This is the web version of Americanas, the EL PAÍS America newsletter that addresses news and ideas with a gender perspective.
If you want to subscribe, you can do it at this link.
Did you know that domestic violence increases significantly when soccer matches are played?
The emotion, the frustration and the anger for the defeat become the excuse to attack the women when a team loses.
This happens at all levels and is usually at the hands of the sentimental partner.
In local and national competitions and also in the World Cup, the sporting event with the most spectators.
It is estimated that this year more than 3,500 million people will watch the grand final between Argentina and France.
In addition to this, the data in Latin America indicate that cases of intrafamily violence increase when there is a game.
Luciana Etcheverry and Natalia Tosi carried out an account published by the IDB where it is observed that the phenomenon occurs in several countries.
There is an escalation of verbal violence that sometimes translates into physical violence and is transferred within homes.
In Brazil, for example, according to an investigation carried out by the Brazilian Public Security Forum between 2015 and 2018, complaints of threats in homes grew by 23.7% on the days in which the League was played.
Reports of injuries rose 25.9% on the days that the teams played in their own cities and 30% when the national team played.
A trend that is repeated in other countries in the region and in the world.
In Colombia, for example, cases of domestic violence increased an average of 38% and 25% on the days that there were national team matches during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
Complaints also increased by up to 50% during Copa América matches in 2015.
According to United Nations data, the widespread violence experienced by women in Latin America makes the region one of the most dangerous to live in.
Added to the violent wave of women murdered each year are assaults and ill-treatment.
In fact, according to UN figures, 38% of women in the region acknowledge having experienced domestic violence at some point in their lives and one in three has suffered physical or sexual violence from her partner. .
In Mexico, for example, there is a colloquial phrase that says: "If my team loses, my family loses."
A phrase that normalizes violence against women and children after a sports defeat and that is quite accepted in society.
The problem is not in the sport.
Soccer does not cause violence, but nevertheless it can be a factor that affects relationships and emotions.
The data is a reminder of how sports can reinforce toxic masculinity.
“Managing emotions is essential,” says Mauricio Duarte, from the Mexican collective Casa Tonalá, where he works from narrative practices with men to deconstruct their masculinity.
"Working what we feel is one of the debts we have as men," he adds.
“When emotions are not managed well,
The image of a fan of the Mexican national team who stabbed a television screen a few weeks ago after his team was eliminated by Argentina in the current World Cup in Qatar comes to mind.
Or the case of the Chivas fan who punched the wall while his friends reminded him that his children were witnessing that moment.
"Your children are watching you, Gonzalo, behave," they told him.
“It has to do with that part of the learned and hegemonic masculinity that we all have incarnated: the competition with another pair that in this football situation escalates and becomes distorted and the situation surpasses you,” adds Duarte.
Tension, frustration, anger, anger... this is how the therapist describes the escalation of feelings that can end in violent behavior.
Even more so if there is alcohol and drug use involved.
Last year, the authorities of the State of Nuevo León recognized that the weekends in which there is a game of the city teams, the complaints multiply.
"510 calls in a weekend of attacks, and that Tigres and Rayados did not lose, because they tell me that if it does not go up more, to 1,000, it is a shame," said Governor Samuel García.
In England, as Etcheverry and Tosi mention, it was discovered that violence in homes was also linked to football.
A study carried out by the National Center for Domestic Violence, ACPO and BBC revealed that during the 2010 World Cup, attacks increased by 25% after England matches, whether they won or lost the national team.
That is why they decided to launch a campaign against this type of violence.
In Latin America some examples were also created to fight against gender violence, however, in these they did not make evident the relationship between sport and the increase in cases.
Among them is 'Score a Goal for Machismo' by the Justice and Gender Foundation together with Oxfam or 'Let's stop the ball', from Argentina.
Our recommendations of the week
subscribe here
to the EL PAÍS México
newsletter
and receive all the key information on current affairs in this country