Politics, Popular Culture and the Beautiful Game in Brazil: The Country of Football eds. by Paulo Fontes and Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda (review)

Politics, Popular Culture and the Beautiful Game in Brazil is a collection of nine texts edited by Paulo Fontes and Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda in which their respective authors offer us a comprehensive framework of the socio-political and economic realities surrounding football in Brazil – also known as soccer in the United States and Canada, a term derived from the early denomination Association Football. In the first essay, Fatima Antunes examines in detail the emergence of football in Brazil as a sport of masses since its introduction in the country in the 1890s. Over the decades, several historic milestones – including its first official match in 1895 and its professionalization in 1933 – contributed to engrave the sport in the collective consciousness of the nation unlike in any other.

The historic roots of football in Brazil are somewhat akin to how it emerged elsewhere, including Europe, and are corroborated and summarized recurrently in the volume: a hobby of the elites upon its introduction, it eventually surpasses cricket, rugby, and tennis as the sport of choice among Anglo-Saxon expats in the country. Among these is Charles Miller, credited with the introduction of football in Brazil and with playing an instrumental role in the growth of the sport in popularity among his peers and beyond. From there, the pervasiveness of the game quickly reaches the urban blue-collar classes, as the emergence of industry-based clubs contributes as both cause and effect to this phenomenon. Factory-clubs, drawing the vested support of management, gain in visibility and notoriety over their community-based counterparts, giving rise to the sanctioned status of "player-worker." As these companies realize the marketing potential that the teams they endorse represent for their businesses, they are compelled to capitalize on this asset by engaging in hiring policies based no longer on labor ability, but rather on playing talent.

It is at this point where the role of football in society gains a distinctively Brazilian tone: if, on one hand, football made social mobility possible in ways that were out of reach before, on the other hand, even the most talented of players had to grapple with the downward pressures brought by issues of class and ethnicity. In addition, and no less importantly, the construction of a national identity assumes special relevance in a young and ethnically diverse country such as Brazil, especially when the notion of "Brazilianess" is associated with football and with the consolidation of the so-called "racial-democracy." This is certainly the case during the Getúlio Vargas' presidency (1930-1945). Gregory Jackson demonstrates how football becomes part of a concerted effort to promote national identity and pride in that period. Unlike other dictators who notoriously strived to preserve racial homogeneity, Vargas embraced ethnic diversity as authentically Brazilian, shifting the discourse and rejecting the notion of Brazilian backwardness as rooted on the miscegenation of its demographics. Nevertheless, a delicate balance between skin tone and playing ability persisted beyond the Vargas period, where each of the factors continued to impose limits on the affirmation of the other.

The authors in the volume offer a vivid portrait of these dynamics at work, from the São Paulo factories at the turn of the xx century to the mining communities of Rio Grande do Sul today. Then and now, the potential for social mobility across ethnic lines is greater than in any other field of activity, although many players never benefited from it. In one of the essays, José Sergio Lopes retraces the life and legacy of a former football star – Garrincha–, as well as the circumstances surrounding his death and the eventful funeral that ensued, not only to underscore the importance of the sport in Brazilian society, but also to reflect on its social idiosyncrasies. In another piece, José Paulo Florenzano analyses how the beloved...