Soccer as civic pedagogy: the Barrabases comic in Chile, 1954–1962

Barrabases was the most popular children’s soccer comic in Chile and the first of its kind in the Spanish-speaking world. Created by cartoonist Guido Vallejos, it centred on the mischievous Barrabases team from the fictional town Happy Village. It blended humour, sportsmanship, and moral lessons with vivid depictions of teamwork, discipline, and civic responsibility. Across four editorial periods (1954–1962, 1970–1974, 1975–1980, 1989–2006), the comic reflected Chile’s shifting political landscape, from developmentalist optimism to authoritarianism and democratic revival. This article explores the first editorial era analysing how Barrabases encoded youth morality, masculine archetypes, racialized bodies, class tensions, and active audience participation. By aligning its narratives with state ideals and national identity while reproducing racial hierarchies and excluding women from soccer, the comic became both entertainment and a civic primer. It offered Chilean children a model of conduct, embedding notions of fair play and collective identity within mid-twentieth-century Chilean mass culture.