During a meeting this Wednesday morning (9) with the Spanish Prime Minister, in Buenos Aires, the Argentine President, Alberto Fernández, declared that “the Mexicans came from the natives, the Brazilians, from the jungle, and we arrived in boats “. “They were boats that came from Europe,” he said, pointing to Pedro Sánchez. Subsequently, he approved: “My [sobrenome] Fernandez is proof of that. “
The Argentine leader believed he was referring to a sentence wrongly attributed to the Mexican writer Octavio Paz (1914-1998), Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1990, in which he would have mentioned the Aztec roots of Mexicans and the Inca origin of Peruvians. . However, he got confused and the phrase is actually part of a song by composer Litto Nebbia.
Argentinian public and political figures often commit what the local press often calls a “misstep”. The racist phrase, however, reveals a deep cultural trait that downplays or even denies the mixed race roots of the Argentine population.
Such statements have already been made by various members of parties and social and intellectual classes.
Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, for example, said that “Argentines are Europeans born abroad”. Now it’s the turn of Peronist Fernández, who presents himself as a center-left name and has ties to organizations that defend minorities and indigenous peoples.