"Cumbia, nena": Cumbia Scene, Gender and Class in Argentina

Abstract

At the beginning of the last decade, while researching the world of Argentine soccer fans, we interviewed an important member of a fan group of the Racing de Buenos Aires soccer club. This group called itself “Los Racing Stones” and, during the interview, we discussed the reasons this name was chosen when the group formed towards the end of the 1980s. The answer, as we expected, was a play on the Rolling Stones. For a group of young white middle-class men who loved soccer almost as much as the band’s music, the name served as a way to present themselves as rockeros while also indicating-in a broad and unspecific way-that they were transgressors and “rebels.” What surprised us was what the young man said next: “But now all of that has passed. Cumbia scarfed it all down. Rock doesn’t mean anything important”(personal interview, 2001).