One of the first things you learn in any sociology course is to be cautious with generalizations. Saying “Los Argentinos son” [“Argentines are”] is a difficult and improbable phrase: “Argentine men are” is more likely to be accurate, yet it is still bound to fail as an assertion because it will always lack precision in terms of class, ethnicity, age and region. Argentina is a vast country and, although not densely populated, it has enormous differences and inequalities, like any modern society.
However, in just 200 years of being an independent nation, Argentina has constructed several overarching myths — no nation can do without them. One such myth is that we are a European society inexplicably transported to Latin America, a kind of island on the continent, uneasily sharing that status with Uruguay (or more precisely, the capital Montevideo, which is often seen as a slightly anachronistic Buenos Aires).
Another myth is that everyone talks about us all the time. The universe has no other topic of conversation than the adventures of Argentina. If, to make matters worse, the topic is soccer — or sometimes other sports like boxing, motor sports, tennis, rugby or basketball — the world is said to be obsessed with discussing the infinite quality of our athletes (male) and their unwavering galactic superiority. This also extends to the fans: the best (male) fans in the entire world.
And then there is another indestructible myth: We are an ethnically unified society. “We Argentines come from the boats,” says a popular song from 1982. The full quote is this: “The Brazilians come from the jungle, the Mexicans come from the Indians, but we Argentines come from the boats.” Though a bad song, it was cited by former Argentine President Alberto Fernandez in 2021, who attributed the idea to the Mexican writer and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz, who had actually written, ironically, that “Mexicans descend from the Aztecs, Peruvians from the Incas, and Argentines … from the boats.” The “boats” here signify the perpetuation of the notion of transplanted Europe, via Italian and Spanish migration; this narrative does not account for what happened to the Indigenous populations or the descendants of African slaves who arrived in large numbers throughout the Americas, including what would become Argentina. Serious studies affirm that at the time of independence from Spain in the early 19th century, the population of African slaves was no less than 15% of the total. Since there was no acknowledged or hidden extermination, this illusory transformation into a strictly white country requires some explanation.
The explanation is threefold: mixed marriages, concealment, denial. In Argentina, “there are no Black people.” Therefore, thankfully, we are not racist — we cannot be racist. “Black” is used only as a classist insult: Black people are the poor people. The poorer, the blacker. But that is not racism, according to the good conscience of the white, urban middle classes.
The latter is, of course, pure irony.
Indeed, everyone has been talking about Argentina recently, but the subject of debate was its racism. The scandal erupted from a brief Instagram video filmed by Argentine soccer player Enzo Fernandez, currently with Chelsea in London, after the national team’s victory in the Copa America held in the U.S. (following the final game against Colombia in Miami). The video features a song that ends when someone on the team bus says, “Cut the live.” This action suggests an awareness that the song was highly inappropriate and shouldn’t be shared on social media.
The song itself is a blatant display of transphobia and racism in varying degrees. The full lyrics state: “Listen, pass the ball: They play for France, but they’re from Angola.” The song goes on to describe French star Kylian Mbappe as a “cometravas,” a slang term that refers to someone who has sex with transgender people, before returning to its initial theme: “Their mother is from Cameroon, their father from Nigeria, but their passports say French.”
The lyrics also reveal a profound ignorance of geopolitical and historical realities: Angola was a Portuguese colony, Nigeria was British, and only Cameroon was French. The song originated during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar from a group of fans who wanted to supplant the popular stadium anthem “Muchachos” (“Boys”). They sang it in front of a sports channel’s cameras; the journalist, shocked by what he heard, asked them not to repeat it. However, it was too late, as the channel had already aired it several times as a colorful piece. At the time, given the popularity of “Muchachos,” the song didn’t gain much traction — until now.
A little history of the song (I love the stories behind songs used by soccer fans, their origins, transformations and travels through time and space): Originally, it was a propaganda jingle used by the military dictatorship in Argentina in 1981. It was intended to advise families not to take pets in cars when traveling on vacation. The song’s lyrics went:
“Bobby, my good friend, this summer you won’t be able to come with me. Today I heard Dad say that this time I can’t take you. Bobby, don’t miss me too much. I’ll be back soon. Take care of all my toys, Bobby. Don’t misbehave.”
Like many songs later adopted by fans, it had an easy melody and simple rhythm, making it easy to memorize with appropriate rhymes. Interestingly, before it reached the stadiums, it became a political and antidictatorial song: “Military, son of a bitch, what have you done with the disappeared? The foreign debt, the corruption — you are the worst scum the nation has ever had. What happened to the Malvinas, those kids are no longer here. We must not forget them, and that is why we must fight.”
Eventually, it reached soccer stadiums as a song expressing love for one’s team without insulting or threatening others: “(Name of the team), my good friend, we’ll be with you again this championship. We’ll support you from the bottom of our hearts; these are your fans who want to see you as champions. I don’t care what they say, what others say. I follow you everywhere, loving you more and more.”
Over the past 40 years, the style of soccer songs has shifted toward being more aggressive, threatening and violent. Soccer chants now often have three main characteristics: mocking rivals for match outcomes, degrading rivals by casting different social identities negatively, and glorifying violence past and present.
This song, once a declaration of unconditional love, was transformed into a homophobic, classist and racist statement. “Listen, pass the ball: The Blacks of Casanova became whores. How cute; we’re going to f— them in the poor hovels near Route 3. The Blacks arrive by car, and they dress as women, to make a couple of pesos because they need to eat.”
Isidro Casanova is a neighborhood in greater Buenos Aires, home to a local club, Almirante Brown, which, like the area, is impoverished and socially marginalized. The creators of the chant were fans of Nueva Chicago, another small team but from the city of Buenos Aires and therefore “richer” and consequently “whiter.” And more “macho.”
The relationship between fans and crowds has become increasingly masculinized, resulting in metaphors that describe this relationship in homoerotic terms. Being a fan means being “macho” and having “aguante” (endurance), a key term in understanding Argentine soccer culture — and not just soccer culture. Rival fans are metaphorically sexually assaulted, through implied anal or oral relations. These are, of course, metaphors, but they shape a (violent) understanding of the relationships between rival teams and fans. Much has been written about this, both academically and journalistically, for almost 25 years, but to little effect.
Ten years ago, following the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, I wrote about a song that had become very popular among Argentine fans: “Brazil, Tell Me How It Feels” (set to the melody of “Bad Moon Rising” by Creedence Clearwater Revival). The song was a long list of insults aimed at Brazilians, concluding with the assertion that soccer legend Diego Maradona was better than the great Brazilian player Pele. At the same time, Argentine fans left a graffiti message on the walls of the Copacabana neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro during the World Cup that used a homophobic sexual slur in reference to Pele. This inscription conveyed a dual message: It was both a declaration of “we were here” (by painting your walls) and an assertion of “we are macho; the Brazilians are not.”
However, an older chant, which reached its peak of abuse during the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, had extended this attribution to all Brazilians but with a distinctly racist tone: “Everybody already knows that Brazil is in mourning; they’re all Blacks, they’re all fags” (original text: “Ya todos saben que Brasil esta de luto/son todos negros/son todos putos”). In an era of political correctness, it seemed that crowds could not be both homophobic and racist simultaneously: They could express only one form of prejudice at a time.
Until now. The lyrics of “Brazil, Tell Me How It Feels” now seem almost Shakespearean compared with “Listen, Pass the Ball.” A journalist recently wrote that, even within a soccer culture as degraded, sexist and violent as Argentina’s, the phrase “Listen, Pass the Ball” signifies that everything said afterward can only be horrible, incorrect and indefensible.
Across Latin America, the relationship between Afro-descendant communities and soccer was far from straightforward. Uruguay offers a somewhat different example, although it was not without its challenges. Uruguay had abolished slavery 50 years before Brazil, and its soccer scene reflects this earlier abolition. The first Afro-descendant player in Uruguay was Federico Arrieta, a goalkeeper for the Intrepido team, in 1908. Nacional introduced Antonio Ascunzi in 1911 and Jose Maria Viamont in 1912, causing some dissent among members who preferred segregation. Penarol, founded in 1913, brought in the first two Black stars of Uruguayan soccer: Isabelino Gradin in 1916 and Juan Delgado in 1917. Both played in the inaugural South American Championship in 1916, leading to a protest from the Chilean League, which demanded that the Uruguayan team lose points for including “African players.”
Starting in 1921, Jose Leandro Andrade, known as “The Black Wonder” (a nickname bestowed by the French press during the 1924 Olympic Games), emerged as a key figure in Uruguay’s international successes from 1924 to 1930. He became the first major African-descended soccer player in Latin America.
In contrast, Brazil had an explicit ban on Black players that persisted until the late 1920s. Similar challenges were faced in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Honduras. However, this was not the case in Mexico or Chile. Argentina, as previously mentioned, did not recognize (or see) its Afro-descendant population and continues to overlook it today, despite the fact that Maradona, one of Argentina’s most iconic players, was of mixed heritage, with both Indigenous and African ancestry. Argentine racism was addressed in a simplistic manner: through class. Maradona was considered “Black in soul” but not in racial terms — because of his class.
This is why Enzo Fernandez’s video sparked so many political reactions. Since, supposedly, there are no Black people or racism in Argentina, no one felt the need to offer any explanation or apology. Worse still, most comments on social media did not even recognize racism in the song, viewing it merely as a “description” of the African heritage of French players — homophobia and transphobia were not mentioned at all — or just an example of “soccer folklore.” When the secretary of sports suggested in an interview that the players could apologize, he was promptly fired from his position by order of President Javier Milei, who asserted that no one could dictate “what to do or say to the world champion and two-time American champion players.”
Vice President Victoria Villarruel went a step further, turning the incident into a fervent nationalist and anticolonialist appeal in a post on X (formerly Twitter), which remains on her account @VickyVillarruel: “Argentina is a sovereign and free country. We have never had colonies or second-class citizens. We have never imposed our way of life on anyone. And we will not tolerate anyone doing it to us. Argentina was built with the sweat and courage of the Indigenous people, Europeans, Creoles and Black people like Remedios del Valle, Sergeant Cabral and Bernardo de Monteagudo. No colonialist country will intimidate us with a song on the pitch or by confronting the truths they refuse to admit. Stop pretending to be outraged, hypocrites. Enzo, I support you; Lionel Messi, thanks for everything! Argentinians, always hold your head high! Viva the Argentineness!”
That same night, the president’s sister rushed to the French Embassy to apologize for the vice president’s remarks. While this might seem like a farce, it is happening under a government that claims to be serious.
In Argentina, a common way to deny any form of racism, homophobia or antisemitism is to say, “I am not racist/homophobic/antisemitic, and furthermore, I have a Black/gay/Jewish friend.” The key phrase here is “furthermore”: That’s when we start to see the true implications.
Thus, a photo of Fernandez hugging a Black child was swiftly circulated, clearly conveying the message: “I have a Black friend, so I cannot be racist.” It’s a sentiment that many Argentines might recognize.
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