The Andes Mountains in Argentina, near my family’s home in San Juan
What should you do about Argentina?
To leftists, and anyone who will read:
Argentina had a beautiful and painful (read: hay que sufrir) 2026 World Cup. I am speaking from the perspective of my family, many of my friends (even if they did root for other teams) and my fellows Argentines. A point of emphasis here is perspective - I am writing from my own - this felt like an against many odds tournament, and a spectacular series of comebacks, especially the game against Egypt (coming back from 2-0 in the final 14 minutes of the match). Even in our loss in the final, I found a deep sense of pride and gratitude for the beautiful game, my people, my team, and the many memories across the tournament, all of it amplified by our 2022 victory and the final World Cup for Lionel Messi, our captain and legend in the flesh.
Part of those memories are what come and go with every global futbol tournament. The songs, the art (thought much of it AI generated, unfortunately), the chants, the beautiful faces of intergenerations with hopes and dreams of glory. Parties, mythic stories resurfacing and memories of past world cups, spending time together with family, friends, and strangers. All of these things are part of our modern human experience - to gather and watch people play a sport to be anointed champions.
The other aspect of futbol, and especially the World Cup, is banter. The deployment of language to rile up or contest another team and their fans - sometimes the language deployed is witty, poetic, funny, and other times it is brutish, basic, or uninspired. Futbol does not exist in a vacuum - it is entangled with our many histories, especially the ugly. Futbol is not an apolitical sport, if anything, it is a place where politics become both muddled and clear - which means that banter often times turns violent, even if it is only on a discursive level. The songs, chants, art, have turned racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and islamaphobic since the inception of the sport. Argentina has had some of its players recite racist chants toward Black French Players. Spanish fans have embraced a long tradition of islamaphobia in their chants, most recently toward Egypt. Mexican fans have a long history of homophobic chants that have resulted in fines for the national team. There is no team or fanbase that is exempt from this history for the past century that reflect the last 500 years of a global white supremacist reality.
However, what is relatively new in the sport is the existence of social media. Futbol culture, while global, was for most of its history a localized set of sub-cultures that existed within cities and stadiums and our television screens or radios or the newspaper the following day. Yes, the World Cup did bring the world together, but prior to this last 4 world cups, social media and the hyper accessibility of the internet have made it a much more global sport, meaning the sub-cultures and access to fandoms are not local - the physical is no longer a barrier to engage. This is not an intrinsically bad thing. I can now connect with fans of teams I love through an app and some words on a website in real time. I can see celebrations from afar and share mine immediately. For anyone who has felt isolated or lonely during the World Cup in decades past, can now be part of a community through social media.
Before I continue, it is relevant now for me to say who I am, more specifically, who I am as through the places I am both from and of. My father is from El Salvador, a refugee from the civil war. My mother is from Argentina, affected by her own experience living under a brutal military dictatorship. I was born in New York, and live here, and will die here. I am all three things at once. I have spent significant amount of time, including parts of my childhood, in Argentina and El Salvador. I also have a deep love for Liverpool (and Brixton in London) as I have lived there for graduate school. My love for my homes is personal, embodied, and ancestral. I root for Argentina because I am Argentine, because my mother is Argentine, because my family and ancestors are Argentine, because I love Argentina. And, I apologize here because it is a deeply personal matter and without translation, Argentina loves futbol in ways that can be understood in only a few ways, one of which is by being Argentine. If you are not Argentine, the feeling may be lost in translation.
Now returning to social media and futbol. The flattened universal access has made it so people say whatever they want to say online, and it also means people sometimes choose teams through social media ,and through that platform root for their team, and banter against an opponent. This is also the age of Messi (which is now in its twilight) and he has amassed a global following, his jersey being the most purchased jersey in history (across his time as a player of Argentina, Barcelona, PSG, and InterMiami). This I the world we live in now. Social media is part of futbol, and in many ways, vice versa.
The stories of why people root for whom (or against) were once isolated to conversation - you ask and people respond - like my reason rooting for Argentina is being Argentine, or rooting for Liverpool is because that city welcomed me and I found family there. Now, those reasons are public and without the intermediary of interpersonal conversation or the distance of geography. People root for England maybe because they thirst for Jude Bellingham (this trajectory is very common now, maybe silly, but also quite fun). Or maybe they saw a super-cut edit on twitter of Cabo Verde and their now legendary goal-keeper Vozinha. Maybe someone is supporting Colombia because of their friend of partner. The list goes on. One explanation of why one may support a team, or against a team, is because of social media. And now I shift to what happened to Argentina during the 2026 World Cup, which we must return to Qatar and 2022 to understand it.
The brilliant Dr. Erika Denise Edwards wrote an article titled “Why Doesn’t Argentina have more Black Players in the World Cup” with the following tagline, “Argentina is far more diverse than many people realize - but the myth that it is a white nation has persisted”. The article is an excellent answer to the question people have asked since the 2014 world cup (though that social media landscape is radically different to what we experience now) and challenges the myth - Argentina is diverse and has a diverse history that includes Black people and descendants of Africans (including Africans who were enslaved and brought to colonial Argentina by the Spanish empire) and indigenous people (I descend from such a place, a string of mountain communities across the Andes in San Juan, Mendoza, and across the mountain range borders in Chile). This article was a magnificent and accessible way to answer the question in complete honesty, recognizing Argentina’s racist colonial past and fighting against erasure. From my own memory, there were jokes here and there about Argentina being white - banter in my mind - and then the glorious moment of victory came and we became World Champions. And I was glad this article was written, it felt like something I could send to people and learn with them through the myths, and in some ways, hold Argentina accountable to our history. And after the cup, the world kept turning.
Even so, what may have been an opportunity to learn about Argentina and think of solidarity with its non-white communities, what did not break was the myth people accept in their imaginations. I am accustomed to it, as many Argentines are, especially in diaspora, but the imaginary persisted that Argentina is a “white” country, for the next 4 years. Fast forward to 2026.
The 2026 World Cup expanded the tournament to 48 teams. Many nations that had never qualified had made it to the tournament, including the now legendary Cabo Verde, the smallest nation to ever qualify. More teams, more fans. But, while not new, something else becomes part of the any rationales of why one supports - or opposes - a team. Politics.
Again, futbol is not apolitical. It has been deployed to distract from state sanctioned violence or even legitimize it. Benito Mussolini used the 1934 World Cup, which Italy won, to sanitize his dictatorship. Pele won his third and final world cup at the Azteca while Brasil was suffering from its dictatorship. The Argentina dictatorship imprisoned and tortured leftists and revolutionaries a mile away from the Estadio Monumental during the 1978 World Cup, Argentina winning that year. Slave labor was used to build the infrastructure of the 2022 world Cup. And in 2026, the US, one of three hosts beside Mexico and Canada, has an ongoing gestapo-like campaign against immigrant communities, abducting and killing people through ICE and a violent immigration system, having a now well funded and established concentration camp system to house those people rounded up. All of this as climate change escalates burning forests in Canada and the US and Western Europe continues to fund the genocide in Gaza. Futbol is political, despite its players and capitalist investors wanting it to be apolitical or, when convenient, cover for atrocity. In our Semifinal with England, after the Argentine victory, a large flag that read “Las Islas Malvinas son Argentinas” - prompting English media to, in plain terms, lose their minds and reinforce their colonial control over the misnamed Falkland Islands, and prompting some supposed decolonialists to, somehow, support the English colonial claim.
What has begun to blend together in this regard is politics as part of the logic of why you support a team. And this is where things have felt different, and worse, during this world cup.
“You cannot support Argentina because they are racist!” Or “If you support Argentina, especially as a Black person, you’re crazy. How could you?” Across twitter, TikTok, and instagram, there have been what feels like an infinite loop of the same sentiment. One cannot support Argentina because Argentines are racist. That baseline has also been part of social media activists - large platforms that make content that is “educational” and social justice oriented - making videos, infographics, etc. on Argentina’s history. The difference between these videos and the article by Dr. Edwards (and countless others that have written for decades about Argentine history) is historical inaccuracies, lack of evidence, and decontextualized examples that are, at best, generated by AI. The other fascinating (albeit depressing) distinction here is that it was heavily implied that opposing Argentina for being in line with a bad/worse politics meant that who you did support had “better” or more liberatory politics. The final four teams in the tournament were France, Spain, and England (all three being the perpetrators of colonialism, imperialism, and the transatlantic slave trade) alongside Argentina. People across social media, if they didn’t say it directly, implied that the 3 European teams were politically better than Argentina. I will not expand on that implication.
I am not here to litigate history or deny my own people’s history of racism - Argentina, as all Latin American nation states - is racist and continues to suffer from structural racism. What I am here to litigate, however, what this brief moment has done to a mass imagination and understanding of Argentina, Argentines, and to its logical conclusion - me, my family, and my Argentine friends.
The World Cup is over. Argentina has lost. But it is clear now that the online global imaginary now thinks of Argentina as racist, full of Nazis and Zionists, an all white country that fancies itself European and bereft of anyone else. Samuel L Jackson uploaded an incendiary post about Argentina being the most racist country in the world. Content creators double down on their misinformed historical takes. Medhi Hasan, while wearing an England jersey, asked Javier Barden his thoughts on Argentina v. Spain being a “proxy” for the genocide Israel is committing against Palestine, implying that Spain represents Palestine and Argentina represents Israel. English and Western media have deployed ancient racist tropes, calling Argentina thuggish, barbaric, uncivilized, while praising Spain for its elegance in the sport. But the now over-current of how people talk about Argentina - in relation to a sport - is that we are all Racists, that we are all Nazis, that we are all White. One slogan that has gained steam is calling Argentina “the Israel of Latin America”.
I want to be very clear here. If you think that this is not the imaginary for those who use social media, you are either not looking directly into the fire or fully ignoring it. Spend but a few minutes on any social media with any tag of Argentina and it is painfully clear. Large scale narratives (including misinformation) are driven by social media - they matter, even if we don’t want them to. There are billion dollar investments in social media, now amplified by AI, and these algorithms are built in large part off the drive to profit and an entrenched white capitalist supremacy. These social media platforms and tools are not exempt from white supremacy - if anything, they serve it. And, yes, social media has been deployed by the people and the masses for good - the Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, and without it, we would not have documented proof of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. But, it seems, its utility for good is becoming dimmer by the day.
Social media has also been deployed as a propaganda tool for misinformation and direct narratives. Relevant to Argentina and the World Cup, I recommend this overview. Argentina has experienced a targeted campaign, much of it hurled toward Messi, an anchor of Argentina and global futbol. I am not here to litigate if there was an effort to specifically attack Argentina and help develop a specific imaginary, but the proof is not only convincing, it in many ways feels self evident. Believe it or not - your prerogative. I accept that there has been an effort to specifically target Argentina, and algorithms let it morph into what it has become because it takes very little to spark a fire on the world wide web.
So where do we arrive? Let us accept the narrative, which now millions have accepted as truth, that Argentina and Argentines including myself are racist, nazis, zionists, and white. The logical conclusion follows that
You should not visit Argentina because you will experience racism, especially if you are not white
Argentine history has nothing to offer us beyond its racism and highlighting that racism
Argentina is unworthy of global solidarity
We are already seeing the consequences of the mass narratives unfold. A TikTok account, taking a photo of a woman of color wearing an Argentina jersey, joked that they will call ICE on her for being Argentine. I have seen no less than ten videos of Spanish fans attacking Argentine fans - violently assaulting them, throwing bottles at them, and following them while spewing abusive threats. Noticeable here is that the victims of these attacks are not all white, some not even Argentine.
Algorithm controlled mass narratives are not new. I am personally familiar with how social media is deployed - and larger traditional media like news outlets and legacy publications like the New York Times - through my Salvadoran heritage. From Trump’s fear mongering of Salvadorans being only* murderous gangsters via MS-13 to Bukele’s aesthetic deployment of being hard on crime and demonizing anyone who appears to be in a gang to justify mass incarceration and his thinly veiled dictatorship, social media now has a very long track record of bamboozling its users. Social media is now where propaganda lives and invades the psyche, and many of us, including you, willfully eat it, digest it, and eat it in its shit form again, all the while thinking we are here for silly trends and dopamine hits and are too smart to succumb to fake news and AI generated videos.
I am now very afraid. How easily is it to propel us into propaganda to hate and develop an extremely limited imagination where the image conjured of a nation of more than 45 million people is a lie. More to the point, where does the lie lead us? And when does the lie become the justification for violence on a mass scale? It is mass media propelled propaganda that is now the weapon of choice to legitimize violence. How is it that we abducted the Venezuelan head of state and have him in a New York jail? How is it that right wing parties continue to gain control across Latin America? How is it that we simply accept the threats of coming invasions - Mexico and Cuba being the current targets. Part of the answer is the manufactured consent of the governed through social media. How quickly would we have invaded Iraq and killed a million Iraqis in the name of justice if we had twitter in 2001?
So far, this letter and reflection has been mostly abstract (and incomplete - there is much more I can thread into it). But now I turn my attention to you and the audience that I began with - leftists and anyone who will read. Part of my frustration with what has happened in the broader imaginary, and I am curious about yours, is that people I otherwise believe to have a consistent and just politics, have proven me wrong. Many I have trusted over the years have fully embraced this racist and xenophobic imaginary of Argentina. And this is not about the truths that I and other Argentines have been speaking about (and you may have ignored) - how Argentina is - as literally all of Latin America is - racist and has racist structures - but about how you have unwittingly accepted an imaginary that is a weapon in waiting.
I want to spend some time on how the propaganda logic should pan out - one to point out an inconsistency, but more importantly, maybe to inspire a breakthrough. I don’t care who you root for - I care about the reason you root for or don’t, for a country in a sports tournament. If you accept the premise of the propaganda, then how does your politics fit in? If you are a leftist, abolitionist, marxist, decolonialist, then why is there an exception to your politics for Argentina? Or, is it that the exception in your politics is more wide-ranging and Argentina given the spotlight is what we are all talking about? I won’t give you the benefit of the doubt, so you embrace the logical conclusion that begins with the imaginary - that Argentina should be abandoned, sanctioned, isolated, left to fend for itself. If this is the singular exception to your poltics - fine, let it be so, Argentina will survive come what may as we have survived colonialism, imperialism, and a military dictatorship. But I don’t think the exception is the case - I think your politics are fickle, inconsistent, ridiculous, and more right wing than you care to admit. And, if the exception is actually the rule - that you are so easily swayed by some TikTok videos with beautifully lit backdrops, some familiar and fanciful editing, all said by someone who is conventionally attractive, then why should I trust you will not be swayed again? And, if this is the rule of your politics and not the exception, what happens when the teeth of propaganda and the inhabitants of the internet come for you and your people, your community, your country? Will you join in and betray yourself, or like me, look at the endless internet in a confused daze?
But, the core of what I want to ask you -
Are you fucking stupid?
If this racist and xenophobic imaginary can so easily, within the span of weeks, happen to Argentina, it can happen to any country in Latin America, Africa, Asia, or smaller diaspora communities across Western Europe, and poor working class white communities - as we have seen again and again these past five centuries. Just that now, many faces that are not white are the foot soldiers of the propaganda, invisible, behind a screen on a phone halfway across the world or your neighbor. I must ask you - have you unwittingly fallen from your own elevated politics through the trickery of an algorithm? Or, are you just stupid? How will you stop being swayed against poor people, queer people, Black people, and so on? All because of your finger scrolling and seeing 5-6 TikTok’s or tweets making a claim?
I ask this of you toward me. Again, if you accept the premise of a white racist zionist nazi Argentina, then am I a racist? Am I a nazi? Am I a zionist? Am I the evil that the imaginary now invokes? Am I a proxy for the genocide in Gaza? Am I am I am I am I? If you are suddenly thrust into a dissonance about who I am and my being an Argentine, then why do you not give that grace to the rest of my people? Go down the path - follow the premise to its conclusion. Who am I to you? Am I worthy of solidarity? Am I worthy of support? Am I worthy of abandonment? Am I worthy of ICE being called on me, of being beaten on the streets in Madrid, or accosted in the streets of Barcelona? If I am to think the best of you, and briefly I will despite the evidence to the contrary, why am I exempt from the mass imaginary and not the millions like me? Am I the thing you imagine as true?
I suspect the answer is no, especially if you know me. But if the answer is yes, come find me, and we shall brawl. At least I will know what it is that drives you - a weakened spirit with no discernment between fact and fiction and an even weaker politics. I do not wish to make an enemy of you, but if there is no reason to trust you, then I will save my solidarity for another. Not because you do not deserve my solidarity, you do, but you would not recognize it or a politics of liberation even if Jesus appeared and etched it across your hands.
What has happened? Generalize me, strip me of my history, and make me the boogeyman. Do it, but I am unsure of what fruit it will bear. There is no harvest here in flattening an entire people of their whole history that is not in service of empire. That is, of course, if you want the fruits of you labor to feed our oppressors. In which case, cut the fruit and serve it on the digital platter so you can keep feasting.
I am instinctually wanting to tell you my story, that of my mother, my abuelos, my community, my many ancestors who fought against fascism, who survived colonialism, who have loved me in my entirety, including my brown skin, my queerness, my poverty, my hopes and dreams. But what use are the stories we Argentines carry if you are so easily swayed, so easily made ignorant, so easily tricked into a retweet, a re-share, a hollow string of letters that read “Argentina is full of Nazis”. I do not trust you with my story and the story of my people. Not because you do not deserve them, we all deserve eachothers stories, it is stories that fuel us. But because you cannot read the forest for the dry dead twig on the ground.
So, I come now to my my penultimate question. What will you do about Argentina? As is self-evident, we live in an interconnected world where none of us are free until we are all free. But, too many messages of abandoning Argentina and hating my people have began to chip away at my hope during our apocalypse. Will you answer the call when Argentina is attacked? Will you learn about our stories when the police beat our elders? Will you read the names of the victims of femicide? Will you help us find the disappeared? Will you elevate Afro-Argentines and Indigenous Argentines? Will you just watch and scoff and say we deserve it? Will you listen to me when I tell you that you are wrong, that we are full of people fighting for liberation, for justice, for a world that is free of the beast of white supremacy?
Maybe I should have seen this coming, we Argentines should have seen this hellscape coming for us on the internet since the banter slowly evolved. I know many Argentines, including Black and Indigenous Argentines, speaking about what you are speaking on now - the difference is, very few listened to us when we were telling you. And now, as people see our fault lines and the dark of our history, our voices are ignored, still, with the voices out the west and who are not Argentine privileged. What is old is new.
Tell me now, so I do not have to waste time in begging. Because this is no longer about a game where men kick a ball around trying to score a goal. We are in the prelude, as we often find ourselves in, to white supremacy killing us, justified through manufactured consent. And I do hope I am wrong, but already a sitting congresswoman, Representative Jasmine Crocket, has stated Argentina is a racist country with a racist history - on record, and if history teaches us, it does not bode well when politicians in the US speak on Latin America in these terms. Because why not invade, why not colonize us again, why not choke Argentina through the IMF, if all there is there are racists and nazis and zionists and raging white people? Why not sink Argentina and forget it ever existed? I ask you, why not? Why not sign off on the taxes that pay for the bombs on April 15th and wait for your refund? Why not ignore what happens next even though you could not help yourself but elevate the lies you saw today?
My final question. Would you say this to my face, in person, use the same words you tweet or share on instagram? If the answer is yes, do it the next time you see me. Not because I have an answer, but because my own abolitionist and leftist politics demand that I do take the chance, and maybe with the air we share, we can undo what is done.
Sincerely,
An Argentine. A Salvadoran. A New Yorker.