Tribune. Working on the religion of the popular classes of Argentina and Brazil, Argentinian anthropologist Pablo Seman called their culture “Cosmological, holistic and relational”. That is to say, men are not so clearly separated from the gods as one would like. There are Maradona and Eva Peron, as there once was Joan of Arc and Mother Teresa elsewhere. Just as between the real and the supernatural, politics, religion and culture are not so clearly separated from each other. This is also one of the reasons that makes it difficult to understand Latin American football in Europe.
Across the Atlantic, the round ball is not a “sport”, uprooted from politics, culture and religion. There is not an Argentinian who does not know that Pope Francis is a Peronist and “Hincha”, supporter of San Lorenzo, the club in the Almagro district in Buenos Aires. This information is of capital importance in Argentina, where you don’t support a team, you belong to it. Being from Boca or River has important social and political connotations.
In addition, individuals do not have a complete choice of which jersey they will cry for. You are often affiliated with a club by your father or uncle and you cannot change it during your life. Social mobility is impossible in football. Until her death, Maradona was “Bostero” (“Bouseux”), nickname given to the supporters of Boca Juniors, and this independently of the teams whose jersey he wore. Boca is an identity, the others are contracts.
Football as an artistic object
In Latin America, football is a culture in two ways. On the one hand, because the game makes it possible to symbolize life, in particular political life, and to offer multiple metaphors. Having a sense of strategy, for example, is “Parar la pelota y levantar la cabeza” (“Stop the ball and look up”). On the other hand, because in the game the arts find poetry and sublimation. Writers, photographers, filmmakers, painters, musicians and dancers take football as an artistic object, and Maradona himself has been a sublime artist or magician.
On the pitch, at the stadium (the stands are essential) and in the city, there is a production of meaning. The player and his audience are not reduced to the body, they speak, make people speak, produce an emotion that takes part in the world like all other forms of culture. Among the reasons set out in his decree of Wednesday, November 25 establishing three days of national mourning, the Argentine President, Alberto Fernandez, mentions many of the sporting conquests of Maradona, but he also says solemnly that “His tears during the defeat in the final of the 1990 World Cup in Italy are engraved in the eyes of an entire country”.
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