Sports, Human Rights and Diplomacy: Argentine ‘Rebel’ Rugby Tours to South Africa in the 1980s

This paper examines the domestic and diplomatic repercussions of ‘rebel’ tours of Argentine rugby teams to South Africa in the 1980s. It argues that the negative reactions triggered by the participation of Argentine rugby players in matches against South African sides despite the international boycott against apartheid has to be understood in the context of Argentina’s democratic restoration and coming to terms with the legacies of massive human rights violations under the dictatorship of 1976–1983. Critics of the tours argued that playing with the South Africans helped legitimise a regime whose oppressive policies were a reminder of Argentina’s recent past. The tours also compromised the government’s efforts to obtain the support of African countries in the dispute over the Malvinas/Falklands Islands, over which Argentina and Britain had gone to war in 1982. As a result, rugby saw its reputation tarnished as an ‘island’ within sport and at odds with the principles of political liberty, social justice and national interest. Based on previously unused archival sources, sports magazines, mainstream journals and interviews with former players the article seeks to shed further light on the social and political history of rugby in Argentina.