World Cup '78 and Argentina's Dirty War

INSIDE A BUENOS AIRES restaurant named El Cuartito, sky-blue paint covers the walls, along with photographs and banners from important athletes and teams. In the center of the largest wall is a shrine to Diego Maradona, the star of the 1986 World Cup. That title is so important that Maradona, a recovering drug addict, still basks comfortably in a nation's warming love and goodwill. People celebrate the '86 title with vivid street art murals, and with photos and signed jerseys and posters in nearly every place of business, including El Cuartito. The restaurant celebrates civic heroes, which is why one particular omission is jarring. Argentina has won two World Cups, the famous one in 1986 and the other just eight years before, in 1978, when Argentina played host. That team is barely honored at all inside El Cuartito. In the back corner of the main room, as far away from the door as you can get, hang two team photos. That's it. Combined, they're smaller than the Michael Jordan poster on a nearby wall. This is not an isolated oversight. During a 30th anniversary celebration of the '78 team, an event that also served as a memorial for victims of the former military dictatorship's violence, the triple-decked Estadio Monumental looked barren, wide swaths of empty seats swallowing groups of people. Spinetta, one of the most famous Argentine rock stars, played for free after the ceremony and they still couldn't draw a crowd. Nineteen of the 22 players didn't show. It seems odd to an outsider, a soccer-mad nation trying to erase one of its greatest teams, but in Argentina, the scrubbing makes sense. The nation has the highest number of psychologists per capita in the world: This is a country drowning in toxic secrets, including the one about a World Cup it needs to forget.