Barra brava


Barra brava is the name of organised supporters' groups of football teams in Argentina that provide fanatical support to their clubs in stadiums and provoke violence against rival fans and eventually the police.
Actions like the exhibition of choreographies to welcome the team when it goes out to the pitch; waving and displaying of flags, banners and umbrellas; and coordination of chants during the whole match, are characteristic of their fervent behaviour aimed to encourage their team and intimidate referees and rival fans and players, for which they also provoke violence.
They also look to attack rival fans, which leads to fights with them, and defend the rest of their team' spectators from rival attacks and police repression., from Argentina, displaying a giant flag a few minutes before a match.
These groups originated in Argentina in the 1950s and spread throughout countries. They are similar to hooligan firms, torcidas organizadas and ultras.

History

During the 1920s in Argentine football matches spontaneously began to appear irregular groups of fans that stood out for their fervour from the rest of the crowd in the stadiums. These groups were denominated as barras by the media, a term that in Rioplatense Spanish slang is equivalent to the term gang, but in its original meaning, that is 'an informal group of people who meet frequently and usually do common activities'. Their actions were limited to stadiums during home matches because they couldn't follow their teams to other cities very often, neither was violence provocation their objective, as violence arose spontaneously due to frustration caused by bad results of their team or as a way to influence the match through intimidation of rival players and referees with insults, throwing objects and occasionally entering onto the pitch to assault them. Sometimes they also attacked rival fans who used the same methods against their team. At the end of this decade, a few newspapers described one of this groups as a barra "brava", appearing the words barra brava together for the first time, but not yet like a term.
One of those groups, named as La barra de la Goma by press, appeared in 1927 and supported San Lorenzo de Almagro. The nickname comes from the rubber of bike inner tubes that this group used in some occasions to attack rival fans. Sometimes they would also throw objects at the players of rival teams to bother them when they should intervene in the game.
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The barras became a traditional part of the Argentinian football crowds and evolved until, in the mid-1950s, they began receiving funding from football clubs to attend all the away matches. While intimidation towards referees and rival players and supporters was previously spontaneous, from that moment on it would be their main objective. Another objective came to be the defence the rest of spectators and players of their club from the attacks of rival fans and police repression, which increased fights and riots, that occurred more frequently before and after the matches outside of stadiums. Thus they became the first organised supporters' groups of football fans in the world that were focused on violence.
Argentine journalist Amílcar Romero stated that, before the appearance of such groups, when a team played away, it was intimidated by home fans. Barras bravas were a response to this pressure, so each club started to had its own barra brava, financed by the club leadership. These groups were given tickets and paid travel to the stadiums, and access to these benefits were controlled by the group's main members. To obtain prestige, the member had to be violent.
In 1958, media has begun to notice the existence of barras bravas after the riots during a match between Vélez Sarsfield and River Plate, at which 18-year-old bystander Alberto Mario Linker was killed by police when cops tried to disperse River Plate fans who were causing unrest in a terrace located behind one of the goals. Police and rioters were criticized by the media, and newspaper La Razón mentioned the existence of barras fuertes in Argentine football that were already known by many people, differentiating them for the first time from the traditional barras as being more organised, hierarchical and coordinated, like it was observed among River Plate' rioters on that occasion.
, in the 1990s with its barra brava in the center.
Barra brava as the currently term appeared in Argentine media in the 1960s, but became popular in the 1980s. In Argentina, barra brava members until the early 1990s rejected that term for considering it pejorative, and prefer being denominated as fanbase/crowd's guides.
Although since the beginnings of Argentine football there were many fights and riots carried out by fans, players, club's leaders and police, the Alberto Mario Linker's death was signalled as the beginning of an era of habituation to violence. During the following decades, riots and deaths increased at the same time that barras bravas turned more numerous and organised.
According to some studies, Argentina has the most dangerous organised supporters' groups in the world. Through August 2012 Argentine football has experienced more than 200 deaths related to hooliganism. Since 2013, all visiting fans were banned from matches of the first division.

Characteristics

These groups deploy and wave flags, banners and umbrellas, and use musical instruments to accompany their chants. They occupy terraces where viewers must stand, while in all-seater stadiums, barras bravas also remain standing throughout the match.
The most characteristic flags are shaped like giant strips several meters in length, that are deployed from the top of the terrace to the bottom. Each group usually also has a banner with its name.
Traditionally, many members stand upon the crush barriers that are placed in terraces to prevent crushing. In order to not fall from there, they hold on from a "suspender", the body of someone else that is by his side and sustained to the flag, or the hand of some supporter that is standing below.
They start and coordinate most of the chants, wave the most important and big flags and always are located in the centre of the terrace that they occupy. Until the group enters onto the terrace, the centre isn't occuppied by the crowd, being left empty to show respect for the place of the barra brava.
Originally these groups were not very numerous or powerful. Over the years, this changed to the point of cases where the barra brava decided who would be the club's chairman. Since the 1980s and 1990s, hooliganism has grown and some groups engaged in illegal activities such as extorting money from club leadership, players and hawkers that work at the stadium and surroundings, sell tickets to matches on the black market, charge for parking in the vicinity of the stadium, etc. Many members also steal or sell drugs as a way to obtain money for travels, the making of flags or buying elements used in the team's receptions on the pitch. They often provide services to political and union leaders who hire them as agitator groups, goon squads, bodyguards, etc.
They are funded also by club leadership, which may give salaries to some members or even a percentage of the profits. Also, when the stadium of some club is used for a non-football event, usually the club's barra brava members are employed as security guards to take care of the facilities.
In Argentina, since the 2000s, a large percentage of deaths related to football were related to internal disputes within barras bravas, emerging subgroups into it that sometimes even had it own names.
The size of a barra brava is generally related to the level of the club's popularity. However, some clubs have big supporters' groups without being very popular. Group sizes range from a dozen of members in very small clubs, to more than a thousand in important ones, all of them with a hierarchical structure that gets stronger and more complex when the group's size is bigger. There are also many small clubs that don't have a barra brava.