Decoloniality and South American Soccer: Maradona, Pelé, Obdulio and the Rupture of the Center-Periphery Logic

Abstract

With the "discovery" of America began what many call the Modern World-System. Even after the independence of the countries that were colonies of the European powers, the colonization has not ended. It continues today, mainly through globalization, which has not only maintained the logic of economic colonialism, but also the cultural aspect. Thus, subaltern studies were created, in order to create theories of the countries of the South for the South, making a necessary process of decolonization (of being, knowledge and power. This article is about how soccer, a Eurocentric sport considered the most practiced in the world, despite showing the prejudices of society and the colonial logic of the commodification of athletes, is a very important tool in the decolonization process. of being, the objective of the work is to show the importance of soccer from a decolonial point of view, precisely because it is a mechanism to combat the aforementioned problems and also because it breaks the traditional periphery-center division of the modern world-system, placing South American countries as the center and the great neoliberal imperialist powers, at times, as peripheral. That is clear with the historical symbology of soccer players, such as Maradona, Pelé and Obdulio Varela as protagonists, martyrs who broke the traditional center-periphery logic of the world system for subsequent generations of soccer players who continued this legacy to this day.