Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America by Brenda Elsey and Joshua Nadel

Abstract

Reviewed by: Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America by Brenda Elsey and Joshua Nadel Kirk Bowman Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America. By Brenda Elsey and Joshua Nadel. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019, p. 368, $24.99. Futbolera is a sweeping account of women, sports, and power covering much of a hemisphere for over a century. The book's aim is straightforward: the participation, emergence, banning, resurgence, and power dynamics of women and sports in Latin America is misunderstood and largely invisible, and there is much to learn from the varied efforts by a wide range of actors to support or undermine women's participation in soccer and other sports. While women's participation in other sports, particularly basketball, is covered in the book, the authors' primary focus is women and soccer. Elsey, author of the outstanding monograph Citizen and Sportsmen: Fútbol and Politics in Twentieth-Century Chile (University of Texas Press, 2011), and Nadel, author of Futbol: Why Soccer Matters in Latin America (University Press of Florida, 2014), are uniquely qualified for this challenging project. One principal strength of the book is the wide geographical coverage while focusing in depth with chapters on specific countries or paired cases. The trade-off is the exclusion of a number of Latin American countries, including the entire Andean region. The book covers Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico in depth, with significant additional coverage of Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Uruguay. The superb chapters on Brazil demonstrate the payoff for this asymmetrical case strategy. Elsey and Nadel allocate 85 pages to women and fútebol in Brazil, which could stand alone as a monograph on gender, sports, and power. Just as officials used eugenics, religion, and the stated need to protect women as feminine mothers to ban football in England from 1921 to 1971, officials in Brazil used similar arguments to ban the game from 1941 to 1981. The authors compellingly demonstrate that the beautiful game was played enthusiastically long before 1940. Spaces emerged at the school, the circus, the factory, at charity events, and through physical education teachers. The forty-year ban itself is a potent example of Steven Lukes' three faces of power, as the game flourished for times in different regions such as Curitiba and Rio de Janeiro. Local officials and many women resisted and skillfully exploited loopholes and opportunities. The authors convincingly overturn the widespread belief that women in Latin America were not playing organized soccer until recent decades. Even today, superstar Brazilian players such as Marta and Formiga had to battle through stereotypes and resistance to play the game at the highest level, and the family of rising star Catarina Macario left the country of football of Brazil to live in the United States so that Catarina could flourish as a futbolera. [End Page 369] The interconnection of race, class, gender, and the socialization of sports features throughout the book. Sports for middle- and upper-class white women, such as tennis, volleyball, fencing, or field hockey are supported by men and women and appropriate, while football is portrayed as less feminine, practiced by non-whites, and a threat to traditional roles. While the book is mainly about power dynamics and systemic relationships, the authors bring to life a number of fascinating and heroic women. Some are well known, like Marta or Sissi. Many more have been largely invisible and voiceless. Elsey and Nadel portray Rose do Rio, Alicia Vargas, Elisa Alves do Nascimento, and others as protagonists with agency who are often courageous and innovative promoting the sport they love. The chapters on Mexico are a cautionary tale. While Brazil represents a bottom-up process, in Mexico women's sports was largely a top-down affair. Due to several unique factors, women's football boomed in the 1960s and early 1970s, with Mexico hosting the second women's world championships in 1971. The bust of Mexican women's football followed soon thereafter. Women's soccer throughout the region is presented as a constant struggle marked by periods of acceptance and rejection, growth and decline. Women's soccer globally and in Latin America is currently experiencing a boom. Players...