The Mexican national team: “Bouto” is Mexico’s damned cry | Sports

Football, that cauldron where passions are pushed to their limits, collide with nonsense in Mexico. The fans’ attitude cost their team three home matches behind closed doors. The economic hit and reputation. Eliminating the “fucked” cry at the time of removing each competitor, which FIFA has been fighting for since 2014, can be even more expensive. If the insults continue in Mexico’s matches, the country may be out of the World Cup in Qatar.

Within the meanings of the word absurd in RAE, it appears to be the word “discredit”, to weigh and emphasize something. However, it does not include the pejorative sense of referring to homosexuals in Mexico. They also use it as a synonym for weakness. “That is not an excuse. There is no discriminatory word per se, but in the case of the word ‘old’ it is used in a pejorative way to refer to women. It is the use of the words that generates these discriminatory circumstances,” notes Claudia Pedraza, Ph.D., Political Science, Specialist in women’s sports. He adds that this outcry “is a manifestation of homophobia, even if the audience has no intention”.

The “fucked” cry has no definite origin. However, one version is that it originated in American football matches in northern Mexico, in the city of Monterrey. When the kicker was doing his job, people would shout, “Ehhh, bang!” Harmless onomatopoeia. The feeling was rotten and moved across the country. Another epicenter of the earthquake is moving to Guadalajara, in western Mexico. During the pre-Olympic tournament, Mexico faced the United States. There, fans of one of the local clubs, Atlas, began to play Argentine songs. from “Uh!” At each rid of their opponent’s goalkeeper they went on to insult “Damned!”.

“I hope they at least give themselves the task of investigating a little bit what that really means, and not homosexuality as such, because it doesn’t go there, and in Mexican speaking we say silly for anything,” an Atlas fan said. “There is resistance among the masses because there is resistance in general from Mexican society,” says anthropologist Sergio Varela.

When FIFA discovered the meaning of the shout at the World Cup in Brazil, it issued warnings to the Mexican Football Association. And after the tournament, the world body withdrew any kind of fine, saying that the fans had no “intent to offend”. However, at the beginning of 2016, FIFA began to impose fines. So far, she has had 17 penalties, most recently for $109,000 and two home matches without spectators in the stands during the qualifying rounds for the Qatar 2022 World Cup. FIFA has created a pyramid of penalties: first the financial, then the matches. Without fans, then losing points towards the World Cup, and finally expulsion from it.

From the very beginning, the federation, coaches and football players did not take it seriously. “The world organization should not impose its ideology, on the contrary, it should be open to various expressions in the stadiums,” Guillermo Canto, former Secretary-General of the Federation, said in 2016. It was really an insult and it’s not like that in Mexico. Miguel defended it, we use it in slang louse Herrera, the former Mexican coach, was sent off for a suspended hit.

“The intent of many songs in Mexican football has to do with the opponent’s femininity and homosexuality,” Pedraza says. “The whole structure is very exclusive: the guys who will see men playing in a game run by managers are men,” Varela adds.

To calm the serious problem, the Mexican Federation launched campaigns in all possible media to ask its fans to stop shouting it. The Confederation of North America, Central America and the Caribbean (CONCACAF) had to step in because, during friendlies or the Gold Cup, the stands in the United States are filled with Mexican fans. They also vetoed the shouting, even halting the game to warn the fans, but the action was not effective.

At the Azteca Stadium, during the two knockout matches against Canada and Honduras, the cry began. In the Mexican league they named the tournament “Grita México Apertura 2021”. But good intentions did not work either: during a match between Cruz Azul and Santos, the referee stopped the match twice to warn the fans. Ricardo Ferretti, one of Mexico’s most successful coaches, started a press conference by asking: “Are there any old women? is not it? poor? Who will be the first poor? Pure males. “The same reality and attitude to the environment demolish all plans to eliminate screaming. The campaigns have attacked everything except homophobia. If you watch the campaigns, none of them would call homophobia. They preferred to go with the idea that screaming harms the national team “, Pedraza adds .

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