Diego Maradona full of contradictions to Argentine feminism

“Diego [Maradona] was a machirulo and exercised violence.

I do not deny it, I do not defend it, but I cannot deny the pain, the sadness that I feel since my old woman called me to tell me that she had died, "replied Clara, 37, from the kilometer-long line that formed this Thursday in the downtown Buenos Aires to say goodbye to the Argentine soccer star.

“We had no female references at that time, or very few, like Gabriela Sabatini, and then we grew up with men, we dreamed through them.

Maradona was raised in a patriarchal culture, like us, and he had sexist behaviors, but Maradona is my childhood, the games I watched at school or at home, seeing my old man cry, going to him on Corrientes Avenue in the 86, full of people and little pieces of paper… And she is also someone who never forgot her humble origins and stood before the powerful, ”added her friend, Verónica.

They both wear green scarves in their backpacks and declare themselves feminists.

The contradictions exposed by both reflect the debate experienced in recent days within the feminist movement around a man denounced for physical and psychological violence by his ex-partners and who for years refused to recognize his extramarital children.

In 2014, his girlfriend Rocío Oliva recorded a video in which he beat her to get her phone.

Three years later, Oliva called the reception of the hotel where they were staying to warn that he was attacking her.

His ex-wife and mother of his daughters Dalma and Giannina, Claudia Villafañe, reported him for psychological violence in 2019 to the Office of Domestic Violence.

The complaints have also come from outside his inner circle: in 2017, a Russian journalist accused him of having pulled his clothes and of having offered her money to have sex with him.

Surrounded by lawyers, Maradona has evaded lawsuits, but has not escaped public accusations and suspicions, including having had sex with minors.

Santiago Lara's mother, who filed a paternity suit against Maradona to get him to recognize him, was a teenager when she became pregnant.

In Cuba, where he lived between 2000 and 2005, the former player photographed himself hugging naked women who appeared to be minors.

“Celebrate and applaud men who violated the rights of women and children, were violent, exercised irresponsible fatherhood, is not a feminist, it will be something else, but is not a feminist.

Not the feminism that we militate, which is the one that is willing to question everything, especially idols and icons, whether they are popular or not.

Because through them, social models are built and incarnated, ”trans artist Michelle Lacroix wrote on her social networks.

"When are the days of mourning for killing us every day?" Luciana Fiorella asked.

Actress Thelma Fardin, who denounced actor Juan Darthés for rape when he was a minor, reacted to Maradona's death with a photo that immortalizes the goal with the hand that scored England in the 1986 World Cup. “To God.

Now come the criticism because if I am a feminist I cannot post this.

People, feminism is liberation, not being accountable to you.

Diego's football amazed me my whole life.

Have they all figured out in this paradigm shift?

This goal is the contradiction itself.

How exhausting that the magnifying glass is put on us.

Quiet and without giving an opinion, do you like them more?

Among us that is no compass, I am in the places that I think I have to be day by day, do not come with your social media militancy that is easy and just as CONSERVATIVE as the paradigms under which we were raised, "he wrote with the image.

It received more than 2,000 comments.

Some in favor, but mostly criticisms that reminded her that just as thousands of people showed solidarity with her when she denounced Darthés, she should do the same with the victims of Maradona.

Mariana Carbajal, one of the founders of the Ni Una Menos movement against sexist violence, had a similar reaction: uploading a photo of Maradona to her networks and clarifying that she was not going to discuss it, only to fire him.

But before the open debate, he decided to present his position.

"That inquisitive feministometer that cannot accept that today a popular idol is being fired, who claimed his origins in the city, who stood up to the powerful, who sided with the weak, who gave joy on the field, who played the best football, that feministometer does not represent me, ”Carbajal said.

“I do not applaud that you have been slow to recognize your children.

I do not honor his violent behavior towards his partner.

Without a doubt, it was an expression of the patriarchy.

I'm excited to see him with the ball, with the passion that he always played with the Argentine jersey, his claw.

I have contradictions ”.

Few figures have caused a similar division in Argentine feminist movements.