Champion Maganda has been used, unwittingly, to the disbelief. It is certain that he was born in the coast of Acapulco (Guerrero), who is mexican, although day-to-day, the people that you know makes him feel an outsider, an invader. Maganda recognizes feel in the crossfire of insults, racism and xenophobia. Your job as a referee professional football, has intensified the insults. Has been accused by the Mexican Football Federation that fired him for his skin color. When asked for an explanation of why not given parties the only thing he heard from his boss was “what do you want to click black?”.
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Since 2001, Maganda knows no other profession than that of being a judge of football matches. Started in the circuits paraprofessionals in the port of a Warrior. His bet was to earn a contract in the Mexican Football Federation and during that tour it was when it began, for the first time, to receive reproaches for being afromexicano. In Mexico one out of every 100 mexicans are of african descent, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). The community afromexicana has been concentrated in two States of Mexico, Guerrero and Oaxaca, according to the socio-demographic profile conducted by the National Commission of Human Rights of Mexico.
“In the third division was going to the stadium and I shouted ‘you fucking black, márcale well!”, account in an interview with THE COUNTRY. On YouTube there is a video from 2009 in which a local environment of Morelos shows a fan of mocking and shouting, “you black son of the hell, I’ll wash your mouth with gasoline!” and even suggests that favored a particular team by “being » brown skin”.
Maganda was reluctant to answer to the people in the stands and also the players, was unmoved and held to mediate the end of the second mexican division, and games of the cup tournament. In 2015, the réferi approached the dressing room of the team of Pachuca to review the uniform. The players “started to make some sounds rather strange, as if they were chimpanzees. Were insults towards me. When I entered the professional sector I thought that it would be different for the amateur”, he recalls.
Everything was going well in the trajectory of Maganda until the summer of 2017 when the Arbitration Commission, mexican changed command and took Arturo Brizio, a exárbitro international. “I had a projection to be in the first division, however, comes and my career is going down. My classmates asked me if I had a problem with any commissioner. It was months and months until I going. She asked him why not I thought and I responded: ‘by fucking black”, account. He was able to talk with Brizio and with two of his associates Julio Escobar and Jorge Gasso. Maganda recalls the following dialog:
−please, I need you to tell me why it does not take the negrito – said Brizio
−Has had bad games, bad decisions, » said Gasso
−Then why not I say? To the others yes I put videos to tell them of their errors, » he asked, Maganda
−why don’t you go back to Acapulco, and beyond to the boats? – mentioned Gasso
“The lord Brizio has been very elitist. He does not like people bajitas, or color,” he insists Maganda. The president of the Arbitration Commission, on several occasions, has denied outright the facts. « I can not give an opinion about it because this topic is in the courts. It is not worth to make any comment on the recommendation of my lawyers, » said Brizio Betmatik to query from this newspaper.
Blade filed a lawsuit against the president of the commission of collegiate and against the company that hired him, the Mexican Football Federation. “I seek justice, it’s not fair that someone is racist and holds a position so important. I want to go to arbitration,” he explains. During the process that started last summer, the guild of referees only made a phone call. Some of your colleagues have supported, although their support has not been public, “there is fear”, you try to explain it the hissing acapulqueño. Since leaving the whistle and his life is stuck in racism.
Maganda aware that last September took a taxi near his home in Ecatepec, one of the areas with the highest insecurity in the periphery of Mexico City. The vehicle moved a few 100 metres until another car cut off the step and this fell to two armed men. The arbitrator mexican thought of the worst. To Champion asked for an official id. “It’s apocryphal, you’re not mexican!”, he was released and made him get out of the car. “Do what you say for my color?”, replied.
The referee can’t be sure if those armed men were police officers or not, but remember that we reviewed their portfolio and mobile. “Here, you took hell for falsifying documents, you fucking colombian shit,” he repeated. Champion struggled until they beat him up and handcuffed him. “To let go, I was asked to sing the national anthem and they asked me who was Miguel Hidalgo. In my own country I am a foreigner,” he recalls. That kind of situations, he admits, will happen very often and try to go accompanied to the street.
While the case of Maganda is resolved in court, the arbitrator has assembled a private security company. “I want to set a precedent in my country. At our law blacks are not recognized, the indigenous people themselves,” says Champion, the whistling that every time you go to an airport you will speak in English or you ask a question that he already is routine: “how little you are mexican?”.
