Remembering Pele: Race and football in Brazil ft Ana Paula da Silva

December 29 marks the first anniversary of Pele's death. As one of the world's greatest football players, Pele's impact goes beyond the football pitch into politics, society and popular folklore. To discuss Pele's legacy in Brazil,  co-hosts Guy and Francesco talk to Ana Paula da Silva, who studies race and gender at the Fluminense Federal University in Rio de Janeiro. Ana Paula explains how Pele was perceived and judged in terms of race and race relations during his career from the 1950s to the 1970s. She observes that he became a controversial figure to some, especially when compared to other important players of that time, like Garrincha and Paulo Cezar Caju. Ana Paula then discusses the subject of race and Brazilian football in the last decades, looking at developments among players and fans on the terraces, the impact and legacy of the 2014 World Cup and race relations during the right-wing presidency of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-22).

Ana Paula's study of the subject can be found in more detail in her book, available in Portuguese as Pele e o Complexo de Vira-Latas [Pele and the Mongrel Complex].

Transcript

 Remembering Pele: Race and football in Brazil ft Ana Paula da Silva

Francesco Belcastro 00:10
 Hello and welcome to a special episode of FootPol, the podcast where food meets politics. I'm Dr. Francesco Belcastro. Here with me is my co-host, Dr Guy Burton. 
 
 

Guy Burton 00:17
 Merry Christmas, Francesco. How are you doing today? 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 00:21
 Season greetings Guy, I'm good. I'm good. 
 
 

Guy Burton 00:22
 Seasons greetings to you and to me and of course to everyone who's listening as well. You know, it is a special episode, isn't it? I mean, we wouldn't expect to be hearing us today, would you? 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 00:32
 Well, listeners just cannot get rid of us, can they? Even on Christmas day, we are here talking about football and politics. 
 
 

Guy Burton 00:40
 We're just imposing ourselves on you. We're so committed to this project that we're not even taking a break during the holiday season. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 00:47
 We are. And... But we got a good reason not to take a break. We got a special episode because there is a very important date for us football funds on the 29th of December, which is in four days, has going to be one year since the death of the great Pele, to many the greatest football player of not of Argentinian nationality ever to play football. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 01:08
 I don't know, as a Brazilian, how do you feel about that? But certainly in every one's top three, I would say. 
 
 

Guy Burton 01:16
 You can see what I'm wearing today, can't you? 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 01:18
 You got your Brazil jersey, you're already home for all of the holidays so I think it's not different. Christmas is a return to childhood for a lot of us and it looks like... That's as well in terms of of what we are wearing. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 01:34
 Okay so joining us today to talk about this fascinating topic is Ana Paula da Silva, our colleague from the from Fluminense Federal University in Brazil in Rio de Janeiro. It's an absolute pleasure to have Ana Paula. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 01:47
 Ana Paula has worked extensively on different aspects around the issues of race and gender in Brazilian society and she's also worked on football and specifically on race in the context in relation to Pelé as a symbol of Brazilian football so we're very glad to have her here. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 02:06
 Hello Ana Paula, how are you? 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 02:08
 Hi, I'm fine. Thank you. So invite me for the participating in the podcast. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 02:16
 We're very glad to have you. Thanks for finding the time. Okay, so I was wondering if we could start with the sort of generic question if you want. Now, our listeners will know that Brazil is a big football country. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 02:29
 One where the role of football is a very important one in society, it's not only a sport. Could you tell us a bit about the role of football in Brazilian society? What kind of role does the sport have in the society? 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 02:45
 Yes, I'm going to speak Portuguese because it's easier. [in Portuguese] Yes, football... 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 02:52
 [dubbed into English] I will speak in Portuguese because it is easier. Yes, football in and of itself is interconnected with the construction of the modern nation in Brazil. Football was, it was used as the nation's sport. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 03:08
 And if we want to think about modernity and what is the nation in modern Brazil, then we have to look at football and think about how it was used over the decades by intellectuals, politicians and scholars who thought about the idea of the Brazilian nation. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 03:27
 So football is intrinsically linked to this construction, to this notion of Brazil as a modern country. Why? Because football came to be seen as a sport that speaks about Brazil. It's as if Brazil had invented a different way than the English, who supposedly brought football from Brazil, which is also a myth of football. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 03:52
 It had invented a new kind of football, which is called football art, which will later be constructed as the ideal football art, and which is a genuine way of playing football in Brazil. And with this we can understand the racial issues in Brazil, the gender issues, the inequalities, the political struggles around the nation projects that were being endangered in Brazilian society, and which involved the construction of football as a national sport. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 04:24
 [in Portuguese] …That's what we can understand, the racial issues in Brazil, the gender issues, the inequalities, the political struggles around the national projects that were engendered in the Brazilian society and that go through the construction of football as a national sport. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 04:49
 Well, I forgot to say before that Ana Paula is a Vasco da Gama supporter, isn't she? So Vasco da Gama had some players that were definitely artists. I mean, the first one that comes to mind is Edmundo. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 05:01
 There was already an artist and a very interesting character himself. So I would definitely support that view. 
 
 

Guy Burton 05:13
 So yeah, so one of the reasons we asked Ana Paula to come and talk to us was because she had written a very interesting, you know, scholarly article about football and race and particularly how it relates to, you know, probably the greatest player of all time, Pele and the 1950s in particular. 
 
 

Guy Burton 05:30
 And so one of the things we wanted to talk to Ana Paula about and hear from you is, you know, how race was understood in Brazil in the 1950s and how it has changed since then and the extent to Pele was a representation of, you know, or a particular represented a particular type of understanding about race in Brazil in the 1950s and how and in your article you also point out this is actually quite controversial, you know, Pele's association with race. 
 
 

Guy Burton 06:00
 So I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 06:02
 Yes, Pele... Sorry, [in Portugese] I'm going to speak in Portuguese... 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 06:12
 [subbed into English] Pele is an interesting figure. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 06:16
 Pele is an interesting figure and is a good case to think about these relationships that I mentioned in the previous question that is thinking about the nation, about racial discourses in Brazil, the formation of the nation and the idea of the formation of what would be a Brazilian people. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 06:37
 In the 50s Pele emerged as a great football star after winning the 1958 World Cup. And he quickly became an example of what black people could be like in the 1950s. This is the point I make in my book, or rather an article, because the book is from my doctoral thesis. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 07:03
 Pele de Viralatas - or Mongrels, as known in English - complex. That is to say, a discourse on race and modernity in Brazil, which was published by the Federal Fluminense University Press. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 07:24
 The racial discourse at the point when Pelle emerged was a discourse about discipline and professionalism in the extreme. It is a notion that inequalities, both socioeconomic and racial, and in relation to black people, in relation to minority groups, poor people, black people, indigenous people, would be resolved through this extreme professionalism and this discipline. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 07:54
 So Pele was at the extreme end of this model of representation that all you had to do was to be a competent, capable, extremely professional, disciplined person. It was a recurring word at that moment, discipline. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 08:13
 It was also a time when Brazil was undergoing accelerated industrialization. The Industrial Revolution, so to speak, in Brazil reached its peak in the 20th century, in the 1950s and 60s. That is when the industrial parks in São Paulo were growing. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 08:43
 It is a Brazil that is increasingly urbanized and industrialized. The idea of professionalism and discipline, they are linked to this notion of social mobility, that you rise socially, economically, by being disciplined and professional. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 09:02
 And this was also a discourse in the black movements of the time. All the material I researched from the newspapers, publishing about the black movements, talked about this and Pele was a great example. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 09:16
 Unlike Garrincha, another football star of the time, for example, Garrincha did not represent this vision of professionalism and discipline in the 1950s and 60s. He was the opposite of that. He was a person understood as a person who doesn't keep schedules, who didn't have discipline, who didn't have any of that. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 09:40
 So Pele was the example. But he became controversial in the 1970s. Soon after he won the 1970 World Cup, he became controversial because the discourse of the period was changing. It no longer revolved around this notion of discipline and professionalism. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 10:03
 Instead, it was around an affirmation of identity. You had to fight for your identity. So the debates involved identity. In other words, it was not enough for you to be black, professional and successful. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 10:20
 You had to raise the flag. You had to talk about the problems that black people suffered in life. You had to be more identity oriented. And Pele did not take this stance on identity. As he had done during the 1950s, he continued to assert himself as a professional and disciplined person. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 10:42
 So he became controversial because just as Garrincha was controversial in the 1950s and 60s, Pele became controversial from the 1970s because he doesn't change. Things get complicated because Pele is not like Garrincha, while the figure of Garrincha is very much centered and understood in the Brazil of the period. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 11:15
 Pele, despite being controversial in the 1970s, became a public and internationally known figure. Because of his contractual situation at the time, he then went on for salary reasons to the United States. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 11:31
 A lot of great stars from around the world were hired to play football in the United States at the time. When Pele left Brazil, he was the face of Brazil. But the change in discourse around him made the figure of Pele difficult and problematic. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 11:51
 He was controversial inside Brazil, yet ubiquitous outside of Brazil. He was the face of Brazil outside of Brazil. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 12:03
 [in Portuguese] …and still makes this figure even more problematic. At the same time, because he is absolutely controversial and controversial within Brazil, he is an unanimity outside of Brazil, and the face of Brazil, outside of Brazil. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 12:18
 Guy, another time we need to bring Ana Paula in and ask her about Socrates and what that symbolizes for... 
 
 

Guy Burton 12:27
 My favourite player, my favourite. But for what he does, you know, his political activism. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 12:33
 [in Portuguese] Socrates is a good example… 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 12:35
 [dubbed into English] Socrates is a good example, because Socrates appears at this moment of politicization. What is happening at this time? The end of the 70s is the end of the military dictatorship, where most social movements are resuming their activities. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 12:53
 And among them are the Black Movement, the Women's Movement, the Rights Movement, the Gay Movement at the time. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 13:03
 Social movements are all recovering at this point. So these banners of identity are much more prominent than they were in the 1970s, or in the 1950s, in Palais' time. In the 1980s, Socrates and another figure, Paulo Cézar Caju, who is also a Brazilian national team player and who was an activist in the Black Movement at the time, they became symbols of the period, while Pele was a controversial one. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 13:38
 Paulo Cezar Caju becomes an example of the black person in football, much to the detriment of Pele. Caju is an activist, talking about black causes, talking about racial inequalities in Brazil, for saying that slavery had not ended in Brazil. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 13:56
 He and Pele had a little bit in common on this. Pele simply said, no, the fact that I am a successful, disciplined, professional and black person is enough. But at that moment, it wasn't enough. It was a time of denunciations. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 14:16
 And Socrates was a product of this political moment. Socrates was a political activist who campaigned, who made demands, who denounced the military dictatorship and its torture, that the military must be punished. So Socrates was an activist player. Paulo Cézar Cajú was also a militant player. He was also an activist player. Pelé excluded himself from this place, from political activism, from the activism of the social movements. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 14:56
 [in Portuguese] …He was an activist player. Pelé excluded himself from this place, of the political militancy, of the militancy of the social movements. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 15:07
 Thank you very much. That's so fascinating. Thank you very much. 
 
 

Guy Burton 15:10
 Ana Paula, I just will run a couple of questions that I have together for you now that because we're obviously talking about the changes that are taking place from the 1950s and 60s into the 70s. But if we now talk about today, you know, is football and race still connected. 
 
 

Guy Burton 15:25
 You know, we know, for example, that there is strong partisanship around the Brazilian football shirts, you know, the yellow shirts of the national team, the Selecao. You know, supporters of the former president, you know, Bolsonaro used to wear it at rallies and make it theirs. 
 
 

Guy Burton 15:42
 Does the shirt and does football identify itself in a racial way today? And overall, what would you say is the state of race and racial relations both in Brazil generally, but also more specifically in football? 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 15:58
 [in Portuguese] That's it, football still has a strong connection, even today. Even today, because it's a big part of football players… 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 16:10
 [dubbed into Portuguese] People still have a very strong connection. Even today, especially because a large portion of football players are still from the lower classes. Today, we have middle class people, but the vast majority of Brazilians come from the popular classes. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 16:30
 They are poor and non -white, black, brown, indigenous people. These are the people who are dreamers in Brazil. Because the country still has so many inequalities and still reproduces so many inequalities, being a football player is still the big dream for the vast majority of kids from the lower classes. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 16:55
 So recent football do connect, and they also connect in debate over what to do about it, because today we have several campaigns in relation to racism in football. Today there is much more open talk about racism in football, about prejudice. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 17:16
 Today organized fans are much more involved in policing this. For example, in relation to racist chanting in stadiums, the black movement has managed to bring the issue of racial inequalities in Brazil into the public debate, and I think they are doing it in a positive way. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 17:37
 Look, Brazil is a racist country. It's a racially unequal country. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 17:45
 Black people don't have opportunities. They never have historically, because it's a country that was the last country in the world to abolish slavery in 1888. Despite this, black people were not incorporated, they were not recognized as full citizens. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 18:05
 This is a debate that is happening in football too. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 18:09
 Today, football players denounce racism. They denounce insults against them. They denounce when there is any kind of racist attack. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 18:24
 This is something that would have been unthinkable, for example, 20 or 30 years ago. So, there has been reflection on this. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 18:35
 Race and football are still important topics in Brazilian sport, in football particularly. It has been especially problematic within football. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 18:47
 In addition to Bolsonaro, Bolsonaro hijacked the national symbols, the Brazilian shirt, the flag. He has brought back a racial discourse from the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, that I talked about in my book, a discourse about whitening of the Brazilian population. This was the idea. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 19:12
 The Brazilian population would only be modern, it would only enter modernity, it would only be a country recognized as a modern country if it became white, if Brazil was a white country. And so Brazil had an active whitening policy. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 19:31
 Brazil brought in a large number of European immigrants for these purposes. It was a state policy and Bolsonaro then brought back the logic of this racial discourse that a white Brazil is a good Brazil, a modern Brazil, that a white Brazil is not an indigenous or black Brazil. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 19:55
 So the shirt of Brazil's national football team became identified with Bolsonaro's good citizen. What is a good citizen? It is a clean citizen, a eugenized or improved citizen in terms of his socioeconomic and racial aspects. In other words, for Bolsonaro, this good Brazilian citizen, he wasn't black. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 20:25
 He wasn't indigenous. He wasn't poor. Only a good citizen could therefore be allowed to wave the Brazilian flag. And wear the Brazilian national team's shirt. It's interesting, because it does not mean that all Bolsonarists are all white. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 20:44
 But this is the model, the ideal. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 20:47
 [in Portuguese] …This is interesting because it doesn't mean that the Bolsonaro's are all white, but the ideal is. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 20:58
 Can I, yeah, yeah. So the last question we wanted to ask you is it's, we have written on the World Cup in 2014, and particularly on the issue of prostitution and sexual tourism around that, has been something of your research extensively. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 21:14
 Could we, however, ask you to tell us a bit what the social impact of the World Cup has been on Brazil now nine years afterwards, is it? Approaching 10 years from your point of view, what has changed, what has been the impact of the World Cup? 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 21:32
 [in Portuguese] It's interesting because the 2014 Cup was around controversies and polemics. At first it was very well done… 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 21:45
 [dubbed into English] It's interesting because the World Cup, the 2014 World Cup, was full of controversies and conflicts. At first, it was very well accepted, but as the World Cup approached, there was a movement against the World Cup. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 22:01
 There were many demonstrations. The demonstrations had their origins in the protests against public transport fare increases, which eventually overthrew President Dilma Rousseff. They constituted a change in public opinion, towards the Lula and Dilma Rousseff governments, which governed Brazil between 2003 and 2016. The World Cup was a major investment in Brazil, with many structural works, with sudden changes. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 22:39
 In Rio de Janeiro, for example, there were expropriations of houses where World Cup projects were built. It was not a peaceful moment, and it can be said that the legacy was very small. What we saw happening around the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics was a Brazil that was turning to the extreme right, which ended up being captured by this extreme right, and which attributed the corruption around these mega -events as a major focus of Brazil's problems. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 23:19
 In relation to sex tourism and prostitution, my colleagues and I have written a number of articles about it, because we started to realize that these mega -events, not only in Brazil, but in other places, other countries in the world, have become justifications to control and criminalize already marginalized populations. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 23:44
 The campaign against sex tourism actually turned into a form of criminalization of certain social groups that were already socially excluded. There was more persecution, more controls on the population, with the removal of these people from certain places. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 24:06
 We began to realize that this wasn't only happening in Brazil, that other countries that had provided an opportunity to exclude and persecute certain marginalized social groups. Among them are sex workers who were removed, were arrested, who in short had their rights forfeited. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 24:41
 And it wasn't only sex workers, but also any other informal worker, like street vendors. These people were being completely excluded because the idea is to sanitize, to clean the city for the mega event, so you couldn't have these groups of people on the streets. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 25:06
 These are policies to combat sex tourism and prostitution. This does not mean that we do not have to protect these people from danger. But we do need to think that these mega -events were also used to persecute them, to remove them, to move them away from their work and their living and coexistence spaces. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 25:36
 [in Portuguese] ....policies to combat sex tourism and prostitution. This doesn't mean that we have to protect these people from dangers, but to think that these mega -events were also used to chase them, to remove them, to move them from their workspace, to work, to live. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 26:02
 Thank you very much, Ana Paula. 
 
 

Guy Burton 26:05
 Yeah, well thank you, Ana Paula. That was really helpful. Thanks so much. 
 
 

Ana Paula da Silva 26:09
 Thank you for the time in the conversation. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 26:15
 Alright, that was great, I really really enjoyed that. Guy, do we need to remind our listeners anything else? 
 
 

Guy Burton 26:21
 Yes, I mean, as we usually do at the end of these shows, we ask our listeners that if they liked it, if they could sort of either like the episode on the platform where they get the podcast, if they could share it with their friends, if they could get their friends to listen to us, or if they would subscribe themselves so they can get it in their inboxes as soon as it arrives on the Monday. 
 
 

Guy Burton 26:43
 And also if they would like to get in touch with us as to things that they would like us to explore and guests they'd like us to talk to, we are accessible or contactable on a number of different social platforms, including Facebook, Twitter/X, Blue Sky, and Instagram. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 26:58
 Yeah, so I need to remind the listeners, this is the last episode of the year, right? So in 2024, if we get enough listeners, Guy is gonna buy Aldershot Town. So please share the podcast as much as you can. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 27:11
 If we… What's the number, Guy?
 
 

Guy Burton 27:12
  Yeah, but don't forget, don't forget what Christina Philippou, our guest, told us that buying a football club was a really bad idea! 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 27:20
 Yeah, she did say that. And if people want to go and check that episode, that's that's why Guy is not buying football club because it's probably not a good idea. 
 
 

Guy Burton 27:28
 Not a good investment. But speaking of which, we have an episode next week as well, even though we're still continuing through the holiday season, aren't we? 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 27:37
 We have an episode, yes? So it's gonna be our guest next week. 
 
 

Guy Burton 27:39
 Yeah, it's Heather Dichter, who is a lecturer over at De Montford University, who's a historian and looks at sport diplomacy. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 27:50
 There's gonna be a very historical one, but we're also gonna talk about a few a few modern things as well. I think so it's gonna be very interesting 
 
 

Guy Burton 27:57
 And that one is coming out next week, isn't it? On Monday, which is actually also New Year's Day. So a good start to the year, I would say. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 28:04
 Definitely. So I hope the listeners have a good celebration. I hope you do as well and we'll see you all - or listen to us - next week. 
 
 

Guy Burton 28:14
 Yes, I would say if you're going out to have a party on New Year's Eve, make sure that you leave a little bit spare so you can listen to us on the first. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 28:21
 Great cure for a hangover!
 
 

Guy Burton 28:22
 Absolutely. And great. Anyway, take care, Francesco. Have a good rest of the holiday season and see you next week - next year, actually. 
 
 

Guy Burton 28:30
 Take care. Bye. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 28:31
 Yeah, bye bye.