Most people consider football (soccer) to be the most popular sport in South America. However, according to Matthew Brown, a wide range of sporting cultures existed between 1863 and 1930. These have been overlooked and ignored. Brown challenges the idea the sports were imported from Britian to South America, which ignores the sports played by Indigenous and African people who left few records. This did not deter Brown from uncovering hidden stories of athletes, sports clubs, and teams in newspapers, archives, libraries, and museums. Brown claims that, “sports played a central role in opening spaces for national citizenship among Black, mestizo, and indigenous people in South America” (215).
The book is divided into two parts. The first part traces the games of indigenous and African people across the continent, such as tejo, a throwing game; chasquis, long-distant running races; palitun, a ball game popular among the Mapuche people; and capoeira, a martial arts dance sport that arrived with enslaved Africans in the 1700s and continues to be performed today. The next chapter focuses on colonial sports brought by Spaniard and Portuguese settlers, such as cockfighting and bullfighting. Brown follows with an examination of British migrants who brought cricket and association football to South America. The next chapter shows how British sports were institutionalized through school teams, physical education programs, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and Sunday schools. Interestingly, soccer became more popular in countries where the Catholic Church had less influence. Then, Brown turns to sports clubs to emphasize their multicultural and multi-sport nature; some were exclusive to elites, and others were accessible to working populations, but all fostered activity, discipline, and belonging. The first half of the book ends with exploring the relationship between sports and business, featuring sports gambling and sporting activities at circuses and enclosed sports stadiums that led to increased gate receipts, advertising, professionalism, and mass sports spectatorship.
The second part explores main themes that emerged from author’s investigations across the continent. Brown begins with an insightful chapter on the historical roots of beauty and sport and how they were embedded in gender ideologies. Female athletes, for example, were encouraged to take on gymnastics and tennis because of its association with grace and beauty and discouraged from playing soccer and more masculine sports. In fact, Brazil banned women’s soccer from 1941 to 1979. The following chapter explores endurance sports such as long-distance running, cycling, swimming, and mountain climbing. These sports, often overlooked by sports historians, produced Olympic medal winners and world-record-breaking athletes. The next chapter shifts to examine controlled violence and masculinity in boxing and soccer. Governing bodies sought to control violent behavior on the pitch, making soccer a non-contact sport with its own distinct style of short passing and agile dribbling. Attempts to control violence in boxing were less successful, however, and boxing was banned in Buenos Aires until 1924. Boxing’s popularity continued because it opened opportunities for social mobility for Black and Brown fighters across the continent. In the subsequent chapter, Brown shows how South Americans’ embrace of technology allowed for aviation and motorsports to excel. Also, innovations in radio communications technology transformed how South Americans related to sports as part of an “imagined community.” In the remaining chapters, Brown shows how South Americans pioneered international sports in the early twentieth century. He writes about Olympic medalists; soccer championships; the 1922 Latin American Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and the 1930 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup in Montevideo, Uruguay. Uruguay’s previous Olympic gold medal victories and garra charrúa or fighting spirt helped them come from behind and defeat Argentina 4–2 and lift the World Cup trophy. In the Epilogue, Brown calls for the inclusion of South America in the writing of the global history of sports and reminds readers of the importance of Indigenous and African sports in decolonizing sports history in South America.
Brown’s book is less a comprehensive study of sports in South America and more an insightful study of local and transnational sporting practices in relation to socio-cultural themes that have been previously overlooked by Latin Americanists. This book offers a refreshing analysis of the hybrid, Indigenous and African origins of sport, previously understood as being imported from Europe, such that fresh perspective will hopefully inspire future research. Brown’s study is a useful reference for sport historians and Latin Americanist seeking to understand the continent’s rich sport history that extends beyond soccer.
