How do you measure a society’s pent-up frustration? Argentina may have found the answer. This is the only way to understand why hundreds of thousands (to speak of “millions” is a bit dizzy and therefore cautious) of people have joined an extraordinary movement of collective catharsis, like the one this Tuesday, to welcome the champion team in Qatar. Buenos Aires is witnessing the largest popular mobilization event in its history, and that says a lot in a country that forged its political identity on the streets. Peronism is the son of this construction, and yet it has never achieved what Lionel Messi and the rest of the Albiceleste players achieved when they beat France at the Lusail Stadium last Sunday and crossed the Atlantic with the golden trophy. Buenos Aires has collapsed with people who need good news, vacations, confidence in the future (all ordinary places), a cure for the “Argentina sucks” that plagues it so badly. For a day, as so often happens, Argentines feel like they are the center of the world.
The championship celebrations were close to success. The bus with the players departed from the property, which the AFA has located 6 kilometers from the international airport, at noon. It took the players two hours after arriving Monday night to weave their way through the crowds waiting for them, a forerunner of what awaited them hours later during the final tour. Doubts about the safest route have driven gamers and crowds wild. The AFA ruled out greeting fans at the obelisk an hour after the game given the danger of being trapped in a sea of souls. An alternative route was sought along 25 de Mayo, an elevated street that ends at 9 de Julio, that avenue of Buenos Aires. The rumor was enough for hundreds of thousands to enter this balcony that divides the city on high.
The Argentine team in the helicopter that transported them MATIAS BAGLIETTO (AFP)
It soon became apparent that a land advance would be impossible. It was after 4:00 p.m. and there was still half the way to go, at its most difficult stage. Two people jumped from a bridge into the player bus. It was then decided to end the matter. The caravan was diverted to a helipad and the pilgrimage on land was swapped for an aerial Olympic tour. Two helicopters flew over the Obelisk area with the players on board, much to the ecstasy of the crowd, who once again gazed skyward. The strategy was enough to keep everyone happy.
“Do you know if they can get through here?” the fans asked the journalists. “Not even the bus driver knows that,” they got as an answer. “I cry ten minutes because they pass, I cry ten minutes because they don’t pass. I’m desperate,” cried a young man who had painted his face light blue and white. “I beg you, please come in! We want to see you! said a woman. And in these invocations the Argentines saw each other again. They can cause large seismic movements and then suffer when dealing with aftershocks. Who is ordering the overflow? The crowd moved like those shoals wanting to simulate power in front of the big fish, looking for the point at which they had heard Messi and the World Cup would happen.
Local media speculated about the numbers. A million, two million, three million people. The most daring spoke of four million, a number that exceeds the population of the city of Buenos Aires if the suburbs are not counted. It’s difficult to throw figures like confetti when there’s no precedent. When future President Raúl Alfonsín ended his election campaign on Avenida 9 de Julio in October 1983, there was talk of a million people. Politics has never again moved such masses, stilled the democratic passion. In 1986, Diego Maradona, at the peak of his journey to heaven, easily reached Casa Rosada with his teammates. He walked out onto the balcony, glass in hand, and greeted the crowd with raised arms. That was not possible on Tuesday. Because of the crowds and because the players never quite agreed to President Alberto Fernández’s invitation to repeat this postcard, which was an icon of the burgeoning democracy.
Fans gathered on the 25 de Mayo highway at the intersection with Avenida 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires. Alan Eidelstein (EFE)
The bus moved at a man’s pace on the Riccheri highway, the artery that connects to Ezeiza. As the police, AFA and government clamored for a solution to the crowd mess, people were betting on the best spot to meet the players. The uncertainty eventually caused people to scatter to different parts of the city. Even the Obelisk area felt less crowded at times than the highway’s intersection with 9 de Julio. The players, in ecstatic limbo, seemed oblivious to the chaos even under the hot sun. Messi drank soda from a plastic bottle cut in half, Rodrigo De Paul uploaded videos to his social networks and Ángel Di María chatted with Nicolás Otamendi. Even the coach, Lionel Scaloni, gave up his priestly ways and addressed the throbbing crowd with his arms raised.
The tension was constant. They all knew they were actors in a historic event, but the threat of flooding permeated everything. Argentina had won the World Cup after 36 years, at the last World Cup by Lionel Messi, the pagan god who was almost empty-handed. They were protagonists alongside an extraordinary liberation action. The economic crisis is getting worse and politics is not up to the circumstances. In the 2001 crisis, that of the Corralito, the atmosphere was one of rolling up your sleeves and working to get out of the hole. Argentines are experiencing a slow but sustained decline 20 years later, an agony that politicians watch from the ring of their own disputes. And then came Messi and the possibility of a common cause: football.
Around three o’clock in the afternoon, a cool breeze began to blow across the crowded streets. “Muchachooos…”, the anthem of the Argentine fans in Qatar sounded like a mantra again. At the end of the day, it was a success in the chaos. An invisible hand commanded what could have been a disaster; That was the feeling in the face of so much abundance. But there were no incidents or fights, nobody fell from a balcony or attacked the police. “Messi and the trophy are home,” headlined the news, a house packed with so many people it almost left the honorees outside.
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