The Politics of Maradona Part 1: Diego as a Global Icon ft. Mariano Paz

No other football player has been as popular and yet also  divisive as Diego Armando Maradona. Few footballers can claim to have achieved the status of political icon like the Argentinian superstar. In the first of two episodes dedicated to the politics of Maradona, co-hosts Francesco and Guy speak to Mariano Paz, lecturer at the University of Limerick and a scholar who has researched different aspects of the politics of Diego  Maradona. Mariano explains how Maradona's iconic nature makes him an 'empty signifier', meaning that people interpret Maradona and his actions in different ways and according to their own views. Despite his political views and friendships with prominent leftist leaders such as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez in Latin America, Maradona was not a traditional political activist, but remained a prominent and significant political figure. Indeed, this was particularly apparent during the 1986 World Cup, when Maradona led the Argentine team against England, only four years after the end of the Falklands/Las Malvinas War between the two countries.

Mariano is the co-editor of Maradona: A Socio-Cultural Study.

Transcript

The Politics of Maradona Part 1: Diego as a Global Icon ft. Mariano Paz

Francesco Belcastro 00:09

Hello, and welcome to a new episode of the FootPol podcast where football meets politics. I'm your host, the co-host, Dr. Francisco Belcastro, and here is my other co-host, Dr. Guy Burton. Hello Guy, how are you? 

Guy Burton 00:20

Hi, Francesco. I'm glad that you brought yourself down to co -host! Suddenly, I thought you were getting big for your boots there!

Francesco Belcastro 00:27

Yes, I had a moment of arrogance, but I immediately, but the reason why I'm so full of myself is because we are having a double header episode today and I'm very proud of that. 

Guy Burton 00:43

Yes, and these are listeners are getting such a treat today aren't they? Not one, but two episodes. 

Francesco Belcastro 00:49

Yeah, and why are we doing these two episodes together, guy? What brings these two episodes together? 

Guy Burton 00:53

Well, do I have to say his name? 

Francesco Belcastro 00:56

You do. 

Guy Burton 00:57

Yes, we're doing a double header episode on, well, he was the greatest footballer of all time. And we're talking about Diego Maradona. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:10

Yeah, so it's going to be the politics of Diego Maradona. We're going to have two different sections and there are two different episodes, really. The first one is going to be with Mariano Paz on global Maradona. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:22

So Maradona is a global political icon. We're going to be talking about, you know, Maradona and the Latin American and global left. Maradona is a political actor on the war stage. And the second one, we're going to have Luca Bifulco and we're going to be talking about Maradona and the city of Napoli in Italy, where perhaps this connection between Maradona and politics, it's stronger and more and more visible. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:47

So it is when we're spoiling our listeners, we really are. 

Guy Burton 01:50

Yeah. But if you don't like Maradona, then just jump to next week!

Francesco Belcastro 01:54

Well, if you don't like Maradona, listen to the episode because there are a lot of interesting things that there are starts from starting from Maradona, but I actually have to do with the relationship between football and politics. 

Francesco Belcastro 02:04

So yeah. So let's let's introduce our first guest. It's going to be the guest for this episode. It's Mariano Paz, who is a professor at the University of Limerick in Ireland. He's published widely on different aspects of sociology, including dystopia, politics in Latin America, popular culture, but he's also written a lot on Maradona, including editing, co -editing rather a book called Diego Maradona: A social cultural study, and writing articles such as "Defining Maradona Studies" for soccer in society. So he's an excellent guest to get us introduced to this Maradonian studies topic. Mariano, welcome. 

Mariano Paz 02:49

A pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me. 

Francesco Belcastro 02:51

OK, so we're going to focus now on Maradona as a global icon, which obviously he is in many ways. Now, Mariano, more than perhaps any other footballer, Maradona is a divisive figure. This is due to his personal life, sort of drug issues, suspension, et cetera. 

Francesco Belcastro 03:09

But is it also due to him being openly political? I mean, Diego is often associated with the global and particularly Latin American left, I mean, body and hanging out with Fidel Castro. Strong political views on several issues, domestically in Argentina, in Italy, internationally. 

Francesco Belcastro 03:27

How political was Maradona, really? Was he a political actor? Did we say he was an activist? Where does he sit there? 

Mariano Paz 03:36

Thank you. That's a very good question. There's divided opinions as well on this topic. You just said he is divisive. So there are people who said, oh, he was eminently political and he was a political figure. 

Mariano Paz 03:51

And others who said, I mean, we shouldn't take this at face value. This was mostly relevant. There's people who have heavily criticized Maladona, others who have endorsed him. So the main thing to say for me is something that perhaps the top Maradonian scholar, an Argentinian sociologist who's called Pablo Alavares has said that Maradona is above all an empty signifier. 

Mariano Paz 04:17

So people read onto Maradona what they would like to see. People make their own assumptions and assertions on the basis of their own convictions, beliefs, and then they assign it, ascribe it to Maradona. Uh... 

Mariano Paz 04:39

Then there's something that's happening after he died, probably, that he has become a less divisive figure. Also, as we move away from the importance and the relevance that some of the leaders he endures, you know, have, for example, Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez, who have now been dead for a long time, so this has sort of diluted. 

Mariano Paz 05:03

So I would say that some of that divisiveness has been lost as you would expect to happen after his death. I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself now. So, you know, in Argentina, above all, he's a hero for most people. 

Mariano Paz 05:25

But even in England, there has been a process of reassessment of Maradona, I think. So in the 80s, after the famous World Cup match in Mexico, you know what I'm talking about, right? For the final game, he scored two goals against England, two goals so notorious that they were given proper names, right? 

Mariano Paz 05:54

There's not many goals that have a name. There is the hand of God's goal. He scored with his hand. And then there is the second goal in which he driven past five or six English players. And that's been called the goal of the century. 

Mariano Paz 06:12

And that's the 20th century. So following that, obviously, there was a large degree of disaffection towards Maradona in England. Not so much in Scotland or Ireland, I since learned since since moving over to Ireland. 

Mariano Paz 06:32

But yes, but even now in the English press, there is there's been a reassessment again lately and more so after his death. This is very clear, for example, in a documentary by Asif Kapadia. I don't know if you know him. 

Mariano Paz 06:49

He's a very good English director. He made a film about Amy Winehouse and a documentary about Maradona. And again, he explores this. There is also a chapter in the book that I co -edited with my colleague Pablo Brescia, which is called Maradona: A Social Cultural Study. 

Mariano Paz 07:13

And we have a chapter there on Maradona as represented in the English press. And the author, first of all, from the University of Glasgow, demonstrates that this has happened. That national press, the tabloids in the last five, six, seven years have become more, let's say, less negative about Maradona, or even in some cases more openly acceptable for what he was. 

Mariano Paz 07:49

I don't think I have answered your question, though. Have I? 

Guy Burton 07:53

We were kind of curious about whether he was a political actor, I mean if we could see him in that sense, whether he was an activist of sorts, I mean you talked about him being sort of an empty vessel in which people could project onto him, but did he actually do anything substantive in terms of political action? 

Mariano Paz 08:12

No, I don't think so, but that will depend on how you define activist. So he had a tattoo of Ernesto Che Guevara on his body. He had a tattoo of Fidel Castro. He openly endorsed the Cuban regime, the revolutionary regime of Fidel Castro. 

Mariano Paz 08:31

He openly endorsed Chavismo. 

Francesco Belcastro 08:34

Mm -hmm. 

Mariano Paz 08:34

the administration of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, later the administration by Nicolas Maduro. Now, I don't think that's enough to define him as an activist. There's also controversies surrounding this, because some people would say, oh, but he obtained an economic benefit, or he obtained some sort of benefit from this endorsement. 

Mariano Paz 08:59

For example, he was a host in a TV program produced by Venezuela in the World Cup in 2014 in Brazil and 2018 in Russia. There is a public TV channel funded mostly by the Venezuelan government called Telesur. 

Mariano Paz 09:25

And during the World Cup, Maradona was hosting a daily TV show, and he got paid apparently an enormous amount of money for doing that. So that's one way of reading it. There is another documentary in Maradona by a very well -known filmmaker, Emir Kusturica. 

Mariano Paz 09:48

And there is a documentary called Maradona by Kusturica. And there, Kusturica, again, a film director who won the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for NASCAR for films like Underground, says, for me, Maradona, if he had not been a footballer, he would have become a revolutionary. 

Mariano Paz 10:10

I'm not so convinced, but you know, you have these different ways of reading him. 

Francesco Belcastro 10:16

Let's talk a bit about Maradona in the context of Argentina. Before you mentioned the sort of 1986 World Cup and so Guy was crying a bit inside then as an half English, half Brazilian man. 

Mariano Paz 10:30

Oh, okay. 

Guy Burton 10:33

As a 10 -year -old, that was the first World Cup I saw and the first experience of English disappointment I ever had. 

Francesco Belcastro 10:41

So we'll talk about it in a second, but I wanted to ask you, is there something specific about Isa bringing, sort of growing up in Villa Fiorito, the quite humble start, the influential role of his mother, that somehow represents the deity of the Argentinian pibe, something that plays a role in Argentina in particular, you'd say? 

Mariano Paz 11:06

Absolutely in the personality of Maradona and a lot of his attitudes towards life and a lot of what we were talking about before, maybe he genuinely endorsed the Cuban regime because he believed that this was a regime that at least in theory intended to build a better society or a more fair society, less unequal society. 

Mariano Paz 11:33

Maradona grew up in, as you said, Villa Fiorito. Bisha in Argentina is the slang term for slum, the favela in Brazil. He grew up in extremely, extremely impoverished conditions. He lived in a house in which they had no running water, so that means not having a toilet, you know, you have a cesspit outside, you have to go. 

Mariano Paz 12:04

There were two bedrooms in the house and he remembered that Maradona had seven siblings. So extremely poor conditions. His father would go out and work in a meat processing factory, so he would be working every day and still, you know, would not make enough to provide, you know, a different kind of lifestyle for their children. 

Mariano Paz 12:34

So obviously this would have a major impact in Maradona. Maradona was all of his life the subject of racist attitudes in Argentina, in Italy, elsewhere. And this is part of this, where he was coming from. 

Mariano Paz 12:53

The color of his skin, which was darker than that, you know, the middle classes in Argentina, but the background, the way he talked, that would mark him as different, you know, going out and about interacting with other people. 

Mariano Paz 13:07

So already he would be marked as somebody inferior, you know, there's a term in Spanish called cabesita negra, little blackhead, the person who comes from the slum, extremely racist, by the way. So surely this had an impact on how Maradona saw himself. 

Mariano Paz 13:26

He was a victim of racist slurs, not only in Argentina growing up, even in Italy, playing for Napoleon. So it's impossible that this would not condition you. And politically, of course, belonging to this background meant that Maradona, mostly because this is what he would see in his father, his mother, would be a Peronista or a Peronist, an adherent to a political movement that has marked, that has defined Argentinian politics since the 1940s. 

Mariano Paz 14:00

A leader called Juan Domingo Perón, who became, you know, again, an extremely loved but also hated president in the 1940s and a sort of progressive agenda. But some would say authoritarian as way nationalistic with the idea of promoting workers right, improving working conditions, giving a voice to a whole social class workers, working class people who had previously been excluded from politics. 

Mariano Paz 14:27

So Maradona became a Peronista, but he was a Peronist mostly on a discursive level. I would argue never, as you were saying before, as an activist, as somebody compromised, he would endorse this or other candidate in interviews throughout his life. 

Mariano Paz 14:42

But I don't think his commitment went beyond that. We can discuss his politics in other ways, I think, in other areas, but not in terms of affiliation or activism for a political party. 

Guy Burton 14:57

If I can just jump in here, because one of the things that you talked about earlier was about the two goals that he scored against England in the quarterfinal in 1986, and also the way that attitudes in the UK or at least England have changed towards him. 

Guy Burton 15:13

But I think if we can go back to that point, that was a particular moment which was only four years after the Falklands War, the Las Malvinas. And of course, so that is a very different, was it a very different charged, politically charged period? 

Guy Burton 15:29

I mean, to what extent did the Falklands Malvinas play into that game and into Maradona's actions on that day? 

Mariano Paz 15:39

Absolutely. So that's a crucial point, I think, in the construction of Maradona as a global icon. And this is why, no matter what he does, for example, this is something we've debated endlessly with friends, with colleagues discussing football, Messi, even if he wins another World Cup, no matter what he does, he could never attain that sort of order or social function that Maradona has. 

Mariano Paz 16:13

So yes, that was crucial. Beyond Argentina, I would say, because I think that may be a reason why Maradona is loved, even in countries which there is no major football in culture, in India, for example, or in Pakistan or in Bangladesh, because they read that not just, you know, part of football, but as an eminently political event, if you wish, a post -colonial, you know, event as well. 

Mariano Paz 16:44

Because yes, that was Maradona on the football level, beating England, but of course, football can be defined also as ritualized conflict, right? And obviously, the ideas of nationality, nationhood and politics play a major role in the World Cup. 

Mariano Paz 17:06

That's, you know, you have national anthems play before each game. So already, that is the way that the World Cup, the FIFA World Cup is constructed. There was a strong anti -English sentiment in Argentina after the Falklands or Malvinas War. 

Mariano Paz 17:28

This is again, a complex issue that we can debate at length as well, because then we can discuss what that meant. The war was an attempt from a right wing, extremely violent, repressive dictatorship to stay in power, to gather support for a regime that had become completely exhausted and lost the support of the people. 

Mariano Paz 17:49

And the Falklands War was an attempt to sort of, again, mobilize the masses and lift the support of the government. Of course, it was an absurd, a criminal enterprise launched by the military government at the time. 

Mariano Paz 18:08

The defeat in the war brought about the end of the, you know, military regime and the return of a democracy to Argentina. But still, the prevalent sentiment was, of course, against the English who were these colonial, you know, power who had killed our soldiers, our children, the Argentinian soldiers were mostly cannon fodder, you know, conscripts, 18, 19 -year -olds sent to the war with almost no training whatsoever. 

Mariano Paz 18:38

So, absolutely, there was a clear attempt at first by the entire national team to distance themselves from a sort of political reading. And they were saying before and after the match, no, no, this is a football match, it has nothing to do with politics, but this is not how it was read in Argentina. 

Mariano Paz 18:56

It's not how it was read in Italy and beyond. It was read as, oh, you know, football is allowing us, you know, to metaphorically redeem ourselves after the military defeat. It's allowing us, I don't know, you know, to punch metaphorically the English enemy. 

Mariano Paz 19:17

And if we do it by illegal means, like the hand goal, so much the better. So that becomes also, you know, another advantage. It was never seen as, oh, no, this is cheating. That was never part of what anybody except a minority in Argentina would have thought. 

Mariano Paz 19:35

Yeah, sure. We are cheating, but this is, you know, being smart. 

Francesco Belcastro 19:40

So did Maradona himself, comment on the Focal Malvinas issue afterwards, after the match, or they kept the distance as they did before. 

Mariano Paz 19:52

Yeah, he kept his distance after the match eventually, but years later in his autobiography and in interviews, he would he would say, no, of course, we know we we were conscious of the of the political subtexts running around here. 

Mariano Paz 20:08

Maradona is also somebody who thrived on on enemies, on constructing or having enemies to motivate himself. Even people would come before much and say, oh, you know, this this rivalry goalkeeper or this right rival defense criticizes you before the press, even if it was not true. 

Mariano Paz 20:28

So Maradona would become sort of, you know, motivated or or, yeah, even even, you know, angrier because that was supposed to inspire him or, you know, motivate him to play to play better. But so sorry to go back to your question, not immediately, but eventually, yes, Maradona would say, oh, this is, you know, again, in my own way to sort of exerting some kind of revenge against England. 

Francesco Belcastro 20:58

So he almost constructed his Argentinian -ness later in relation to that. 

Mariano Paz 21:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. 

Guy Burton 21:07

And in terms of sort of moving beyond sort of his national identity as a national symbol for Argentina, I mean, as you said, you know, he has, he receives this kind of adulation on a global scale, you know, you allude to India, for example, but of course, you know, he then he played initially started his career in Argentina, moved to Europe. 

Guy Burton 21:26

And this is in the 1980s or so when the game is starting to change, becoming more global. But to what extent did Maradona himself have an impact in globalizing the game? I mean, to what extent, I guess, you know, you're talking about the 86 World Cup. 

Guy Burton 21:40

I mean, was this considered beyond just Argentina and England at the time to the other parts of the world? Or is this something that happens later on when when Maradona becomes a global icon? 

Mariano Paz 21:53

Well, no, I think that, particularly, that World Cup and that game... 

Guy Burton 21:58

Hmm 

Mariano Paz 21:59

...were instrumental in making Maradona a global star. For the reasons I was just mentioning, because there were anti -English sentiments in India or in Africa, even without that, people saw Maradona as a redeemer, as the underdog who beats the superpower. 

Mariano Paz 22:22

It was exactly the same mechanics in Italy, with Naples being able to, again, redeem themselves before the richer clubs in the North. So the main thing to remember here, as you said, Guy, this was the 80s, this was the analog world. 

Mariano Paz 22:44

There was no internet, there was no Twitter, there was no video circulating on Maradona. And still, he managed to become, I think, the most important global sporting superstar. 

Guy Burton 23:00

Hmm 

Mariano Paz 23:01

...in the world, above other other sporting legends, above, you know, Mike Tyson, Michael Jordan, or other, you know, sporting heroes. This was a world in which even cable TV was only starting to exist, not not in full. 

Mariano Paz 23:19

So, so it was not easy to watch, you know, and this, again, something that many people have said, if you were in England in the 80s or early 90s, it was not easy to watch Serie A games. You know, to see Maradona or games, you know, from the Spanish league when he was playing in Spain for Barcelona, you know, in the early 80s. 

Mariano Paz 23:43

So, be able to achieve this in this analog context speaks, you know, of how, you know, transcendent, how important his figure was. And remember, he was, he was loved. He was idolized. No matter where he went, he couldn't move. 

Mariano Paz 24:03

He was surrounded by hundreds of peoples in Italy, again, in Southeast Asia, in Argentina, in Latin America. I don't think that would have ever happened without the English game. Let's say Argentina didn't play England. 

Mariano Paz 24:20

I mean, obviously, he still, he was already famous. That's another thing we should remember, even when he was playing in Argentina in the early 80s in, you know, the specialized press that talks about Maradona already being the best football player in the world. 

Mariano Paz 24:36

But this did not go out of that small circle of, you know, people who were very interested in football or the press that cover football. 

Francesco Belcastro 24:45

Can I ask you just a quick follow -up question? These kind of idolization of Maradona continued after he retired as well. I mean, one can think of him in Mexico in more recent years when he was, I mean, in many ways, a sad copy of himself. 

Francesco Belcastro 25:02

It was a period of his life in which he wasn't good and yet it was idolized. It almost seemed bizarre. Is that something to do with what you mentioned with 86? Is it a football matter? Is it a personality matter? 

Mariano Paz 25:17

It has to go well beyond the football matter, given the nature of the phenomenon. It has to relate to Maradona as a charismatic figure, Maradona as a redeemer, Maradona as the ragged to riches story, the person who is really poor, who becomes rich, David versus Goliath myth. 

Mariano Paz 25:44

All of this plays a role here. Remember, there is even a relation. There is a church of Maradona. This is not my invention. This exists. There is anything between 200 ,000 or 300 ,000 followers across the world, people who idolized Maradona as if he were a god. 

Mariano Paz 26:08

Now, this is in part playful. And the people who founded the Church of Maradona know that this is a kind of a homage, a sort of playful approach. But still, the whole thing, it's based on the adoration of Maradona, the deification of Maradona. 

Mariano Paz 26:35

And there's followers, thousands of followers, hundreds of thousands. So this has to go between football, because there's no Church of Messi. There is no Church of Ronaldo. So it cannot be just football. 

Guy Burton 26:50

Well, that has been fascinating. Thank you so much Mariano for sharing that with us and taking the time to talk to us about the global aspect of Maradona. Francesco, is there anything else you want to add? 

Francesco Belcastro 27:01

No, just... I would encourage listeners to go and check out Mariano's work for the edited volume that he mentioned. Mariano, could you remind us the title of the edited volume? 

Guy Burton 27:11

Which we'll be linking to in the show notes as well. 

Mariano Paz 27:14

Yeah. That's perfect. They quoted a book called Diego Maradona: A sociocultural study, which I co-edited with Pablo Brescia. But if I may, and if we have the time, I don't want to talk about my book. 

Mariano Paz 27:29

This book has chapters on, you know, different aspects of Maradona and all of the things that you were asking about. So Maradona is a global phenomenon, Maradona and his role in Italian football, in Spanish football. 

Mariano Paz 27:44

But then Maradona was a presence also in the media, in art. I talked about films already. There's no footballer who had so many films made about himself. And I'm not talking about just commercial biopics. 

Mariano Paz 27:57

I'm talking about art films. Paolo Sorrentino, Francesco, you probably know him, a director who has won an Oscar who wants, you know, a Palme d 'Or in Cannes, so the most important film festival in the world. And he made two films that revolve in part, you know, to a bigger or lesser extent on Maradona. 

Mariano Paz 28:16

So his personality, you know, that transcends football. There's obviously chapters of Maradona and politics in the book. But and the other thing that you will find is a biblioraphy list, because there's hundreds of books I have. 

Mariano Paz 28:33

I'll show you these people on the podcast, but these are these are only a few of the books that have to deal with to do. Todo Diego is Politica - All Diego is political, you know. Or this one is called Rey de Fiorito: Cronicas Politicas. 

Mariano Paz 28:48

So political chronicles from the life of Maradona. Maradona: football and politics. Now most of these books are in Spanish, unfortunately. Our book is in English, the one Pablo and I edited. So that's that's the advantage. 

Mariano Paz 29:03

But there's there's so many, so many works done academically or or, you know, journalistic on Maradona. 

Francesco Belcastro 29:12

That's fantastic. We encourage listeners to go to go and check them out. Mariano, this has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you very much for your time. We have learned a lot about Maradona and about a lot of other things. Guy?

Guy Burton 29:25

Yes. Thank you, Mariano, for taking the time. And as we said, of course, you know, all the links to your book will be available in the show notes as well. 

Mariano Paz 29:33

No worries at all. I'm not trying to promote anything, but I'm always delighted to talk about it. 

Francesco Belcastro 29:38

You should. You should! Hahaha! 

Guy Burton 29:39

Yeah. 

Mariano Paz 29:40

I'm happy to talk about Maradona and politics, you know. 

Guy Burton 29:44

Well, that was really interesting. I mean, I found that fascinating. And so thank you so much, Mariano, for taking the time to talk to us. Now, Francesco, we need to also move on and sort of tell out what else do we need to tell the listeners. 

Francesco Belcastro 29:57

Well, the first thing is to click on the next episode after this. They're going to have a second episode with Luca before, because if they, if they found Maradona, the global political icon, fascinating, they're going to like just as much Maradona and the politics of Napoli, of Italy, really. 

Francesco Belcastro 30:14

So that's just after. So I think if they don't click anything, it's just going to go automatically on the next one. So do that. After they've done that, we always ask for listeners help. So this politics of Maradona is an idea that we had. 

Francesco Belcastro 30:28

We want to do it for a while. But a lot of the episodes that we've done recently, and they've been the ones that people have liked more, actually not our ideas, we're listeners' ideas, right? Listener's suggestions. 

Francesco Belcastro 30:37

So we want to hear from listeners. What are the people, what are the people we should speak to? What are the topics we should cover? And they can get in touch with us in different ways, right? 

Guy Burton 30:48

Yeah, they can reach us on all the various social media that we have a presence on, so Twitter X, Instagram, Facebook, Blue Sky and also at LinkedIn at our own personal account. 

Francesco Belcastro 31:01

And also we need to remind them another thing, what else we need from listeners. 

Guy Burton 31:06

Oh yes, we also want them to, if they liked it or even if they didn't like it, to review us wherever it is that they get their podcasts from and also to share the episodes to the Diego Maradona fan in your life as well as subscribing to future episodes which always come out on Mondays. 

Guy Burton 31:26

With that, thank you very much for taking the time to listen to us and we'll talk again next week. So, Francesco, I'll see you again next Monday. 

Francesco Belcastro 31:32

Just to remind the next week that they shouldn't expect two episodes, there's gonna be only one. 

Guy Burton 31:36

Oh yeah, that's a good point. Don't want them to start getting used to that. 

Guy Burton 31:40

Exactly. Anyway, listen, talk to you again then next week in Francesco. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye.