SPORT AND POLITICS IN THE BRAZILIAN MILITARY DICTATORSHIP: THE CREATION OF A NATIONAL FEELING OF BELONGING THROUGH SPORTS

Abstract

This article investigates traces of the relation between sports and politics during the dictatorship which pervaded Brazil in the last decades of the twentieth century. Conspiracy theories are put aside, and focus is put on problematizing the fact that the sportive phenomenon, a hallmark of culture universalization, have fulfilled the dictatorship political purpose, without the dictatorship itself having propelled the sports as well. Firstly, it is demonstrated that the dictatorship was able to read the world context in order to appropriate and diffuse a practice with appeal to the masses and to consumerism, which led to new ways of subjectivation, thus affecting the interests and the needs of large portions of Brazilians. Sources used include, besides documents related to the sports universe, vestiges of the debate about the concept of “national” and “popular”, a debate which marked the attempts of national affirmation.