It was the 90’s and nothing moved for the San Martín party if it did not have its permission. He was tough in the hand-to-hand fight, skilled at forging alliances with the bosses of all the towns in the area and above all intelligent to continue showing himself as a man from the neighborhood while gaining power and business in the soccer environment, fleecing like everyone else. to the club he said he loved. Any photo from the stands Chacarita between the 90s and the first decade of this century you will have it Raul Escalante in the center of the paravalanche. Nicknamed Muchingadied on Friday after complicating a health condition that he had been carrying since 2017, when he had a stroke.
Such was the recognition he achieved in the world of bars, that bosses from all the fans attended his wake over the weekend, even those with whom he had clashed. Through the tenement of Villa Maipú that he made his home and lair at the same time they passed Rafael Di Zeo from La Doce, Daniel Paz, alias the Black Fioruccihistorical leader of the Tigre bar, Almirante Brown’s bosses, Defenders of Belgrano and there were even wreaths sent by clubs from abroad such as San Pablo, Colo Colo or Alianza Lima and from the Interior such as San Martín de Tucumán, Instituto and Belgrano de Córdoba. And although it may seem like a lie The two factions that today face each other to death for the power of the popular made a truce and came together to say goodbye. On the one hand, the famous San Martín band, which was his group and is now led by his stepson, Chucky Canteros, and Somos Familia, the faction that has been trying for years with mixed luck to achieve power. At that point comes the fascination with the world of crime in the Argentine tribunes.
Muchinga had entered the popular movement in the 80s, with the help of two historic Funeral leaders who worked for Peronism and unionism: Alberto Turi Ginés and the Monkey Oscar Bitz. He was also part of that group. Alberto Batata Apolonio. Quick to stick to those in power, Escalante earned promotion to the front line in a fierce battle against the Los Andes gang and the Buenos Aires Police that appeared in all the national media and his photo, in leather, still fighting with the body pierced by rubber bullet pellets, gave him the necessary badge to rise to the leadership group that was definitively in his hands at the beginning of the 90s, when those who had been his godfathers dedicated themselves directly to politics and unionism, putting muscle to the campaign and government of President Carlos Menem, always serving the gastronomic leader Luis Barrionuevo.
From that moment on, Escalante He managed Chacarita from a bar on Gutiérrez Street. Resale of tickets, percentage of footballer passes, all the club clothing, the buffet and whatever moved with the tricolor of the popular team, passed through his hands with the permission of Barrionuevo, but above all of the vice president Armando Capritotti, who He was the one who managed the day-to-day operations of the San Martín institution. By the mid-90s his name was as popular as that of José Barritta and in this way he was one of those who led the Argentine team in the 1998 World Cup in France. Unusually, when it was learned that a large group from Chacarita would travel under his command, Muchinga held a conference with Barrionuevo to say that they were rewarded for their good behavior and that all the money for the trip had been obtained through raffles, an elegant way of calling for outright extortion of players, businessmen and representatives so that will contribute to the cause. There, on French soil, they stayed in the Montparnasse area and along with the other bars resold the tickets they had for the debut match of Daniel Passarella’s national team against Japan. Money before football, as established by law.
Upon his return, his power continued to grow and Barrionuevo took note of this, as he began to see how Muchinga believed he could impose conditions. Then he set up an internal line led by his driver, Miguel Ángel Juárez, alias Lolo. It all ended as these things end in the bar world: Lolo was murdered on March 23, 2000 with two bullets in the stomach. The investigation said that it had been a crime of passion due to the fight over a girl. Things that happen in the world of football. After that fact, the club resigned itself to Escalante leading, but he understood that he had to align himself with royal power. And so he continued until in 2003 he made a wrong decision that began to undermine his leadership.
Chacarita visited Boca on August 31 of that year. Days ago, Mauricio Macri had won the first round of the election for Buenos Aires boss, but he had to go to the runoff against Aníbal Ibarra. Showing that he could not manage security in his own stadium was a strategy to hit him electorally. In addition, there was still a latent Bar revenge for the La Doce ambush in a friendly in 1999, which ended with several Funebrero fans with serious injuries. And in the middle of the game before the popular order, there was chaos. The judge in the case, Mariano Bergés, accused him and Muchinga fled until he managed to get the Crime Chamber to give him an exemption from prison that the magistrate had denied him. So he ended up presenting himself and over time that cause languished. But in the period in which he was away from the popular, he grew an internal line based in Villa Loyola dominated by two heavyweights in the world of crime: Luis Gómez and Héctor Satan Mannino. The war was fierce but, as always, Muchinga won.
Thus he continued leading the bar for a long time until he decided to enter club politics to stay with formal businesses and control the informal ones from the outside with his stepson Chucky. Since 2012 he joined the Board of Directors as a member, empowering his wife Angelica Molina in the institution and the family SME began to function even when his stepson was arrested for drug trafficking and had to delegate power to other people in Villa Maipú. Everything seemed solid until his health problem in 2017 that left him unwell. And that he made other neighborhoods believe that they could take power by forming the Somos Familia faction, in which there was, oddly enough, Escalante’s own in-laws such as his sister-in-law.
That war continues to this day with uncertain results, although his ex-wife’s alliance with his stepson remains firm for now in San Martín. Something that was seen yesterday morning, when before going to the cemetery the funeral procession passed through the stadium for the last goodbye. And later in the afternoon when the team posed in the match against Tristán Suárez with a t-shirt with the legend “The Muchinga band” and later in the center of the popular, in the paravalanches that was theirs so many times, no one was located, just a crown, to honor Muchinga and remind the world of football that although the years go by, they, those who profit from passion, are always there.
