I always heard about Maradona and Argentina’s run to World Cup glory in 1986. I also knew that they won in 1978 but I never really noticed that it wasn’t talked about as much. At first, I believed that it might be because no one on that team is as iconic as Maradona was in the 80s but I guess that wasn’t true and it shows that I am not very knowledgeable about the history of Argentina.
To hear that a nation that is so obsessed with soccer has some people that despise the World Cup was something I never thought about but it makes complete sense. The events that people in Argentina lived through in the 1970s were extremely terrifying. To be killed and tortured by your own country’s military is something that obviously should never happen. However, that is something many Argentinians had went through.
I can’t even try to begin to understand what they went through. Prisoners, both men, and women raped in brutal ways. Mothers still long to know what happened to their children even now 50 years later. One of the quotes from a mother was especially heartbreaking to read and it was “I hope he was dead, I hope he was dead so he wouldn’t have to go through all that pain.” To be in such a situation, I can’t imagine for any parent. It is something that shouldn’t happen but it did in the country.
The fact that people were being killed and tortured as the World Cup tournament was going on is horrendous to think about. Now I may still have the mentality of a child in this regard but I always thought of the World Cup where many different cultures and groups of people get together to cheer on their respective countries. It is meant to be a time of peace in a world that has been rather violent and cruel. It shouldn’t be as some kind of distraction to prevent people from seeing what is going on in some countries.
