Barra Brava

Barra brava is a name for organized groups of supporters of football teams in Latin America. Their style of supporting is similar to European ultras and hooligan firms. It includes standing throughout the match, singing, and other enthusiastic behavior like waving flags. The phenomenon of barras bravas originated in Argentina during the 1950s and has spread throughout the Americas thereafter. There are similar groups in Mexico called porras, and torcidas organizadas in Brazil. In recent years, many other groups identifying themselves as barras bravas influenced by Argentine groups have emerged.

Groups of fans that stood out for their fervour from the rest of supporters of Argentine teams spontaneously began to appear during the 1920s. These groups were called Barras by the media; a term that is equivalent to the term gang in Argentina and Uruguay but that in its original meaning was used to describe an informal group of people without any relation to crime who meet regularly (for example, a group of friends that meet regularly can be named as a barra). One of those groups named La barra de la Goma ("The barra of the rubber"), was created in 1927 and supported the San Lorenzo de Almagro football (soccer) club. The origin of the name is that barra members would use the rubber of bike wheels (filled with sand and tied with wire at the ends) to attack rival fans during home matches, as they would throw objects to their team's goalkeeper to bother him when he should intervene in the game.

The actions of this group were limited to stadiums, during home matches, and they did not organize themselves to go when the team played away neither they were intended to provoke violence, as it arose spontaneously usually during games that were resulting difficult for their team, as a way to influence the score through intimidation of rival players and referees with insults and launch of blunt objects, although occasionally they used to invade the pitch and came to resort to hits. Also, they intimidated rival fans that tried to bother players of their team with similar methods. Because of this behaviour, at the end of the same decade, few newspapers described this group as "brave" (Spanish for fierce), appearing for first the conjunction barras bravas, but not used then as a denomination.

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