On June 9, 2021, Alberto Fernández made a racist joke at a press conference alongside Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez at the Casa Rosada. “Mexicans came out of the Indians, Brazilians came out of the jungle, but we Argentines arrived in boats. And they were boats that came from Europe,” Fernández told Sánchez, in an attempt to describe the Argentines as “Europeans from Latin America”. Fernandez also erroneously attributed the quote to the Mexican poet, essayist and diplomat Octavio Paz (1914-1998), when it was about lyrics by Argentine rocker Litto Nebbia. Faced with the negative repercussion of his racist speech, Alberto Fernández went to social media on the same day to apologize.
Just as Bolsonaro submits the Brazilians to ridicule in front of the world, this self-image that the Argentine’s President and the Argentines created for themselves, that has the intent of to hide part of their history that, for them, are unwanted ,and, above all, demonstrates ignorance of the real genetic makeup of country, ends to submit them to ridicule in front the world too. I recommend Mr. Alberto Fernandez run an autosomal DNA test. As we know and I think that they know too, there are several companies on the market that does these tests and that charge honest prices, such as Ancestry, 23andMe, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA. I think Fernandez will be surprised by how much of his ancestry did not come on the boats. The same advice applies to all Argentines who think they are different from their neighbors in Latin America, including the Porteños.