Sports! Editor’S Letter
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spring 2012 harvard review of Latin america sports! editor’s letter AZocalo Sports Hed Confession 26 pt Zocalo deck 14 point one line BY I hate sports. As a little girl, I was always stuck on the softball outfield—the practical way of including a chubby, clumsy kid in the mandatory physical education class. I’d rather have been inside reading my favorite poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. I didn’t watch sports because I didn’t understand them and I didn’t understand them because I didn’t watch them. Still don’t. I found some recent comfort that I was not alone. My friend James N. Green from Brown University had his own confession, telling me in an e-mail, “I am still traumatized for having been chosen eighth or ninth when we made up baseball teams in elementary school and I always prayed that the ball did not come my way.” Even so, Green, a Brazil expert, made half a dozen suggestions, some of which have found their way into this issue. And so it went. I’d mention a ReVista on sports and a torrent of suggestions would follow. voLume Xi no. 3 Have you thought about rugby, polo, tejo, skiing, American football, lucha libre, cycling, vol- David Rockefeller Center leyball, zumba, basketball, jujitsu, capoeira, Xavante wrestling, Jamaican bobsledding, they for Latin American Studies would ask. director Then there were those who got excited about sports and race, sports and gender, sports Merilee S. Grindle diplomacy, not to mention sports as violence prevention, as a way of resolving conflicts, as a executive director way of understanding history. It seemed to be the only conversation that managed to integrate Kathy Eckroad friends, acquaintances and colleagues who were sociologists, historians, political scientists, ReVista journalists, anthropologists and even a computer geek or two. editor-in-chief I suddenly realized that for the first time in my life I was talking sports. June Carolyn Erlick And the stories began to flow. Not the stories I had imagined about who had beat out copy editor whom in what game, but intimate stories of sports and life. Many of those tales are in these Anita Safran pages. Journalist Stephen Kinzer recounts his first trip to Cuba carrying a suitcase to the publication interns family of Red Sox player Luis Tiant. Mariano Siskind from Harvard’s Romance Languages and Jai Chowdhry Beeman Alicia Zamora Literatures Department explains in an intimate fashion how soccer loyalty is formed early and Carlos Schmidt passed on through the generations. Harvard anthropologist Davíd Carrasco, who holds a joint design appointment with the Divinity School, recounts the powerful saga of his father, a man from the 2CoMMuniqué borderlands, who became a sports diplomat during the 1968 Mexico Olympics. www.2communique.com Historian Peter Winn from Tufts University told me that, on a recent trip to Hawaii, he ap- printer proached a crowd on the edge of Waikiki Beach surrounding an informal show. The perfor- P & R Publications mance turned out not to be Polynesian ritual, as he had been expecting, but Brazilian capoeira. contact us Suddenly Latin American and Latino sports seemed to be everywhere. 1730 Cambridge Street This January, on my first trip to the Middle East, I was sitting with some Colombian friends Cambridge, MA 02138 Telephone: 617-495-5428 in an open-air park in Abu Dhabi. It was a balmy evening. Families, including veiled women and hordes of children, sat eating appetizers of Middle Eastern mezzes and enjoying water pipes subscriptions and reader forum [email protected] known as shisha. A large screen displayed an ongoing soccer game. I don’t speak Arabic, but listened to the murmuring sounds as I conversed with my friends. All of a sudden I heard a website www.drclas.harvard.edu/publications/ word I thought I recognized: Maradona. I looked quizzically at my friend Federico, who teaches revistaonline at Zayed University. Yes, he said, reading my look, Maradona is training in Dubai. So there we facebook had it. Sports and globalization. ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America I (may) still hate sports. I sure love the idea of them. Copyright © 2012 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. iSSn 1541–1443 ReVista is printed on recycled stock. This issue of ReVista is made possible through the generous support of Banco Santander harvard review of Latin america spring 2012 volume Xi no. 3 sports! Published by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies FiRST TAKE Harvard university Sports Diplomacy by Davíd Carrasco 2 Soccer nationS in every issue Sentimental Soccer by Mariano Siskind 8 Great Players, Bad Business by Rory Miller 10 The Ball and the Blackboard by Bruno Carvalho 13 BooK talk ¡Gooooal! by Johanna Damgaard Liander 15 86 Soccer Clubs by Aldo Panfichi 17 Jobs for the Boys Soccer and Literature by Michel Di Capua 20 A Review by Barbara Nunberg The Cradle of Brazilian Soccer by Paulo Fontes 22 Playing with Cuba, Really? 87 Women’s Soccer in Brazil by Carmen Rial 25 A Review by John H. Coatsworth PLAy BALL Argentina: Press and Power 89 Religion, Politics and Plenty of Betting 30 A Review by Marysa Navarro by Barbara W. Fash and William L. Fash MAKinG A DiFFEREnCE Caribbean Baseball by Rob Ruck 34 Asociación Civil Lapacho 91 Searching for Burt Reynolds by Jack Spence 38 By Diana McKeage “Baseball in Our Blood” by Jack Spence 41 Speaking of Baseball by Félix Julio Alfonso López 42 Baseball Dreams by Stephen Kinzer 44 THE SPortinG LiFE online To Dance or to Box by Andrés Sanín 46 Look for more content online at Indeed, It Is about History by Sergio Silva Castañeda 49 drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline. Santo and Lucha Libre by Gabriel Guzmán 52 Bullfights by Daniel Samper Pizano 56 Sports and Political Imagination in Colombia by Ingrid Bolívar 58 Women and Sports in Peru by David Wood 60 SoCiAL CHAnGE AnD Rights Sports and Recreation by Mario Roitter 66 Fútbol con Corazón by Samuel Azout 69 Sports Diplomacy by Bob Morris 71 Beyond Soccer by Ryan Guilmartin 72 preparinG FoR Rio on the cover Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup by Stanley Engerman 74 The collage represents many sports in Latin America, including Preparing Rio by Claudio Beato 76 baseball, soccer, boxing, lucha libre and even American football in Mexico. Latino players like Davíd “Papí” ortíz (originally from My Goalsetters by Preston So 79 the Dominican Republic) have influenced sports in the united Preparing for the Olympics by Jake Cummings 81 States and beyond. Photo credits (clockwise): courtesy of Boston Red Sox, courtesy of istock photo, Historia Gráfica de Complexo do Alemão Field Notes by GSD RioStudio 84 Fútbol Americano en México; Andrés Sanín; Carin Zissis. first take Sports Diplomacy David L. Carrasco, From Borderlands to Bridges BY DAVÍD CARRascO THE WASHINGTON STAR SPORts EDITOR OPENED ‘I’ll be back tomorrow and I’ll have a he did with this knowledge was to de- the letter from far-off Caracas, Venezu- new basketball with me.’ velop a moral vision that sports should be ela, that had just arrived by diplomatic If you could have seen the looks on used to help people excel in competitive pouch. Entitled “A Very Sad Day,” the their faces when the ball collapsed you situations—and especially for those who piece was penned by my father David would have agreed with me that it was ‘a had been denied practice fields where L. Carrasco, the American University very sad day’. Tomorrow, I promise, will they could develop stronger bodies and basketball coach who was touring Latin be happier. Coach Carrasco.” more competitive minds. America as a sports diplomat for the U.S. From his work as a sports diplomat in State Department that summer. Latin America, Dave Carrasco came to MAn FRoM THE BoRDERLAnds The letter soon appeared in the news- think of sports as an ”international lan- Carrasco’s ability to connect with people paper under the headline, “Carrasco Has guage.” Sports were played all over the from different classes, races and places Compassion for Caracas Youngsters.” globe and enabled kids to reshape their came from growing up in an internation- His poignant story of a Venezuelan play- aggressions into exercise and games. al setting, but not one that people value ground scene ties coaching youth to in- But for this Mexican-American from the as a training ground for sports, diploma- ternational diplomacy, sports in Latin U.S.-Mexico borderlands, sports were cy and cultural richness. He was a “Tex- America to poverty, sadness, compassion more than just exercises in competition. Mex,” a ”border man” from the Segundo and perhaps even social change. Sports were a means through which so- Barrio of El Paso, Texas, literally within a “Today I call it a ‘Very Sad Day,’” cial equality could be played out. When stone’s throw of the Chamizal, that piece Carrasco wrote. “When I arrived at one he was interviewed for a 1968 essay on of Mexican land that had moved to the of the recreation centers in Caracas, there the Mexico City Olympics in the New U.S. side of the border when the Rio Bra- were about 75 kids waiting for me to start Yorker, Carrasco said, vo changed its course in the 19th century. the class in basketball. Keep in mind that “The United States should get more He took his toughness from the streets of these recreation centers are not like the involved in youth programs abroad. south El Paso, where he was a feared box- ones in Washington D.C.