History and the Invention of Traditions in the field of Soccer

• Autor(a) principal: Soares, Antônio Jorge
• Data de Publicação: 1999
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Estudos Históricos (Rio de Janeiro)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/reh/article/view/2087

The present article aims to verify in what sense the book " The Black in the Brazilian Soccer", written by Mário Filho, became a inexhaustible and "privileged" source of information for those who intend to write on the history of the Brazilian soccer. As the title of the book suggests, the black ethnic group should have been plying a central role in the social construction of the Brazilian soccer. The black people should also have a heroic character for tolerating damage and segregation as well as fighting and resisting until becoming national heroes. In summary, the book is inspired by nationalism, in which prejudice, racism and separation between blacks and whites are enemies to be defeated for the sake of the nation. In fact, Mário Filho was an inventor of traditions. Thus he has produced "new narratives" in the soccer, according to more recent interpretations from social sciences. This investigation put the focus Mário Filho's interpreters who have been transferring the attacks to "other enemies", without questioning them and without analytic fineness. The "new narratives" intend to denounce the racism of the history of the Brazilian soccer, as any other racism, and at the same time to affirm the singular style of this sport in the country. In this case the analytical bias makes soccer a means for exploitation of the black race, rather than one among several others. In this investigation the central hypothesis is that the "new narratives" on soccer, when used uncritically from the book "The Black in the Brazilian Soccer", end up swallowed by the force, almost mythical, of Mário Filho's literary style. The final result is the construction of a " new " mythical and epic speech of exclusion, resistance and self-reliance of the black population in the " old version of the national identity".