Empty stands: How the Military Junta left a football club without its fanbase

Football clubs are inextricably linked with the neighborhood around them, where murals and graffiti let you know you’re in their home, a holy ground of sorts. For Club Atlético Excursionistas, Bajo Belgrano is that home. But in March 1978 it was forcibly emptied by the Military Junta. In preparation for that year’s FIFA World Cup, bulldozers arrived to dismantle the Bajo Belgrano settlement, forcibly relocating its residents to the city’s outskirts, a strategy meant to hide poverty from international view.  The club was hardly the only one affected by the dictatorship’s policies. San Lorenzo, Fénix and Riestra all had their stadiums demolished, forcing the clubs to move and fans to take their passion elsewhere.  Instead, Excursionistas stands as a rare case of a club staying while its entire community was ripped out. But to understand how the community developed around the club, why it was torn out, and how that affected the club, we need to delve a bit deeper. A home built on the floodplains Founded on February 1, 1910, in Buenos Aires City, Excursio, as the club is affectionately known, settled into its home in the Bajo Belgrano neighborhood, in the northern part of the capital, in 1912.  “Bajo Belgrano as we know it today is a far cry from what it originally was,” Excursionistas vice president Matías Antelo told the Herald. “At the start of the 20th century, these plots were basically given away for free.” The lands were low and close to the river, making them prone to flooding. There was also a nearby city trash incinerator, which made the air extremely polluted and foul-smelling. The Excursionistas stadium around 1970Photo: Club Atlético Excursionistas The football team quickly achieved success, becoming a top-tier team by 1924. But in 1934, Excursionistas had been relegated to the Second Division following a league merger, and it has never returned to the top tier since. Yet the fans didn’t seem to care.  Known as the Villa del Bajo Belgrano, the area developed into an informal settlement as migrants from the provinces and neighbouring countries moved there in the 1920s and 30s. By the 1970s, the settlement covered nearly 30 city blocks between the streets of La Pampa, Figueroa Alcorta, Libertador, and Monroe. At that time, there were 298 families living there; almost 1,000 people, who shopped, worked and enjoyed their free time in the neighborhood.  It was fertile ground for Excursionistas to cultivate a loyal, undying fan base. Bulldozing an intolerable sight When the Argentine military government kicked off preparations for the 1978 World Cup, it decided that the presence of a settlement so close to the River Plate stadium, which was set to host the World Cup final, could not be tolerated. After weeks of harassment, followed by offers to relocate the inhabitants to temporary homes in the outskirts of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, bulldozers arrived on the site with days to go until Argentina’s debut against Hungary in June.  Set to feature in that game was right winger René Houseman, who had grown up in the neighborhood and whose mother and brothers still lived in the settlement. “They told us we had to leave,” Houseman’s sister Ema told newspaper Infobae in 2018. “They drove a bulldozer to the front door and forced us out. They had a truck where they loaded your possessions, and you were out.” The ruins of what had been the home to nearly 300 familiesPhoto: Historia de Belgrano For people who had spent their entire lives in the neighborhood, it was heartbreaking. “Many stayed there, with their house in ruins. Every day, people hosted farewell barbecues on the floor of the demolished homes,” she said.  After that, many of the residents moved back to their home provinces or countries, but several accepted to be relocated to Rincón de Milberg, Florencio Varela or Soldati, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. According to Ema, René always regretted not being able to purchase the area so the settlement could remain in place, an admission he made in a 2014 interview.  A costly blind eye Amid all this, Excursionistas and its stadium were spared.  Antelo believes the club’s long-standing tradition in Belgrano, along with a failure to foresee how valuable the land would become, kept it safe. He’s also the first to admit the club didn’t do much to help its former neighbors. “Club officials of that era didn’t actively support the demolition of the settlement, but adopted a passive stance,” said Antelo. “They didn’t see the settlement as a respectable group of club members, or a group of people worth protecting.”  The clearest example is that of Houseman himself. A self-proclaimed Excursionistas fan and Bajo Belgrano resident, he tried out for the club but was rejected because of his background. He instead started his career with nearby club Defensores de Belgrano and eventually reached the Argentine national team. René Houseman remained a staunch Excursionistas fan all his lifePhoto: Historia de Belgrano However, the fans who remained felt how the joy was drained out of the stands. “All those who lived through it use the word ‘sadness,’” said Antelo, whose father is also an Excursio fan and saw it all happen. “Once the settlement was gone, Excursionistas was a sad club, a club missing 60 or 70 percent of its fans.” While some supporters remained, and some of those whose houses had been demolished kept making the trip, it was not the same.  The club never regained the popularity it once enjoyed. Antelo recalls a time when 7,000 Excursio fans turned out for an away game in 1976, and admits it “never again saw such a large away crowd.” Fans who were driven out of Bajo Belgrano started following their new local clubs, but they didn’t quite forget about their old love. During the 1980s and 90s, Excursionistas had friendships with the fanbases of Defensa y Justicia, Tigre, and Sacachispas, as fans who had been kicked out of Belgrano settled in the north and south of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area. “In 1983, Excursionistas faced Talleres de Remedios de Escalada in the second division promotion final. The club lost that game, but drew a huge crowd, largely because buses full of Defensa y Justicia fans had come to support Excursionistas,” said Antelo. Read more of the Herald’s coverage of the 50th anniversary of the 1976 military coup here The fight for the heart of Belgrano, 50 years on Fifty years later, a lot has changed around Excursionistas, bringing about a significant shift in the socioeconomic makeup of the club’s fanbase. Yet the board and the club make an effort to ensure everyone is aware of the club’s history. “We aim to always take pride, from a discursive and institutional perspective, in the roots and working-class origins of the fanbase that defined the club from the 1920s through the 1970s,” said Antelo. In the middle of one of what today is one of Buenos Aires’ most luxurious areas, Excursionistas charges much lower membership fees than other nearby clubs. Antelo thinks it’s the way in which the club “stays true to the history,” by continuing to assert itself as a popular choice for the working middle class. The growth and gentrification of the Bajo Belgrano have now made Excursionistas the club with the most valuable stadium in all of Argentine football, from a price-per-square-foot perspective. Even more than River’s Monumental or Boca’s La Bombonera. Antelo admits the club has received repeated offers from construction companies to purchase the plot at fair market value and even build them a new stadium elsewhere, but rejected them all.  It proved a point of contention, as for a long time the club wasn’t a tenant but a renter, meaning the risk of a forced relocation was never far off. In 2013, however, Excursionistas bought the plot, securing the location of its stadium. “As heirs to generations deeply rooted in this neighborhood, we believe that Excursionistas is the heart of Belgrano,” said Antelo. Excursionistas is the only club registered with the Argentine Football Federation that has never moved its stadium, which Antelo feels is as “inconceivable” for the club as changing the colors of its shirt. Fifty years after the bulldozers took the fans away from the stands, resistance for Excursionistas is now about keeping those very stands where they are and preserving an identity inextricably linked to the institution. “We stand firm and say: ‘Not only were we born here, but as long as it depends on us, we will die here,’” concludes Antelo.