Raúl Martínez and Alejandro Prieto

Montevideo, Jan 7 (EFE).- The English Football Association's sanction of Manchester United's Uruguayan footballer Edinson Cavani for using the word "negrito" has been met with disbelief by many in the small South American nation, forcing some in the country to confront whether or not the commonly used expression has racist undertones.

Fined 100,000 pounds and banned for three matches for responding on social media to an acquaintance with the phrase "gracias, negrito" ('Thank you, Little Black'), Cavani's case has caused a tremendous stir in Uruguay where the hashtag #GraciasNegrito was a trending topic on Twitter in solidarity with the star forward.

The FA prohibits any use of language with "reference, whether express or implied to color and/or race and/or ethnic origin".

Once he was made aware that his words might be interpreted differently, he immediately removed the post, although he has reiterated that there was no malicious intent in the post.

Commonly used both in Uruguayan Spanish and in various Latin American dialects, even the Uruguayan National Academy of Letters (ANL) argued that forms such as "negri," "negrito" or "negrita" can be nicknames to express affection.

In the history of Uruguayan soccer, the case of the captain of the world champion national team in 1950, Obdulio Varela, who went down in history as "El Negro Jefe" (The Black Boss), stands out.

For the representative of the Afro-Uruguayan association "Africanía", Tomás Olivera, it is "common and ordinary" in the Spanish language and it is "nothing offensive".

"Sometimes they call me 'negro' or 'negrito' and they have said it to me with affection. You can tell by the way, by the expression, when it is something pejorative, when it is something insulting and when something is a term of affection," he tells Efe.

Olivera, an 83-year-old writer and activist, is convinced that the punishment does not take into account key cultural aspects because it has been meted out in a different cultural environment to the one in Uruguay.

"Cavani is a person who has shown here more than once that he is very respectful of human beings (...) from a sentimental and social point of view", he points out.

The renowned Afro-Uruguayan musician and composer Rubén Rada agrees. He told Efe that he supports Cavani, in line with his public defense of why he not only doesn't mind but actually likes his nickname "El Negro Rada".

"I love being called 'Black Rada'. Before, people wanted to soften and they said 'el pardito', 'el morenito', 'el morocho'. No, the word is black," the winner of the Grammy for musical excellence in 2017 said.

But a new generation of activists disagrees, such as Afro militant Lucía Martínez, who believes that this went "beyond" Cavani, since soccer "strikes a chord" with Uruguayans who have leapt to the striker's defense with a mix of ignorance and racism.

Specifically, she points out that in the Twitter messages from white people justifying why "negrito" is acceptable, the omission of the Afro position is striking.

"It seems to me that it is the black man, the black woman, who has to determine if that term is affectionate or not, and the Uruguayan cannot even have the empathy to put himself in the place of saying: 'I, a white person, am determining if the other can be offended or not,'" she tells Efe.

She adds that since being of African origins "is in the skin," it is not necessary to explicitly use these nicknames "to affectionately refer to someone because of their skin color".

"It is a vicious circle of structural racism. Whichever way you look at it, racism is totally embedded in the Uruguayan's psyche and he cannot discern it. They go into the justification and tell you the story that my father used to call me 'negrito' or 'negrita'," she says.

A more profound analysis is that of the artist and militant of the Anti-Racist Bloc, Mayra da Silva, who tells Efe that the word "negrito", although its root is unknown, comes from "a rather painful period, the slave trade".

Although, in her opinion, "Cavani's intention was not racist," Da Silva emphasizes that one must also consider the historical use of the word during the era of slavery, a crime against humanity. EFE

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