For fans of pro soccer in Mexico City, the four most popular teams represent distinct identities that embody such attributes as political power, nationalism, and working-class values. One of these
This is one of the few works that describes soccer fans in Mexico. It is particularly valuable because it is based on the author's close personal observations of the [soccer fans'] behavior.
—James Taggart, Franklin and Marshal College
|
|
teams, the Pumas, is associated with youthfulness, and its equally youthful fans take pride in the fact that their heroes have not yet been corrupted by corporate or political interests. This
ethnographic study examines Puma fans' understanding of the ideal that the team represents, considers the practices they employ to express and sometimes contradict this ideal, and reveals how soccer
fandom in contemporary Mexico has emerged as a nexus of tensions among competing visions of state and society.
Roger Magazine takes readers inside Mexico's soccer stadiums to explore young
men's participation in struggles over the future of that country's urban society. His firsthand observations of the fan clubs—las porras—yield a unique inside look at confrontations in the stands
over group organization, particularly at the emergence of rebel segments within the clubs. His study offers a close-up look at ground-level struggles over social organization in contemporary urban
Mexico, showing how young male fans both blindly reproduce and consciously manipulate images of violence and disorder derived from national myths about typical urban Mexican men.
Golden
and Blue Like My Heart offers a new way of understanding the dynamics of fandom while shedding new light on larger social processes and youth culture in Mexico. And with its insight into soccer
culture, politico-economic transition, and masculinity, it has important and wide-reaching implications for all of Latin America.
|
