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Blanco y Negro never imagined having to even consider the option of terminating the contract of one of its main figures for something that happened miles from the field, in the privacy of his home. Or in the massiveness of the networks. But the complaints of systematic intrafamily violence (VIF) against Leonardo Valencia ended up splashing the club and the player in an unsuspected way. Since July 22, the day that Valeria Pérez, the player’s former partner and mother of his three children, publicly accused him again through a funa on social networks, the case has not ceased to acquire relevance; grows like a snowball.
It was during the last superclassic where the weight of public opinion hit the hardest. Thousands of reactions on social networks repudiated the player’s ownership, claiming his presence at the National Stadium as a sign of cover-up against gender violence by the club. “How disgusting to see macho unpunished! They will all fall and they will never have our silence again. They touch one, they touch us all! The ball is not stained !!! ”, was the download on Twitter of the national team Catalina Carrillo, one of the most commented on that Sunday.
The following duel, in the defeat against O’Higgins, the player was not cited, which was interpreted as a sign of the force with which the wave hit. But no, he was back on the roster for the match yesterday. And he played as a starter. His previous absence was a technical decision. One more rotation.
“It is necessary to specify that this is not a war between feminism and football,” clarifies Marco Cubillos, a sociologist who has devoted himself to studying social phenomena in football. “This is the fight of feminism against machismo, which is deeply rooted in soccer culture, thanks to the figure of the macho as a valid personality model. People get confused and think that feminism seeks to end men, but it is not like that, it only seeks equality between genders ”, she explains.
The end of patriarchy as a social model has generated clear fractures in the development of all spheres of the country. And as this is also a fight against symbols and conceptions, the relevance in the collective imagination that football has of itself is leading it to question its most intrinsic fabric. “Footballers often say they feel inside a bubble, but this case goes to show that this is clearly not the case. They are social, political and gender agents and it is good to clarify that the footballer is part of this change in the cultural model, in which they have also wanted to take part, even participating in campaigns ”, explains Cubillos.
Over the years, several cases like the one reported by Valeria Pérez have been known to public opinion in sport. However, this is the first time that one has caused such a stir. Antonia Orellana, a journalist and feminist activist, assumes that events such as those charged against Valencia are situations that will never go unnoticed again. “What happened is that domestic violence ceased to be a purely family or intimate event, and now it has been assumed as a crime. And not just any crime, it is a violent crime against people. And that a famous person, or any person who exercises leadership in the public space, is involved as the author of these events is something that we will never tolerate again, ”says the coordinator of the Feminist Front for Social Convergence.
Antonia is also a colocolina fan and has participated in some actions with feminist fan groups. Therefore, she claims the late reaction of the club to this situation. “He is a repeat offender and if the club did not take his weight before, now it is up to him. The fans reacted much faster than the club. The Rosario Moraga Commission has existed for a long time, which sees all issues of gender violence. Of course, I still read on social networks messages from colocolinos like ‘dirty clothes are washed at home’; that is to consider that women are not more than an object ”, she explains.
The complaints that Valeria Pérez has made on her social networks and also in Justice are not the first. Earlier, the victim presented four others for domestic violence; one of them ended with Valencia found guilty. Now, she says only to seek peace and the well-being of her family: “I received a lot of prejudice when making my story known, but the truth is that it was the only option I had. I got tired of the threats, of suffering for not knowing how to defend myself. I am afraid of the mafia circles in which he moves and the only thing left for me was to get out of there ”.
Pérez assures that his case is not very different from that suffered by other couples of soccer players. She says it with property, maintaining that after the funa on social networks many approached her to tell them that they go through the same thing. “It is very strong to receive messages from girls who are also having a hard time at this time, who are still afraid of the circle they have. It is strong to find out that so many soccer players’ wives are going through situations similar to those I suffered, “he says.
Throughout this period, Valeria has continued to make complaints against Leo Valencia through her social networks. She does so, she argues, out of fear of the player and her environment. “I continue to receive threats and harassment from those close to her and her family. They are direct messages, who write comments without fear, publicly, things like: ‘we are going to break your snout for sapa and snout’. They are super strong, super violent things and they do it in front of everyone ”, he assures.
The flyer complained against Valeria Pérez for slander with advertising. He asks for three years of minor seclusion in his medium degree for her, also for having blamed him for the death of his brother-in-law. This judicial action is followed by the lawyer José Pablo Forteza, who represented Sergio Jadue before the Chilean justice. Meanwhile, according to Katia Sánchez, the lawyer who defends him in the demands of his ex-wife, the player is under psychological treatment.
Right from the point of view of psychology, many times a funa is understood as a cry for help in the face of the inaction of an entire system. “The patriarchal society in which we live does not have any respect or protocol for a victim to express their feelings and also prioritize their version, quite the opposite. Victims of violence are not heard and justice does not exist. It happens a lot that, either they do not report, or the complaints come to nothing and finally, this escalation of violence can even end in femicide ”, emphasizes the psychologist Anaí Núñez Riveros, a specialist in the treatment of abused and battered women.
From the Law, the vision is not very different. Natalia Bravo, a lawyer who is a member of the Association of Feminist Lawyers (Abofem), believes that the case of Valencia can reformulate somewhat the vision that soccer has regarding this type of crime, although she assumes that the noise it has generated will not change much the bottom of the problem. “What is relevant in this case is how a professional footballer should understand the activity. I share the idea that football is a re-socialization engine, but it is different when you hire someone convicted of VIF and who also has an open process. In the State, a person convicted of this crime simply cannot work, because that is what the Law establishes ”, affirms the also legal adviser of the Association of Female Soccer Players (Anjuff).
For her, the case only reveals a small part of the way in which women are seen by the entire system that governs Chilean soccer. “From an institutionalized perspective, the great bias that the development of women’s football has is machismo. I say this from an absolutely objective conception: the ANFP and the SADP Law require that the link that clubs must have with their counterparts (the players), be through an employment contract, but they do not have it. And those that do, do so with open discrimination, because it is only for some. Of 1,000 female players in Chile, around 50 have a work contract; the rest, no. Women’s football is only understood as a mechanism to help men to compete in the Conmebol championships, which requires them to have women’s teams to participate ”.
But the relativization of gender violence is not something that is only established in football. The jokes of some journalists on social networks, for which they had to apologize after being embarrassed, were the spark that ignited the Association of Sports Communicators, which in its letter of principles demanded, among other points, an end to machismo in the middle. “This is a phenomenon that occurs a lot in today’s society. Sport is a world made up almost entirely of men, so macho jokes have always been present, even among us. This has to do with a change of chip in society, where we have to understand that raping a woman is not something funny, far from it is something that we must tolerate or shut up, ”says Magdalena López, one of her spokespersons.
Regarding the records for VIF complaints, the figures are clear. In March of this year and only in the Metropolitan Region, Carabineros recorded a 14% decrease in complaints for this crime, compared to the same date last year. However, calls related to violence against women increased by 20%. In the same period, in the Ministry of Women and Gender Equity, calls to request support for the orientation number increased to 70%.
Colo Colo, who did not want to participate in this report, first officially said that he would investigate the case and, given the delay in his pronouncement, received pressure from various political voices. “When you are a footballer or a public figure, you have to set an example on the pitch, outside and at home,” said the Minister of Sports, Cecilia Pérez. Deputy Ximena Ossandón pointed more directly to the club: “If Colo Colo had a clear position on gender violence, we could know if the decision to marginalize Valencia is a sanction or a simple coincidence. How good it would be to know if the club is acting with an exemplary criterion for the aggressors. But we don’t know ”. Harold Mayne-Nicholls, White’s principal, called her Thursday to assure her they were committed to the matter.
Not only Colo Colo was overcome by the scandal, without knowing what to do. Sport in gerenal does not have the protocols to act upon these events. On Friday, Blanco y Negro announced the creation of a working table in conjunction with the Social Club, in which it will seek to create precisely a protocol against any type of violence. In addition, on Tuesday, senators Ximena Rincón and Marcela Sabat met with Pablo Milad to propose new regulations to address the problem. The ANFP did not want to refer.
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