NEGROS MALOS¨ Un fragmento discursivo controversial en el contexto deportivo

Abstract

This research analyzes the discursive fragment "bad blacks" in Ecuadorian professional soccer, understood as a discursive formation loaded with history, power, and symbolic violence. The main objective is to identify how this statement operates as a device for racializing error, naturalizing stereotypes that link Afro-descendants with inferiority, indiscipline, or uselessness. The research is based on a critical discourse analysis approach, articulated with the theories of Foucault, Van Dijk, Mbembe, and Bourdieu, and is also based on three analytical matrices: discursive, informative, and content. These allow the phenomenon to be broken down into linguistic, media, and institutional dimensions, evidencing the tension between the visibility of Afro-Ecuadorian talent and its symbolic stigmatization. The results indicate that expressions such as "bad blacks" are not mere isolated opinions, but normalized discursive practices in fans, social networks where the hashtag #NegrosMalos has been institutionalized, and media narratives, which reproduce racial hierarchies under the guise of sports criticism or "local color." Although there are advances, such as the campaigns of clubs such as Independiente del Valle, Orense S.C., and the policies of LIGAPRO and CONMEBOL, a gap persists between the symbolic and the structural. Without legal regulation, effective sanctions, mandatory diversity training, and ethically committed journalism, discursive racism will continue to operate as a technology of exclusion in one of the most massive and emotional spaces in Ecuador. The study confirms that language not only reflects racism but also produces, legitimizes, and reproduces it, demanding comprehensive interventions that transcend protocol gestures to transform the symbolic and social structures that sustain it.