Julio Grondona, Argentine Power in World Soccer, Dies at 82

By SIMON ROMEROAUG. 1, 2014

Julio Grondona, right, with Diego Maradona in 2008. Despite their feuds, Maradona expressed his condolences this week. CreditMarcos Brindicci/Reuters

Julio Grondona, who ruled over Argentina’s soccer association for 35 years and wielded influence far beyond it as one of the most powerful figures in FIFA, international soccer’s governing body, died on Wednesday in Buenos Aires. He was 82.

The cause was complications of an aortic aneurysm, said Ernesto Cherquis Bialo, a spokesman for the Argentine Football Association.

At his death Mr. Grondona was FIFA’s senior vice president, a position considered second only to the president, currently Sepp Blatter.

Known in Argentina as Don Julio, Mr. Grondona became president of the Argentine Football Association in 1979, when the country was in the throes of the so-called Dirty War, in which the military dictatorship hunted down suspected opponents, thousands of whom were never seen again.

After democracy was re-established in 1983, Mr. Grondona consolidated and expanded his power through a succession of civilian governments, economic crises and corruption scandals surrounding FIFA, from which he emerged relatively unscathed.

Often photographed wearing a gold pinkie ring inscribed with the words “todo pasa,” or everything passes, Mr. Grondona negotiated an array of lucrative sponsorship and media deals. He was feared by many in Argentina.

“The power isn’t mine,” he once said. “They give it to me. The others feel that I have power, and that’s what counts.”

Julio Humberto Grondona, the eldest of six children, was born on Sept. 18, 1931, in the port city of Avellaneda, near Buenos Aires. He abandoned engineering studies in his early 20s to take over his family’s hardware store, Lombardi y Grondona, after his father died. The business made him wealthy.

In 1957, he and his brother Héctor founded the soccer club Arsenal, whose stadium, in Avellaneda, was named in Mr. Grondona’s honor. He joined FIFA’s executive committee in 1988.

Mr. Grondona could be combative if not belligerent. In 2003 he was denounced as anti-Semitic after he questioned the place of Jews in top soccer leagues, saying they did not work hard enough. “I do not believe a Jew can ever be a referee at this level,” he said.

He later apologized for the remark.

He also expressed contrition for describing the English as “liars” and “pirates” in 2011 as England prepared a bid to host the World Cup in 2018. (Russia was awarded the event.) He was a vocal supporter of Argentina’s territorial claim on the Falkland Islands, called the Malvinas Islands by Argentines — a dispute with Britain that led to the country’s defeat in the Falklands War in 1982.

Mr. Grondona told reporters in 2011 that he had bluntly laid out his views to English soccer officials. “I said: ‘Let us be brief. If you give back the Malvinas Islands, which belong to us, you will get my vote,’ ” he said. “They then became sad and left.”

In his own country, Mr. Grondona was often criticized for his ironhanded manner but also hailed for his contributions to Argentine soccer. Among other things, he had a hand in the national team’s run to its second World Cup title, in 1986, when it was led by the superstar Diego Maradona, and oversaw the construction of a world-class soccer training complex near Buenos Aires.

Still, he hewed to controversy through the most recent World Cup, which concluded in Brazil in July with Germany’s defeat of Argentina in the final.

Known for his public feuds with Maradona, who once coached Argentina’s national team, Mr. Grondona said that Argentina was able to squeak out a 1-0 victory over Iran in a World Cup match in June only after Maradona had left the stands. Mr. Grondona called him a “jinx.” Maradona responded with a crude hand gesture that was shown on television.

Maradona took to Facebook this week to comment on Mr. Grondona’s death, expressing his condolences.

Mr. Grondona’s wife, Nélida Pariani, died in 2012. He is survived by three children, Liliana, Julio and Humberto.

In June, just before the World Cup began, Mr. Grondona spoke of his lasting bond with soccer, telling the German news service DPA, “When I leave FIFA, it will be to go to the cemetery.”

Friday, August 1, 2014

A00009 - Augie Rodriguez, Mambo Dance Master

Augie Rodriguez, 86, Half of a Mambo Team, Dies

By MARGALIT FOXJULY 26, 2014

Augie and Margo Rodriguez in the 1950s. The couple, fixtures at the Palladium Ballroom in Manhattan, mamboed their way from dance competitions to nightclubs around the world.CreditCourtesy Michael Terrace

Augie Rodriguez, half of Augie and Margo, the husband-and-wife team who at midcentury helped turn mambo from a sultry social dance into a dazzling public entertainment, died on July 18 in Deerfield Beach, Fla. He was 86.

The cause was cancer, Margo Rodriguez said.

In the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, Augie and Margo were among mambo’s most famous exponents, appearing on television, on concert stages and in nightclubs worldwide, often accompanied by renowned bandleaders like Xavier Cugat.

In New York, the couple were fixtures at the Palladium Ballroom, on Broadway between West 53rd and 54th Streets. The space was for decades a mecca of Latin music; there, they often danced to live music by Tito Puente and his orchestra.

In Las Vegas, Augie and Margo opened for many major entertainers, including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.; they also performed at the White House for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon and in London for Queen Elizabeth II.

On television, they were seen often on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Steve Allen Show” and “The Arthur Murray Party.”

Mambo dancing originated in Cuba in first half of the 20th century. As conceived, it was a ballroom affair involving sensual swaying and elegant footwork.

Augie and Margo kept the sultriness and the elegance and added a stunning dose of athleticism, integrating slides, turns and dizzying spins worthy of a figure skater.

They also infused mambo with techniques from other dance traditions, including ballet, jazz and modern. In so doing, they helped usher in the transition from mambo dancing to salsa dancing, which, as the style’s saucy name implies, is an amalgam of diverse genres.

Augustin Rodriguez was born in Brooklyn on May 13, 1928; his father had come to the United States from Spain, his mother from the Dominican Republic.

After service in the merchant marine as a young man, Mr. Rodriguez returned to New York, where he began frequenting the Palladium. For many months, he said, he learned by watching other dancers; only then did he begin to dance himself.

At the Palladium, he was first partnered with Margo Bartolomei, a New Yorker of Puerto Rican and Corsican parentage; like him, she was self-taught at first. They became partners off the dance floor as well, marrying in 1950.

In their early years together, the couple competed in many ballroom dance contests, doing a more traditional mambo. They often won the top prize, which might be as much as $100 or as little as $15.

Before long, they began studying ballet and modern dance. Little by little, almost without their being aware of it, that training crept into their ballroom routines.

“At the time, we didn’t realize we were changing the whole atmosphere,” Mrs. Rodriguez said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “Whatever we learned that day in class, we would put into the mambo.”

In later years, the Rodriguezes taught dance and booked nightclub acts for cruise ships.

A resident of Deerfield Beach, Mr. Rodriguez is also survived by a son, Richard, and two grandchildren.

If, in their transformation of mambo, Augie and Margo ruffled purists’ feathers, it did not bother them in the slightest.

“Some of the dancers said: ‘What are you doing? You’re ruining the mambo!,’ ” Mrs. Rodriguez said on Thursday. “And we said, ‘That’s the way we feel it.’ ”