Javier Milei, Argentina’s leader, has distanced himself from his controversial vice-president’s support for the offensive chants sung by the national football team.
Enzo Fernandez, the Chelsea star, triggered outrage last week by posting a video of his teammates belting out a racist and homophobic chant as they celebrated winning the Copa America, the Western hemisphere’s equivalent of the European Championship.
The lyrics, which targeted vanquished 2022 World Cup rivals France, ridiculing some of the players as coming from “Angola”, were widely condemned, especially in the UK and France. Stamford Bridge said it would discipline Fernandez.
Mr Milei initially defended the right of the Argentina players to “say, think and do” what they wanted regardless of pressure from foreign governments. But he was careful not to condone the chant itself.
But Victoria Villarruel, the vice-president, offered full-throated support for the offensive song, posting online: “No colonialist country is going to threaten us for a football song nor for saying the truths they don’t want to admit. Stop simulating indignation, hypocrites. Enzo, I support you. Messi, thank you for everything. Argentina, always hold your head high!”
That appears to have been too much even for Mr Milei, who is famous for making his own outrageous remarks and levelling insults at everyone from other heads of state to his compatriot Pope Francis.
Over the weekend, Manuel Adorni, Mr Milei’s spokesman, described Ms Villarruel’s comment as “unfortunate”, while the president said it was “not a happy one”. Mr Milei also sent his closest confidante, his sister Karina, to meet France’s ambassador to Argentina to mend fences.
Usually described as “ultra-conservative”, Ms Villarruel has a long history of triggering outrage in Argentina.
Her father Eduardo was a lieutenant colonel and Falklands War veteran who participated in a 1987 military uprising against the recently restored democratic government, an uprising she has defended.
She has also made a career of downplaying and justifying the serious human rights abuses of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina in the 1970s and 1980s, killing and disappearing thousands of its opponents, real and perceived.
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