From Beauty to Duty , livre ebook

Pitch Publishing Ltd - da Cruz Martin

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

182 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Uruguay remains a curious case in world football. Early Olympic and World Cup triumphs made it the game's first global power, and the small country has punched above its weight ever since. But the story behind its success is untold. In this first English-language history of Uruguayan football, Martin da Cruz maps the game's journey from exclusive British pastime to Uruguayan national passion, bringing to life the teams, players and personalities who helped create one of the world's most intense sporting cultures. From the start, football was intimately tied to Uruguay's national story. Wedged between giants Argentina and Brazil and lacking a cohesive national identity, Uruguay used the game to create unified and educated citizens, to put an end to civil war and become an advanced social democracy. Yet football also drove counter-narratives of class and race, challenging Uruguay's self-identification as a peaceful, 'white' nation. From Beauty to Duty is the story of a little country made big.

Informations

Publié par	Pitch Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	03 octobre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781801503051
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2022
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Martin da Cruz, 2022
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781801501491
eBook ISBN 9781801503051
---
eBook Conversion by www.eBookPartnership.com
Contents
Prologue
1. Precarious Walls
2. Classrooms and Workshops
3. A Pet Institution
4. We Play
5. Nuestra Juventud
6. Onward!
7. Vagabonds
8. War
9. Second Foundation
10. Agitators
11. The Reaction
12. Democratise!
13. Internationalise
14. Maestros
15. Celeste
16. Model Country
17. 1912
18. Delgado
19. Independence
20. Odysseys
21. Polyrhythms
22. The Vanguard
23. Am rica Forever
24. 1917
Appendix
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Photos
For Nancy, Edison, and Gloria
Prologue
Montevideo, 31 July 1924
MANY THOUSANDS stood impatient at the docks that afternoon. They clamoured for a space on top of cars and buildings and watchtowers and light posts, wherever they could to catch a glimpse of their heroes. The crush became too much for some and they fell into the freezing cold water. At 3pm, anticipation palpable, planes swirling, on the horizon appeared the Valdivia. Waving national flags, banners, hats and handkerchiefs, the delirious crowd welcomed home Uruguay s triumphant national football team. Olympic gold medallists, world champions. With precision and art, they had turned the Old World s conception of the game upside down.
In Uruguay, football is everything. Every time the national team plays, said the late thinker and novelist Eduardo Galeano, no matter against whom, the country holds its breath. Politicians, singers, and street vendors shut their mouths, lovers suspend their caresses, and flies stop flying. No one expressed it quite like Galeano. In 1968, as Uruguay sank deeper into social and political crisis and a group of young revolutionaries took arms, the 27-year-old released Su Majestad el F tbol . I like football, he said in the prologue. Yes, the war and celebration of football. And I like to share euphoria and sadness in the stands with thousands of people I do not know and with whom I identify fleetingly in the passion of a Sunday afternoon.
That s how the people felt back in 1924. From afar they had followed their young compatriots as they dazzled the old continent and swept aside all. From afar they had imagined themselves in it all by reading the epic chronicles of El D a, newspaper of the masses, the only one to send a correspondent to Paris. And they felt it when after each triumph, especially the gold medal match against Switzerland, that correspondent, Lorenzo Batlle Berres, would say, You are Uruguay! Together at the docks they knew their little country had broken out from the shadows of Brazil and Argentina.
In 1924, nothing represented Uruguay like its national team. At a time the country began its centenary celebrations, the sky blue shirt, La Celeste , became a potent symbol of the nation. A symbol of a prosperous country with an educated citizenry and a capital that could stand proud alongside those in Europe. A society many attributed to the work and vision of Jos Batlle y Ord ez, the former president whose advanced social and labour legislation helped transform Uruguay from a 19th-century theatre of war into a secular social democracy and the first welfare state in the Americas.
La Celeste represented the success of what they called a hyper-integrative society; a peaceful, inclusive, and equal country. An optimistic nation. A so-called melting pot. Just one look at the Olympic team shows it. A group of working-class players, mostly sons of immigrants, could not only represent a nation but reach the top of the world. What better proof of this fair and equal society than Jos Leandro Andrade, Black football star, three-time world champion, three-time South American champion. And what better proof than Uruguay s unique playing style, a home-grown amalgamation of combination and joy that had no equal.
Yet this footballing tradition wasn t invented in 1924. It was the culmination of a decades-long process of popularisation. From the beginning the game was entwined with Uruguay s national story since its creation as a buffer state, a story based upon the lack of a unified identity and territorial integrity and the constant threat from its giant, interfering neighbours - Brazil and Argentina. Conscious of such vulnerabilities, Uruguayan nation builders agreed that only through the quality of its citizens could the small country survive.
Football arrived as Uruguay began consolidating as a nation state. When it saw itself as a new nation. A white nation. It was a nation born from genocide. One of the first acts of the first president of the republic was a cowardly deception and ambush and murder of 40 Charr a people, with another 300 taken prisoner. Since the Salsipuedes massacre of 11 April 1931 Uruguay became what cultural and literary scholar Gustavo Verdesio called an amnesic nation , forever seeking to erase or deny its Indigenous heritage. The country also denied its Black heritage. The people who in their slavery and eventual freedom built the country and fought its wars and formed part of its working-class mass remained officially invisible, constantly marginalised.
Uruguay s official national story was underpinned by immigration. By the hundreds of thousands of mostly Italian and Spanish who crossed the Atlantic with dreams of Am rica and settled in Montevideo, the region s first port of call. In the second half of the 19th century, Uruguay s population multiplied several times, reaching one million by 1900. One-third of the country s inhabitants were concentrated in the economic and political centre of Montevideo, slowly industrialising and expanding. In 1908 one-third of the capital were foreign-born. The overwhelming majority were children or grandchildren of immigrants. Demographic transformations accelerated the need for a unified identity, to forge a national consciousness among those with little connection to Uruguay. Journalist and politician Jos Pedro Varela s transformational reforms in the 1870s established free, obligatory, and secular education as crucial in assimilating new arrivals and producing educated and patriotic citizens of their children.
Football arrived in a Uruguay plagued by political instability and violence. By a decades-long intermittent civil war between the liberal Colorado Party who controlled the national government and represented Montevideo, and the conservative National Party, the Blancos, who defended rural culture and tradition. In Uruguay one was either a Colorado, a Red, or a Blanco, a White. Party spirit and rivalry was passed down to their children. Political questions were still settled by insurrection. By 1900 the country had experienced around 50 coups, uprisings, or revolutions of some sort.
Football arrived when Uruguay s identity was at stake. When the country needed to set itself apart from its more powerful neighbours. When it needed to unite a heterogeneous mass of immigrants and workers, to include them and their children in the national story. When it was desperate to stop Uruguayans killing Uruguayans for the colour on their shirt. And it arrived when the people themselves were looking for something to call their own, something to find and understand their place in times of sweeping transformations. And soon they would find an English game that, as football journalist Luis Prats said, would move to the beat of the nation, and become an expression through which they could observe the events that shaped their era .
1
Precarious Walls
ONE DAY in October 1878, 22 men gathered on an open field in the Montevideo suburb of La Blanqueada. They met not far from the site of an event steeped in national significance. Back in 1811, in the Quinta de la Paraguaya, the revolutionary leaders of the Banda Oriental proclaimed Jos Artigas as Jefe de los Orientales , ushering in a struggle for independence from Spanish rule. Now, 67 years later, another group was taking part in another event of national importance - the first game of football on Uruguayan soil.
They played two matches that day. A Uruguayan side bolstered by several British people and their sons faced a team of Englishmen. The first ended in a draw, the second a win for the Uruguayans. And in an inadvertent homage to that revolutionary cry of 1811 they were brutal struggles. They say one player suffered two broken ribs in a collision. It was a very rough game in those days, recounted Pedro Campbell Towers, a participant that afternoon. Football had not yet been properly defined it was played almost like rugby.
While those initial encounters are remembered through oral tradition, Uruguay s first recorded football match took place on 25 August 1880, the country s Independence Day. The match once again took place at La Blanqueada, and a Uruguayan side once again faced an English opponent. On this occasion, however, the event counted on the presence of a local observer who, under the pseudonym Glauco , penned the first local impressions of the game for newspaper El Siglo .
The