Soccer player "outed" in Peru as Argentina hosts gay soccer tournament

Above: Goalkeeper Juan "Chiquito" Flores' professional soccer career might be coming to an end after a homophobic gossip show "outs" him (An extended version of the video here); Below: Argentina's main gay soccer team, DAG.

International gay soccer tournament takes over Buenos Aires - For months now I've been getting bombarded by so many press releases, news items and e-mail messages about this week's international gay soccer tournament in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that in some respects I will be oh-so-happy when the event ends this Saturday (additional information about the tournament can be found at Bloomberg Canada's Digital Journal).

No more newspaper articles about the Mexican team's pink uniforms! No more press releases about cute team mascots! No more debates about why there are no lesbian teams at a "gay and lesbian" event! Or complaints that the event is too expensive for the average Argentinean to attend! (the last two being pretty valid points but nevertheless I'll be happy when the e-mail bombardment stops).

Still, there is no denying that the event, the first of its kind in all of Latin America, is a landmark event that illustrates the amazing advances that the gay community has seen in the region over the last decade.

But, should there be a 'gay' soccer tournament at all? - Last week I read an interesting post over at Dollymix questioning the need to gave a 'gay' soccer tournament at all instead of "working to make straight football a more supportive and welcoming place for gay athletes and fans" which is fine and dandy - except that it's easier said than done.

I mean, to my knowledge, there has never been a single soccer player that has come out as being gay while still on a professional team and I can only name one player who came out after he finished his professional career - and he is said to have committed suicide in part over the pressure and stress that followed his announcement.

No doubt a reflection of the intense homophobia that haunts the sport. No wonder the Brazilian soccer world was "thrown into turmoil" as recent as last month over "insinuations that a player was gay" as this Associated Press article explains.

Peru soccer star in free-fall after video shows him canoodling with two men at a bar - Just a couple of weeks ago, on September 13th, a popular television gossip show in Peru ran video of an apparently inebriated Juan "Chiquito" Flores - a star goalie for Peru's Cienciano professional soccer team - standing at a 2nd floor bar terrace getting pretty chummy with a couple of male friends (see above).

In a longer version of the segment, the show goes at length about the women that have been rumored to be his girlfriends in the past, then takes a cheap-shot at his virility by showing scenes from a Punked!-type prank show in which Flores is caught shrieking when he thinks a television studio has caught on fire, and - finally - they gleefully unveil the video of Flores and his friends at the bar.

Flores' response could not have come faster. The day after the images aired he told Veronica Gasco of Peru21, in no unequivocal terms, that he was not gay and only liked women.

He said that he was out with friends and that the scenes in the video had been taken out of context, that he'd seen a beautiful woman walk by and was trying to point her out to a friend. The kiss that was supposedly caught on camera? Flores says that the music was too loud and that he had to get very close to his friend's ear in order to be understood and that, while he had a number of gay friends and partied at gay bars, he was only sorry to say that he was not gay (there is also a great interview with Jaime Bayly also from Sep. 16th to which I have linked at the bottom of this post).

"Chiquito faggot! Chiquito faggot!" - Denials notwithstanding, the damage to his career seems irreversible, even if it's been days since the video aired.

On September 16th, on the eve of the first match in which Flores played after the images were aired, his teammates were already telling sports publication El Bocon that they would defend Flores from any gay taunts by members of their opposing team or their fans.

Correo reports that Flores' team went on to lose 4-1 and that it was uncharacteristic of the goalie to let so many soccer balls fly past him in a single game. They also said that fans of the winning team, Melgar, filled the air with chants of “Chiquito maricón, Chiquito maricón” ("Chiquito faggot! Chiquito faggot!") which the paper says had a visible effect on Flores.

On the 18th, Libero reported that Flores admitted that insinuations by the gossip show host Magaly Medina had "affected the entire team's performance" and added "if I am seen with a woman, I'm a womanizer; if I'm seen with a man, I'm a maricón."

Things got much worse at Cienciano's next game on September 19th and not only because the team lost again 1-0. At least they couldn't blame Flores for allowing the score: By the time the score came, he had already been removed from the game for attacking a ball-handler (no pun intended).

"He's gone crazy" - That's the Sept. 20th Correo headline in an article that describes how after 28 minutes of play Flores simply walked over to the sidelines and kicked a soccer ball-handler in the shin.

The paper says that from the start of the match every single person in the stadium kept screaming 'maricón, maricón' at Flores and that the goalie lost it when he looked over and saw the ball-handler smile at him. The ball handler, Freddy Caoquira Ccalla, was taken to a hospital to make sure he did not have any fractures but first requested a police inquiry upon which Flores was led off the field by the police and released later after giving his declaration on the incident (there was no fracture but Flores has been ordered to pay the medical costs).

He tells Correo that the ball boy had been throwing insults at him and calling him a fag from the start of the game and that he was overcome by anger and by the discomfort that the chants ricocheting around the stadium walls had caused in him.

Cienciano, Flores team, is said to be seriously considering letting go of Flores early (his current contract with the team ends in December) and told the paper that it could not deal any longer with the 'scandals' surrounding the goalie.

El Bocon says that, as Flores came out of the police station, several people waiting for his release shouted 'maricón' at him and told him he should go to jail.

Bayly probably is right to say Flores is not gay: Back on the 16th Flores also did an telephone interview with popular Peruvian talk show host Jaime Bayly (for those of you who understand Spanish, Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here).

Bayly, who is bisexual, says that it's obvious from the images shown on the tape that there is no romantic link between the men and that the producers of the gossip show edited it with malice and with the sole purpose of damaging Flores' reputation.

Bayly addresses issues related to homophobia, masculinity and male bonding with humor and calls the scandal unjust. And I tend to share his assumption that Flores not gay.

Nevertheless it seems Flores' career might be coming to an end. Perhaps proof that we do need international gay and lesbian soccer tournaments to combat homophobia in soccer while a new reality takes shape.

Previously:

• Oscar De La Hoya in Fishnet Stockings and High Heels (Sept. 20, 2007)

Jaime Bayly interviews in Spanish:

1st interview, parts 1 and 2 - Sept. 16, 2007


2nd interview, parts 1 and 2 - Sept. 23, 2007

Oscar De La Hoya in fishnet stockings and high heels

[UPDATE: De La Hoya has admitted the photos were real in an interview with "Aqui y Ahora" which aired on September 1, 2011]

Considering a whole day has gone by since these images surfaced all over the (gossipier) side of the blogosphere, this probably already is old news.

Still, in light of the recent attempt by a Spanish journalist to question Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' virility by asking him if he was gay, these images of boxer Oscar De La Hoya wearing make-up, a wig, a full-body fishnet mesh getup and high heels struck a nerve.

The X17 site "exclusive" introduces the images as "Presenting Miss Oscar De La Hoya" and claims "These images will send Oscar De La Hoya's career to the canvas!"

Several people have responded on the X17 page with the usual snickering jokes and outright disgust that is so representative of a culture that is still so uncomfortable with seeing a man dressed as a woman. Others have said that the images are obviously fake and just an instance where De La Hoya's head has been Photoshopped into another man's body.

By this morning the images had made it to national media with the New York Daily News not only reporting on the photos but printing yet another depiction - or, as they call it, "artist's rendering" - of De La Hoya in drag, and, in doing so, fully engaging in the not so hidden homophobic / transphobic subtext of the online dialogue.

In the article Debbie Caplan, a representative from the De La Hoya camp says that the photos are indeed fake: The photos "are Photoshopped. They're not real. His head's too small and it doesn't even look like his body."

Towleroad has additional links to a statement from De La Hoya's lawyer who also says the images are fake and that they are considering legal action against X17.

The Daily News article, on the other hand, says that the photos come from a woman who had a "kinky" relationship with the boxer, who happens to be married (Update: She has changed her story).

As I wrote in March of 2006, De La Hoya is no stranger to attacks on his masculinity in the form of homophobic taunts or allegations from former contenders he has gone on to defeat. And, unlike many in the sport, De La Hoya has always risen above the fray and responded with dignity and honor without resorting to throwing back homophobic taunts of his own.

Whether the photos turn out to be fake or not, at most they show De La Hoya likes to ad spice to his sex life - as so many other people in the United States do (he might also have been dressing up for sport and not necessarily for kinks); he also might have been unfaithful, as so many other people also have as well. Allegedly, the sexual partner in question is a woman which still would make De La Hoya, hm, straight? The reaction actually speaks less about De La Hoya than about those who gleefully think that his career is done with the publication of these possibly fake images (and Latino gossip sites are just as complicit in rejoicing).

The De La Hoya camp certainly seems threatened - if their swift reaction and denials are any indication - and I guess that in boxing this sort of thing can indeed affect someone's career. If I were them, though, I'd look at how De La Hoya has handled himself in the past when he's been called a fag and learn from the way that he has addressed those attacks with humor and honesty.

Updates:

• Mario Lopez says De La Hoya is getting a kick out of the scandal (EXtra clip here)
• Model changes story: Says that the camera that was supposedly used to take the shots was hers but that she wasn't in control of the camera when the photos were "taken" (New York Daily News, Mon., Sept. 24, 2007)

Related:

• Soccer player "outed" in Perú as Argentina hosts gay soccer tournament (Sept. 26, 2007)
• Sports Illustrated Latino is gay-inclusive (July 11, 2007)
• Twenty years later, Don McPherson in Harlem (March 23, 2007)

Previously:

• Homophobic boxers KO'd (May 7, 2006)
• Latino boxers and gay paranoia (March 1, 2006)

Update: Homophobic boxers KO'd

In Latino boxers and gay paranoia (March 1, 2006), I noted the escalating war of words between adversaries in two upcoming boxing matches and how two Nicaraguan boxers, Rosendo Alvarez and Ricardo Mayorga (both managed by US-based boxing figure Don King) were both using press events to question their adversaries' sexuality, using the Spanish word for "faggot" and generally questioning their rivals' sexual proess and masculinity. Obviously, this is boxing, so it must be said that most of these confrontations during press conferences seem to be staged for maximum scandal (and to draw interest to the fights) but, according to reports, the blatant homophobia was starting to truly annoy Oscar De La Hoya, who faced Ricardo Mayorga last night.

The pictures above tell the story, De La Hoya knocked-out Mayorga in the 6th round, after which he accepted Mayorga's appology for what had been said leading up to the fight.

As for Rosendo Alvarez? He forfeited a chance at the title in the April 8th match after weighing-in at three more pounds than the flyweight limit, but still was knocked-out by Mexican fighter Jorge Arce in a 'special attraction' match that was just for show (before the 6th round KO, Alvarez continued to question Arce's masculinity to the the end, even in-between rounds).

The De La Hoya fight did lead to a bizarre television interview on Tuesday when Jay Leno had Dr. Phil and the boxer as guests. If memory serves me right, De La Hoya walked into it by asking Dr. Phil what he could do to deal with having to be celibate for an extended period of time before a match and not being able to have sex with his wife. Dr. Phil said something to the effect that he personally wasn't gay or needed to observe celibacy so he didn't know what to say. De La Hoya tried to laugh it off and even threw a kiss to Dr. Phil as he got a bit closer to him. Considering the questions that have followed De La Hoya all through his boxing career and how ugly the comments got in this particular match, it was a weird way to deflect some of the commentary.
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Some Ricardo Mayorga quotes from one of the press conferences before the match:

"...tu vas a ser el maricon en mi cama cuando yo quiera" ["...you are going to be the fag in my bed anytime I want you to be"]

"Yo te voy a partir la cara de maricon que tienes, yo ODIO los maricones como tu" ["I'm going to break that faggot face of yours, I HATE fags like you"]

You can also check-out some of Don King's comments goading his fighter on at the above link.

Latino boxers and gay paranoia

UPDATES to this post:

• Oscar De La Hoya in fishnet stockings and high heels (Sept. 20, 2007)
• Homophobic boxers, KO'd (May 7, 2006)

ORIGINAL post: Yesterday, the Nicaraguan news-daily La Prensa reported that there is an escalating - and homophobic - war of words and gestures being played by Nicaraguan two-time junior flyweight boxing champion Rosendo Alvarez and the Mexican pugilist and current world champ Jorge Arce as they prepare for a show-down in Las Vegas on April 8th.

According to La Prensa, Alvarez claims that Arce instigated the exchange when he arrived in Nicaragua: "He started to say that my wife ruled over me and this is something that no man [likes to hear]. I have a good relationship with my wife. That was his error. He's getting into my personal life and I don't allow anyone to do this."

The article also says that Arce went on to blow kisses at Alvarez accross a crowded room at a promotional boxing event on Saturday night which almost led to a scuffle.

Alvarez told La Prensa: "No real macho man throws kisses at another man. Only gays do that. That's why I have no doubt that Arce is gay. But on April 8th I will make him a real man by giving him a true beating."

Arce, for his part, said that it wasn't the first time that Alvarez called him a gay man but that the allegations didn't bother him: "I found out that [Alvarez] loses his head quickly, so now he will have to deal with it because I will continue to harrass him, and once he's bothered, I will knock him out so he doesn't have to worry about these delicate things."

Of course, there's nothing new about boxers questioning each others' masculinity and, sometimes, their sexuality. The subject has even made for the gripping 2005 documentary "Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story" which was also shown on the USA cable network. But why it is still so prevalent a tactic in boxing today remains shameful.

Alvarez was not the only Nicaraguan boxer to call a future sparring adversary gay this week: Today, La Prensa also reports that Nicaraguan boxer Ricardo Mayorga, known for his outrageous, often homophobic statements, and his tendency to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol during press events, told a roomful of reporters gathered at a Beverly Hills press event: "This faggot won't be able to stand the rhythm [of my punches], believe me, he will fall in knock-out on May 6th."

The supposed "fag" in question? Mayorga's next boxing match rival, Golden Boxing Boy himself, Oscar De la Hoya.

To De la Hoya's credit, he was unfazed.

Interestingly, both of the Nicaraguan boxers raising the gay flag are currently represented by infamous boxing promoter Don King.