Colombian Ministry Tweet Hurls Homophobic Slur about Super Mario Bros' Luigi

A Twitter account for a Colombian government ministry sent out a tweet that used a homophobic slur about a Super Mario Bros. character and prompted an apologetic followup, according to Kotaku.

The original post, which has now been deleted, retweeted an image of Mario – the red-coveralls-wearing primary character of the Nintendo video games and the main hero of the new "Super Mario Bros." movie from Universal Studios – appearing with a pretty young woman and a Pride flag covered over with a "No" red circle and slash. The image was captioned with a sentence in Spanish that translates to, "The fact that he is the most famous character in video games has had nothing to do with it."

The ministry's retweet added another caption, one that used the offending slur: "I hope Luigi is a f***ot."

Luigi, who was not pictured in the original tweet, is the meeker, green-coveralls-clad brother of Mario, according to Wikipedia. He co-stars in a number of video games, as well as the new movie, as Mario's sidekick.

Though it was deleted, screenshots of the retweet, and its use of the slur – in Spanish, "marica" – was shared widely, Kotaku noted, and the Colombian Ministry of the Interior – the same ministry from which the retweet originated – addressed the online controversy.

"We know it wasn't the [right] words, but we are aware that homophobia kills," the Ministry of the Interior account posted, sharing a retweet of a post that included a screen cap of the original post along with a critical comment. "That is why we are in favor of all initiatives that make the LGBTIQ+ population visible and we work so that their rights are guaranteed."

The post ended with, "#SaveUnCM," which Kotaku decrypted as meaning "save a community manager."

Kotaku offered a theory about what had transpired.

"What likely happened here is that the ministry account manager forgot to switch to their personal account when they tweeted about The Super Mario Bros Movie, at least that's what I suspect," the outlet hypothesized, before going on to note that "'Marica' is commonly seen as a derogatory term against feminine men, though there are also casual filler uses like 'dude' or 'bro.' And anyone familiar with queer language knows that the community will often reclaim words that are used as slurs."

The article added: "I don't know what's worse: Being outed as a homophobe, or possibly accidentally coming out of the closet at work before you're ready."