Gambling Identities at the Race Tracks: Horse Racing in 1930s Buenos Aires, Jewish Argentines, and a Newspaper’s Bet on National Identity

During most of the twentieth century, spending time at the tracks and knowing the ins and outs of horseracing was the epitome of being porteño (inhabitant of the city of Buenos Aires). The horse race track of Palermo and the constellation of people and customs around it, including gambling, were romanticized in Argentine culture, especially in tango lyrics. Composers borrowed from the specialized lingo of horse racing and hybridized these terms with lunfardo, the slang of marginal Buenos Aires that tango adopted as its truest voice.

     Considering the romanticized character of the sport as an essential porteño passion, the decision of the newspaper Crítica – the daily with the largest circulation in Argentina – to introduce a new writer for its horse racing column in 1930 must have puzzled part of its readership. The column introduced “Patoff,” a fictional character that the periodical created. Patoff, besides being a writer and lover of horse races, was a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe.

     Often written in dialogical style, as if he was being interviewed, the fictional columnist provided analysis of past races, as well as predictions of future competitions and the likely winners, called fijas (“assured” betting tips). Patoff expressed his clearly expert opinion in a Spanish marked by a heavy use of the tracks lingo as well as a fake Yiddish accent. Crítica played on the contrast between the linguistic markings of a recent arrival and the specialized insider slang of horse racing experts for comedic effect, a goal aided by certain exaggerated personal traits of Patoff, such as being hot-headed and easily angered. However, the character’s linguistic combination was also a statement on assimilation. This paper studies Crítica’s use of the fictional columnist to subvert tropes of Argentine and porteño identity and contest them, arguing for more expansive, integrationist definitions.