Cholo Balbuena: the Peruvian romantic who became a Chilean national, played in that team and was an idol of that country

They called him Cholo but he was Chilean. Or rather, he was born in the Peru, near the Bridge of Sighs but his adventurous boat trip to Chile had fallen in love with him so much that he decided to stay and live, and what could have been just a brief camp during his years as a soccer player, became a house, a new passport, and idolatry. “My father remembered every day the country where he was born and that he saw him grow up until he was 21 years old, when he emigrated here to become a national,” says Verónica Balbuena, the second daughter of the Balbuena Martínez couple, who in the end was completed with five children. His father is José Balbuena, el Cholo, a wing Peruvian left-winger who conquered Chile with goals and that Peruvian generosity that the world applauds.

It is a Sunday afternoon, ten days before a new South American classic is played between Peru and Chile. Verónica Balbuena says it with nostalgia, with respect, and with that Chilean accent that goes at full speed, unique in South America and skips the that. His memory is amazing: he remembers, for example, that his father used to tell him about Tarata Street. @verobalbuena On Twitter she is a professor of Physical Education, from Tocopillana and today preserves two immense legacies of the Cholo, the Chilean-Peruvian, the Peruvian-Chilean: the unmistakable black eyes and unconditional affection for the blue shirt of the University of Chile.

“Until the last breath,” Verónica recalls, “my father remembered his Peru with infinite love.” This is the story of José Balbuena Rodríguez, a left-winger born in Barranco, in front of the Costa Verde sea, who at the end of 1946 became a Chilean national of his own free will and became the only Peruvian who played an official tournament for that team. How could it be otherwise, childhood on the Bridge of Sighs and adolescence in Miraflores, there was the immense Cholo.

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Who was José Balbuena and how did he get to Chile? With a Chaplin-like mustache and a reputation for being a fast, unattainable pointer, Balbuena Rodríguez learned by playing soccer for the Lusitania and América neighborhood teams, until he made the leap to the team where one of his idols, Teodoro Lolo Fernández, played. It was also a Lolista. In the ‘U’ he alternated between 1936 and 1937, until he moved to Deportivo Municipal, where he started in that 2-3-5 that wrote the first glorious chapter of La Franja: together with Luis ‘Caricho’ Guzmán, Óscar Espinar, Víctor ‘Pichín’ Bielich and Leopoldo Quiñónez, formed the lead of the first championship achieved by the councilors. He made 3 goals and played 6 games. With them, you couldn’t play bad.

Eduardo Hormazábal is a journalist, Lolista and it carries Coayhaique, Valdivia and Santiago de Chile in its blood. It is also a treasure hunter. A year ago, he found a lost photograph in the Museum of Chilean Memory where, during a break from the South American in Ecuador in 1947, he saw Lolo Fernández, the idol of Universitario, surrounded by soccer players from the Mapochina team. Surrounded, because all six of them couldn’t hug him at the same time. You can’t ask them anything now, just describe what the image projects. The six Chilean players look at Cañonero with the attention of someone who has just seen the virgin’s appearance. It is a kind of hypnotic state, which corresponded to the affection of that country on the Gunboat for the unforgettable Combinado del Pacífico. Sergio Livingstone (1920-2012), historical goalkeeper for La Roja, does not even change his bath towel in exchange for not missing the visit. But there is one of them even more moved, in front of him.

We did not know until today that one of them, the one who looks with authentic devotion to the idol of Universitario, was the Peruvian-Chilean Balbuena, with the Solitary Star T-shirt, his hair with gel and his little mustaches passed by the figaro.

“As a player,” says Hormazábal, “he is remembered as a man devoted to his shirt (who has played 11 consecutive seasons at Universidad de Chile illustrates this), very regular (the year he arrived he played 14 games and finished 13 goals) and with character (the only match that did not end was against Colo Colo, where he was expelled along with Alfonso Domínguez). And, obviously, he is thanked for having made Chile his home and for wanting to play for the national team ”.

The reports of the special envoy of the famous Chilean magazine Estadio a Ecuador 1947, Antonino Vera, state that two days after that meeting in the dressing room, Lolo and the six Chilean footballers, Balbuena played the only game with the classic rival’s shirt. It was a 3-0 victory against the local team. 22 thousand people attended George Capwell in Guayaquil. It was December 11, 1947. It fell on Thursday. That shirt, most likely from the English firm St. Margaret, lapel collar, star on the chest, no longer exists.

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They were different times. Football was amateurish, multi-day steam trips and newspaper reports the most reliable test for future times, when history must be looked at. In November 1946, the magazine Estadio de Chile dedicated a page to Cholo Balbuena, when his nationalization process became official. The Chilean authorities accelerated the process because it was urgently required: the 1947 South American was close and the La Roja coach, Mr. Tirado, had summoned it.

The magazine Estadio, which did not give praise, wrote this: “Balbuena, set in our customs, works in our country and wants to make his home under this sky that was pleasing to him. The sports fan, sentimental and in love with his favorite idols, is satisfied with Balbuena. The fans of his club, Universidad de Chile, one of the largest in our sport, must feel even better the compliment of Balbuena’s gesture ”. It was a gesture born in journalism after his first years in that country, where he arrived in 1939 and only one season won the first title in the history of the also known, with beauty, as Romantic Traveler. In total, he played 168 games with the Blues and scored 47 goals. He was already one of them.

Or as he himself said in a following issue of the same magazine:

I tell her daughter, Veronica, and she nods. This Thursday 7 from 8 pm at the National Stadium, she in Tocopilla, I in Lima, we will tune in the same game, we will say the same things, we will celebrate the goal that makes us happy. And we will remember Don José, Cholo Balbuena, a long bridge that more of us should step on. The continent already hates itself too much to add more to it.

And Verónica responds that one of these days, as was customary until the day her father died in 2009, the three daughters will remember him singing to Lucha Reyes and Chabuca.