In the Río de la Plata, bullfighting was the most popular sport. According to Lyman Johnson in his book Workshop of Revolution, “municipal authorities held the first staged bullfights in Buenos Aires in the middle of the seventeenth century. In the late colonial period it remained the most popular mass entertainment…” (78). It was an activity in which all social classes participated, either by entering the ring or watching the spectacle. Businessmen constructed several bullfighting rings in the city in which matadores demonstrated their skill and bravery, usually on horseback. Upper class creoles, peninsulares, and workers alike payed to watch the fight, which often got quite rowdy during and after the bullfight.

Also featured in the region were other equestrian games and sports. There were feigned cavalry battles, displays of horsemanship, games kind of like tag, and races, all of which took place in urban and rural areas. Another famous equestrian game is Pato, which originated on the Pampas among the gauchos (a modern form of the game is still played). Félix de Azara, a famous traveler sent to determine the border between the Spanish and Portuguese empires at the end of the eighteenth century, described the game in Viajes por la América Meridional: “They put together two teams of horsemen and they decide upon two sites separated by a league. Then, they sew in a leather sack a live duck with just its head outside, having also two or more handles or knobs. Then, they select two of the strongest horsemen and halfway between the assigned points, the men spur strongly until the most powerful takes the duck, throwing his rival to the ground if he does not abandon it. The winner starts running, and those of the opposing band follow him and surround him and grab the duck from another of the handles, taking it using the same method. The winning team being the one that arrives with the duck to the signaled point” (my translation). These were all very dangerous sports. Following independence, many of these activities were prohibited since they were not “civilized” enough for a society of “order and progress.”

Lyman Johnson also mentions “canchas de bolos, a form of lawn bowling where competitors displayed their skills while onlookers placed bets” (80). Essentially, the player had to knock down a set number of pins or a certain random number of pins. In the same locations, people also played handball and bochas, which is like modern bocce ball (81).

Do you consider dance to be a sport? People of African descent are famous for hosting large public dances. Travelers would often comment on these displays and colonial authorities found the prospect of large groups of dark-skinned people meeting in such an uncontrolled fashion to be quite terrifying. The French traveler Alcides d’Orbigny described a celebration in 1827 in Montevideo which “I saw in rapid succession war dances, representations of agricultural work, and steps of the most lascivious type. There more than six hundred blacks seemed to have regained for a moment their nationality…[which] made them forget, for one single day of pleasure the pains and sufferings of long years of slavery” (Quoted from Gikandi, Slavery and the Culture of Taste, 267). And of course, later, tango sprang up in the conventillos of Buenos Aires. I suppose in these cases, dance is more of a leisure activity than an organized sport.

What about gambling? Do you consider it to be a sport? It’s on ESPN2 all the time. Region crime reports from the colonial and early national period are absolutely filled with an incredible amount of gambling in urban and rural areas alike. At night after work, many of the young men would go to local hangouts, play various card and dice games, and engage in cockfighting. Often, they would split their winnings with their friends or buy a round of food or drink, which helped develop social networks and foster camaraderie. Colonial and early national authorities viewed these games as evidence that poor workers were lazy, backwards, violent, and indolent. They rounded up vagrants and forced them to work or join the military, much to the disdain of the men who often fled the moment they got a chance. But of course, as Susan Socolow points out in her book The Merchants of Buenos Aires, wealthy merchants and peninsulares had their famous tertulias where elite members of society met and often engaged in both of the activities for which they punished common people: dancing and gambling.

The hypocrisy demonstrates clearly the disdain and fear that elites and authorities had for popular movements which they did not understand or could not control. The elites saw many of the activities I mentioned as dangerous, violent, backward, and barbaric. Sports often sparked violence or the threat of violence. Worryingly, the games also distracted men from their work or familial responsibilities (a dereliction of duty which the elites viewed as backward and uncivilized). Also, these sports were not organized as we know organized sports today. Often they were folk games or pick-up games that people simply played to relax and pass the time. I’m not an expert on the history of organized sports, but the organized sports that entered into many Latin American societies toward the end of the 19th century (football and baseball) were often seen as healthy pursuits for young men by elite members of society. The elites believed that organized sports helped maintain a healthy body and teach young men team/community values (which were more in line with and defined by elite cultural norms). In many ways, sports were a reaction to and an attempted destruction of the types of spontaneous, often brutal leisure activities that I’ve mentioned here.