Diego Armando Maradona (1960-2020) is among the greatest figures in Argentine identity and is perhaps the greatest of them. It is no coincidence that the football player who led millions to delirium is the only one among the country’s many myths (and there are several of them) to receive the nickname “God” (“D10s”, with the ingenuity of mixing the word in Spanish with the number 10 shirt that he wore to glory). His life, full of epic moments, takes on another after his death.
Maradona is a descendant of an enslaved man who was part of the historic Army of the Andes — troops led by Argentine general José de San Martín (1778-1850) who were responsible for the liberation of Peru and Chile from Spanish rule.
This is what several years of studies and rescue of documents analyzed by genealogist Guillermo Collado Madcur, who has dedicated himself to the profession for four decades and was president of the Argentine Federation of Genealogy and Heraldry, point out.
“For some time, with greater European influence, I think there was a strong intention to deny, hide or underestimate indigenous or African ancestry, but lately I’ve noticed the opposite: there is an interest in valuing and highlighting them”, says Collado to Sheetabout the reception of the study in Argentina, presented at a genealogy congress in 2022 and which is now gaining greater public repercussion.
In his investigation, published at the Argentine Academy of Genealogy and Heraldry, in Córdoba, Collado details that the player’s ancestral surname is “Fernández de Maradona”, after Francisco Fernández de Maradona, a Spaniard from Galicia who arrived in Argentina in 1748 and married and raised a family there, in the province of San Juan, in the center-west of the country.
One of the couple’s sons, José Ignacio Fernández de Maradona (1752-1828), was a prominent figure in the region. He became governor of that province and owned slaves, including Luiz Maradona, registered as a “violinist” and called up to fight in the Army of the Andes in exchange for his freedom.
“Luiz Maradona marries a woman enslaved by the same slave owner, Maradona,” says Collado. From this union, Juan Evangelista Maradona was born in 1812, who became a free man — since his father had achieved this status.
In search of better opportunities, Juan Evangelista leaves San Juan to live in the province of Corrientes, more than 1,000 km away. There he married and founded the “Corentine” family, from which the player descends, according to the genealogist. “This man becomes rich, he owns cattle, but then he declines economically. He has a daughter —Victorina or Victoriana—, who becomes a laundress and who is the great-grandmother of Diego Armando Maradona.”
She is the mother of Saturnino Maradona, “in a single-parent home”. Saturnino, in turn, “is the father of Don Diego (Maradona’s father), who marries Dalma Franco”, details Collado.
“Don Diego” (1928-2015) starts working in the port of the city of Corrientes, capital of that province, but later becomes a worker in a factory in Greater Buenos Aires, where Maradona was born in 1960.
Also a researcher and professor of communication sciences at the Universidad Nacional de San Juan, Collado says he gave a copy of the study to Dalma Maradona, the player’s eldest daughter.
Among the objectives he believes he has achieved with this work are “dispelling doubts and discarding speculations”. “And, without that being my original purpose, to show an example of overcoming,” he adds. “For more than one of my compatriots, the result of this investigation constitutes a metaphor for Argentineanness.”
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