2024-08-17 03:01:00
One of the best-known cases of rugby’s social contribution (let’s be clear: it’s not the only one) is that of the Los Espartanos Foundation. Its aim is, as advertised on its website, to “transform the lives of people deprived of their freedom.” First, a men’s rugby team was formed in the San Martín prison, in the province of Buenos Aires, and the idea expanded to 60 prisons in 16 provinces. Since 2016, there is also a women’s rugby team in Unit 47, in the same Buenos Aires district.
In 2021, when the Covid pandemic caused less confinement, the writer Agustina Caride visited the detainees at least once a week. From that experience came the book Let’s go girls! – The Spartansthe first women’s rugby team in prison (Editorial Marea).
-In Let’s go girls! You tell few but powerful stories. Which one had the greatest impact on you?
–The one that struck me the most is not in the book, I didn’t include it because I didn’t hear it from her. She was a very young girl, in her early twenties. Very pretty, she wasn’t a Spartan, she only sat at the table once and had been sentenced to life for murder. She didn’t seem like a murderer, more like a victim.
–What did listening to those lives and touring the prison teach you?
–Not to prejudge. I understood the benefits of a team sport, the values that can be transmitted and learned from a game when it is played fairly. I also learned that I am not special. They brought out that “writer’s ego” in me. I was one of them. And without a doubt I valued life, freedom, the privileged place where I was born and raised. I left home at 25, almost thrown out by my father, and that, which in my life became a tragedy, compared to their stories was a world of perfumed cotton. I was even ashamed to share “my problems.” Were there really problems?
–Were there differences between what you expected to find and what you found?
–I went in thinking that I was going to build them and in the end I ended up deconstructing myself. I started simplifying myself. From something as banal as the clothes I thought about every Monday “so as not to show off.” I went in with the anxiety of getting to know them and ended up reviewing my own history. “Hey, tell us.” They wanted to know, they needed something from outside, from the street. In that sense, I suppose I went in to leave them something from outside (I have brought them paintings, plants to decorate) and I left with something from inside, from the smell of cigarettes, the cold in winter, the music that kept playing because of the loud volume at which they listen to cumbia.
–Did you have any prejudices?
–Yes, it was inevitable. I looked at them and couldn’t stop thinking, what could they have done to be here? That was the first day, I would even say the first few minutes (I used to stay between an hour and a half and two hours). Because as soon as the table was set, they passed around the mate and the biscuits, it was like being at a birthday party where you don’t know anyone, but you know it’s just a matter of time, that someone is going to ask you a question and when you answer, communication will begin. That’s how it was, one wanted to know if I had children, what I did, and little by little I let go of my barriers of containment. The second time they greeted me or introduced me, they already knew that I liked my mate sweet. In winter they waited for me with hot tea and closed the windows for me. So, that gesture of the first day, as if I needed to hang my purse across the street, ended up in the gesture of leaving the purse forgotten on a bench, of telling one to hand me my cell phone or to look for a pen. Where? There, in the wallet.
–Positive, then.
–I think it was a learning experience for everyone. The girls on the field, the prison guards (bichas) and the coach too, as well as me. Despite calling them bichas, they get along well. The day they played a game outside the prison, there were three of them who wanted to go to the bathroom, and a guard had to accompany them. I walked behind them, and I saw them as four friends, except that one of them had a gun hanging from her belt. But they laughed, they chatted as if they were really in half-time, or third half. That struck me. I think that type of relationship grew thanks to being Spartans, to the sport that somehow makes everyone equal. Something I didn’t know about rugby is that anyone can play it. That is, there is a position for everyone, for different types of people. You can be short or tall, fat or skinny, clumsy or skilled, fast or slow. You play anyway, there is a position for each type. On the other hand, it was a sport they knew nothing about, not one rule. Starting out was not only starting from scratch, but all of them at the same level. That is already a great metaphor for many things in their lives. There, where you have to be careful that your shirts or shoes are not stolen, where there is the leader, the silly one, the cool one, suddenly they were equals with equal opportunities. In the game each one found where to stand out, what to offer to the team. Being part of a team also says a lot: it is learning to live together, to understand that each movement they make benefits or harms the rest, let’s say the rest as a society.
–Anything you would have liked to add to the book?
–It always happens that over time you realize what you didn’t say, or should have said. Now I don’t know… (laughter). An image comes to mind, that of the barriers. To enter the prison there is a barrier that they raise, and the car goes through (or on foot if you go on foot). Then you have to go through a wire gate, like a chicken coop. Then you cross the wall through an iron gate, then you enter the hallways and they open the locks. Behind all that, there are the women. I don’t know, I kept thinking about that, about all the barriers that we put between people, between human beings. I don’t forget that they are imprisoned for a reason, but the question is how do they get out of there knowing that there are so many obstacles? I mean, they get out, the problem is what awaits them outside? A second chance? Are those of us who live on this side willing to give second chances? Or are we going to keep putting up barriers?
–The title of the book was already prepared for you.
–”Let’s go, girls!” was the shout they gave at a game I went to see. The one in which three of them went to the bathroom with the security. They played at a club in Tigre, their family, friends, and children were milling around. It was very emotional to see them run, hugging their loved ones. They wore the jersey with the pride of knowing that they were going to show off, to put on a show. They had formed a circle, the coach was in the middle giving the final instructions. And then, before the circle was dismantled, one of them clapped and shouted what ended up as the title: Let’s go, girls! And she added “damn.”