In September 2020, as Argentina went through one of the most traumatic pandemic lockdowns in the world, Diego Maradona wrote on Instagram demanding more taxes be paid. “I ask God to approve the Law of Solidarity Contribution of Great Fortunes,” he wrote in a message that accompanied a photo of him as a teenager, in front of his childhood home in the impoverished southern suburbs of Buenos Aires. “In this moment of crisis, the help of those of us who have the most is needed.” The best soccer player in history died two months later, on November 25, and did not see the Argentine Senate approve the extraordinary tax on the richest with which the Government intended to alleviate the blow of the coronavirus. The measure raised splinters, even among some soccer players who refused to pay it. But Maradona, as always, had preferred to defend directly what he considered more fair.
The message he wrote that day He is one of several who have disappeared from their social networks in recent weeks. From the “Your decisions screwed up the lives of two generations of Argentines” that he dedicated to former President Mauricio Macri to the “I was, I am and I will always be a Peronist” that he wrote to celebrate the day of loyalty to General Juan Domingo Perón a couple of weeks before his death, they all had to do with his political views. The decision has outraged many Argentines who mourned his death not only as that of the footballer who avenged the traumatic defeat against England in the Malvinas War with goals, but also as that of the son of a humble neighborhood who throughout his life chose to stand on the side that he considered to be the poorest.
It is one more chapter in the long war for the commercial use of the public image of the idol. In recent months, both Maradona’s heirs – his five recognized children – and his former lawyer, Matías Morla, have won court battles over the use of his image: the former forced Napoli in Italy to remove his father’s image from a shirt that paid tribute to the idol, and the second won a battle against the company EA Sports, which can no longer use the image of Maradona in one of the most popular soccer video games in the world.
The idol’s Instagram account (active since the end of 2017) had been reactivated by his children in September 2021, between sports events and constant warnings about the “misuse” of the player’s image. In July of this year, his heirs launched one last blow. “We are the owners of all rights to him and of course the use of his name and image,” they warned in a letter addressed to Morla and published on Instagram. But that statement does not coincide with the clarifications that have been made about the decision to erase his political views.
The only message about it was published by Dalma Maradona, the eldest daughter of the Ten, who has stated that it was not his decision. “I wish it was me! I do not decide anything! ”, He wrote on Twitter last October 12, and claimed that a lawyer who“ is not his ”approves all the publications. “I’m not going to take over something I don’t do,” he wrote. Regardless of who is behind that decision, the truth is that an account with more than seven million followers is the best showcase to market his brand. And that showcase cannot be stained with the polarization of politics.
Assumed “son” of Fidel Castro, defender of Nicolás Maduro and friend of Cristina Kirchner, Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales, Maradona was also a flag of the Latin American left at the beginning of the century. “In addition to being a great soccer player, Maradona was a great politician,” former Brazilian President Lula da Silva defined him in a recorded message during his funeral. “He had a gut feeling for almost all the things that happened in the world and that harmed the working and humble people.”
None is as remembered as November 2005, when accompanied by an Evo Morales who was not yet president of Bolivia, he arrived by train at the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, 400 kilometers from Buenos Aires. The then US president, George W. Bush, was visiting Argentina to push for a free trade zone across the continent, only to find himself ostracized by the new wave of South American leaders and a 40,000-strong wall in the streets led by Chavez and Maradona . He reached out to the star with a timid “Let’s kick Bush out!” embraced by the Venezuelan president to drive the crowd crazy.
Provocative and noisy, Diego was a revered soccer player, a public man who dragged his mistakes in front of the cameras and a thermometer of the popular conscience of his country. In 1997, when he returned to Buenos Aires to retire playing for Boca Juniors, he moved to a neighborhood of mansions and embassies, where he parked a truck that took up almost an entire street. Faced with criticism from his neighbors, he responded by going up to the cabin: “I can tell you how I made the money. If any of those who live here also say so, I’ll take out the truck.”
Boca Juniors commemorated these days the 25th anniversary of the last games played by the Ten. With the video of their last game, a classic against River Plate that Boca won as a visitor, the fans celebrated their idol, but they were not indifferent to the current situation: a criticism of their eldest daughters that was unthinkable a few years ago. “They want to invent a depoliticized Diego”, wrote one of themand warned: “D10S is ours”.
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