Imagine

Imagine you are ten again! And, you are obsessed about football. You daydream of meeting your footballing heroes one day. To add fuel to your imagination, dad subscribed to a sports magazine- one that is full of colourful pictures, with tiny details about the game that you yet don’t understand fully but somehow appreciate. This periodical becomes your door to that exciting world, that makes you believe that one day- you will watch a game live at the stadium, you will cheer for every slick move, pray with bated breath when the game gets tense and scream like a madman when your hero nets the ball.

For generations after generations in Argentina, El Gráfico was just that and more. Then one day, it disappeared- remaining only as a facsimile on the internet, from a touchable dreamy object to a click and a white screen! This is the story of El Gráfico and how it slowly died on the hands of sports lovers.

From the beginning

The Gráfico started its journey on the hands of Uruguayan entrepreneur by the name of Constancio C. Vigil. He had to stop printing his Atlandia magazine after a riot broke out in 1919. In the aftermath of that, he started  “Editorial Atlántida” under his own publishing house, based out from Buenos Aires, Argentina. From this publishing house came the famous El Gráfico. It was not supposed to be sports-only magazine, it included everything. Its USP was to include a lot of photos (therefore, the name). It became a full blown sports magazine only from 1925 .

Later, this famous magazine’s pages will hear stories from a plethora of great writers and journalists- including Alfredo Rossi, Felix Frascara, Ricardo Lorenzo (with penname Borocoto), Dante Panzeri among others.

Editors of El Gráfico were like superstars, from Dante Panzeri to Carlos Fontanarrosa. Under the supervision of Fontanarossa, journalists like Julio César Pasquato, Osvaldo Ardizzone, Héctor Onesime and Pepe Peña joined the team. The selling of the magazine peaked during the 1978 and 1986 World Cups when Argentina had the final glory. In fact, the magazine reached its commercial peak when 690,998 copies were sold amidst the 1986 World Cup frenzy!

In 2018, as Argentina was going through acute economic crisis, it was decided that the 99-years long print run has to came to an end. El Gráfico has to accept the same fate as other culturally iconic publications like the Buenos Aires Herald (140 years), and La Razon (112 years). The reason to stop was not uncommon- the low consumption level cannot sustain the publication. Those who loved it perhaps would be heartbroken, but in the capitalistic world, it’s unfortunately about the money! El Gráfico could neither compete with the televised medias nor the other printing houses.

What it meant ?

Jonathon Wilson, the famous Sports Author, was heavily disappointed with all this. He mentioned El Gráfico was a huge part of the history of football. He said in an interview, “There has probably never been a magazine as important or as influential as it was in the 1920s, when it helped shape the Argentinian game, helped define what it meant to be Argentinian”.

So we have tried to read through write ups on what El Gráfico meant for others.

Roberto Fontanarrosa, a famous Argentine cartoonist and comic artist once said, “I don’t write about football because I’m a writer who likes it, but because I’m a born football fan. While the intellectuals read Tolstoy, I read El Gráfico.” In Osvaldo Soriano’s (Argentine journalist and writer) words, “I followed football through Aróstegui, Veiga, and I waited for the arrival of El Gráfico, which, for us, the younger ones, was the Bible. I also remember that I had to order the first book I ever read by mail from Editorial Atlántida: it was “El diario de Comeuñas” by Borocotó, a copy that I still have.”

After its death, El Gráfico has become rather a collectible item. Some fans have the whole collection of monthly and the crazy ones even have the weekly prints of the famous periodical. Old fans would now only recall how they used to rush to the newspaper stands on Monday nights, because if you are late, you will not get any copy the next day! El Gráfico was not your typical run of the mill sports magazine, it dived deep into the game, analysis, sports personalities and their professional lives, it well captured not only the obvious things about sports but went much beyond that. Sadly, it was a time capsule for the future generations. Nobody just knew it that time. The magazines will be the reference point for the study of the Argentina’s sports and soccer history.

Image source: By Unknown author – El Grafico magazine, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17741814

Resources:

1. El Gráfico y su punto final, Gastón Chansard, http://www.pausa.com.ar, 2018.
2. El Gráfico: la publicación deportiva con mayor impacto en la historia argentina, Radio Perfil, (year unspecified).
3. El Gráfico: 99-year print run comes to an end, Dan Edwards, Buenos Aires Times, 2018.
4. El Gráfico, la revista que marcó a los argentinos, Gustavo Grazioli, http://www.pagina12.com.ar, 2023.
5. Muere ‘El Gráfico’… ¡llora por mí, Argentina!, Juan Castro, http://www.marca.com, 2018.
6. El Gráfico (Argentina), Wikipedia.