The phrase about the origins of Argentina, Brazilians and Mexicans is critical of President Alberto Fernandez. International | News

EFE

June 10, 2021 – 11:25 p.m.

This Thursday Argentine President Alberto Fernandez spoke again about the phrase that caused controversy on Wednesday when referring to the origins of Mexicans, Brazilians and Argentines.

His words had a strong echo on social media and generated responses from the Brazilian president and Mexican officials.

“Lito Nepia integrates the true meaning of my words better than me,” the president said on Twitter, referring to the Argentine musician who owns the song, which contains parts of a compromise phrase he said yesterday.

In that message, Fernandez used another part of the same piece of music: “’I wanted it to be a phrase (samba) that speaks to us. Of this land we want (Latin America). It is a mixture of all, ” he wrote.

Fernandez referred to the waves of European immigrants who came to Argentina in the past in a speech that formed much of the country’s social identity.

“Octavio Boss once wrote that the Mexicans were from the Indians, the Brazilians were from the jungle, but as Argentines we came from ships,” Fernandez said.

Those words did not take long to generate strong criticism on the networks, where many users warned that the president was misled when presenting the Mexican Nobel Prize words, which fit very closely with Nephia’s song, of which Fernandez considers himself a fan and friend.

In the song “We Come From Boats”, released in the 1980s, Nephia sings: “Brazilians come out of the jungle, Mexican Indians, but we in Argentina come by ships.”

This is what Boss wrote: “People from the Mexican Aztecs, Peruvians from the Incas and Argentines from ships.”

“I do not want to offend anyone who feels hurt or invisible, in any case,” Fernandez wrote on Wednesday afternoon.

Despite the apology, the content of the sentence uttered by Fernandez was not without reactions in Brazil Jair Bolzano, With strong ideological differences with Fernandez and Mexico, with its president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Has a good relationship with Argentina.

First, the president’s son, Brazilian deputy Eduardo Bolzano, tweeted that “the only ship sinking was Argentina’s plane” and questioned whether the phrase was “racist against the indigenous and African people who created Brazil.”

About four hours later, his father posted a photo of himself surrounded by a large tribal population with the word “Selva” and the Brazilian flag on it.

Already today, Bolsanaro addressed the issue directly in front of a small group of followers: “The President of Argentina said they were from Europe and we came from the jungle,” he said.

After saying that neither Fernandez nor Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro had any vaccines, he revealed that he had exchanged messages with former Argentine President Mauricio Macri this Thursday, a desperate re-election attempt he directly and personally supported in 2019.

“We have no problem with each other or with the Argentine people. The only competition with Argentina is in football, ”said Bolzano.

While in Mexico, Maximiliano Reyes Zika, Undersecretary of State for Latin America and Caribbean of the Foreign Ministry, called the Argentine president’s statements “unfortunate” and said that they were “invisible to Latin American racism.” But sorry.

“We appreciate his subsequent apologies and reaffirm our pride in our native roots. Argentina and Mexican, we are all Latin Americans,” said Reyes Zika. (I)