Paraguay's World Cup Exit Sparks International Racism Row
The Weekly Post | 08.07.26
TOP STORY
Does Paraguay Have a Racism Problem?
A prominent Paraguayan senator has triggered international uproar for directing racist abuse towards Kylian Mbappé after he scored the penalty that eliminated Paraguay from the World Cup on Saturday.
In a welter of angry remarks posted on X, Celeste Amarilla branded the top French forward an illiterate “brute” and a “colonised Cameroonian, desperately trying to pass himself as French.”
“He suckled on coconuts instead of mother’s milk,” added the 61-year-old lawmaker for the opposition Liberal Party (PLRA). “The most educated thing he listened to were chimpanzees.”
Mbappé quickly hit back on the same platform, calling Amarilla a “despicable woman and unworthy of your position.”
The Paris-born player of Algerian-Cameroonian parentage said the senator’s “brazen racism” had overshadowed Paraguay’s “historic effort” during the World Cup and “given the worst possible image” of their country.
The French Football Federation called the senator’s remarks “utterly unacceptable” and filed a complaint. The Paris prosecutor’s office said it was investigating whether to charge Amarilla with inciting racial hatred: an offence punishable by up to a year in jail and a €45,000 ($51,000) fine.
French president Emmanuel Macron also weighed in, saying Mbappé had “scored another goal” against racism. “All my support,” he added. “When words smear, our values respond: dignity, respect, fraternity.”
As the scandal went viral worldwide and was even criticised by the UN, Amarilla deleted the original posts. She then published an open letter to Mbappé in which she expressed regret for using “the same insults” she had received as a mixed-race person.
But she blamed her outburst on the 27-year-old Real Madrid star for comparing Paraguay’s physical tactics to playing in excrement — and failing to shake Paraguayan goalkeeper Orlando Gill’s hand after the final whistle.
In a press conference on Tuesday, Amarilla admitted to racism, which she said she “hated” and was trying to unlearn.
“I grew up in that global society,” she said by way of explanation, “where saying negro de mierda was common.”
The senator, who claims to have received “millions” of messages of support, also threatened to sue Mbappé for gender-based violence.
“Read my letter, if he knows how to,” she added. “Don’t mess with us Paraguayans, Mbappé, because we already put Ronaldinho in jail for being corrupt.”
The affair is the latest scandal involving allegedly racist and sexist comments by Paraguayan public figures to erupt in recent weeks.
Prior to Saturday’s match, the former goalkeeper, TV commentator and sometime political candidate Jose Luis Chilavert said “in the ‘98 World Cup we played the French, and now Paraguay is facing an African team.”
Last month, Paraguayan tennis star Adolfo Vallejo was fined $65,000 by the French Open after he said a match he narrowly lost to French teenager Moise Kouame should have been umpired by a man.
And in March, Paraguayan influencer Carmiña Masi was kicked out of the Argentine version of Big Brother after she said fellow contestant Jenny Mavinga looked like she had “just been bought, fresh off the boat.”
Masi — who also explicitly likened the DRC-born Mavinga to a “little monkey” and a “slave” — subsequently apologised. But like Amarilla, she also tried to play the victim and ride out the scandal.
“I’m leaving with my head held high,” she said.
THE POST TAKE
Mbappé-gate has triggered a fierce debate about sportsmanship, sovereignty, the limits of free expression — and Paraguay’s peculiar relationship with race.
Many Paraguayans swear their country is colour-blind.
Widespread racial mixing under Spanish rule — later made a state policy by post-independence dictator Dr. Francia (1814-40) — means most locals have some Indigenous ancestry.
While declining in use, the native-origin language Guaraní is spoken by 66.6% of the population: a rarity in Latin America.
Especially during international tournaments, Paraguayan politicians and coaches like to talk of the garra guaraní: the tenacity and cunning supposedly inherited from the country’s pre-Columbian inhabitants.
Visitors from the US and Brazil are sometimes struck by Paraguay’s apparent lack of segregation by neighbourhood, race-based identity politics — or everyday prejudice towards Black people.
Amid the Amarilla-Mbappé fallout, one Cameroonian resident of 26 years interviewed by TV news said he had “never felt discriminated against” in Paraguay.
”I don’t know any other country where the people are as warm as this,” Kwetta Kenneth Nju told Unicanal.
Mexico and Brazil have their beloved caramelos. Here, the perro delmer — the tan-coloured, market-variety mongrel — has come to signify Paraguay’s sense of its own pedigree: a bit of everything, and proud of it.
But scratch the surface and you find a clear connection between race, class, wealth and power in Paraguay.
Paraguay’s political elite is overwhelmingly lighter-skinned and Spanish-speaking. No Indigenous person has ever held national office, despite multiple qualified candidates running for congress. Some 66% of the country’s native population lives in poverty: nearly three times the average.
Paraguayan countryfolk often have little in common — and even struggle to communicate — with their Mbyá, Avá Guaraní, or Paĩ Tavyterã neighbours. Paraguayan Guaraní, say scholars, has long ceased to be an Indigenous language.
That’s to say nothing of the diverse linguistic and ethnic groups in the Chaco — the vast outback that makes up Paraguay’s western half — where reports of discrimination, forced labour, and even a slow-motion genocide of uncontacted Ayoreo nomads by white settlers regularly surface.
Two hundred years ago, almost half the population of Asunción was Black or mixed-race — the product of the trans-Atlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans to work in Paraguay’s farms, mines and households.
The incomplete 2012 census registered nearly 4,000 people who identified as Afro-Paraguayan, mainly in working-class barrios like Kamba Kuá in Fernando de la Mora and the nearby town of Emboscada.
A 2024 study suggested the real figure could be 85,000 or more: roughly 1.5% of the population. Yet Afro-Paraguayan organisations say they are often made to feel invisible — or exoticised and discriminated against.
The Grupo Tradicional San Baltazar — a cultural collective from Kamba Kuá — criticised Amarilla’s outburst, saying it was likely to “increase hatred and persecution towards afrodescendants.”
And while officials from Paraguay’s ruling Colorado Party were quick to condemn Amarilla’s attack on Mbappé — and to hint that she could be suspended from her seat — critics argue the government has done little to combat racism.
Article 46 of Paraguay’s constitution prohibits discrimination of all kinds. But legislation that would give that provision teeth has stalled in the Colorado-controlled congress for decades.
Interviewed by Latitud 25, left-wing senator Esperanza Martínez criticised her colleague, while warning against any attempt to remove Amarilla — one of Paraguay’s few remaining opposition figures.
Asunción mayor Marrio Ferreiro, senator Kattya González, and Ciudad del Este mayor Miguel Prieto have all been unseated amid dubious judicial manoeuvres in recent years.
“Hatred isn’t freedom of expression,” Martínez wrote on social media. “Let’s debate the law, the violence in our society, and the responsibility shared by the media and politics.”
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Also in this issue:
Paraguay’s economy: the best it’s ever been? · IMF tells Paraguay to pay its debts · Community radio station shut down · Government critic silenced · Post-match post-mortem · Leo DiCaprio in Paraguay · Paraguayan soldiers in Ukraine
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