From the love of Vargas Llosa for the U to the mythological support of Arguedas for Alianza: How a writer in Peru loves his club

Forty-five years in the future, now on the lawn of the Santiago Bernabeua Vargas Llosa A septuagenarian, with silver hair, a deeply dark coat, and a Nobel Prize under his arm. Accompanied by Iker Casillas and Joaquincaptains of the real Madrid and the Valencia respectively, the novelist gave the famous play of honor in the run-up to the game.

In 2011, in February, after a short but emotional speech on the field of the Monumental Stadium, and after closing shouting “Long live the U!”, the Nobel laureate waved the Universitario de Deportes flag to the ovation of almost eighty thousand souls.

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Jose Maria Arguedas He was a Victorian neighbor and friend of Hector Teodulio Legarioarcher of Lima Alliance and four times champion with the intimate club. Although associating the author of “Los ríos profundos” with the Andean world and the indigenous current is inevitably logical, the researcher and critic Ernesto Toledo Bruckmann affirms in his book “Arguedas, the encounter with Lima and his political initiation: 1911-1938” that “Arguedas had a cordial stay in the city” and it was there that he forged not only so many friendships but also some hobbies such as his preference for Alianza Lima.

Unlike the confessed and verified support of Vargas Llosa by the U, the Arguedas thing was always in a kind of limbo between the mythological, the fictional and the emotional. However, among the most compelling evidence is what Víctor Bustamante Moscoso said in the book ‘Unpublished notes: Celia and Alicia in the life of José María Arguedas’, by Carmen María Pinilla, in which he affirms the following:

In addition to the dynamics of the unthinking, in the words of Panzierior a great simulator of life, in those of Valdanosoccer is a constant in the biography and work of some (many) Peruvian writers and writers.

Bryce covered in the Nacional and Ribeyro did not run

Alfredo Bryce Echenique it was special even for the passions. And it is that the author of “A world for Julius” would confess to his great friend Julio Ramon Ribeyro that he was a fan of today’s untraceable Ciclista Lima, but not before emphasizing that he had once had to stand between the three sticks in the National Stadium: .

The ‘skinny’, of course, was not far behind as he commented, always with that mixture of humility and irreverence, that he used to play when he was a student at the Champagnat school, although he did not run much due to an early love of cigarettes. Years later, he would write “Atiguibas”, a story in which readers find the cream gunner Lolo Fernández as the protagonist. “A work of art, a model of strength, technique, courage and opportunism”, Ribeyro would describe the merengue scorer. Much later, when his biographer and friend Jorge Coaguila asked him “Where does the title of the story (Atiguibas) come from?” Ribeyro replied that this would never be revealed, so that after a moment he would burst out laughing as he responded “Until the roe, then”since it was what the rostrum chanted.

One of the most famous Peruvian poets is undoubtedly Blanca Varela who in her book “Canto villano” included the poem “Fútbol”. In it, in addition to the obvious suggestion of the title, he talks about childhood and transcends the description of simple motor activity and the plasticity of bodies, to embark on the evocation of paternity and how the son finds happiness and the world kicking a ball.

Narrators who play or players who narrate

Leonardo Aguirre He is a smoker like Ribeyro was but, unlike the skinny guy, he does run. Except for an injury that has taken him away from the courts for a few months, the author of “Nine Lives”, “A Kitchen Surges – Rhymed Chronicle of Lima”, among other titles, remains active and shares the field with his friends and colleagues weekly. religiously: “Since we had hair, we rallied. It’s been 15 years now. Poets and narrators, also editors. synthetic grass. And I will be synthetic, no way, because space is short. The shorts: Pólack, Médez, Muñoz, Sánchez, Ledesma, Trelles, Ruiz, Pera, Freyre, Neyra (perhaps Pimental, capable Guillén, even Page). Consequently, the conversation is bookish: the previous one. .

In the case of Jose Carlos Yrigoyennarrator, poet and critic, author of “With everything, against everyone”, among other books, and reviewer of this newspaper, his passion for soccer goes hand in hand with his love for team colors, Alianza Lima: “I am a fan of Alianza for very simple reasons. The first: I surrender to the talent and aesthetic brilliance of certain human actions. I believe in beauty and that the claw is not a mystic, but a final resource in the absence of skill. A team that bases its essence on the claw is born admitting its second place “he explains without any shame and continues commenting that “the lineages that history and Alianza forge in that aspect have no comparison (…) if being Peruvian is suffering, let me do it with a blue and white shirt on my chest.”

Furthermore, he synthesizes an answer when asked why write about this: “I have written a book on the history of the national team, which recently received a radically enlarged and corrected third edition. I wrote it from the idea that motivates all my projects: to make the books that I would like to read and that don’t exist yet. This is one of those cases that joins a fan that deserved an act of redemption”he concludes.

For her part, the writer sophia gomeza finalist for the 2022 Copé Award, remembers what was the first approach with his team. “Since I was a child I liked soccer. I remember at the age of 10 watching a game on television and hearing the commentator shout for a goal, and my father running to see if his team had scored. .

In addition, it reflects on the role of women in a historically masculine space. “I’m sorry I couldn’t play soccer. I was in a women’s college and in the early 2000s those of us who wanted to play soccer went against the current. There were all sports, but there was no women’s soccer at school. Today I feel that it is something beautiful to see that there are girls who have that possibility “.

poets also play

the endearing poet Antonio Cisneros He is remembered not only for verses like “They did not raise my salary for your absence / however the bottle of Nescafé lasts twice as long / triple the razor blades”, of “Cuatro boleros maroqueros”, but also for its sky-blue swelling. Toño, he was staunch Sporting Cristal since before it existed. How is that possible? He himself explained it: “I am a fan of Sporting Tabaco first. Automatically, when Tobacco became Crystal, I went to Crystal. I was actually born with the light blue”he commented in an interview shortly before his death in 2012.

The author of the Generation of 60 never remained in the simplicity of the inexplicable, but rather rehearsed and presented his ideas whenever he could, recalling very specific episodes. “Didi’s team is a great Cristal team. It was a great time, we were champions in ’68. Didí was the greatest we’ve ever had. He led Peru to the quarterfinals in Mexico 70. It is the most that a team has achieved in a hundred years of football history ”ended.

Another slightly more contemporary poet, as well as an essayist, is Bruno Polack, author of books such as “The city that does not exist” and “Ars Fascinatoria!” who lives his fandom not only when he puts on the University jersey to play the pitches on duty with some of his colleagues, but also through his most personal memories. The cry of thousands of throats was not only deafening, it was the very manifestation of passion, the manifestation of collective love and madness. I stumbled and just before I fell, someone grabbed my arm. I got up and, as I started to jump, I added my voice as loud as I could to receive the cream team that came out onto the pitch. I felt like it was my own welcome. My own baptism. That afternoon the U came out champion. With my cousins ​​we entered the field after the game and we did the Olympic lap. It wasn’t the first time I went to the stadium, but I remember it as the first time.”comments in an exclusive statement for Trade.

Cayre Alfaro He is a skateboarder, poet, editor, anthologist and subscriber of Lima Alliance. The talented author, still in his twenties, remembers his first time in Matute: “Despite having spent my first years of life in La Victoria and studying early at the San Ricardo school, next to the Matute stadium, I just entered Alejandro Villanueva at seventeen. I was taking my younger brother, who played in the blue and white academy. My brother barely knew how to speak, but he yelled Alianza’s first goal to tears and, with that moment, he told me that Matute would be a space that would accompany us for the rest of our lives. Since then, we have been subscribers and we go to every date that is played in La Victoria. Every time I return to the Alianza Lima stadium, I also return to my childhood neighborhood, to the walks with my grandmother to the San Ricardo school, to eat ceviche in the market with my mother, to go to the Mundialito field with my uncle, to look for kiosks that sold cut-out figures with my grandfather, to walk through Gamarra with my aunts, to visit my uncle Gordipepo in the Matute residence, to the cry of love from my younger brother”.

Featured authors like Martin Roldan, barista and illustrious fan of Alianza Lima, whose book “This love is not for cowards” is a way of understanding football as a refuge and identity in an always unfavorable context, or Orlando Mazeyra, an author from Arequipa who proudly proclaims on his social networks his fascination and passion for Melgar are other examples that, in a certain way, we are all part of this. Although a glossary or a list ends up being one of the most arbitrary exercises, it is certain that soccer, as a good mass phenomenon, has an impact on many and many more people dedicated to letters and language work.