Jimmy Burns's Blog, page 8

March 24, 2016

Cruyff- Dream Maker

When people ask me , an anglo-spaniard- born in 1953 in Madrid a few hundred yards  from the Bernabeu,the year of Di Stefano’s arrival,  why I am a Barca fan, I mention Johan Cruyff.


Hearing the news of his death brings back those heady days of the mid 1970’s when I first fell in love with FC Barcelona thanks to the flying Dutchman who later created Barca’s a  ‘dream team’-one of several as it would turn out- thereby leaving an enduring legacy.


For if in  its political and cultural dimension FC Barcelona  has long prided itself in being ‘mes que un club’ – more than a club- it was  Cruyff’s coming  to it in 1974 which proved  a defining moment in the club’s   evolution as universally respected sporting institution  at a hugely significant moment in Spanish history.


Cruyff  arrived in Barcelona having already earned a reputation as a living legend playing for Ajax –initially under Vic Buckingham and later Rinus Michels- and the Dutch national team.  Cruyff , never known for his modesty, would later admit to having Michels  as his “first and only football master.” It was under his coaching that Cruyff fin 1966 played a leading role in Ajax’s first real achievement in the European Cup, helping the team trounce Liverpool 5-1 in Amsterdam, and scoring two memorable goals in the return tie, in front of the Kop.


It was in Holland that Cruyff emerged as the star performer of what the Dutch first and called ‘total football’. It was the concept under which every player was supposed to have comparable technical and physical abilities and be able to interchange roles and positions  at will.


At its best the system was supposed to have players in a  seemingly effortless collective flow of transition for most of the game, an exciting mixture of  dribbling, first-touch passing and goals, rather than long balls or kicks into touch.


The number 14 Cruyff wore on his shirt was as surprising as his play. While he might play centre-forward, he was often seen playing through the midfield or out on either wing, his ever-changing figure on the pitch playing havoc with any conventional concept of defence


Cruyff’s star with Ajax seemed on a never-ending ascendant  until his fellow less talented  Dutch players, resentful of  his higher earnings and his character,  in 1973 voted against his captaincy.  That summer he signed a $1m three-year contact with FC Barcelona-the highest ever paid until then by the club for any player. After years of being humiliated by the memory of Real Madrid ‘golden years’ and the continuing superiority of its rival, Barca, now with Michels as its coach,  was ready for its own Di Stefano, a player that could make a team great thanks to the influence of his personality and genius on and off the field.


In his first season, Cruyff brought Barca out of its doldrums and into a  brilliant zone many of its fans had been longing for.  Within weeks  the club had positioned itself at  the top of the Spanish league and resisted all attempts to replace them.


During  that first memorable season, Barca played football not only with an enormous self-confidence but  also with particular vengeance against the one opponent that had always mattered-Real Madrid- beaten in its own Bernabeu  stadium 5-0.  Of all the goals it was Cruyff’s that seemed guided by particular magic. Picking up the ball on the turn just inside Real Madrid’s half, Cruyff weaved in and out of  the defence, his nimble frame turning at sharp angles, then accelerating like a cheetah chasing his prey before skipping effortlessly over a final desperate sliding tackle and striking home past the goalkeeper.


His contribution  to Real Madrid’s defeat, as wrote the New York Times correspondent in the aftermath of the match, did more for the spirit of the Catalan nation in ninety minutes than many politicians  had achieved in years of stifled nationalist struggle. Indeed  Cruyff- nicknamed El Salvador  – was never just a footballer. Into a Spain still ruled by a repressive dictatorship Cruyff  brought with him some much needed social and cultural fresh air from his native Holland. His defiance of the Franco regime’s prohibitive laws on the use of the Catalan language,  by registering his son with the Catalan name Jordi,  came to symbolise the sense of imminent  liberation that democratic Spaniards were feelings in the   dying days of the old dictator.


As a player, Cruyff went on to give fans like myself many more hours of sheer delight, as a new Spain post-Franco took its place among the democratic nations of Europe.  But it was his second coming to FC Barcelona as coach which was to  prove more successful and far reaching in sporting terms than the first.  When he signed up as Barca coach in May 1988, Cruyff not only ushered a period of unprecedented football success for the club, but provided it with a culture and style that would endure long after his retirement .


If Cruyff  hadn’t done nothing else, Barca’s victory in the European Cup final at Wembley in the summer of 1992, would have earned him a significant  place in  the club’s official history.  Thanks to the ‘dream team’ that Cruyff coached and Koeman’s winning goal , Barca became champions  of Europe for the first time, and the first Spanish champions since Real Madrid had won the  title more than a quarter of a century before.  Cruyff had achieved his personal ambition of leading Barca to the title he had won as player with Ajax twenty-one years  earlier. He had also fuelled  the Catalan sense of national identity, while teaching Barca fans a lesson in the meaning of success.


While in fact it  would take several years more before Barca managed to catch up with Real Madrid in terms of national and international achievement, the process  eventually entered a new golden period under Pep Guardiola   a player turned coach who owed his inspiration to Cruyff.


The lesson of the Cruyff years was that Barca could have foreigners and Spaniards (not just Catalans)  in its team, some drawn from its exemplary youth academy La Massia, and produce  hugely entertaining  football which won titles and enhanced the value of the club, commercially as well as culturally. Thanks to Cruyff , fans like me rediscovered why the club  mattered to them.


Which is why so many fans  of my generation remember the day in early 1991 that Cruyff was rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack. He was subsequently diagnosed with coronary fatigue brought on by the narrowing of an artery, almost certa8nly provoked by his heavy-smoking habit.


When in his first press conference after undergoing an operation double-bypass operation, he talked about his scrape with death, he did so with humour. “It’s one’s good fortune to have a God watching over one and making sure when something like this happens that there happens to be a hospital nearby.”


Soon afterwards Cruyff made himself available for an anti-smoking campaign organised by the Catalan government. A poster showed him tanned and relaxed, and healthy alongside the words : “In my life I’ve had two vices: smoking and playing football. Football has given me everything in life. Smoking nearly took it away from me.”


Months ago, he was stoic when making public that he had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and although many of us prepared for the inevitable there was a part of us that recalled how his recovery the first time round seemed to personify the resurrection of the club itself. This time the dream of having Johan beat death again failed us and we tilted at windmills.


However my enduring memory of Johan will be sharing tapas and wine with him  at his home outside Barcelona one sultry summer’s evening  in the late 1990’s while researching  the first edition of my book ‘Barca: A People’s Passion’. I was utterly absorbed as  I  listened to him taking me breathlessly  through the modern history of  FC Barcelona,  his eccentric if non-grammatical use of English matched in its unrivalled originality  only by his captivating thought and insight   around the game of football and its worth . His spirit will endure in the Camp Nou.


 


The post Cruyff- Dream Maker appeared first on Jimmy Burns.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on March 24, 2016 08:22

February 17, 2016

La Mujer en La Vida de Francisco

En un futuro difícil de pronosticar . me cuesta imaginar que la BBC pueda darse la enhorabuena por una primicia sobre el Papa Francisco que tenga que ver con una amistad duradera con una mujer, detalles de los cuales al parecer fueron ocultados por el Vaticano, enterrados en un archivo de biblioteca y pasados por alto por los historiadores.

Yo no intento aquí emitir un juicio sobre el descubrimiento de cartas íntimas y fotografías de la amistad que tuvo el Papa ‘Santo San Juan Pablo Segundo con Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, una filósofa casada y Polaca como el – aparte de comentar que mi colega Británico no ha hecho ninguna sugerencia que los votos del celibato se rompieron , y la historia tal como ha sido expuesta debería haber sido conocida públicamente años atrás. Que no fue así, ha permitido al periodista de la BBC Ed Stourton justificar la publicación de su historia en base de razones éticas y de interés público, descargándose de cualquier otra responsabilidad . El hecho es que pesar de que Stourton insiste que su historia no implica nada más fuerte que una amistad que le “humaniza” el Papa Juan Pablo , su ‘primicia’ huele a escándalo y ha provocado un nuevo debate sobre la supuesta hipocresía del clero y la velocidad injustificada de una canonización. Tales son los peligros de daños a la reputación en la era digital.

Evidentemente, el periodismo de nuestros días se ha vuelto más sentencioso pero tenemos un Papa diferente. La transparencia y la rendición de cuentas han sido sellos distintivos del Papa Francisco y su relación con las mujeres ha sido un libro abierto a lo largo de su papado, después de haber sido objeto de escrutinio por sus biógrafos.

En mi biografía –Franciscus, El Papa de La Promese que publica esta semana la editorial Stella Maris- , trato ligeramente la correspondencia que según se dijo Jorge Bergoglio mantuvo a los doce años y en la cual prometió a su primero amorío que si no se casaba con ella, él se convertiría en un sacerdote. La historia fue contada por una jubilada en Buenos Aires llamada Amalia Damonte en el período inmediatamente posterior a la elección de Bergoglio como Papa.

La historia más tarde desapareció de los titulares con la misma rapidez con que había salido a la superficie. Nunca fue confirmada por el propio Francisco, pero según aclaro su hermana sobreviviente María Elena, la carta pudo haber sido un producto de la imaginación inofensiva de una anciana.

Más central en la narrativa de la vida de Bergoglio fue los muchos días que pasó ofreciendo consuelo espiritual a las prostitutas cuando ejercía de sacerdote jesuita en la ciudad Argentina de Córdoba, y denunciando, tras sus visitas a los barrios pobres de Buenos Aires, la injusticia de tráfico y abuso de las mujeres inmigrantes.

En las estrechas relaciones personales que desarrolló con mujeres , la que mantuvo con Clelia Luro fue sin duda alguna la más notable si se considera el hecho de que ella era una persona que desafio abiertamente la enseñanza dogmática de la Iglesia. Clelia era una madre separada con seis hijos. Se enamoró con el obispo de Avellaneda argentino, Jerónimo Podestá, durante la década de los 60, mientras trabajaba para él como su secretaria privada.

La pareja se casó en 1972 después de que Podestá fue despojado de su autoridad para celebrar la misa, confesar y ordenar sacerdotes. Durante el régimen militar que llegó al poder en Argentina en 1976, los dos se fueron al exilio ya a su apoyo a la teología de la liberación, los puso en riesgo de prisión, o asesinato.

Clelia se convirtió en una feminista radical, haciendo campaña a favor de las mujeres sacerdotes. Ella también estableció un grupo de apoyo para las mujeres, como ella, que sufrían al ser condenados y excluidas por las autoridades eclesiásticas por haber contribuido a romper el celibato clerical..

En el año 2000, dos años después de Bergoglio había sido nombrado arzobispo de Buenos Aires, y de que Podestá se encontrántrase de vuelta en Argentina con Clelia, este fue diagnosticado con cáncer terminal. Unos días más tarde Podestá fue hospitalizado por última vez. Nadie de la Iglesia argentina se acercó a Clelia para ofrecer apoyo- nadie, salvo, Bergoglio.

El futuro Papa llamo a Clelia tan pronto como escuchó la noticia del enfermedad y llegó al hospital cuando Podestá ya estaba en coma. Bergoglio sostuvo la mano de su amigo, ungió la frente de Podestá con aceite vegetal puro y oro palabras de consuelo, paz y coraje, perdonando sus pecados. A Clelia no la dejó ninguna duda de que ella estaba en la presencia del Espíritu Santo, que traía consigo la confianza en un Dios benigno, y forjó una amistad duradera con Bergoglio.

Durante los doce años siguientes Clelia y Bergoglio se vieron cada cierto tiempo, aunque de forma irregular. Mantuvieron una estrecha amistad gracias a la llamada que recibía de Bergoglio cada domingo en su teléfono móvil, iniciando una conversación que a menudo duraba casi una hora.

Ocho meses después de la elección del Papa Franciscus, ella murió. En uno de últimos contactos con su viejo amigo, Celia envió a Francisco una copia firmada de un libro de memorias que había escrito con Podestá acerca de sus cuarenta años de vida de casados, unidos por el amor y la convicción moral, social y política que el celibato debería ser opcional en la Iglesia católica .


The post La Mujer en La Vida de Francisco appeared first on Jimmy Burns.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on February 17, 2016 06:37

February 14, 2016

Francisco o la Nemesis de Trump

Francisco o la Nemesis de Trump


Bienvenido a México, Papa Francisco, tierra de la Chingada, donde te  acercas a esa frontera con el Norte, a la periferia, a la riqueza, a la intolerancia de Trump.

Como escribo en mi libro Papa de La Promesa (Stella Maris, Barcelona) , que se publica esta semana :

Francisco representa la mayoría de todo lo que Donald Trump encuentra objetable.

Me gustaría enumerar todo esto, sin ningún orden en particular:

La amabilidad y la tolerancia hacia las minorías, y otras razas y religiones.

La preocupación por el calentamiento global hasta el punto de hacer un llamamiento a una reducción inmediata y drástica de generadores de energía y residuos contimantes.

Una crítica al capitalismo, y la creencia en el bien común basado en la solidaridad humana y en una comunidad verdaderamente cristiana según lo previsto por las Bienaventuranzas.

Humildad.

Espiritualidad

Discernimiento jesuítico.

Capacidad de escuchar al otro.

Un Dios de las sorpresas que se enfrenta a un Dios de Mammon.

De un modo u otro, en el futuro próximo Francisco o Trump verán sus índices de popularidad subir o bajar en los EE.UU. Sospecho que Francisco será la némesis de Trump. Él tiene a Dios de su lado.


The post Francisco o la Nemesis de Trump appeared first on Jimmy Burns.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on February 14, 2016 02:36

December 21, 2015

Podemos – Spain’s Joker in the Pack

If there was an enduring legacy of the Spanish Civil War, it was that whatever its outcome, Spain was fated for decades subsequently to be divided between winners and losers-and Franco imposed his victory, brutally, with little sense of reconciliation.

Seen against this historical background , perhaps the best thing that can be said about Spain’s general election is that there were no clear winners or losers, at least not to the extent of any one party being able to claim the moral authority to impose its governance unilaterally.

Indeed two common themes emerged from the post-election speeches of all four main party leaders with each striking an optimistic note. The first- a need for dialogue-was shared by Marian Rajoy and Pedro Sanchez, the leaders of the two most voted parties. The second – from Podemos’s Pablo Iglesias ad Ciudadanos Albert Rivera-was the conviction that the old ways of doing politics -cronyism, corruption, imposition-as characterised by a succession of Spanish democratic governments in the post-Franco era was over and would now give way to a period of fundamental reform and regeneration.

Taken individually and analysed in more detail, the speeches were in themselves less worthy of finding an honoured place in future history books. Rajoy struggled to convey any sense of statesmanship which undoubtedly will be required if any stable government is to emerge in the coming weeks; Pedro Sanchez showed at least a measure of democratic sensibility by conceding ng that the PP as the most voted party should be the first to try and form a government-while hardly coming across with either the vision or the charisma of an alternative president in waiting.

As for the alternatives, Rivera did his reputation no good by speaking as if he had won an election when in fact Ciudadanos’ result were way below what he and other party strategists had hoped for, leaving his claim to be the anointed power broker somewhat diminished.

Which leaves Podemos still far from gaining the kind of electoral support that would legitimise it ruling Spain unilaterally but nonetheless delighted with a result which Iglesias and his followers will celebrate as a step towards power in the future.

This joker in the pack –less we forget it – believes in radical democracy built on difference and dissent and the assumption that liberal democracy is essentially oppressive and needs to be re-negotiated and altered.

Podemos has stirred grass-roots politics throughout Spain- but its capacity to stoirr up a hornest’s nest is greatest in in Catalunya with its support for a referendum on independence . So far neither it nor parties who oppose such a referendum have yet to make a convincing argument as to how their positions can serve the common good. The Catalan question and how other parties choose to resolve it will provide the real test of whether Spain’s democracy has matured and become more consensual or simply deviated into a new battleground.


The post Podemos – Spain’s Joker in the Pack appeared first on Jimmy Burns.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on December 21, 2015 03:50

December 19, 2015

John le Carré & Graham Greene

Review of Adam Sisman’s Biography of John le Carré

pubilshed in The Tablet 17 December 2015




As admirers of Graham Greene will know, espionage can provide the context for exceptional novels. Few living writers have learned that lesson as well as David Cornwell, better known as John le Carré.

Le Carré, like Greene, drew from his own experience in the intelligence servies to produce some of his best work: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, relatively early on in his writing career, and A Perfect Spy, described by Philip Roth as “the best English novel since the war”, halfway through it. In stark contrast to Ian Fleming’s comic-strip hero James Bond, the morally ambivalent and vulnerable characters in le Carré’s spy novels shed a light on the murkier aspects of the world of the secret services, exposing its cynicism and amorality as well as its understated courage.


The ghost of Greene looms large over le Carré’s life and work. For both, their fiction is a way of escape from unresolved dilemmas in their personal lives. The Catholic guilt associated with adultery and marital breakdown gives Greene’s The End of the Affair its emotional charge, while the burden of having a fraudster and philanderer as a father fuels the distaste for treacherous Cold War agents and greedy corporations and corrupt politicians in the post 9/11 world that drives le Carré’s most accomplished novels.


Many of le Carré’s later novels leave spies and spying behind, but whereas Greene’s Catholic faith – for all its doubts – came to give the best of his writing scope and edge, le Carré’s restless and seemingly addictive search for a cause has failed to generate universal recognition of him as a great writer, despite him being a prolific (23 novels in 50 years) and hugely popular one. While Greene stands virtually uncontested as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, le Carré’s reputation remains, as Adam Sisman puts it, “curiously ambiguous”. His critics not only question whether even his best spy novels amount to great literature, but doubt he is anything more than a good spy writer who has struggled to succeed in other genres.


Adam Sisman is at his best in this meticu­lous and illuminating biography in detailing the rise and rise of the obsessively driven professional spy turned celebrity novelist, churning out a novel every two years or so, several of which would subsequently be turned into lucrative TV series or feature films,

to keep his agents and publishers happy.


For an author acutely conscious of his place in the literary pecking order, it was brave of le Carré to encourage his biographer to “write without restraints”. But it was a calculated risk. Sisman admits to being a long-term admirer of le Carré’s work, counting himself among those who believe that he is one of the most important English writers of the post-war period. Thankfully, his biography stops well short of hagiography. Sisman agreed to le Carré’s precondition that he would not press him about his time working as a spy. He acknowledges that while it may have served le Carré’s purpose to keep this aspect of his life hidden – another “cover”, like his name – it would do the reader a disservice, and probably the subject too, if he didn’t try and find out as much as he could about his time in the intelligence services from other sources.


We learn that le Carré was recruited by MI5 to spy on his fellow students while at Oxford, then served in MI6 in post-war Germany, where he befriended, among others, two well-known Catholic servants of the Crown, the Foreign Office’s David Goodall and MI6’s Peter Lunn, son of the convert and apologist Arnold Lunn. A fluent German speaker, le Carré is widely recognised by his former colleagues to have done a good job, vetting refugees and recruiting agents.


After leaving MI6 to devote himself to writing full time, le Carré maintained informal contacts with British intelligence, being invited by spy chiefs to speak to recruits even after he had strongly criticised the US “war on ­terror” in Iraq. The final pages contain a rare mea culpa. His friend, the late MI6 chief David Spedding, confessed to le Carré just before he died of lung cancer in 2001: “You can’t imagine how disgusting our world has become.”


By then, le Carré’s secret world had turned full circle, back to the early days of the Cold War, when Alec Leamas, the jaded intelligence officer in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, had hit out at the moral ambiguity of the work he was asked to do in the service of his country. “What the hell do you think spies are?” he asks his girlfriend, “moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They’re not! They’re just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me: little men, drunkards, queers, henpecked ­husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives.”


And yet  le Carré refused – when given the opportunity – to meet the Cambridge spy Kim Philby at his Moscow home, on patriotic grounds. Like Greene, le Carré was fascinated by Philby’s ability to deceive and both writers were to use him as source material. But, unlike Greene, le Carré could never consider Philby worthy of friendship – perhaps because he lacked the compassion and literary imagination of a Catholic.





The post John le Carré & Graham Greene appeared first on Jimmy Burns.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on December 19, 2015 08:46

Reasons to be Positive

Looking back on the last few months of 2015 and some of the events that make me feel positive about the future


18th June Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ – Care of our common home, emphasises the connection between environmental degradation and poverty, between the love for creation and poverty reduction and the interconnection between human dignity, human development and human ecology.

http://www.cafod.org.uk/…/UK-…/pope-francis-first-encyclical



Ist July The U.S. and Cuba have reached an agreement to restore diplomatic relations and reopen embassies in each other’s capitals, a senior administration official said Tuesday, the biggest step yet toward ending a half century of enmity between the two countries.

9th September I give Pope Francis signed copy of my book Pope of Good Promise during papal audience in St Peter’s Square.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oK2PQJNHg8


12th October Film ‘Sufragette’ released

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HdQ0iVrl2Y


23rd October Adele releases Hello

http://www.theguardian.com/…/…/adele-hello-new-song-25-video


30th November Pope Francis says Christians and Muslims should turn their back on revenge and hatred and tells worshippers in a mosque in the Central African Republic that “Christians and Muslims are brothers and sisters”.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-34960971


13th December A deal to attempt to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 2C is agreed at the climate change summit in Paris.The pact is the first to commit all countries to cut carbon emissions. Key blocs, including the G77 group of developing countries, and nations such as China and India said they supported the proposals.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35084374


December 15 Britain’s Major Tim Peake joins Russian Yuri Malenchenko and American Tim Kopra as they blast off to space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan .


http://www.independent.co.uk/…/tim-peake-british-astronaut-…


December 18th A resolution, passed unanimously by the UN Security Council, sets out a timetable for formal talks and a unity government in Syria within six months.



The post Reasons to be Positive appeared first on Jimmy Burns.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on December 19, 2015 08:38

December 11, 2015

Laying the Ghost of Peron

Laying the ghost of Perón
10 December 2015 by Jimmy Burns The Tablet



This week the newly elected Mauricio Macri was sworn in as president of Argentina, replacing a generation of Peronists. Can he unite a country troubled by poverty and corruption, issues that Pope Francis frequently highlighted in his days as Archbishop of Buenos Aires?


A new chapter in Latin American politics has been opened up with the election of Mauricio Macri, a ­businessman and former football club boss, as president of Argentina . It follows a ­historic victory over the main candidate ­representing the Peronist party, whose ideological current and factions have dominated Argen­tinian politics since the Second World War.


Within hours of his election, Macri, who was sworn in this week, reassured everyone that he would build his presidency on the basis of consensus. In contrast to the outgoing president, the radical Peronist Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, he was shown during the campaign not to be combative by nature, and with a record free of cronyism. This appears to have appealed to voters disillusioned by the confrontation and corruption that came to characterise the 12-year rule of Kirchner, who succeeded her late husband, Néstor, as president.


“What is clear is that this is a victory for a different way of doing politics: a way that is open to dialogue and is measured, not messianic,” commented the leading Argentinian Catholic journal, Criterio, in an editorial.


Macri’s coalition, known as Cambiemos – “We can change” – secured a narrow, ­second-round victory after an intensely contested presidential election that saw the electorate split between three main groups. The first, comprising loyal supporters of Kirchner’s Frente para la Victoria (the FPV, or Front for Victory), backed her late husband’s former vice president, the outgoing governor of Buenos Aires province, Daniel Scioli.


The second was a smaller group of dissident Peronists, who backed Sergio Massa. The third, Macri’s own voters, was an alliance of conservatives, members of the other trad­itional party, the centre-Left Unión Civica Radical (the UCR, or Radical Civic Union), and a large section of the electorate that simply wanted a clean break from the past.


Despite coming from an Italian immigrant family, Macri is no rags-to-riches politician. His fortune derives from his businessman father, Franco, who made his money out of lucrative contracts during the bloody­­ military regime that engineered a coup in 1976 and collapsed in 1982 after the Falklands War. The family firm, whose interests straddled construction, finance and manufacturing, adapted well to Argentina’s transition to civilian government, despite some run-ins with the judiciary over alleged trading malpractice, and thanks to good relations with the Government of Carlos Menem, which liberalised the economy during the 1990s.


Mauricio’s decision to enter politics followed his kidnapping in 1991 – and his release after the family reportedly paid a multi-million-dollar ransom. At the age of 36, he became president of Argentina’s most popular football club, the Buenos Aires-based Boca Juniors. His term in office, from 1996 to 2008, was the most successful in the club’s history and acted as a springboard when he formed his centre-Right Republican Proposal, or PRO, in 2003.


Three years later, Macri was elected to Congress and, in 2007, he became mayor of Buenos Aires, subsequently reducing the city’s crime rate and improving its public transport and environment to the benefit of residents and tourists alike. Despite being caricatured by the Peronists as a ruthless capitalist, his popularity grew in line with his reputation for efficiency, compromise and transparency.


His election may have benefited from the impartiality of Pope Francis, who in his days as a Jesuit priest had shown some sympathy for the Peronist cause. This time, the only public comment Francis made was to urge people to “vote with their consciences”. The advice was dutifully echoed in a statement by Argentina’s bishops, along with other Bergoglio concepts, such as the need to vote for a “culture of encounter and respect” , “social friendship” and “genuine dialogue”.


If the Church was relatively discreet during the campaign, it was largely because Macri and Scioli were both pro-life – as Kirchner had been – and there was no offer to liberalise the country’s restrictive abortion laws on abortion. Macri’s campaign was not derailed by media reports recalling criticisms of him by the then Cardinal Bergoglio for encouraging the first gay marriage ceremony in Buenos Aires during his time as mayor.


Nor did HE lose votes because his own ­marital status – thrice married with four ­children after two divorces – was not in line with church teaching. In fact, his admission to being a non-practising Catholic could apply to a majority of middle-class Argentinians,  who now look to Pope Francis for guidance on political morality as well as a less dogmatic attitude towards remarriage and other areas of their private lives.


On balance, the memory of Bergoglio’s denunciation of corruption during the Kirchner regimes probably tipped many disillusioned voters in favour of Macri. During the campaign, some priests in the shanty neighbourhoods clashed with Aníbal Fernández, one of the Kirchners’ closest allies and the candidate for the governorship of Buenos Aires, because of his alleged links with drug trafficking.


In the event, Fernández was defeated by María Eugenia Vidal, the former deputy mayoress under Macri and the first woman (and first non-Peronist since 1987) to be voted into this office. The province of Buenos Aires includes 40 per cent of the country’s population, and is thus a key political fiefdom.


Although Kirchner’s FPV has retained control of the senate – and could therefore block some of Macri’s legislation until at least mid-term elections in two years’ time – several governors support the new president, making it easier to ensure co-participation in tax ­revenue raising, historically a source of tension in Argentina’s weak federal system. Meanwhile, his ministerial appointments ­suggest a pragmatic approach.


His father, Franco, now 85, declared recently that his son had “the brain to be president, but not the heart”. Certainly by the time Francis makes his first visit home since his election as Pope – probably within the next year or so – Macri will need to have shown he can inspire a sense of the common good, a tough call in a country not best-known for its collective grasp of true democracy.


Jimmy Burns is a specialist writer on Latin America and author of Francis: Pope of good promise, published by Constable.


The post Laying the Ghost of Peron appeared first on Jimmy Burns.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on December 11, 2015 10:08

November 21, 2015

One-sided El Clasico

A one-sided affair

This evening’s El Clasico was a one-sided affair and therefore not a match worthy of the greatest rivalry in football. But this is not to take away the performance of Barca-its energy, skill, and team spirit- all factors evidently lacking in the team fielded by Rafa Benitez.

Real Madrid played like a team emerging from a long summer break. With the exception of Marcelo and Ronaldo, the players in white were outpaced and out passed, not least on the left flank where Neymar, Iniesta, and Jordi Alba combined with speed and efficacy.

It’s always good to see Iniesta not just on form but also score a goal, and a standing ovation he got from Real Madrid fans honoured him and honoured them.

Good too to see Messi back, and seemingly fit.

It was 0-4 to Barca. It could have easily been 0-6 thanks to some brilliant saves by Bravo, and two very poor shots at goal by the substitute Munir. Poor lad. Having a trio like Neymar, Suarez, and Messi can be as easily tough to follow as inspirational although Sergio Roberto showed clear signs of maturing at a more impressive rate.


The post One-sided El Clasico appeared first on Jimmy Burns.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on November 21, 2015 11:38

November 15, 2015

Football against the real enemy

Football against the Enemy, as my good friend and colleague Simon Kuper titled his seminal book on the political and cultural passions generated by the game, could well take on new meaning later this week.

With an admirable sense and sensibility not common in the football world, the French and English football authorities  have agreed to go ahead with the match between their respective national teams.

While the game might have been cancelled on grounds of extended mourning, not to have gone ahead with it would have been an admission of fear and insecurity, and would have handed the ideologues of Islamic terror another propaganda coup.

Instead-and I have no doubt of this- on Tuesday Wembley will be packed, and will resonate with passionate renderings of God Save the Queen and La Marseillaise , with the anthems complementing rather that antagonising each other as a restoration of faith in what unites civilised societies.

That said it would be a pity if the occasion is hijacked by xenophobic football fans in a show of bigotry. Rather it should be an opportunity for people of all races, and faiths to stand shoulder should to shoulder in solidarity and shared respect for the cherished principles of democracy-human rights, political tolerance, and the rule of law.

The fact that the game was arranged months ago as a ‘friendly’ between two countries proud of their democratic traditions should set the defining note, with the baser instincts of rivalry giving way to a clear perception of the common good. Football against the real enemy,  that which terrorises.


The post Football against the real enemy appeared first on Jimmy Burns.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on November 15, 2015 02:02

October 17, 2015

An appreciative reader

” I absolutely loved “Pope of Good Promise” which I read in hardly more than a long single sitting. It’s beautifully written, hugely engaging and built on what must be a unique well of experience and knowledge.  I loved the way it’s written as an intensely personal journey, and in particular the way you bend over backwards to be fair and balanced to all concerned, sharing your own doubts and intuitions. You took a risk in writing about your transcendental experience in the Basque Country but you carry it off with conviction.

The book’s range is impressive. I went in thinking I knew something about the Jesuits, Argentina, Peronism, Pope Francis and matters of the Church but came out knowing so much more and – above all – with real understanding.  One of my best reads of the year, without a doubt.” Rod Pryde, former head of British Council  in Madrid  at Wigtown Festival

The post An appreciative reader appeared first on Jimmy Burns.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on October 17, 2015 13:05

Jimmy Burns's Blog

Jimmy Burns
Jimmy Burns isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but they do have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from their feed.
Follow Jimmy Burns's blog with rss.