The Argentina Versus Germany Experience
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Sin la familia (el hombrecito y mi esposa están en NYC), I watched the game at Eric and Alex’s today while Oscar the Boxer spent some time in his relaxation hut and their hombrecito napped. Excusing the first goal, it was a really fun match and then suddenly, the play turned one-sided and the Germans started drastically walking up the score. Argentina quickly scrambled and, at times, almost seemed confused while they attempted to contain the damage.
For awhile, Argentina was considered a top contender to take the 2010 World Cup and the excitement around Buenos Aires was incredible. Even if you weren’t watching a match, the roar of the fans during games could be heard anywhere. La onda on the streets after the matches was an amazing experience.
After the match, I scoped the streets to see if madness would prevail and to my surprise everything seemed unnervingly quiet. I headed toward my office and along the way, I noticed a collection of German flags flying in front of Sullivan’s. I saw a much larger crowd of Argentine jerseys across the street and was afraid that complete anarchy was about to unfold. I spotted a police officer on the opposite corner nervously talking on his mobile phone while the German fans aggressively waved flags and harassed cars as they attempted to make their way through the intersection. I overheard a British couple discussing something so I slowly moved towards them to see if I could eavesdrop. The gist of their conversation was that the celebration was incredibly rude given the current location. Personally, I was wondering why skulls weren’t being cracked by the large group of Argentine fans across the street, and then I realized that the people waving the German flags were speaking Spanish and were actually Germano Argentinos.
A common misconception is that all the German Argentines are descendants of Nazis fleeing Germany after WWII. While there were roughly 12,000 poorly received German immigrants arriving in Argentina between 1946 and 1952, the majority of the two million Argentines of German decent are largely a result of the massive Volga German (mismo con mi familia en los Estados Unidos) immigration wave that occurred much earlier in the century.
In retrospect, the celebration of diversity by the Germano Argentines and the toleration shown by the non-German Argentines was nice to see and clearly shows that Philipp Lahm, the captain of the German squad is truly ignorant of the culture of Argentina and was offensively wrong when he said, “they [Argentina] did not know how to deal with a defeat.”