Racing de Avellaneda’s Brava bar, in an archive image. Getty
The South American Football Confederation (Conmebol) on Tuesday sanctioned Argentine Racing Club over racist gestures by a group of fans during a match against Flamengo of Brazil in Buenos Aires. The trigger was a video shot from the away gallery showing a group of local fans mimicking monkey gestures after a tie in the group stage of the Copa Libertadores, America’s premier regional competition, on May 4. The fans’ racist gestures, punishable by a $100,000 fine under Conmebol regulations, have reignited the debate over discrimination in the stands of Argentine football. Racing’s sanction was lifted the same night a Colombian soccer player denounced racial slurs during another game in Buenos Aires.
“The topic of racism is tiring. “The fact that they call you a monkey, that they call you black, that’s disrespectful and sad,” lamented Colombian striker Hugo Rodallega on Tuesday after his side’s Independiente de Santa Fe lost to Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata in Argentina. “It doesn’t hurt me that we lost, it hurts me what’s happening around the stadiums. What’s happening around the world is a disaster,” he said, still on the field, during an interview at the end of the Copa Sudamericana game, the second regional competition.
The gymnastics authorities apologized this Wednesday, although they are now awaiting the decision of the Conmebol Disciplinary Committee. The regional football authority could sanction the team for the same reasons as the Racing Club: Article 15.2 of its disciplinary code, which provides for a $100,000 fine against any institution “whose fans offend another person or group of people or offend human dignity”. of any kind, based on skin colour, race, gender or sexual orientation, ethnicity, language, creed or national origin”.
Rodallega’s complaint opens a new panorama of xenophobia in Argentina’s stadiums. It’s the latest case, going beyond the usual insults seen when national teams meet Brazilian teams. The latest sanction given to an Argentinian team over xenophobia by their fans is a copy of incidents at Racing Stadium earlier this month. In May 2022, Boca Juniors fans made similar gestures towards Brazilian Corinthians fans at another Copa Libertadores game. The joke is so common during confrontations between fans of both countries that Brazilians have their own answer: they tend to burn Argentine bills from the stands to poke fun at the country’s runaway inflation.
The xenophobic and racist slur is a sign of violence at Argentina’s stadiums, where visiting fans have been banned from league games for a decade. The Save Soccer organization maintains a historical record of 346 violent incidents at stadiums that ended in the death of a fan, ranging from human avalanches to police repression. But the most common episode is fights or ambushes between fans.
The ban on away fans in the stadiums has done little to stop xenophobic chants in the stands. The anti-Semitic slurs against Atlanta, a team from Buenos Aires from one of the city’s traditionally Jewish neighborhoods, or the xenophobic chants against Boca Juniors, which link the popular roots of the team with the most fans in the country to South American immigration in Argentina , are frequent episodes in national football. But the cruelty towards Brazilian teams is cross in Argentine football: like Racing, River Plate, Boca Juniors or Independiente de Avellaneda, they have been punished in the last two years for insulting visitors from their stands.
“We cannot allow fascism and racism to dominate football stadiums,” Brazilian President Lula da Silva lamented this week of Spain’s “passivity” towards racist slurs against Brazilian soccer player Vinicius Jr. of Real Madrid. Lula’s government has asked its Spanish counterpart to take action on the case. Turning the racism that Vinicius lived out in Spain into a diplomatic conflict, the latest sanctions against an Argentine team are now putting the focus of the South American neighbors.
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