“As cold as Mbappé’s chest”: stories of the “hustlers” who won with the Argentine national team party

“Negrito,” Vitaca said.

– Than? -said Rocamora

– Will we survive?

“The Busted”, Jorge Asís

“Very cold like Mbappe’s chest.” Franco wrote the posters last night, by hand, on light blue cardboard originally bought to write down the prices of the beer, water and foam and stick them on the windows. The phrase invaded his mind at the speed that the French idol dribbles. A ray.

He imagined what, a few hours later, would finally happen: his Traffic in the heart of the crowddetained with the impunity that -deservedly- gives a world championship, in the middle of Corrientes avenue, a bar on wheels at the right time and the right place, just a few meters from the Obelisk (from whose window a naked man peeked out 74 meters away waving an Argentine flag), among thousands and thousands of Argentines drenched in glory but above all, thirsty.

Played as winners, Franco Navarro and two friends gathered money to buy the merchandise and for gasoline yesterday Monday after seeing the enormous festivities on Sunday and left San Justo very early for the epicenter of happiness. Objective: to sell what the Argentine soccer people who celebrate such a feat need under the burning December sun. And finish with the numbers in green at the end of the year: unexpected bonus, bonus track of 2022.

“My friends gave me a push”admits Franco. The three live in Villa Constructora. During the week, in ordinary life, Navarro uses his freight truck and there are days when he earns up to 20,000 pesos. The other drives a car for an app and “El Gordo” buys and sells clothes. “What we earn we will invest in merchandise”, warn. The beers come out non-stop.

Buenos Aires was a three star carnival with a single comparsa, the light blue and white. The number of people who took advantage of the holiday to celebrate throughout the city is countless. It talks about five million citizens but how to measure it? It seemed that no one stayed at her house. It is not remembered -there was not- a celebration like this. Someone passing by yesterday commented in the street, in astonishment, that the crowd was equivalent to “the funerals of Evita, Perón and Maradona together”. And another replied: “Or their resurrections.”

Meanwhile, Franco and his two friends were where they needed to be, three merry hunters to beat France. Double happiness: gather some mangoes and celebrate. “I tell you the truth, I hesitated. I didn’t want to risk it. But hey, I had a sharp edge and I put the truck. And El Gordo insisted on me. Seventy-five prawns plus gasoline”, says Franco, leaning on the trunk of the Traffic while the madness around is such that Three Air Force Mirages thunder by. I wish the Apocalypse looked like this. The crowd shouts, howls “muchaaaaachos” under a blue sky through which thousands of light blue and white balloons and war planes fly.

Another hundred meters to the Callao side, another truck. Matías Cavieres, a 26-year-old freighter, improvised a bar with a wooden board and from the Ford cashier dispensed all the drinks he could during the long day of popular joy and thus, after noon, He already knew that he was paying for the vacations with Paula, a nurse, also 26, his girlfriend.

“We invested 80 and we already got more than double”He smiles and she smiles. “We are search, search, how can you”, remarks Matías. The water 400, the beer 500, very cold.

No one sees the pagers. But they are here, there and everywhere. Ready for when the crowds coming down to celebrate are tempted by a t-shirt, banner or poster. Hasty for the thirsty. They are a lot. There are millions of engines for the immense wheel of the popular economy. As Argentine as football and Messi, if football and Messi were different things (they are not).

“After all, we are all here at this party looking for something. Some the happiness that they do not have in ordinary life, others a little string, others to see Messi and Dibu up close ”, philosophizes Diego, a fan who came from Olavarría and takes photos with his cell phone of some young people climbing from the roof of a newsstand to a canopy and from there to the eaves of a building and then to a balcony of some offices from where they jump and shout and can’t believe it, world champions.

Matías says that on Monday night he went to the area of ​​the AFA’s Ezeiza property and sold everything he brought with him. “You get triple, quadruple. We brought 100 Milanese sandwiches for 600 pesos and we also sold them all”, details. Neither he, nor Paula, nor Brenda (24) nor Kevin (20), his brothers-in-law who accompany them, have slept in the last 24 hours. From Ituzaingó to Ezeiza, from Ezeiza to the Obelisk.

“Yesterday at about 2:00 p.m. I told him ‘Fat lady, we are going to make money, we have to go on vacation’”Matías rejoices, closer to Mar de Ajó than when Argentina beat the Netherlands.

Claudio C. (asks not to publish his last name) is 47 years old and on Sunday, when Messi raised the cup, He remembered how at the age of 10, in 1986, he went with his father to sell hats, flags and headbands at this very place, the corner of Uruguay and Corrientes. “There were much fewer people, I remember. And on Sunday Argentina came out champion and I thought ‘I have to work’. On Sunday I went to sell at the festivities in La Plata, where you can sell more expensive, today I came here, and last night I was in Ezeiza. I’m doing very well, I sold a lot”, he counts and points to the blanket with the last flags for 1,500 pesos.

“I’m leaving in an hour. Argentina gave me three suits of gain. It is a lie that there is no work. We all work, ”she says, who knows if she exaggerates. She arrived at the Obelisk area around 10 in the morning. In Ezeiza he finished at five but he had no transportation to move around until someone showed up and dropped him off at Liniers. From there he took the train to Once and walked. Originally from Berazategui, Claudio is a street vendor at soccer matches but during the week he works in what he calls “the dark trade of the fairs”.

“Like the gaucho I learned in the street, I sell the merchandise that is stolen from the trucks, in robberies that are arranged to collect the insurance. I am a good salesman, I have a magnet, like with women, ”she smiles suggestively.

Opposite him, Tefi Kámera, 35, is standing next to a Styrofoam ice cream maker. He holds a sign that says “Look over here silly enough of racism” and another, supported by the conservative, who asks for help to pay a debt and exhibits his CBU. “It’s my first time as a street vendor, I make vegan food, but I have a debt of two million in the house that I live in and I need help to put it together, ”he says. She arrived at 12 noon. She invested 10,000 pesos in 42 cans of beer. He sells them for 500 pesos. There are few left.

Tefi has a lot of competition. The best sellers in the city of the unforgettable party are drinks, flags and t-shirts.

Jonathan Farias (37) lost his job two weeks agoafter working in black eight years for a paper distribution factory as a delivery man. They gave him just 120 thousand pesos as compensation.

Yesterday he went biking through Wilde, his neighborhood, (“it does me good to clear my head”) and he ran into a friend who was washing the truck and told him that he was going to sell juices to the crowd at Ezeiza. “I used the 120 Lucas and bought water and juice and beer and I came with my four children”bill.

Jonathan was identifiable among the thousands upon thousands of 9 de Julio vendors because It was the one with a freezer! next to the car. “It was from my old woman. I started it up with ice all night, six roll bags. She’s doing well for me,” she smiles. The Selection gave him, in addition to a star, an unexpected day of work at its worst.

Los postersInstead, there seem to be old fashioned. Although it is not what Héctor Larralde assures. He sells them for $500 (large ones) and 200 for small ones.

Actually, he came to celebrate and by the way, he thought, he could collect a few pesos “for the Holidays”. “Even if I don’t sell them here, then I sell them on the coast, I work there in the summer.” He came from Tandil with his son. She brought a tent to spend the night under the trees on 9 de Julio, but in the end she did not unfold it because, with so much traffic and so much light, she arrived in Buenos Aires with the sun.

“I spent 35 Lucas on these posters”, tells and shows: the youngest has Messi with the cup, the eternal photo, and the big one, the 11 starters who danced during the first half to France. Above, a legend in blue: Champions!

“We came to see Messi, it’s a pity that it won’t happen”says Héctor, one of the nearly ten “buscas” per block that occupy the widest avenue in the world from Constitución to Avenida de Mayo.

“And by the way I’m teaching the trade of salesman to the kid”, caresses her son’s head, while talking with an interested party. “I am a searcher for Moreno. I graduated as a lawyer and went to live in Tandil, I sell pots there and in summer I sell things on the coast. I got tired of throwing away CV as a lawyer and nothing. Today we came to do the procession. Maybe it will help me get a job and go back to Buenos Aires”.

Your son asks you for change of 1,000. She just sold a large poster.

PHOTOS: Adrián Escandar, Franco Fafusli and Reuters

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