In The Game: Why Studying Latino/a Sporting Lives Matter

Sports are everywhere, infiltrate everything, affect everyone, and extend its influence globally. From the millions generated in mega-sporting events like the Super-bowl and World Cup to the “arms race” in college sports... [ view full abstract ]

Sports are everywhere, infiltrate everything, affect everyone, and extend its influence globally. From the millions generated in mega-sporting events like the Super-bowl and World Cup to the “arms race” in college sports that negatively affects university budgets, to the recent acts of resistance by the University of Missouri football team, American sports – it would seem – has infiltrated every caveat of U.S. society and shows no sign of decline. Yet, scholars have been slow to get “in the game” and critically interrogating the Latino and Latina sporting experience in the U.S.
The interpretation and experience of Latinas/os sporting lives offers a unique opportunity to have (un)disciplined conversations about the changing relationship between sport and race, gender, class, sexuality, (trans)nationality, neo-liberalism and citizenship. Latina and Latino athletes have proven the integral force that sport plays, often times challenging and changing perceptions of national identity. They demonstrate that across the 20th century, sport has served as a contested terrain in regards to the inclusion of marginalized communities and the meta-project of US exceptionalism. For all of this, too little scholarly work has serious attend to these themes and their significance. Indeed, even within Latina/o Studies, which has taken up the ways systems of exclusion and inclusion affect Latino/a communities, sport remains understudied.
This roundtable, moderated by José Alamillo, brings together a diverse group of “promiscuous scholars” who will discuss the ways in a critical sport studies contributes to the (un)disciplinarity and (in)civility in Latina/o Studies. Luis Alvarez will discuss the history and development of the U.S.-Mexico soccer rivalry. He will explore the rivalry as a product, literally, of neoliberal globalization and a site where players, fans, and media that cover the matches (re)negotiate citizenship, diaspora, and race. Rudy Mondragon will “step into the ring” to focus on the representations of racial, national, gender, and class, citizenship identities in the sport of boxing. He will focus on the ways in which Latino boxers utilizes spatial strategies to negotiate their position in the boxing industry and creatively claim space as active agents of resistance. Priscilla Leiva will tackle how stadiums have facilitated pan-Latina/o identifications and multiracial claims to the city. She will discuss how sports spaces produce alternative civic identities and complicate idealizations of the stadiums as places of multicultural harmony. Jorge Moraga will focus on the ways identity and issues of representation become marketed in professional sporting events, particularly the National Basketball Association and National Football League. His pays particular attention to the ways marketing agencies navigate, outreach, and represent U.S “Hispanics” in basketball and football. Sergio González will examine the interconnections between sports, religion, and Latinidad in the development of Latino communities in the American Midwest, specifically focusing on the creation of movements for solidarity and social justice throughout Wisconsin in the second half of the twentieth century. Panelists will not only consider how Latinas/os continue to alter and shift U.S. sporting cultures, but how a critical sports studies approach can help us deliberate Latina/o Studies into the future.