Lucidity has been suspended until further notice in Uruguay. These are difficult times for those who wish to stop and think. The entire nation feels aggrieved, wounded, humiliated. The hero of a motherland has been banished thanks to an international conspiracy. Virtually everyone believes that what we are dealing with here is a manoeuvre to halt this tiny but brave country, which threatens to repeat its feat of 1950 by lifting the World Cup for a third time and once again frustrate the interests of the powerful.

The unanimity that prevails is unprecedented. A former president, Julio María Sanguinetti, once said that in Uruguay "we speak in Spanish, eat in Italian and think in French". It is an allusion to our habit of arguing about everything, to the fact that there are positions for and against anything, from the trivial to the sacred.

However, on the Suárez saga, there are no two opinions. The subject affects, apparently, the very essence of the "Uruguayan being". When Suárez injured his knee and had to be operated on a few weeks before the World Cup, the team captain, Diego Lugano, said: "Any one of us would have gladly given his knee in place of his." In Uruguay, football is a very serious matter.

As the game against Italy was being broadcast, when the Italian player Giorgio Chiellini was baring his injured shoulder, the Uruguayan commentator said: "What are you showing us, your bra?" From the moment it became clear that Suárez had bitten again, it was referred to as the "supposed bite" and, almost immediately, as "the anti-Suárez campaign by the British press".

In the newsrooms there were mixed opinions, but sports journalists who were thinking the unthinkable – that a bite is a savage act that cannot be compared with a kick or elbowing, for example, regardless of their consequences – could not say so as it would definitely not help their careers. They risked missing the wavelength of their audience, who demanded that they behave like fans before being objective analysts. This is the local tradition when it comes to football: the commentators and pundits are also fans. They act as journalists only when the sky blue shirt is not under discussion.

In the case of Suárez, that tendency has been taken to an inconceivable extreme. The television has been showing over and over again, even in non-sporting programmes, the catalogue of atrocities that have been committed on the football pitch, with Fifa punishing no one, or almost no one. When Fifa's punishment of Suárez was announced, the clamour became deafening. Now the narrative is: "Suárez made a mistake, he deserves to be punished, but this is disproportionate."

The fact that, as well as suspending him, they banned him from pitches, clubs and training grounds for four months, humiliating him like an undesirable in front of the entire world, has certainly not helped bilateral Uruguay-Fifa relations.

In this context, I published a very brief analysis on the Observador newspaper's website that read in part: "The writer of this article asks himself if it is possible to be Uruguayan and consider the punishment meted out to Suárez fair without being a traitor."

The text consisted of two paragraphs: "There are a few things that it would be healthy to clarify. To start with: Fifa did not punish Luis Suárez because it comprises mafiosi who want to harm Uruguay, which is a land of simple and honest men. It punished him because he bit a player, for the third time in his career. Because in football, kicks and elbowing are normal – but bites are not. They must not be. They are not normal in Uruguayan football, or in the football of any other country. You must not bite. It's wrong.

"In the second place: football is one of the distinguishing characteristics of Uruguayan identity and is lived with a singular passion in this small country, but it is a game not a war. When the word 'hero' is used to refer to Suárez in a victory on 19 June and when they use words like 'exploits', 'courage' and 'honour', they are being used in a figurative sense. Don't believe it is the most important thing in life. It's not. It is a sport, entertainment. Nothing more."

I was surprised by the huge quantity of positive comments that I received, although the negatives were in the vast majority. Among the former, there was above all gratitude, for being a dissonant voice in the sea of unanimity. For interpreting what many were thinking but whose reasons could not be heard in the uproar.

Among the latter, those that interested me in particular were those referring to national identity. It revealed to me that in Uruguay football is something more than "a sport, entertainment". It may not be a war but it is something very distinct from what they feel in Colombia or in England. They made me realise that the fact that the president of the republic would defend Suárez was not demagoguery but the sincere sentiments of a Uruguayan, and that the same could be said of government officials and members of the political opposition, who also came out on the side of the Uruguayan hero; and of the journalists, who are friends of the players; and the traders, who are Uruguayans. That Uruguayans are a people with football in their blood. That they want to steal the glory from us because of a little bite. That the world is irrational. That sometimes you have to take sides. And that a Uruguayan who sides with reason in an emergency like this is, yes indeed, a traitor.

I should know. I had been waiting for the World Cup to start since Brazil was chosen to host it. I suffered during all the elimination stages, despaired when we were seventh among the nine South American countries. I cheered the goals in the playoff against Jordan as if it were the final. I was tense when I watched the live draw that placed Uruguay with Italy and England. I was saddened when I found out that Suárez had been injured and would need an operation; I believed he would not recover in time. I thought we'd be out when we lost against Costa Rica. I cheered like a madman when we scored two goals against England. I was excited when we confronted the Italians and the whole of Uruguay was on a roll.

And then I see Uruguay's number nine approaching the Italian defence and making a rapid head movement, like a sting on the shoulder. I didn't want to believe it, but each repeat made it clearer. Suárez had bitten again.

I was still in a trance when Uruguay scored the goal and I celebrated with a very strange mix of joy and sorrow. I knew they were going to punish him, that it was only fair to do so. It hurt and still hurts: for him, for me, for Uruguay. Football is in my culture and moves me more than any other spectacle. But I refuse to lose objectivity, to stop thinking, to substitute analysis for propaganda. To drown in this sky blue sea without trying to swim towards a rational shore.

Luis Roux is a cultural writer for El Observador. A Spanish version of this article can be found at http://gu.com/p/3qg95/tw