Dhe scene itself lasted only two seconds. But even days later she was still a topic of conversation in Mexico. Before the start of the cup game Cruz Azul against Toluca, referee Adalid Maganda knelt on the grass – in honor of the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Numerous Mexican newspapers and sports papers reported on Maganda’s anti-racism gesture. The 36-year-old is the only colored referee in Mexico’s top division and is always the object of racial hostility.
“The gesture of Adalid can help raise the awareness of our Mexican brothers and get managers, players, and fans to analyze racism in sports,” said Wilner Metelus, president of the Citizens Committee for the Defense of Naturalized and Afro-American Mexican citizen. He called on the Mexican football association FMF to respect and support Maganda’s action.
At the same time, Metelus complained that colored players in Mexico, unlike England or Germany, for example, did not make a public sign after the violent death of African-American George Floyd in the United States by a police officer. “There are many Afro-born brothers in the Mexican league who have been victims of racism by shouting at them or giving them monkey noises,” said Metelus. The players in Europe or the United States are more solidary there. “In Mexico, there is a lack of educational work on discrimination and the involvement of managers in order to adequately promote a campaign against racism.” A request from the FAZ to the Mexican football association FMF for a comment on Maganda’s gesture and programs against racism in Mexico’s stadiums remained unanswered . The FMF rejected an interview request to Maganda with reference to the FIFA regulations.
“In my own country I feel like a foreigner”
Maganda, who comes from the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, started his refereeing career at the age of 17. He went through all divisions in Mexico. He stoically endured the racist failures and hostilities. “In the third division I went to the stadiums and they yelled at me: ‘Damn negro, give him a real warning!'” He once said in a newspaper interview. In 2015, when he had just moved up to the first division, Maganda checked the players’ clothes before the game between Atlante and Pachuca. In the pachuca locker room, the soccer players “made some very strange noises as if they were chimpanzees. You insulted me. I thought it would be different in the professional field than in the amateurs. ”
According to the National Institute for Statistics and Geography, one in a hundred Mexicans is Afro-descent. After all, that’s around 1.4 million Mexicans. But every time Maganda arrives at the airport, he is addressed in English. He has got used to the comment “Oh, are you Mexican?” But the question is not always asked so harmlessly. It was two years ago, Maganda told the story, that he had just taken a taxi near his home in Ecatepec, one of the most unsafe areas on the outskirts of Mexico City, when a car blocked the way, two armed men got out, and Maganda asked for his ID. The men said he was not a Mexican. “You rid yourself in the shit for falsifying documents, you damn shitty Colombian.” When Maganda fought back, he continued to report that he was beaten and handcuffed. In order to be finally released, he had to explain who the Mexican liberation fighter Miguel Hidalgo was and who would sing the Mexican national anthem. To date, Maganda does not know whether the two men were police officers or not. He said, “In my own country, I feel like a foreigner.”
At some point he was tired of always holding still. After former FIFA referee Arturo Brizio became president of the Mexican Association’s Arbitration Commission in 2017, Maganda’s career stalled. He was considered less and less for games in the first division – for racist reasons, he says. When he asked his superiors about it, he got the answer: “What do you want, damn negro? Why don’t you go back to Acapulco, to the boats? ”Brizio rejected the allegations and explained the reduction in stakes with the referee’s physique. Maganda sued for his suspension in April 2018 and went on a hunger strike in November of the same year after a decision was made against him. Maganda remained without operations for a year before the association allowed him to return in early 2019. Instead of in the first division, Maganda had to whistle in the lower divisions.
After a few appearances as fourth official last week, the cup game was Maganda’s first appearance as the chief referee in Mexico’s elite class since the suspension – of all places in the Olympic Stadium of Mexico City, the place where the two African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos during the 1968 Olympic Games expressed their iconic anti-racism protest when they raised their fists during the award ceremony – one of the most famous gestures in sports politics with which athletes are still protesting racial discrimination to this day. Maganda now used the symbolically charged place for his own statement against racism.
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