You might have seen recently, on YouTube or in a sports article, Tevez’s attempts at speaking English with a couple of Argentine students, saying how it was ‘beri dificool’ for him to speak the language. Many people have been ripping on this lately, at the fact that when he talks in English he looks like he’s spitting out random sounds, but to all those haters I have two words: ‘no jodan’. If you read the comments in this article (http://442.perfil.com/2010/06/14/el-spanglish-de-tevez/), which includes the video of Tevez’s interview, you can find quite a number of haters, but also a number of die-hard supporters.
Tevez Speaking in English
Carlos Tevez is a national hero, not only because of his status as a football player, but because of the fact that he has never forgotten where he came from. Tevez comes from an extremely poor neighborhood in Buenos Aires Province, ‘Ejercito de los Andes’ (also known as ‘Fuerte Apache’, which is where he got his nickname ‘El Apache from), also considered one of the most dangerous areas of Buenos Aires. An interesting fact using statistics of the last census: of the 1.825 kids between the ages of 9 and 14, 340 of these will disappear by the time they’re 15-19. Time to start counting your blessings.
The fact that he kind of resembles a man-monkey hybrid is only made worse by the fact that when he was a 10-month-old baby he took a slight fall into boiling water, resulting in several ‘cicatrizes’ on his face and upper body. When Tevez was a rising star he got offered free plastic surgery to correct these imperfections, but he refused, claiming it was part of who he was, and that his people appreciated him no matter what he looked like. He’s like Mickey Rourke: fucking ugly, but way cooler than you’ll ever be.
Not only does he own an impressive array of war wounds, he is also in a ‘cumbia villera’ (Argentine ghetto music) band with his brother Diego, called ‘Piola Vaga’, and if you want to see the football superstar ‘moviendo las caderas’, put ‘tevez piola vaga’ in YouTube and get ready to get down.
I’m not a football fan, so there’s probably all these other football stories with Tevez I’m not mentioning, but what I do believe is that he is an honest role-model for Argentine kids, especially those who can’t even afford shoes and spend their time kicking cheap plastic balls on the street. People like him give these kids something to dream about, some hope, like Maradona before he became an overweight junkie. Though not a ‘fanatico’, I am following the ‘Mundial’ though (I am quite proud of having forced myself out of bed on a Saturday morning for a match), and the feeling of wanting to support your team is contagious. There’s something in the air in Buenos Aires in the times of the World Cup, all of us Argentinos coming together under the ‘albiceleste’, and Tevez’s spanglish is a reminder that, even though we might be divided by languages, as people we are all joined in a common passion for the ‘Mundial’.
So to all those nay-sayers who mock Tevez’s attempts at English, once again, ‘vayanse a la mierda’. How’s your Spanish lately? ‘Is moy buenou?’ ‘Nou abla nou espaniol?’ Check out your own language skills before picking on someone elses. And it doesn’t matter if you’re from the ‘villa’ or from ‘Recoleta’, learning English (or any other language) is always an admirable and useful thing to do, and hopefully in the future we might not only be brought together by a common interest, but also by a common language, even if it is ‘Spanglish’.
To the ‘nenes’ and the ‘nenas’, and ‘el Apache’
El Pendejo Porteño
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