Alberto Amato
11/25/2020 18:24
Clarín.com
Opinion
Updated 11/25/2020 6:27 PM
He was one of the great idols of Argentina, which implies an inevitable variant of tragedy and even of young death.
Maradona was not the 33 years of Eva Perón, nor the 45 of Carlos Gardel, but he shared with them the bonfire, the immolation, the offering.
If God told Mozart or Bach when he sent them to this world: "Make music", he entrusted Maradona with: "Be a footballer."
But since God is round, according to the Mexican Juan Villoro, and mischievous, he gave him a second assignment: "And play ball."
Which is what he did since he tied one to his left foot, that is, when he was born in Villa Fiorito.
If Maradona embodied like no one else that strange spell that defines national idols, and national feelings, it was also thanks to his humble origins that he did not deny even in his moments of glory and shoveling money.
The humble boy who reaches high, exerts an intense fascination, enables a certain moral authority that is often non-existent but always on the surface, grants license for self-confidence, rebellion, fury and tenderness, all mixed together.
He does so because the idol's fate is written like in a play:
misery first, rise to glory, and final tragedy
.
Maradona's life seemed woven by Shakespeare.
And he played the role as the best of the actors.
The rebellion suited him wonders.
His sharp, and sometimes sharp tongue could wreak havoc;
the powers that be took it into account, or feared him because they knew that behind a
Maradonian forcefulness
, popular support was beating that allowed him everything, from the discovery of defining the goal to the English as "
the hand of God
", to the entelechy of telenovela with which he tried to apologize for his drug addiction: "
The ball is not stained
."
He equally admired people as dissimilar as Fidel Castro, Carlos Menem, Che Guevara or Cristina Kirchner.
He had Che tattooed on one arm, Fidel on his magical left hand;
the former president was embarrassed when the conflict with the countryside and then he was an unconditional Kirchnerist.
That too was allowed, tolerated and celebrated, even if it was already for the memory of having been and for the pain of no longer being.
Tied to the phenomenon of humble origins, Maradona made a cult of the epic.
His triumphs, and even his defeats, were colored by the aura with which Homer crowned Odysseus to do the two things that, the Greeks say, move us in the world:
achieve what we dreamed of and return home
.
Epic is having made Napoli win the scudetto of the Italian league;
epic had the defeat in the final against Germany when the World Cup in Italy in 1990;
Homero's is the boat that took him to Newell's Old Boys, to direct Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata, or propel that dubious Dorados de Sinaloa towards the impossible, in the middle of the battlefield of Mexican drugs.
Epic has an abrupt end: it
is a tragedy that he died at the age of 60
.
Like all death in fullness, we always know who it is that is leaving, but we will never know what it could have been.
Epic had their attempts, in vain, to get away from their addictions, cocaine, alcohol, to fall again like Sisyphus with his stone.
One of those relapses sank the Argentine National Team in the United States World Cup.
Even that was forgiven, because even that is what Maradona dressed as an epic: "They
cut off my legs,
" he simplified, as if a gigantic world conspiracy had condemned him beforehand.
A thousand times it fell and a thousand times it rose
.
That also sweetens national idolatry, dignifies it in one, exalts it in a broken and fatal mirror that exalts misfortune: Leonardo Favio painted Argentina in Gatica beaten, bleeding, dragged on the ring canvas;
an official advertisement proclaims these days: "Let's do what we do best: get up."
Those thorny and clunky conditions of Maradona's personality consecrated him before the national sentiment as a hero;
He was not Odysseus nor was he coming back from Troy, he was Maradona,
the son of Fiorito, the rebel, the fighter, the tireless
.
Soccer had a king.
Maradona, who did not believe in monarchies, was the hero of this sport: a character who carved with the patience and dedication of a goldsmith and who ended up devouring him.
He did with his body what he wanted.
And he craved a lot of everything.
He got fat to his liking, lost weight when he wanted, stuffed himself with drugs and alcohol, underwent a gastric bypass to escape a body that surrounded him, flirted with death and dribbled it as many times as he proposed to, pipe included.
He planted his own mount of olives, set up his own Calvary, nailed the nails of his own cross, conscious and perhaps happy that everything was forgiven him.
Until his body snapped like a fragile branch.
National idolatry has no consolation.
But you will find it soon.
If Gardel sings better every day, Maradona and his goals will be more spectacular every day.
But that is nonsense: Maradona is dead and that is a great irremediable sadness.
Like the Greek gods, he resurrected whenever he wanted.
Until yesterday.