Playing with Regional Identities: Colombian Footballers and Cultural Change in the Sixties and Seventies

This paper explores some of the ways in which Colombian footballers embraced and disputed regional identities. Since the late fifties, professional football (soccer) teams of 10 cities have participated in the national tournament and the players have been depicted as exponents of regional virtues and vices.  Based on oral history interviews with the most famous Colombian players during the sixties and seventies and the analysis of sporting published materials, I describe how the players appropriated but also challenged crucial elements of their regional identities.

I focus on the comparison between players from Antioquia and the Cauca Valley, two of the most important Colombian departments. I show that through their sporting practices footballers gave shape to a performative field in which regional identities were infused with new meanings and regional-racial hierarchies were redefined.  By doing so, my paper insists on the locally-based meanings of sport practice and remembers us that both the history of regions and the history of sports are forged through very different cultural practices and in multiple social spaces.