The popular saying indicates that if a person gets lost in the jungle, the only chance of salvation is to walk in a straight line continuously. If he goes on like this long enough, he will reach his limits. Now, in a labyrinth the question is quite different: only those who have a great memory will be able to find the exit, and they will be able to remember the corridors through which they have already traveled. Those who make friends with the incoherence of their strange turns and will not be afraid to try something different.
Several days have passed since referee Szymon Marciniak decreed the end of the electrifying World Cup final in front of the 89 thousand souls present at the Lusail Iconic Stadium and more than three and a half billion tuning in to the broadcast. In Argentina, the celebrations and joy for the title obtained continue to be embedded in the social fabric and invite us to (re)think what that third star that is already embroidered in the social fabric means.
Something different happened in this World Cup for the Argentines. It was not only the consecration of Lionel Messi and his team. The –deserved– victory of our sports leader meant something more, it was an important reassurance: the ratification that, if someone sets a goal and works seriously, with patience and humility, in the long run they can achieve it. It was the challenge to the idea that we are lost in our own labyrinth and that if we walk in a straight line we can reach the Promised Land. The euphoria contains that confirmatory catharsis. But… What had happened if Dibu Martínez did not display his art and Randal Kolo Muani’s shot came to fruition at minute 2:43 of extra time in the second overtime? The question is too complex a threat to the conceptual and emotional building that only now, after more than two hundred years, is beginning to show its foundations.
The writer Marcos Aguinis published in 2001 his book El atroz encanto de ser argentinos. Between the essay and the sociological reflection, he offers an accurate characterization of the national being and its foundations. At the beginning he gives us a clue: the name of our country comes from the Latin word “argentum”, which means silver. The infinite wealth that feverished the conquerors of the new world and marked the destiny of success and well-being in our own name.
Later on, he will explain that our town was formed from contradictions and mixtures: the Spanish landowner, the liberal intellectuals, the Creole, the mestizo, the neighbor from a “good family”, the exiled gaucho and the malicious and dark suburb. Jazz, samba and milonga mixed in a unique combination. All the countries of America received immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, but Argentina was much more receptive and thus, there was a destiny: between the tango and the melancholy of the immigrant, the idea of perpetual suffering was conjured. Who accompanied us to the penalty converted by Gonzalo Montiel for the start of another state of consciousness: it’s Argentina, you wouldn’t understand it. In these five words, with graceful efficiency, a new level of self-awareness is proudly displayed.
And perhaps the acceptance that we are not so uncomfortable in our labyrinth. Knowing that the World Cup is only a sporting achievement, but that there is also something else: it is possible to identify your own style. Integrating the straight line, but also the fluctuations of our oscillating identity. It is possible to raise the glass and after ten minutes sit down and chat with the family as if we were drinking mate in the backyard, while the kids play kicking a little water.
Therein lies the best. It means that we can make friends with our monsters to work energetically for a better future. The moral reserve is there, latent.
The third star is set in the firmament of Argentine history and may be the indicator of a style that stops thinking about the past and begins to recognize itself as open to the world and to all possibilities. Because as an anonymous tik-toker said in these days of World Cup liturgy: “at the end of the day, to be Argentine you just have to want to be.” Health!
*Dean of the Faculty of Educational Sciences and Social Communication USAL.
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