The Black Man in Brazilian Soccer

Mario Filho, Jack A. Draper

Description

At turns lyrical, ironic, and sympathetic, Mario Filho's chronicle of "the beautiful game" is a classic of Brazilian sports writing. Filho (1908–1966)—a famous Brazilian journalist after whom Rio's Maracana stadium is officially named—tells the Brazilian soccer story as a boundary-busting one of race relations, popular culture, and national identity. Now in English for the first time, the book highlights national debates about the inclusion of African-descended people in the body politic and situates early black footballers as key creators of Brazilian culture.

When first introduced to Brazil by British expatriots at the end of the nineteenth century, the game was reserved for elites, excluding poor, working-class, and black Brazilians. Filho, drawing on lively in-depth interviews with coaches, players, and fans, points to the 1920s and 1930s as watershed decades when the gates cracked open. The poor players and players of color entered the game despite virulent discrimination. By the mid-1960s, Brazil had established itself as a global soccer powerhouse, winning two World Cups with the help of star Afro-Brazilians such as Pele and Garrincha. As a story of sport and racism in the world's most popular sport, this book could not be more relevant today.

Sujets

• Sport
• Sports collectifs
• Football
• Football
• Autour du sport
• Histoire du sport
• Leônidas da Silva
• Garrincha
• Fluminense Football Club
• Botafogo de Futebol e Regatas
• Arthur Friedenreich
• Barcelona
• América Football Club
• Pelé
• Fausto dos Santos
• Racism
• Brazil national football team
• Santos FC
• São Paulo FC
• Italy national football team
• Sports journalism
• Literature of Brazil
• America Football Club
• Mário Rodrigues Filho
• Sociology of race and ethnic relations
• Santos Football Club

Informations

• Publié par: The University of North Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 10 février 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781469637037
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

The Black Man in Brazilian Soccer
 
This book was sponsored by the Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University.
A book in the series Latin America in Translation / en Traducci ó n / em Tradu çã o
 
The Black Man in Brazilian Soccer
MARIO FILHO
Translated by JACK A. DRAPER III
The University of North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill
 
Translation of the books in the series Latin America in Translation / en Traducción / em Tradução, a collaboration between the Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University and the university presses of the University of North Carolina and Duke, is supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
© 2021 The University of North Carolina Press
Portuguese-language original © 2003 Herdeiros e sucessores de Mario Rodrigues Filho and was published by MAUAD Editora Ltda. ( http:// www .mauad .com .br )
All rights reserved
Set in Minion by Westchester Publishing Services
Manufactured in the United States of America
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rodrigues, M á rio, 1908–1966, author. | Draper, Jack A., III, 1976– translator.
Title: The black man in Brazilian soccer / Mario Filho ; translated by Jack A. Draper III.
Other titles: Negro no futebol brasileiro. English | Latin America in translation/ en traducci ó n/em tradu çã o.
Description: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2021. | Series: Latin America in translation/en traducci ó n/em tradu çã o | Translation of: O negro no futebol brasileiro. 4a. ed. Rio de Janeiro : Mauad, 2003.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020035407 | ISBN 9781469636979 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469637006 (paperback ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469637037 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH : Soccer—Brazil—History—20th century. | Soccer—Social aspects—Brazil. | Athletes, Black—Brazil. | Discrimination in sports—Brazil—History—20th century. | Brazil—Race relations.
Classification: LCC GV 944. B 7 R 6213 2021 | DDC 796.3340981—dc23 LC record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2020035407
Cover illustration: Sabar á (Onofre Anacleto de Souza), 1953. Public domain/Arquivo Nacional Collection, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
 
Contents Translator’s Note to the First English Edition Author’s Note to the Second Edition Author’s Note to the First Edition Chapter 1   Nostalgic Beginnings Chapter 2   The Grass Field and the Empty Lot Chapter 3   The Rebellion of the Black Man Chapter 4   The Social Ascension of the Black Man Chapter 5   The Trial of the Black Man Chapter 6   The Black Man’s Turn Acknowledgments Notes
 
Translator’s Note to the First English Edition
Published here for the first time in English, The Black Man in Brazilian Soccer is an astoundingly rich panorama of anecdotes from soccer and daily life in Brazilian society from the early twentieth century through the 1960s. The language of Filho’s text, the first four chapters published originally in 1947 and the latter two in 1964, is vibrant and surprisingly modern in style, while shifting between more lyrical, epic moments and lighter sections featuring Filho’s by turns ironic and sympathetic take on the vicissitudes of the struggle to break down class and racial barriers in the game of soccer.
Mario Filho’s narrative can also be read as a treatise on the democratization of Brazilian culture in the context of its massification. He emphasizes the importance, for those who wish to understand the history of the sport (especially in the decades of the 1920s–40s, when major class and racial integration occurred among Brazilian soccer teams), of considering the spatialized class divides of the empty lot versus the club field for players, and general admission versus the grandstand for fans. These spatial dualisms paint a picture of a hierarchical society with a large divide between a powerful economic and political elite and the great mass of the remainder of the population. They also echo sociologist Gilberto Freyre’s division of Brazilian society in its early history into the big house of the master versus the slave quarters. 1 Further, they anticipate Roberto DaMatta’s more modern division of Brazilian society into the spaces of street and house and, in particular, his discussion of carnival, in which he notes the division of samba school headquarters into a close equivalent of the grandstands and general admission sections initially featured by Filho here, in the context of soccer. 2 The story of class and racial integration of Brazilian soccer will be a story of the interaction and interpenetration of these spatial dyads simultaneously coded by class and race.
Gilberto Freyre himself was a great supporter of Mario Filho’s writings and wrote a laudatory preface to the 1947 edition of this book. There and elsewhere, Freyre described the development of a Brazilian soccer style as a fusion of “Dionysian” impulses in Afro-Brazilian culture (ludic, irrational forms of individual dance, movement, and improvisation) with the originally “Apollonian” European sport (focused on more rational team strategy and tactics) to form a unique national hybrid. 3 Without going into a more detailed analysis of Freyre’s formula, what I would like to emphasize here is that this particular dyad focuses on a distinction between the non-European elements of Brazilian culture on the one hand, and European culture on the other, in order to emphasize a kind of national synthesis or unity of Brazilian soccer identity. The key point being that difference, with regard to Brazilian soccer and related culture and social relations, is projected externally .
However, the reader of The Black Man in Brazilian Soccer will find a fascinating dialectic play out, which is more focused on internal difference within Brazilian sports and society. This includes, first, the increasingly multiclass and multiracial playing field, as class and color lines are overcome by poor, working-class, and black players. 4 The emphasis here is less on the production of a Freyrean hybrid ( mestiço , or mulatto) identity of the team or the nation and more on the story of economic, social, and psychological struggle involved in the desegregation of soccer for black players over the course of several decades—a struggle I have analyzed in more detail elsewhere. 5 Second, Filho explores internal differences of identity and playing style even among black Brazilians themselves, perhaps best epitomized by his contrasting portrayals of two soccer giants of the 1930s: Domingos da Guia and Le ô nidas da Silva. Both Afro-Brazilian players—the former a defender and the latter a striker—are discussed in tandem in chapter 4 by Filho in terms of their differing temperaments, mindsets, and playing styles. On the one hand, Guia is a rather phlegmatic, fastidious defender, delivering precise and intelligent passes from the back line, all without breaking a sweat. Silva, on the other hand, more closely matches the paradigm of the creative Brazilian dribbler and scorer, moving to the tune of samba with an Afro-Brazilian swing or ginga , which Pel é would only come to epitomize two decades later (as detailed in chapter 6). Filho’s portrayal of different players like these two emphasizes the diversity within the community of black players itself. Departing from this emphasis on internal difference, his larger tale of black Brazilians and how they helped define the national soccer style, even as they struggled against racism, complicates and transcends Freyre’s more simplistic and homogenizing vision of black players in Brazil.
In terms of the Brazilian World Cup teams, this divide between a more serious, calm, collected defender and a more creative, improvisational, emotional attacker would inform virtually all the decisions as to which player would captain the side. More often than not, it would be the Domingos da Guia–like player who would be selected as captain, proving that the “English” temperament continued to be very much respected and effective for a team leader on the field. Just as Domingos da Guia himself was very much a Brazilian—and Afro-Brazilian—player, despite not matching the iconic stylistic model later perfected by Pel é , a solid defensive line would become a far less lauded but essential part of all Brazil’s World Cup champion teams. Thus, Filho’s focus on these two players in the era of the 1930s, when Brazilian soccer fully racially integrated and went professional, paints a picture of a balance between the Apollonian and the Dionysian in the Brazilian game. This balance would prove fundamental to Brazil’s astounding success on the global stage. Not only that, but we see in Filho’s history that black players, and to a more limited extent black coaches, were contributing to all sides of the game, from the tactical approach, to making offense and defense come together on the field, to the individual improvisation and creativity—the “samba” on the soccer field for which they would become most famous. Thus, it is quite prescient when Filho writes, in chapter 4, that Le ô nidas and Domingos are “the symbols of Brazilian soccer.”
In closing, a few general notes about my translation. Every translator must make innumerable choices in a work as extensive as this. Here I will emphasize that I have attempted to preserve as much as possible Filho’s colloquial syntax and punctuation. Filho’s free-flowing, journalistic style is one key way in which he enables himself to quickly jump between the viewpoints of players, coaches, fans, club presidents, management, and even presidents of Brazil, in addition to his own perspective and that of the larger Rio de Janeiro and national media he was a part of, and the international media he became familiar with when Brazilian clubs or nat