Fernando Báez Sosa and his family needed justice. Three years have passed since the event that mourned Argentine society. Fernando was brutally beaten to death by a group of peers in a bowling alley in Villa Gesell. It seems necessary to make some reflections based on the treatment of the case in the media, in order to contribute to a slightly deeper debate on the reasons that trigger this type of violence.
The first circumstance that was highlighted with the news –let’s remember– was the condition of ‘rugbiers’ of the aggressors. Coincidentally, it had recently become known in the media that a group of young men from Mendoza, who played rugby, were involved in the rape of a 24-year-old woman. However, these boys were later dismissed.
It escapes no one that the world of rugby has had a negative image in society for a long time. And that this image was fed by the very attitudes that are reproduced among some participants who show off their belonging to privileged sectors, with certain aesthetic customs, discrimination and even violence. But it would be unfair to lose sight of the fact that this sport is also practiced by people whose values are solidarity and camaraderie without distinction. There are plenty of examples in Argentina and in the world.
Rugby is a noble sport, precisely collective, and its principles are far from promoting violence. How many episodes of physical or sexual violence have we seen carried out by leaders of different sports disciplines other than rugby?
This is not a defense of rugby, much less of the aggressors of Fernando Báez Sosa who played this sport. What he intends is to provide a point of view according to serious events such as this cannot be analytically reduced to an episode starring a group of violent hotheads, who attacked a couple until they were beaten to death, but must be contextualized.
In the first place, one must ask oneself: with what values were these young people raised within their families? If their history of violence was known, what did the club where some of them played rugby do about it? The family and institutions are located in society. So, what is happening in our society in which a small group of young people, on vacation on the beach, instead of enjoying a place specially designed for those fines, start to beat another to death, before brandishing a classist and discriminatory behavior?
surely this dimension of the case escaped the media and its presentation focused on exploiting emotional aspects, which ended up developing and fueling a climate of social indignation that clamored for punitive responses bordering on irrationality.
On an emotional level, it is distressing every time Fernando’s case comes up within a family or friendship conversation, in which empathy inevitably makes us put ourselves in the place of his inner circle and become aware that anyone could be living That painful drama.
But the approach to violence and its response from the State are not resolved in emotional terms, nor can it be reduced to a promiscuous and fleeting media scenario. The problem continues and Fernando’s murderers will spend many years locked up. Something has to be done with them. More urgent is the social debate.
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