The New History of Sport in Latin America. Introduction

Abstract

Thirty-five years ago, at a time when few were undertaking academic studies of sport and society in Latin America, the historian Joseph L. Arbena argued that sport could provide a window into the regional experience in the Americas. He also argued that the subject of sport had only received “limited systematic analysis.” To a large extent, that is no longer the case. Ruminating on that change, Gregg Bocketti recently affirmed that “now it is a rare season that does not see the publication of at least one academic work on Latin American and Caribbean sport, as scholars have joined athletes, coaches, journalists, and fans in acknowledging the immense scale and broad scope of sports in the region.” Indeed, since Arbena’s gloomy diagnosis, in most social sciences and humanities disciplines, over the past fifteen years in particular, researchers with an interest in the historical analysis of society have opened Arbena’s metaphorical window and have emphasized five key sets of issues, among many. Their approach has often been inter-disciplinary and not necessarily inclusive of history as a discipline. We identify below these five problem sets and illustrate each with an example from the growing body of literature.