After an Argentine tourist was arrested in Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian outlets focused on her accountability. In Argentina, some centered instead on her vulnerability.
A case involving an Argentine tourist and a racial slur at a bar in Rio de Janeiro’s upscale Ipanema neighborhood has set off debate on race and responsibility, exposing sharp differences in how news organizations in each country cover racism.
On Feb. 6, Agostina Páez was arrested after she was accused of using racist insults and gestures toward employees at a bar she was visiting with friends. The gestures of her imitating the behavior of a monkey were captured on video and quickly went viral.
Páez, 29, a lawyer and content creator from Santiago del Estero, was detained and charged with a “racial offense.” Under Brazilian law, racial insults are criminal offenses punishable by up to five years in prison.
Though she has since been released on bail, a judge ordered her to wear an ankle monitor and surrender her passport, barring her from leaving Brazil while the case proceeds.
Páez has publicly apologized, saying she was unaware of Brazil’s laws and never intended to be racist. She has also accused Brazilian police of harassment, and the Buenos Aires bar association has asked Argentina’s Foreign Ministry to intervene.
The episode has quickly evolved into more than a legal dispute. Coverage in Brazil has largely centered on Páez and her responsibility in the encounter with restaurant staff. In Argentina, however, much of the reporting has focused on whether the staff provoked the altercation and on Páez’s vulnerability as a tourist far from home.
Most Brazilian outlets covered the case from a large uniform vantage point, given the country’s long-standing laws and cases on racism.
Rio de Janeiro-based outlets like O Globo and sister publication Extra closely reported on the incident. O Globo broke news that two days after a judge ordered Páez to use the ankle monitor, she had yet to get one, as her lawyer thought tracking her whereabouts was too much.
In Florianápolis, in the southeastern state of Santa Catarina, popular for Argentine tourists, the news outlet ND+ reported a detailed profile of Páez.
The online outlet Metropoles focused on Paez’s argument that what she what she had done was just “a joke.”
Many Argentine outlets appeared to downplay the incident. On Jan. 27, a report from Telefe Noticias asked: “Isn’t this too much?” A few days later, America TV broadcast a video of the waiters verbally taunting the lawyer. One of the headlines read “New video favors detained lawyer in Brazil”.
TV program Duro de Domar, on C5N, asked if those revelations could weaken the case against Páez. On Feb. 20, the Buenos Aires-based La Nación reported that her attorney said three people impersonating police officers had broken into the apartment she was renting in Río. The newspaper had also published a headline quoting Páez’s attorney saying her being kept in Brazil might put her life at risk.
Still, some Argentine outlets openly criticized Páez. Buenos Aires newspaper Página/12 ran an article titled “Argentinian Racism for export,” contextualizing Brazil’s history with racism, its punishability and compared it with the Argentinian model, where racism is neither recognized as a legal concept or as a structural issue.
Even the Argentinian federal government entered the media frenzy, sharing with media outlets a manual for tourists on what not to do to avoid such issues. In it, they explained that xenophobic and racist gestures are considered racial offenses and are punishable by arrest.
“There was a lot of talk about this topic in the media as the video was constantly looped on television”, Mariano Onega, a journalist at the Buenos-Aires based C5N TV, told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR). “I would say that for almost that entire week, the video was shown 24 hours a day, both on social media and on the main news channels, where it was repeated over and over again.”
Leticia Navarro, a Brazilian journalist who’s lived in Buenos Aires since 2010, also followed the case. She commonly appears in Argentinian press to comment on international and cross-cultural news.
“Many reporters were surprised that someone was getting arrested for mimicking a monkey,” Navarro told LJR. While some of her fellow journalists thought someone was facing the consequences of their actions, others thought what was happening was too extreme, she said.
“I had explained to my colleagues that this was not a xenophobic occurrence, where she was targeted because she is Argentinian,” she said. The law equally applies to foreigners as well as Brazilians, Navarro added.
Anama Ferreira, a Black Brazilian businesswoman and former TV presenter in Argentina, where she has lived since the 1970s, spoke about the episode on a panel on Buenos Aires-based Todo Noticias. The Argentinian press did not take the episode as seriously as the Brazilian media did, she said.
“The press covered the case extensively, but always showing solidarity with the girl,” Ferreira told LJR.
Racial tension is an unresolved issue in Latin America, said Alejandro Mamani, member of the anti-racist Indigenous collective Identidad Marron.
“The racial debate in Latin America exists at all levels and in different forms, which is what makes it complex to talk about racism between countries,” Mamani told LJR.
Soccer rivalries have been the arena where racist cross-national episodes most commonly occur. There are many cases of Uruguayans, Paraguayans, Chileans and Argentinians being arrested or detained in Brazil for racist offenses.
Just last month in Lisbon, Gianluca Prestianni, a White Argentine player for Benfica, was accused of calling Vinícius Júnior, a Black Brazilian player for Real Madrid, a monkey, also causing widely reported controversy.
There is also a historical precedent. In 1920, an Argentinian paper published a cover that depicted Brazilians as monkeys. In 1996, Diário Olé, one of Argentina’s biggest sports newspapers, ran an infamous cover “Que vengan los macacos” [Let the Monkeys come] before its national team played against Brazil in the Olympic Games.
Yet this is not only a sports or tourism issue. In 2021, former Argentinian president Alberto Fernandes said in a public speech that Brazilians came from the jungle and Argentinians came from the boats.
Brazil received the largest number of enslaved people in the Americas and has the largest African-descendant population outside Africa. Argentina’s national narrative has historically emphasized a European identity, and many Afro-Argentines say they feel like they’ve been written out of history and are mistaken for foreigners in their own country.
It remains unclear whether the most recent episode will deepen tensions between the two countries. Some Argentines are said to be calling for a boycott of tourism to Brazil in response to Páez’s arrest, saying she is being excessively punished.
Noelia Rubenbach, journalist and producer for TV 24, said she hopes the controversy does not fuel resentment, but rather proves instructive.
“Many will notice and learn for the first time,” she told LJR, “that in Brazil there is a law against racism and that it is important there.”
