I keep thinking about how I was being accused of dehumanizing Argentina by talking about what I saw and it's just like... This was a World Staged Event. The Entire Planet was watching. We all saw the poor conduct of the team and of the fans. Were we not supposed to... Gather anything from that? How is it not the fault of the team and the fans for embarrassing their country with their behavior, but instead our faults for talking about what may have led to that sort of behavior? And again, this was not just me! Plenty of folks from across the pond and in Latin America were also talking about it!
And before someone says "well you didn't talk about-" yes I did. Yes WE did. We saw Mbappe drag that racist Paraguayan senator for filth, well deserved! That whole "it's because he's from France" yeah whatever, we know what made her say what she did about him. Shit, she told us lmao. We talked about how France and these European countries sure can find Black people when they need athletes, but hate them otherwise. That was another thing that got a lot of us involved. We can see the antiblackness in it all!!!
There is a huge racism problem in Latin America (or possibly 1000 separate, but interactive racism problems). I'm Mexican, and personally I was terrified that Mexico, as a host nation, would embarrass itself by doing something racist; but Mexico came out smelling like roses by being extremely hospitable and adopting South Korea as a sibling nation.
I will say though, that out of all the social media footage I saw (and I was specifically looking a lot) I didn't see any where Mexicans were specifically being nice to black people. Not saying it didn't happen, but anti black racism is certainly present in Mexico.
In the end it was Argentina that really embarrassed itself through both fan and player behavior. But Argentina is only the most extreme version of something that is present through the Americas.
