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Latin American football seen as rife with violence against women
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 3, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The world of Latin American
football is often criticized as one in which violence against women is
tolerated, and now there is a new case to further soil its reputation.
Two top players — Colombians Edwin Cardona and Wilmar Barrios — who play
for one of Argentina’s storied teams, Boca Juniors, are accused of assaulting
and threatening two women.
However, they are not the first men to face such controversy.
The region has already been rocked by cases such as that of Brazilian
international Robinho who was convicted last year in Italy of taking part in
a gang rape.
The former coach of the Colombian national team, Hernan Dario Gomez, had
to resign after hitting a woman as he left a bar in Bogota in 2011.
There have been other cases in Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Guatemala and
elsewhere.
In Latin American football women “are seen as things, or prey, but not as
partners,” said sports psychologist Oscar Mangione, who used to be on the
staff of Boca Juniors.
– Winning is everything –
In the new case, the women accuse Cardona and Barrios of putting them in
situations of “physical and verbal violence.”
These include an alleged ordeal in an elevator in which one of the players
was wielding a knife, said Juan Cerolini, the plaintiffs’ lawyer.
The players were initially suspended but they were back playing last
weekend, just days after their trial started and with no verdict yet
returned.
The complaint seems to have been almost forgotten at their stadium, called
La Bombonera.
“If what they did is wrong, they had better pay. But there is always
something shady going on. I want Boca to win. What can I say?” said one
female fan, aged in her 20s, who gave her name only as Luciana as she headed
to the game in which the players returned to action.
“What matters above all is the issue of usefulness in terms of the value
of winning or the economic investment the team has made in a player,” said
Mangione.
“There is no institutional policy. A kid joins the world of football at
age 12 and might retire in his 30s. And in all that time he is only trained
to be a football player. And this is an important span of time to train him
as a man in every sense of the word,” he added.
At the same time players, “like it or not, are role models. And their
behavior enables a certain kind of behavior which is not good,” Mangione
added.
– Cultural change –
In an Argentina a woman is killed every 29 hours, according to the
Observatory for Violence against Women, which recorded 298 such killings last
year.
That stands in sharp contrast to legislation in which “Argentina is a
pioneer” in laws to protect women, said Ada Rico, head of an NGO called Casa
del Encuentro.
“You can have as many laws and measures as you want. But we are not going
to get anywhere without a cultural change,” she added.
Analia Fernandez, a journalist and amateur football player, said what is
most common is to “treat the player as the victim and not take the word of
the accuser.”
Right now, men’s football “is a place that legitimizes violence against
women,” she told AFP.
“Our task is to begin to transform that kind of football. Here out on the
field we women are changing things,” Fernandez said from the pitch of her
team in Buenos Aires.
BSS/AFP/MRI/0837 hrs