Sport and social issues in Brazil

Ensaio escrito em 2006 como parte de material incluso para obter vaga de MA em Sport, Media e Culture da Universidade de Brighton, Inglaterra.


"Sou brasileiro e não desisto nunca" or "I am Brazilian and I never give up" in its literal translation is a pretty popular Portuguese saying that can also explain the exactly importance of sports in Brazil.

To understand what the phrase truly means is also necessary to find out the reasons sports are take so seriously in this country, or even how these people that can barely finish their school years, sometimes prefer to be in the pitches instead of being in classrooms, changing the books for football.

How is sport concepts developed in a country that is shown on TV news as a paradise, or sometimes as a proper hell? Brazil is a place where violence kills innocent people in the name of the traffic and, on the other hand, its famous landscapes and landmarks bring more and more visitors each year to the country.

We can really understand that sports are between these two poles when we hear about the pretty poorly skilled boy that now is playing football in some famous European team. Or when we notice that a poor and very talented other children choose to practice basketball in the neighborhood team instead of learning how to load a gun.

As a neutral element between these two very different sorts of "Brazils," sports activities can really change lives and have a huge influence in the social context.
The first reason is that the importance of the personal victories and the meaning of satisfaction to amateurs or professionals athletes are always the same everywhere.

It is not different in Brazil. We can realize it in phrases like "I am Brazilian and I never give up," because it is about a group of people who lives in a country with large social problems. It is also about a people used to work hard to get their own things.

So does it really matter if the gold medal is an Olympic one like the ones that will be won soon in the 2007 Pan American Games, held next month in Rio de Janeiro? Or the symbolic ones won in the regional championships? The price and satisfaction of a victory is always the same.

In 2004 when I had the experience of working with sports events in the City Hall of Santos, I could understand a little bit more about this social phenomenon that is able to brings wealthy or poor boys and girls together in the same objective: to win through sports.

Two of these athletes of Santos are good examples of this reality: The judo fighter, Leandro Guilheiro, 23 years old, and the boxer, Ivani da Conceição Ferreira , 30 years old. Both of them had a very different trajectory in their careers but, both of them showed the same kind of perseveration and will of change their lives through the sport they practice.

Leandro is already a well-known Brazilian athlete that won a silver medal in the last Olympic Games in Athens 2004. He practices a very popular sport in Brazil, Judo, and he was also trained by one of the most famous Brazilian judo athletes, Rogério Sampaio.

Leandro started training this sport when he was six years old and as any other judo player he has to conciliate several hours of practicing a day with some good chance of injuries between it because it is a really disciplined and difficult sport.

Maybe his trajectory was not as hard as the one tracked by the boxer Ivani da Conceição Ferreira. More than ten years, all dedicated to Boxing, Muay Thay, and kickboxing, made of Ivani a truly champion of her categories even it was not enough to bring her to an Olympic Game yet.

While Leandro was representing Brazil in Athens in 2004, Ivani was finding her place in South American and Brazilian Boxing Championships. She was training 5 hours a day, apart from working as Muay Thay coach trainer to keep her dream alive. Because her good results in career, she was awarded a scholarship to study Physical Education in a University in Santos and finishing her studies, was probably something that she would never do without a 100% scholarship.

Leandro and Ivani are just two examples of how sports are took seriously in this city and it is just a tiny part of the work done in the rest of this country. While we are about to achieve the dream of hosting our first big sports event, the Pan American Games, we can also understand why sports in Brazil is sometimes the main factor in changing lives here.

As a proved social element able to bring confidence back to a youth generation who got used to deal with the daily difficulties, including lack of work opportunities, violence, and a very deficient education, sports seems to be the only way of changing their realities and future.

It works because the statistics and studies about the subject shows that the children that dedicate part of their time practicing some kind of sport, have less contact with drugs and at the same time have a better performance at school, because the discipline is part of the whole process.

So it is very understandable why kids here prefer the football to the book and the pitches to the classroom, even though it is also just a first step of a dream that can come true with a lot of dedication to conquer all objectives in life.

It is pretty clear that through the sports children can feel themselves truly citizens of a Country that build future athletes, day by day.

This way, they maybe can choose in which of the two different "Brazils" they will be part of: the paradise or the hell. That is the reason that the words "Be Brazilian and never give up" in some circumstance of life makes so much sense to these people, after all, the price of victory in life is always the same.

por simone ribeiro