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Hispanic American Historical Review 84.1 (2004) 130-131



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Sport in Latin America and the Caribbean. Edited by Joseph L. Arbena and David G. Lafrance. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2002. Maps. Notes. Bibliographies. xxxi, 241 pp. Cloth, $60.00. Paper, $19.95.

This excellent collection engages the topic from both historical and contemporary perspectives and covers the range of regional differences within Latin America. The editors' introduction surveys the history of sports in Latin America from precolonial times to the most current problems, such as the "defection" of Cuban baseball players. The introduction also foregrounds the main issues and topics of the essays that follow, giving the book a coherence that is rare in collections of this kind. The volume should be required reading for courses on Latin American popular culture, as well as those more directly concerned with sports in the region.

The editors distinguish three periods in the history of sports in Latin America. The precolumbian period, which has left few traces in later developments and is treated lightly, is obviously a topic better suited for anthropologists and archaeologists than for historians, sociologists, and other scholars. The colonial period receives more attention, as it left an indelible stamp on Latin American culture, especially in equestrian sports such as the Mexican charrería, the origin of the modern rodeo. Finally, the book covers the modern period, during which sports in the modern sense emerged as the result of various imperialisms. In most of South America, but also Central America and Mexico, soccer entered with British influence, [End Page 130] while U.S. hegemony in the circum-Caribbean helped spread baseball. Other sports, such as boxing and basketball, are considered only briefly. I believe that boxing deserved more attention, and the treatment of professional Cuban boxing (pre-1959) should have been better presented. Cuba had, in Kid Chocolate, Latin America's first professional boxing world champion; other champions of note include Kid Gavilán, Luis Manuel Rodríguez, and the tragic figure of Benny Paret, who was killed in the ring.

A measure of the specificity of the essays can be gleaned from Robert Ruck's magnificent piece on the origins of baseball in San Pedro de Macorís, the Dominican town that has sent so many players to the major leagues. Combining contemporary reportage with historical research, Ruck reveals that cricket was introduced by black field hands brought from neighboring English islands. The organization of cricket clubs prepared the ground for the transition to baseball in the 1920s and provided a tradition of discipline and training that survives today. Ruck also provides a useful overview of the history of Dominican baseball in general. Set during a present-day Three Kings celebration in which local baseball celebrities distribute equipment as gifts, the piece chronicles the lives of players such as Alfredo Griffin and Pedro Guerrero. An interesting, though unexplored, issue would be the link between Three Kings Day, baseball, and the celebration of the feast during slavery days (studied in a memorable essay by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz), when "freedom for a day" was granted to slaves to enjoy the dances and games of their ancestral Africa.

Several themes run through the book. The broadest and most abstract is whether sports encourage the acceptance of the sociopolitical order or provide a way to contest it. Two corollaries of this explore the contribution of sports to emerging national or regional identities and the use of sports as political propaganda (especially marked in Cuba). A related, but more historical, theme is the dissemination of modern sports from the elites to the masses and the sociopolitical effects of this process. In other words, those engaged with foreign interests were the first to play soccer and baseball. However, after these sports were avidly adopted by the lower classes, professional teams offered a means of socioeconomic advancement.

A broader historical approach might have revealed the connection between the rise of modern sports and the development of nationalisms and national armies in the post-Napoleonic era. Teams became mock armies dressed in the colors of...

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