If you attend a soccer match in Buenos Aires of the local Atlanta Athletic Club; you will likely hear the rival teams chanting anti-Semitic slogans. This is because the neighborhood of Villa Crespo has long been considered a Jewish district; and its soccer team; Club Atlético Atlanta; has served as an avenue of integration into Argentine culture. Through the lens of this neighborhood institution; Raanan Rein offers an absorbing social history of Jews in Latin America. Since the Second World War; there has been a conspicuous Jewish presence among the fans; administrators and presidents of the Atlanta soccer club. For the first immigrant generation; belonging to this club was a way of becoming Argentines. For the next generation; it was a way of maintaining ethnic Jewish identity. Now; it is nothing less than family tradition for third generation Jewish Argentines to support Atlanta. The soccer club has also constituted one of the few spaces where both Jews and non-Jews; affiliated Jews and non-affiliated Jews; Zionists and non-Zionists; have interacted. The result has been an active shaping of the local culture by Jewish Latin Americans to their own purposes. Offering a rare window into the rich culture of everyday life in the city of Buenos Aires created by Jewish immigrants and their descendants; Fútbol; Jews; and the Making of Argentina represents a pioneering study of the intersection between soccer; ethnicity; and identity in Latin America and makes a major contribution to Jewish History; Latin American History; and Sports History.
#1156581 in Books Stanford University Press 2002-11Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.25 x .90 x 6.13l; 1.23 #File Name: 0804747083400 pages
Review
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Remarkable!By SuzanneThis scholarly study paints a portrait of an unsung patriot and black American patriarch. How many Americans escaped slavery; survived Civil War Naval duty and then raised sons who all fought in U.S. wars themselves?The author; a Stanford law professor; is pretty accomplished himself: the first black man to head the National Labor Relations Board under President Clinton. Bill Gould has written a clear and sweet study of his great-grandfather. After taking in the panoramic sweep of this inspirational life; we are left to mull over the mystery of it. Who taught young William Gould to read and write well enough to produce a Civil War diary aboard a Union warship?
