One man is going viral for making the argument that this year’s World Cup, read carefully, is essentially a colonial atlas. Every squad, he says, tells you which empire moved which people. Except one.
“The World Cup is the most-watched sporting event on earth. And if you know how to read it, it’s almost the most comprehensive map where slavery and colonialism actually went,” TikTok creator Adiv (@adivunsolicited) opens.
He runs the tally: 21 of France’s 26 players are of African descent. England, 15. Netherlands, 14. Belgium and Germany, nine apiece. Twelve of the United States’ 26 are Black. He calls this “the product of one of the most successful settler entrepreneurial projects to enslave Black people.” Brazil’s entire starting lineup, he adds, descends from the roughly 4.9 million Africans trafficked to that country, the single largest destination of the transatlantic slave trade.
Haiti made it, too — a nation forced by France, at gunpoint from a flotilla of warships in 1825, to pay reparations to its former slaveholders.
Curaçao, with a population of 150,000, qualified for the first time. The island was formerly a regional hub of the Dutch Atlantic slave trade, and its squad is drawn almost entirely from Dutch-raised players. “That’s not diversity. It’s displacement on a pitch.”
Then there’s Argentina. It’s the only squad among the 48 without a single Black player. Adiv insists this isn’t a coincidence, but the outcome of state policy. In 1800, he notes, Black people were more than a third of Argentina’s population of 187,000. By 1875, the government had stopped counting African descendants in the national census altogether.
A nation forgets its history
He namechecks Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, president from 1868 to 1874, as the architect. Sarmiento’s presidency has been described as a “covert genocide,” and by 1875, the depleted Black population went unregistered in the national census.
Meanwhile, the 1853 constitution was engineered to draw European immigrants, and Italian and Spanish arrivals reshaped the country between 1880 and 1950. The playbook was to erase Black people (or simply pretend they do not exist), import white ones, call yourself European.
This is partly why there are so many ethnic Italians and Germans in Argentina, though this is a much deeper story.
In Argentina, Adiv says, they took the culture. Tango, Argentina’s global calling card, grew directly out of Afro-Argentine communities. “Tango” is a word from Kikongo, a language spoken in the former Kingdom of Kongo, and it means “time.” Enslaved Africans in Buenos Aires developed candombe from Bantu ka n’dombele, meaning “to pray to the gods,” and the word itself referred to the gathering places where Black Argentines met to drum and dance.
Art historian Robert Farris Thompson traced deeper roots still. “The path of the sun became the path of the tango,” Thompson wrote, tying its rhythm to the Kongo word ntangu.
The erasure was later stated plainly. Former Argentine President Carlos Menem once declared, “In Argentina Blacks do not exist, that is a Brazilian problem.”
Every other squad is evidence of what colonialism did, Adiv argues. Argentina is evidence of what colonialism intended.
June 16, 2026; Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.; Argentina’s Lionel Messi celebrates scoring their second goal. Mandatory Credit: Jay Biggerstaff-Imagn Images
Credit: Jay Biggerstaff-Imagn Images
An entire people isolated and ignored
“There are still Black Argentinians, but they [are] deliberately isolated by the society, even a YouTuber made a video on it, which shows they erased those people,” wrote one commenter.
Most were grateful for the history lesson, but some came with additional history for context. One person had a photo of an important historical figure in Argentina’s history. “This painting depicts María Remedios del Valle, known as the ‘Mother of the Nation’ for her pivotal role in the Argentine War of Independence,” they wrote of the photo of a Black woman. “She was appointed Captain by General Manuel Belgrano due to her bravery on the battlefield, where she both fought and served as a nurse. Her image currently appears on the 10,000-Argentine-peso banknote in recognition of her military service and heroism.”
As with all things online, there were naysayers in the comments. Some asked for sources, which are readily available.
Historians have spent decades pushing back on Argentina’s official and social amnesia. In 1778, Argentina’s Black community made up roughly 37% of the total population; today, less than 5% are Black. The Menem quote isn’t a rhetorical flourish—it’s the through-line of a national mythology built on demographic engineering.
The Big Lead reached out to Adiv and Buenos Aires-based non-governmental organization DIAFAR (Diáspora Africana de la Argentina) via email.
