Sport and Authoritarian Rule in the Brazilian and Portuguese Estados Novos

During the twentieth century many authoritarian governments used sport as a means of propaganda to project their nations internationally and as an instrument of social cohesion. In the 1930s several authoritarian governments associated sport with a new idealized model of the nation. In this article I use a comparative approach to analyze the use and control of sport by the authoritarian governments of Oliveira Salazar in Portugal and Getúlio Vargas in Brazil as strategies in the constitution of Estado Novos (New States). The manner in which the Brazilian and Portuguese Estado Novos used sport followed models adopted by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, the primary cultural influences on Brazil and Portugal in this period.