CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Throughout the past several decades and into the present the canchitas, or playgrounds for informalfootball, have been a key instrument for the articulation of community life, identityand solidarity networks in Argentine shantytowns. During the 1950s and1960s,for example, canchitas and localfootball associations weresimultaneously a vehicle for each shantytown todefine it own character, andthe founding stones for neighbourhood improvementcommittees. Furthermore, thesymbolic density of the canchita is enhanced by the fact that it liesdirectly in front ofthe shantytown?s parish chapel, the keystone of religiousand charity life, andis crucially accompanied by an icon of the Gauchito Gil,a character of populardevotion in Argentina. The importance of football in the film, asareflection of its centrality in everyday life, is not limited to theshantytownbut rather applies to the society as a whole ? the individual isdefined by theway they play it or watch it. The canchita reflects the specificity of theshantytown environment: thesocial encounters taking place here evolve into aturning point in thetrajectory of one of the protagonists, Fredy (Julio Zarza),underlining themultiplicity of meanings and functions served by football forArgentine society.