This collection interrogates sports in Latin America as a key terrain in which nation is defined and populations are interpellated through emotionally charged practices (state policy, media representations, and sports play itself by professionals, national teams and amateurs) of inclusion and exclusion.

This collection interrogates sports in Latin America as a key terrain in which nation is defined and populations are interpellated through emotionally charged practices (state policy, media representations, and sports play itself by professionals, national teams and amateurs) of inclusion and exclusion.

This volume discusses the role of comics in the formation of a modern sense of nationhood in Latin America and the rise of a collective Latino identity in the USA. It is one of the first attempts - in English and from a cultural studies perspective - to cover Latin/o American comics with a fully continental scope. Specific cases include cultural powerhouses like Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, as well as the production of lesser-known industries, like Chile, Cuba, and Peru.

With essays by Ron Briley, Michael Ezra, Sarah K. Fields, Billy Hawkins, Jorge Iber, Kurt Kemper, Michael E. Lomax, Samuel O. Regalado, Richard Santillan, and Maureen Smith This anthology explores the intersection of race, ethnicity, and sports and analyzes the forces that shaped the African American and Latino sports experience in post-World War II America. Contributors reveal that sports often reinforced dominant ideas about race and racial supremacy but that at other times sports became a platform for addressing racial and social injustices. The African American sports experience represented the continuation of the ideas of Black Nationalism--racial solidarity, black empowerment, and a determination to fight against white racism. Three of the essayists discuss the protest at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. In football, baseball, basketball, boxing, and track and field, African American athletes moved toward a position of group strength, establishing their own values and simultaneously rejecting the cultural norms of whites. Among Latinos, athletic achievement inspired community celebrations and became a way to express pride in ethnic and religious heritages as well as a diversion from the work week. Sports was a means by which leadership and survival tactics were developed and used in the political arena and in the fight for justice.

Sport in Latin America and the Caribbean is the most comprehensive overview to date of the development of modern sports in Latin America. This new book illustrates how and why sport has become a central part of the political, economic, and social life of the region and the repercussions of its role. This highly readable volume is composed of articles on a wide variety of sports-basketball, baseball, volleyball, cricket, soccer, and equestrian events-in countries and regions throughout Latin America. Broad in scope, this volume explores the definition of modern sport; whether sport is enslaving, liberating, or neutral; if sport reflects or challenges dominant culture; the attributes and drawbacks of professional versus amateur sport; and the difference between sport in capitalist and socialist nations.

Transnational Sport in the American West is the story of how a sport can cross physical and cultural borders. Catholic missionaries first brought the sport of basketball to southern Mexico in the early twentieth century, but over time the sport has grown into a cultural tradition in states like Oaxaca (Wa-hak-a). The ball bounced across the Mexico/U.S. border into Los Angeles, CA during the 1970s and pick-up games in the park eventually became organized tournaments. In 1977, an annual tournament called the Benito Juárez Cup was established in Guelatao, Oaxaca to celebrate the culture of basketball in the region and to honor former president of Mexico, Benito Juárez. Now, generations of youth from the U.S. travel to Oaxaca to play in the tournament. Follow the story of three youth who describe their culture and the significance the sport of basketball has played in their life. They have different experiences based on age, gender, skill, and birthplace but they all have one thing in common. Basketball is a part of them, and although the sport can be played many different ways, this is their game.

Perhaps no other activity is more synonymous with passion, identity, bodily ideals, and the power of place than sport. As the essays in this volume show, the function of sport as a historical and cultural marker is particularly relevant in Latin America. From the late nineteenth century to the present, the contributors reveal how sport opens a wide window into local, regional, and national histories. The essays examine the role of sport as a political vehicle, in claims to citizenship, as a source of community and ethnic pride, as a symbol of masculinity or feminism, as allegorical performance, and in many other purposes. Sports Culture in Latin American History juxtaposes analyses of better-known activities such as boxing and soccer with first peoples' athletics in Argentina, Cholita wrestling in Bolivia, the African-influenced martial art of capoeira, Japanese Brazilian gateball, the "Art Deco" body ideal for postrevolutionary Mexican women, Jewish soccer fans in Argentina and transgressive behavior at matches, and other topics. The contributors view the local origins and adaptations of these athletic activities and their significance as insightful narrators of history and culture.

Analyzing Latino baseball players, masculinity, and American nationalism, Rudolph sheds new light on the ambivalence of mainstream America towards Latin/o culture.

Sound, Image, and National Imaginary in the Construction of Latin/o American Identities addresses a gap in the many narratives discussing the cultural histories of Latin American nations, particularly in terms of the birth, configuration, and perpetuation of national identities. It argues that these processes were not as gradual or constrained as traditionally conceived. The actual circumstances dictating the adoption of particular technologies for the representation of national ideas shifted and varied according to many factors including local circumstances, political singularities, economic disparities, and highly individualized cultural transitions. This book proposes a model of chronology that is valid not only for nations that underwent strong processes of nationalism during the early or mid-twentieth century, but also for those that experienced highly idiosyncratic cultural, economic, and political development into the early twenty-first century.

From the influential work of Los Bros Hernandez in Love & Rockets, to comic strips and political cartoons, to traditional superheroes made nontraditional by means of racial and sexual identity (e.g., Miles Morales/Spider-Man), comics have become a vibrant medium to express Latino identity and culture. Indeed, Latino fiction and nonfiction narratives are rapidly proliferating in graphic media as diverse and varied in form and content as is the whole of Latino culture today. Graphic Borders presents the most thorough exploration of comics by and about Latinos currently available. Thirteen essays and one interview by eminent and rising scholars of comics bring to life this exciting graphic genre that conveys the distinctive and wide-ranging experiences of Latinos in the United States. The contributors’ exhilarating excavations delve into the following areas: comics created by Latinos that push the boundaries of generic conventions; Latino comic book author-artists who complicate issues of race and gender through their careful reconfigurations of the body; comic strips; Latino superheroes in mainstream comics; and the complex ways that Latino superheroes are created and consumed within larger popular cultural trends. Taken as a whole, the book unveils the resplendent riches of comics by and about Latinos and proves that there are no limits to the ways in which Latinos can be represented and imagined in the world of comics.