were exhausted travelling around
the country on roads in very poor condition and spending their days in what they saw
as small cities with ill-equipped airports. Under those conditions, ‘to be a professional
footballer was like being a gypsy, always on the move’ (Tocker, 1984: 71–76, 80). Antio-
queños did have long experience of moving around and, in fact, they were renowned
throughout the country for their migratory capacity and their determination to make
wild environments habitable. However, roving the country as a footballer was seen as a
very different activity. Those Antioqueños who migrated to colonise uncultivated plots
and make the land productive, so that they could be joined by their families, were hailed
as heroes. But those who moved around playing football and travelled alone seemed
more like vagrants, young men who were mischievous, or at least irresponsible. Foot-
ballers Dario López and Alejandro Brand confronted some of those challenges during
the 60s. López worked and played for the same teams that Ospina did ten years before:
Selección Antioquia and Coltejer. After finishing high school, enjoying local recognition
as footballer, and convincing his parents that he could take care of himself, López left his
position in the textile company and in 1966 accepted Deportivo Pereira’s offer to become
a professional footballer. Something similar happened to Alejandro Brand: after playing
with the Selección Antioquia and being offered employment in Medellín’s companies,
he sought opportunities to become a professional footballer in Bogotá. Brand made
his debut in 1969 with Millonarios and his quick success gave rise to public debates
about the situation of Antioqueño players. Journalist Miguel Zapata criticised the low
wages paid by Medellín’s teams for provoking a painful exodus of talented footballers
(El Clarín, 26 November 1969: fo.285). According to Brand, footballers in Medellín
confronted harsh conditions: players were expected constantly to show social deference,
were badly paid, and were constantly told how to behave, especially with regards to mar-
riage and family issues. Brand made his career in Bogotá and the experience allowed him
to identify, from a distance, how professional football set in motion different changes
in regional identity. From his perspective, Antioqueño professional footballers had to
convince their fellow Antioqueños that playing football and making a living by doing so
was a legitimate way of being and of belonging to Antioquia – that it also involved hard
work, duty and commitment. Perhaps professional football did not produce the material
wellbeing associated with industrial development but it provided new leaders and new
social bonds. Traditional networks of patronage and clientelism between old and young
Antioqueño men and their families had to change, for young talented footballers were
looking beyond Medellín’s industries to make their contributions to Antioquia’s great

history.
Conclusions
The success of Antioqueño professional football in Colombia and Latin America today
hides the history of how that sport drove changes in the regional identity of Antioquia,
and in ways of being and belonging. This article has analysed three episodes in which
journalists and footballers discussed the sport. The episodes include the public campaign
to build Medellín’s new stadium during the 1940s and early 1950s, the foundation of a
new professional team by well-known players, and the challenges of becoming a foot-
baller from the players’ perspective.
Prevailing analysis in Latin American football historiography focuses on the con-
flicts between amateurism and professional football (Frydenberg, 2011; Elsey, 2012;
Curi, 2015). This article amplifies the field of study by exploring how professional-
ism unfolded when neither the state nor collective actors showed any interest in the
sport, and people from important social circles assumed professional football to be a
questionable practice lacking in the superior moral values associated with their region.
Indeed, a focus on the experience of Antioqueño players and journalists is particu-
larly helpful because the ‘hegemonic regional project’ at work in that society applauded
practices and values that seemed incompatible with football, such as colonisation of
rural areas, obedience to elders, industriousness, austerity, family responsibilities, and
money-making skills. At the same time, that regional project rejected ostentation, public
display and controversy. Under these inauspicious circumstances, footballers supported
the professional teams, denounced the authorities’ lack of involvement in public enter-
tainment, and expressed their interest in representing Medellín in the national profes-
sional tournament. They became crucial agents with cultural initiative for promoting
the sport.
Furthermore, the article has discussed some of the challenges that professional foot-
ball raised for Antioqueño regional identity. Focusing on the case study of Rodrigo
Ospina, a famous textile worker and footballer in Medellín during the 1950s, it explored
some of the tensions involved in the practice of the sport. Although he was a talented
and well-known player, young Ospina decided to follow his boss’s advice and stayed as
a worker at Coltejer instead of ‘taking a chance’ in professional football. Both the advice
and the decision were influenced by the experience of inter-class collaboration in Antio-
quia and by the strong and paternal image of industriousness prevalent in local society
(Mayor, 1984: 251–253). Ospina’s trajectory allows us to appreciate the importance
that social superiors’ advice and familial responsibilities had in the working of regional
identity and in the decision-making process of becoming a professional footballer in that
context.
The troubles that footballers encountered were not with the ideals or values asso-
ciated with amateurism, but rather with the moral and productive character of pro-
fessional football. The changes that professional football generated among Antioqueño
players remind us that the ‘job’ of a professional footballer required specific cultural,
economic and political conditions. In Antioquia during the 1950s, there was no politi-
cal space or cultural need to promote or encourage young footballers as the ‘hegemonic
regional project’ emphasised the value of hard and productive work, the conquest of
rural areas, the virtue of being a family man and having a modest life. Professional
football in Colombia did not offer these conditions but some men took the risk. By so
doing they began to change the ways of being and belonging in Antioquia.
Acknowledgements
Between 2012 and 2015, I worked with 52 Colombian footballers who had been cham-
pions of the national tournament or members of the national football team during
the 1960s and 1970s. Particularly helpful for writing this article were the conversa-
tions with R. Ospina, A. Álvarez, D. López, A. Brand, J. Tamayo, F. Maturana and
D. Gamboa.
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Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 37, No. 5, pp.

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