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Alto Gringo has his dig at the fine imposed on the barcelona player Excuse me, but does anyone else out there think the 12,000 euro fine levied on Barcelona's Samuel Eto'o was just a wee bit ludicrously excessive? Not to mention disquieting and reflective of unsavory currents lurking not too far beneath the social surface. For anyone who missed it, the Cameroon-born forward grabbed the mike during the official Barcelona team celebration of its league victory this year and joined in the chant: “Madrid, cabrón! Salud al campeón!” This was interpreted by the puro-chomping varones who run the Spanish fútbol association as an incitation to violence against Real Madrid and thus worthy of the most substantial fine levied against a player in something like a decade. Now, I suppose we should be grateful for their efforts to keep the social peace. I certainly remember the tense atmosphere of aggression and violence hanging over the Plaza del Ayuntamiento in the summers of 2001 and 2003, when the very same chant rose up on the nights Valencia won the league title. I must admit I was so frightened I even joined in them myself (oh, the shame), but I swear it was only from peer pressure. It was only out of fear of those vicious mobs roaming the streets, you know, the ones who later traveled to Madrid and left scores of buildings burning and hundreds of corpses littering the streets there. I mean, you gotta draw the line somewhere and certainly Samuel Eto’o makes as good an example as any. But in all seriousness, I can’t help thinking far deeper issues are at play. What really rankles is that Eto'o's fine for that harmless chant during a victory celebration was four times (yes, count ‘em) the amount that very same body imposed on the puta mierda de racista español named Luis Aragones, the coach of the Spanish national team. Four times the amount meted out for those comments to Reyes about Henry that gave permission for an unprecedented wave of openly racist abuse directed at the likes of Eto'o in Spanish fútbol stadiums this past season. Aragones is still coach of the national team, because the very old boys network here takes care of its own. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by the (in)action of the fútbol high & mighty since no one was around to answer the phone at the league office the Sunday afternoon Caneira's baby daughter died and Valencia called to see about postponing the game. Clowntime is forever. But it’s dangerous clowntime this time and let's get a few things straight. I’m from the U.S., played team sports and I know reglas de fútbol. I played basketball and made jokes at my own expense about having white man's disease because I can't jump. I remember a favorite player with the Lakers in the ‘80s catching hell for saying he played like a white dude after a bad game and understanding perfectly what he meant. But Luis Aragones crossed a line. When a legendary but aging baseball executive in the U.S. blurted out some variant on the classic blacks lack the intelligence to be managers number 10 or 15 years ago, he was gone from his job within a week. This past year, the rabid neo-con radio show talk host Rush Limbaugh lost his spot as the regular guy commentator on a prime U.S. football broadcast after four games. The reason: commenting that the best player on the Philadelphia Eagles, Donovan McNabb, was so highly regarded only because the media had an interest in pushing a successful black quarterback. The funny thing was how relatively little uproar resulted from his firing a few days later—it was an issue for maybe a week and then disappeared off the radar screen when it could easily have lingered a lot longer since Limbaugh and his followers are not exactly reluctant to play the persecuted martyrs but it didn’t. He crossed a line and everyone knew it. And McNabb’s comments in response went right to the core issue—he said fine if you think I'm overrated, fine if you want to criticize my playing, but why does skin color have to enter into it? That’s the part Aragones missed—there were about four or five motivational ploys available before he got there, even up to national slurs about Henry being French. I hate nationalism and any kind of flag-waving, but my reglas de fútbol will go that far. But no, he went straight to race and then compounded the gaffe by claiming it as a motivational tool since Reyes is gypsy and would do better knowing he could look down on someone else like so many theoretically look down on him. Talk about clueless, but reglas de fútbol was proudly proclaimed as the puro-chomping varones and most of the rest of Spain lined up behind our embattled St. Luis the simple country fútbol coach like so many obedient sheep. Except, of course, for the racist crew who hit the stadiums to do the funky gorilla grunt thing that I first read about in “Among The Thugs,” Bill Buford’s scarifying mid-'80s book on British hooligans. The point of all this is you can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim to be part of Europe and then plead special treatment because of the Franco regime when it comes time to live up to it. You can’t talk the talk without walking the walk, at least not without catching serious flak. Which rolls us back around to the Eto’o fine. I don’t think it was an accident the amount was so ridiculously high. I think we’re looking at those old, cigar-chomping varones looking to put them uppity Africans in their place (consult Aragones for more colorful descriptions). Bad enough so many are coming over here, but to have suffer them in the spotlight putting down the mighty Madrid—time to lay down a few lessons on who's still the boss here. It’s called institutional racism, folks, something far harder to ID and root out than the garden level one-to-one variety. It’s also a prime example of Euro-centrism, the ingrained assumption that European ways, mores and culture are intrinsically superior to the rest of the world, especially in comparison to anyone born outside the continent with a melanin factor variable. Spain definitely suffers from both—I always thought Patrick Viera of Arsenal had it dead right during the first Aragones uproar when he commented that racist sentiments are banal in Spain. Good word, because the country has never been a destination, a place where others wanted to come to, until just recently so people never acquired the experience of dealing with other cultures and peoples. Hell, they just substituted regionalism for racism on an everyday level, and viewed anybody from a different region or even barrio as some alien entity to be looked down on. Of course it’s not true of everyone, probably not the vast majority of Spain, but it does make incidents like the Eto’o fine all the more unsettling and dispiriting. --Altogringo-- ©2005 24/7 Valencia Magazine /thisisvalencia.com |
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Valencia's Valencia's Valencia's Valencia's |
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