Buenos Aires’s iconic Casa Rosada, Argentina’s presidential palace, was draped with a large black ribbon of mourning. Inside, lying in state were the rests of the great Diego Maradona, local hero, global idol, football god. Outside, thousands of impatient fans waited in Plaza de Mayo beneath a huge Argentinian flag at half-staff.
In the coffin was Diego of the people, Diego of Argentina, the man who seduced the nation since he was a boy and who conquered the world at the end of his football cleats. They were there to say their last goodbyes to el Pibe de Oro, the Golden Kid.
Flags of all sizes and of many countries waved in the multitude. They were impatient, sorrowful. They repeated football-game chants. Viva Diego, they cried out. They pumped one hand in the air. They just wanted to get to the front of the line to file past the casket, so they could be close to him one last time.
Starting at midnight, the body had lain in state in the Salon de Los Pueblos Originarios, the Hall of the Native Peoples so those close to him had an opportunity to say farewell. The location a fitting nod to the man who wanted to be a man of the people.
At 6 am, he was moved to the Esplanade of the palace where he laid in state in front of the people. This is an area made especially for these occasions and the place where former president Néstor Kirchner laid prior to his state funeral. Maradona was to lay three for three days, as the nation observed three days of national mourning, as decreed by President Alberto Fernández.
“All the doors of the State are open for Diego,” said Fernandez. “What they ask for, Diego deserves to have.”
But, faced with hard-to-control, loud crowds in the middle of a pandemic, police saw crowds spreading across the plaza and as far as the other side of the iconic Avenida 9 de Julio, the capital’s 22-lane grand thoroughfare and one of the world’s great and widest streets. The decision was made to control the access to the plaza, and to close the lines filing in to walk past the wake.
The disappointing prospect of being turned after waiting for hours took the situation from relative calm to a mass rush of the crowd against the police. Rubber bullets, tear gas, and force resulted in several people being injured and the potential of a worsening situation. People began to climb the wrought iron gates to gain entrance to the esplanade.
In that mix, at the request of the family, the wake was called off and, with President Fernandez at the scene, the government moved quickly to transport the body to the cemetery. With COVID-19 in the air and social distance all but forgotten, the crowd accepted the change of plans in stride.
As movement at the entrance to the Casa Rosada indicated an imminent move and waiting to see the coffin of the hometown idol, the fans broke into the strides of the Argentinian national anthem.
“Oíd mortales el grito sagrado Libertad, Libertad, Libertad…”
As this happened, the body was taken out by a back entrance, varying the originally planned route in front of the people and headed out to Avenida Colon followed by a large squad of motorcycle police and a cortege of several cars. The funeral headed straight to the 25 de Mayo Freeway and from there west to the private cemetery Jardin de Bella Vista, 30 kilometres away.
Then ensued a 40-minute funeral caravan joined by hundreds of motorcycles and other cars that followed. Along the way, as people followed developments on the radio and passed the news by cellphone, a grieving city fell into archetypal roles as old as time. They stopped and stood silently. Cars stopped along both sides of the freeway. People stepped in front and waived, some bowed their heads and made the sign of the cross, others looked up in tears.
In different spots, people cheered, others clapped or saluted, some kneeled. Bridges along the route lined with people with signs, and flags, and game jerseys. In places where larger crowds were gathered, they sang the Argentine anthem while others cried inconsolably as yet others stood bravely before the cameras, tears rolling.
It was hard for Argentinians to let go of Maradona. Throughout the route, horns blew mournfully long, there were the Latin American folklore cries of Viva Diego and football chants. People jumped in place as fans do in anticipation of a game, perhaps not knowing why at this time.
The night before, all stadiums in the city and most of the country were lit in blue and white in one of those global rituals of unity and comfort we have come accustomed to seeing when a loss is too much to bear.
Poignantly, the iconic Bombonera Stadium—home of Maradona’s former club Boca Juniors— kept everything dark, except for one single light in the box from where he watched the games.
That lonely light was a metaphor for Argentina. There was a sad, unspoken emptiness in the faces and words of those who stepped to speak with the media, perhaps aware they were lucky to have seen a bright shooting star that will not be seen again, and that their luck had run out.
As far away as Mexico City, Argentinian restaurant owners decorated their tables with flowers, flags, and game shirts.
Throughout his life in the spotlight, Maradona always said that whenever he played, he played for his mama, Doña Tota. Now he was heading home to rest next to her and his father Don Diego in the green fields of Jardin de Buena Vista.
In the last years, he had talked about a wish of getting all his children together for a family portrait. As he was led to rest, his sisters and daughters were there as they had been since his death. Alas, his son Diego Armanso Jr. who lives in Italy tested positive for COVID-19 and was not able to fly. The last wish unfulfilled.
As the procession got closer to the cemetery, people managed to skew the police cordon and invaded the expressway, jumping close to the funeral car with a raised hand as fans do with the Ole, ole, ole chants common in football games, somehow respectfully crowding the car carrying the body, but not stopping it, as if they knew he had to slip from their midst.
The 1,000-strong police assigned by the municipality of San Miguel, where the cemetery is located, to prevent people from interrupting the cortege into the cemetery were almost overcome completely. As helicopters followed overhead, policemen and women were seen on camera consoling each other after Maradona passed their post.
It was as if the entire city had converted itself into the stands of a great game, packed with crowds of eternal fans as if at once celebrating a victory and mourning a fatal loss. People jumping up-and-down perhaps trying to conjure for themselves the moments of football glory that Maradona gave Argentina and that will be no more.
It was clear that the country had lost a piece of itself, of its identity, of its spirit.
Off the freeway, on the last stretch before the cemetery, the treelined Mayor Irusta Street was crowded with people waving flags large and small; it was a sad festival of longing for the man many believe was the best football player on the planet and who would pass near them for the last time.
In the absence left by his passing, there was a moment when the funeral seemed to stop. It was a tribute and reminder that there lived a man called Diego Maradona whose life put so much spirit in his nation and the world.
From there, things moved anticlimactically fast. The car with the flag-draped coffin disappeared behind a heavy wall of police security, and the gates closed, so that the man who filled stadiums would have a private goodbye in peace, away from the adoring crowds.
It was the saddest moment, the most painful time, the last goodbye. As those kept outside cried and chanted, the grief went on and on.
Maradona was buried on the northeast corner of the green fields, under the shade of tall poplar trees, about 6 meters from the cemetery’s internal road. There were birds and beautiful flowers in sight. From the air, it seemed every bit a place of peace.
By 7:30 pm local time, a bright light illuminated the gravesite, about 60 people said their private goodbye.
Conscious that many people were not able to say goodbye, the municipality of San Miguel announced that in the next few days it was would make arrangements and schedules, so people can visit the grave.
For now, however, for the fans that accompanied their idol as far as they could, there was only a return to an empty world where Maradona lives no more.
If the words of 18-year-old Valentino Lebedevski’s tribute at the cemetery site are an indication, Maradona will live long in spirit and imagination: “Diego the great, we love you. Thank you for so many joys…Diego, you are not leaving, you live and will live in our hearts forever.”
