𖦹｡Naenz｡𖦹's profile picture

Published by

published

Category: General

View Blog View Profile

Argentina Racism

So, in honour of Argentina winning (cheating) in the semi-finals yet again, I feel like this is a good time to not talk about everything wrong with the game and the country itself. However, I'll not be talking about the countless fouls and loopholes they got away with this season that are so blatant, even Messi fans are seeing them. Instead, I'm going to talk about how Argentina has a serious racism problem. From chants, political moves and history that still discriminates against the nations poc. It is so bad that the entire Latin community completly denounce the country itself, a well-hidden and manufactured flaw that is almos rarley spoken about on an international stage.

#1 World Cup

First, let's talk about the racism they displayed here in the World Cup first:

One example I can give here is when they continuously mocked Speed when he was watching them play, shouting dog whistles and throwing cans at him for no reason.

Keep in mind, these are grown adults, behaving like this towards a streamer in front of a million cameras, so if they're comfortable with doing this for the world stage to see, imagine what type of stuff happens behind closed doors...

There racism is so bad, that a whole new rule has been made in football after Gianluca Prestianni was being discriminatory towards Vinícius Júnior through covering his mouth to cover the insults he said towards him, leading to a new rule where if you cover your mouth towards the other player to say something, it is grounds for a red card.

Not only do they do this, but they also love to sing racist chants. This was apparent when even the players were going against France in the quarter-finals, basically targeting and mocking the black players of France for their African heritage and French nationality. Here's the chant for reference:

Here's what they were chanting:

"Spread the rumours. They all play in France, but they're all from Angola."

"How nice it is. We are going to make them run. They are t*** eaters like Mbappe."

"His mother is Nigerian, his father Cameroonian. But on the passport, French."

These guys even referred to Mbappe as "cometrevas", a derogatory term used on people who have relationships with trans people.

Racist and Transphobic. Let's pick a struggle VARgentina.

Maybe I'm more furious at this because I love Mbappe, but even from an outsider's perspective, he is a great player, sportsman and a great person overall. It really sucks that he isn't able to win the World Cup because he and the other players deserve it way more than those FIFA favourites.

This is not to say that France isn't racist as well; it's a country on the continent where racism was inevitably born after all, but this type of harassment and discrimination is completely unacceptable and completely takes away the amount of contributions these talented players have made for France. We all know for a fact that they also get treated horribly by racist French people already, and now your opponents are joining in on mocking your identity? If that's not disgusting, then I don't know what is.

This especially hits home for me as well, as I also feel very offended by this. POC get almost the same treatment as well, always get seen as outsiders despite how much we bring to the communities we built.

The irony and hypocrisy of it all, that they make fun of black French people for "not being French" when most of them are not even descendants of Argentina itself. And the reason why is way darker than their chants.


#2 Why is Argentina so racist?

So I think this only reasonable to go over the history of Argentina and its anti-black origins that lead up to the present, one that is rarely talked about. But since it's quite a lot, I'll divide it to make it easier to read.

  • African Erasure and Mistreatment

Around 1588, Africans were kidnapped, enslaved and brought to Argentina. Over 200,000 Africans were brought to the country, which led to 1/3 of the population being of African descent. However, that population has drastically decreased because of decades of black people being forced on the front lines in Argentina's wars and the yellow fever epidemic in 1871. But these were only one element that was used to erase the African population.

In the late 1800s, the leaders of Argentina wanted to make Argentina white. This policy was called the whitening, which promoted intermarriage and mass immigration of Spanish and Italian people to minimise the poc population, with 7 million immigrants coming into the country between 1850 and 1950, black people being erased from records. This all eventually led to the drastic drop of black people in Argentina, now being less than 1% of the population. Most of the Argentinians we see today are descendants of Spain and Italy, hence the hypocrisy of their racist chant towards black French people.

"Black people don't exist in Argentina, that's a Brazilian problem"- Argentine President Carlos Menem, 1996.

Importent to note, its relly distubing how they wanted to completely erase black people in Argentina to the point they didn't exist, yet their culture, such as tango, comes from African music, its os disspainting to see another group of peope completly mistreat black people but love and take our culture and arts for themselves take credit for it. 

Sources:

  • Indigenous erasure and abuse

They also made a racial category called "trigueno", meaning colour of the wheat, actively contributing to the invisibility of not only black people but indigenous people as well.

With that, around 14,000 indigenous people were killed between 1878 and 1885 during the "conquest of the desert in Patagonia, along with settlers and policemen massacring the Qom and Mokoit people who were protesting againt there abuse and discrimination, as well as being forcibly taken away from their homes and relocated to work in cotton fields. An additional 400 to 500 people were killed.

Argentina were also one of the countries that voted against the UN resolution calling the transatlantic slave trade the biggest crime against humanity. Awfully telling.


  • Housing German fascists

Argentina was also a safe haven for nazis, as a handful of them fled to argentina to seek refuge.These systees would be called "ratlines". Where the president of that time along with the goverment would make fake documents for known officers. This particular fact confuses me given that they also housed Jewish people fleeding prosectuion as well, just for them to house their opressors in the same region


Having dicussed all of the history and present elements circurlating in the region, its important that I also give a little nuance. This is me not coming for every argentinian and accusing them of being rascist, nor am I dissolving any other country of their anti-blackness, Im sure a good chunk of Argentinians have already decontructed that. However that doesnt erase the fact that thier system, like many others, is still activley disregarding black and indegenious identity. Its super important to highlight that these people are still here with us, thriving and speaking up about what theyve been through. And I recommend people to listen to them and there stories. This world cup has exposed to alot of history that is rarley spoken about, every 4 yrs, we get taught the many instances of discrimination and rascism of POC. But hey, what else is new am I right?

If Ive left anything out or made any mistakes, pls let me know!

Kudos: 0

Comments

Displaying 2 of 2 comments ( View all | Add Comment )

agusarnov

agusarnov's profile picture

Report

can't believe u written a big ahh essay about my country and MOST OF IT IT'S HISTORICALLY WRONG LMAO. would like to chat with u privately and discuss this, as u got a big interest in argentinian story and "racism", i guess u would like to talk with a real argentinian..


no hate tho! i'm freely open to hear your point of view and as a lot of things are wrong, some of them are right.



i would actually like too. Ive been reseching this for a while know so id like another prspective

by 𖦹｡Naenz｡𖦹; ; Report