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Argentina has given the world some glorious things. Excellent wine. Beef. Tango. Jorge Luis Borges. The country is breathtakingly beautiful, from the wilds of Patagonia to the mighty Iguazu Falls.
Yet every so often Argentina reminds us that beneath all this lies a darker national tradition: grievance dressed up as virtue.
The country’s dismally unsporting World Cup campaign is merely the latest expression of something much older. Argentine football has long celebrated a style in which cunning is venerated above fairness and gamesmanship mistaken for genius. After all, Maradona’s “Hand of God” is not a source of embarrassment but a national myth.
What elsewhere might be regarded as cheating is too often celebrated as cleverness, provided it humiliates the opposition. It is not that Argentina – which committed 113 fouls at the World Cup, the most of any team – invented sporting cynicism. But it has often wrapped it in patriotic romance.
That same mentality has shaped its attitude to the Falkland Islands. For more than 40 years, successive Argentine governments have nurtured the nonsense that Britain somehow “stole” territory that Argentina never possessed.
The islands had been under continuous British administration since 1833, while Argentina’s own claim rests on little more than aspiration and a brief, fragile presence. The islanders themselves have repeatedly and overwhelmingly expressed their wish to remain British.
When General Galtieri invaded the Falklands in 1982, he did so not to right an ancient wrong but to prop up a collapsing military dictatorship. Britain was entirely justified in responding with force. That included the sinking of the General Belgrano.
Despite decades of predictable bleating, the ship was a legitimate military target during an armed conflict. It posed a genuine threat to the British task force and its destruction almost certainly saved British lives. Wars are not won by sentimentality.
Yet perhaps the most revealing chapter in Argentina’s modern history concerns not football or the Falklands but another big “F”: fascism.
After the Second World War, Argentina opened its doors to many of Hitler’s worst criminals. Juan Perón had long admired aspects of European fascism and subsequently provided a more than accommodating retirement home for Nazis on the run.
I explored this story in my book Hunting Evil, which traces the post-war pursuit of Nazi fugitives. What struck me most was not simply how many escaped to Argentina, but how astonishingly little effort many made to conceal themselves.
Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz “doctor” responsible for horrific medical experiments, lived openly in Buenos Aires for 10 years. Far from skulking in remote jungle hideaways, he used his own name. At one stage, “José Mengele” even appeared in the local phone book.
One encounter I had during my research brought the point home even more forcefully.
About 20 years ago, I interviewed a former Gestapo officer called Erich Priebke in Rome after he had finally been tracked down and extradited from Argentina. One of those responsible for the Ardeatine Caves massacre, in which 335 Italians were murdered in 1944, Priebke had spent nearly half a century living peacefully in the Patagonian town of Bariloche.
He served as a respected shopkeeper, attended civic events and was regarded as an upstanding citizen. Priebke hid not by disappearing into obscurity but by living in plain sight, and remained forever grateful to the country that had disgracefully given him sanctuary.
Argentina was hardly unique in harbouring Nazis. Some found refuge elsewhere in South America, while others were quietly absorbed into Cold War intelligence programmes in both East and West.
But nowhere became so closely associated with the phenomenon. It was a country whose leadership, institutions and sections of society proved unusually willing to accommodate men whose crimes were the vilest imaginable.
None of this means Argentina is somehow uniquely wicked. Every nation has shadows in its past, Britain included. Nor should millions of decent Argentines be judged by the actions of dictators or unsporting footballers. Modern Argentina is a democracy whose citizens have often shown extraordinary resilience in the face of economic mismanagement and political dysfunction.
But nations are also shaped by the stories they choose to tell themselves. Too often Argentina has preferred romantic myths to uncomfortable truths: the myth of the noble victim in the Falklands, the myth of glorious footballing cunning; and, for too long after 1945, a willingness to look the other way when Europe’s worst murderers arrived seeking sanctuary.
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It remains a country capable of producing sublime culture and remarkable people. But it is also one whose inability to confront its myths has left a dark thread running through its national story.
That thread helps explain why, whenever Argentina stumbles on the world stage, old questions about football, the Falklands and fascism have an awkward habit of returning. Lo siento mucho.
