Category: Wk05-First World Cups

Snapshots of Modernity shows how Uruguay became a powerhouse in soccer by hosting the first ever World Cup in 1930. The article shows how photography helped Uruguay present itself as a modern in progressive nation during its centennial celebrations from its independence of Brazil.

The photographs help highlight, new stadiums, huge crowds, and heroic athletes, who is symbolize technological advancements and a civic unity. The images of packed stands and thrilled spectators, suggested a Democratic participation which portrayed soccer as a shared national experience, that appeals to all sorts of class divisions. They emphasize masculine athleticism, respectable femininity, and racial struggles.

Acuña shows that the World Cup is within a broader political context. Uruguay used the tournament and the images that circulated around the world as a way to enhance their international prestige and to show their political stability. As well as how football photography functioned as a way of showing both domestic and foreign audiences how to perceive a nation. In the end, the 1930 World Cup photographs show that there is meaning to these images as they helped construct a narrative of Uruguay as a modern democratic and unified country as well as how sports and media shaped national identity during the early 20th century.

– Abraham Cruz-Hernandez

Pictured above is the 1930 Uruguay World Cup Championship Team

Both of these articles represent political influence on sports, especially how national identity being is being shaped, reinforced, and portrayed in sports. This is evident in the 1916 Campeonato Sudamericano held in Buenos Aires. After much reluctance, the Uruguay team chose to include Black players Juan Delgado and Isabelino Gradin. “In their defence of their Black compatriots Uruguay seemed to reaffirm the country’s whiteness, to deny and denigrate its African heritage. Delgado and Gradin’s heritage. As if their descendants had not been forced across the Atlantic. As if their cultural expressions every summer were not based on real connections to the continent. For them, Delgado and Gradin were simply Uruguayan, a result of an inclusive and integrated and peaceful society in which the racial question had been resolved. As if Gradin had not threatened to quit the national team over racism just weeks ago.” Uruguay’s reasoning for their inclusion is indicative of how racial and national identity was viewed during this period of time. This choice was certainly intention in pushing a political narrative. Delgado and Gradin were essential to Uruguay’s winning of the tournament. “Uruguay was at the vanguard of football and nation. The national team symbolised social inclusion, democracy, solidarity, in both personnel and style.”

For the two readings that were assigned this week, I noticed a distinct theme between the two of them. There is a connection to politics within football with some interesting nuances to it. In one scenario, Uruguay in the early 20th century was eager to prove itself in international competition among other South American nations as well as the nations that span the rest of the world. This came after victories in the Olympics as well as becoming a global leader in staging football competitions and celebrating one hundred years of political independence. There is more than just national identity included in the politics of football. The exclusion of Juan Delgado from a Southern American competition as well as other racial injustices provided an avenue for players to protest against the racial hatred that was plaguing Uruguay’s football. There were derogatory comments made about Isabelino Gradin, which prompted pushback from the player against his call-up to play for Uruguay in the Campeonato Sudamericano. From page 296 in the Martin De Cruz article, “For him and other racialised Uruguayans it was an everyday reality so he wouldn’t stay silent. He wouldn’t shut up and dribble. He wouldn’t be afraid to put racism under the spotlight on the eve of Uruguay’s most important footballing moment.” A football player was utilizing his status in the sport to highlight a major societal and political issue within the country he was asked to play for, racism. The relationship between politics and football has layers to it. There is national identity, societal issues within the competing nations, and the actual diplomatic component to it involving international politics between important regions. The inaugural World Cup in Uruguay established a sort of political “tug-of-war” between South America and Europe. European nations stayed away from Uruguay for the World Cup in 1930, citing travel costs and the worry of being so far away from their fans and their typical European bases. Uruguay offered to pay for the costs on-site for the competing teams, yet only four European nations sent teams to compete in the World Cup for that year, being France, Romania, Belgium, and Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was the most eager to compete out of the European teams, with the other nations such as Belgium being connected to the German-Belgium vice president of FIFA, Romania entering on the intervention of their king, Carol II, and France being convinced by one of the driving forces of FIFA at the time, Jules Rimet. So in short, the main point I have picked up in the course of these readings was that politics and football are intertwined at a few different levels, being local, in-country politics, national politics among other nations in the region, and international politics across the globe between South America and Europe.

When sports and politics intersect, global events like the World Cup reveal how power and national identity are actively constructed rather than simply displayed. Bowman and Gordon & London show that the World Cup has never been a neutral celebration of sport. Instead, it has functioned as a stage where nations assert authority, legitimacy, and modernity within unequal global systems.
Bowman argues that the early World Cups must be understood within the context of empire, nationalism, and international hierarchy. The tournament emerged at a moment when global power was concentrated in Europe, and this imbalance shaped who hosted, who competed, and whose style of play was valued. The World Cup created an appearance of international equality, but beneath that surface it reinforced existing inequalities by privileging European institutions, norms, and political interests. Participation itself became a way for nations to seek recognition in a world order that often denied them influence.

The 1934 World Cup in Italy makes the political use of sport especially clear. Gordon and London show how Mussolini’s fascist regime transformed the tournament into a tool of propaganda. Football was used to project an image of strength, unity, and discipline that aligned with fascist ideology. Stadiums, ceremonies, and media coverage were carefully controlled to present Italy as a modern and dominant nation. The team’s success was framed not as athletic achievement alone, but as proof of political and cultural superiority.

This case demonstrates that the World Cup could be manipulated to serve authoritarian goals, turning sport into a vehicle for state power rather than popular expression. Yet, as Bowman suggests, this control was never total. International audiences, rival teams, and the unpredictability of sport itself limited how fully regimes could dictate meaning. The World Cup remained a contested space where political messages could be promoted but not always universally accepted.
Together, these readings show that the World Cup operates as both a reflection of global inequality and a mechanism for shaping it. Whether through imperial structures or fascist spectacle, nations have used the tournament to define themselves and assert their place in the world. At the same time, the very need to use sport for legitimacy reveals how unstable and performative national power can be.

Ultimately, Bowman and Gordon & London suggest that the World Cup’s historical importance lies in this tension. It is not just a sporting event, but a global stage where ideology, identity, and power are negotiated. Understanding the World Cup as world history means recognizing how deeply political forces are embedded in what often appears to be simply a game.

/\ Juan Delgado

This week’s reading is all about Uruguay’s victory in the 1916 South American Championship. It was also the first tournament of this type. This reading covered a few interesting points and controversies. A big theme highlighted is racial tentions. Uruguay has been a very racially tense nation. In 1916, most South American countries experienced some sort of racial turbulence. As we will find out, Chile would gon out of their way to blame their loss on racial differences.

Isabelino Gradin was the top scorer of the tournament; he almost quit over racial discrimination. Officials of the tournament had made some racially derogatory remarks to him. This was in the midst of the Afro-Uruguayans’ struggle for equality, something that is still present today. 

This continued with the Uruguay and Chile game. Uruguay defeated Chile 4-0, and the Chilean team then said they only won because they had “African Professionals”. They chalked their entire win up to nothing more than racial differences. By downplaying the Uruguayan players’ skills to their skin colors, they created the narrative of racial differences. 

Uruguayan player Juan Delgado was a star player in Uruguay. Before the tournament, when Uruguay was selecting its players. They intentionally left him out, favoring Alfredo Zibechi. An important note is that Delgado, much like Gradin, was a darker-skinned Uruguayan. Their decision stood until Zibechi stepped down to allow Delgado to play. 

These events show the uncomfortable history of soccer in South America. While this was a single example, times were rough for racial minorities during this period. It wasn’t until major political shifts during the late 80s and 90s that they became visible. Mundo Afro, founded in 1988, was able to petition the government to collect racial data in 1996. These surveys revealed the true ethnic composition of the nation and challenged the notion that Uruguay was a “white nation”. Overall, this reading did show me the racial struggles that existed in Uruguay. I never thought of racial tentions in South American countries.

Porter Cockrum

This week’s readings focused on the 1930s World Cup in Uruguay. The Passage “From Beauty to Duty: A Footballing History of Uruguay” wrote about the racial controversy during the 1916 South American World Cup. This World Cup was intertwined with politics and racial biases. Furthermore, these readings illustrated how football can be used as a tool for political diplomacy.

Players Juan Delgado and Isbelino Gradin were excluded from the 1916 tournament because of their race. Uruguayan media defended Delgado and Gradin as Uruguayan nationals. With this being said, the World Cup provides a sense of national identity, and Delgado and Gradin were denied this due to racial bias.

Ultimately, these three readings showed the intersection of football and politics. Furthermore, they discussed the racial execution of players Juan Delgado and Isabelino Gradin. The World Cup can be used as a tool of political unity and national identity. However, the World Cup can also be used as a way for political leaders to conduct political brainwashing.

Pedro Acuña’s analysis of photographs from the 1930 World Cup in Uruguay shows how images worked as more than documentary records. They actively constructed meanings about modernity, citizenship, gender, race, and national unity. Photographs of the Estadio Centenario and the Uruguayan crowd and team presented Uruguay as a modern nation capable of hosting a global spectacle. Football appeared as a unifier that gathered citizens across class lines and symbolized social progress at the height of Uruguay’s social-democratic optimism.

Acuña also challenges the idea that early football culture was exclusively male. Images reveal women as visible participants, as they were spectators in the stands and ceremonial figures on the pitch, showing a shift in social norms. Yet these same images reinforced more traditional ideals, presenting women as symbols of beauty rather than focusing on any sort of athletic prowess. Team portraits emphasized masculine fraternity and balance, projecting ideals associated with middle-class respectability and national cohesion. Individual players, such as Afro-Uruguayan star José Andrade or the one-handed striker Héctor Castro, further expose how race, disability, and masculinity were negotiated and normalized through visual culture.

These visual strategies align closely with the broader political dynamics of the 1930s World Cups outlined in The Politics of Individual World Cups: The 1930s. The inaugural 1930 tournament itself was deeply political: Uruguay hosted it to celebrate the centenary of its constitution and to assert its status as a modern nation, while European participation was shaped by economic hardship during the Great Depression. Subsequent tournaments made the political stakes even clearer. The 1934 World Cup in Fascist Italy was used explicitly as propaganda by Mussolini’s regime, while the 1938 World Cup in France reflected growing international tensions and regional resentments on the eve of World War II.

In the 1930s, football photographs, stadiums, and tournaments became stages on which nations projected power, unity, and ideological values. The visual culture of the 1930 World Cup and the political use of later tournaments show how football helped imagine modern nations and as an entanglement of sport and politics that continues to shape the World Cup today.

The module gave me the insight of the FIFA World Cup not only as a sports event, but as a potent historical instrument of studying the nationalism, modernity, and identity of the world. Bowman (2020) in The World Cup as World History reframed the event as a projection of greater political, economic, and cultural pressures rather than sports between countries.  As Bowman (2020) demonstrates, the World Cup turned out to be a massive event as the nations could display an image of power, solidarity, and a contemporary image worldwide. This attitude assisted me in perceiving the role of sport as a historical actor within the historical context as opposed to a background event.

The article by Acuna (2019) about the World Cup of 1930 in Uruguay enriched this knowledge further by emphasizing visual culture and photography as historical sources. Acuna (2019) posits that images captured at the tournament were not objective documents but highly designed pictures that conveyed the message of modernity, democratization of Uruguay, and national pride of the nation in its own centennial. The focus on the structure of stadiums and spectators, the idea of gender roles, and racial difference demonstrated how the World Cup became an instrument of representation to signify the advances and the state power. This visual presentation served as a supplement to the wider argument by Bowman (2020), who offered tangible examples of how the World Cup was used as a nation-building tool.

Among the observations I made in reading both works is the extent to which there was an effort to craft the public perception, be it through worldwide narratives, media, or photographs. Both authors emphasize the use of the World Cup to manipulate meaning, both Bowman (2020) in political structures across the world and Acuna (2019) in imagery and representation. Collectively, they show that football was strongly connected to the notions of citizenship, men, and national identity.

Although the information I obtained has led me to the present level of understanding, I still wonder whose voices were left out of these stories, especially the working-class audience and non-symbolic representations of women. In general, the module allowed me to view the World Cup as a historical process that shows how countries have used sport to narrate stories about themselves and their identity in the world.

The first FIFA World Cup was hosted by Uruguay, a small nation squished between Brazil and Argentina. Despite it’s size, Uruguay had proved it’s soccer prowess, winning both prior Olympic soccer titles. Additionally, Montevideo was home to Conmebol – South America’s Soccer association – making it a hub for soccer in the region.

Despite it’s qualifications, Uruguay (and South America as a whole) was not seen as a global soccer powerhouse. Rather, the powerhouse title lay with the nations in which the sport originated – England and Scotland. A lack of belief in South American soccer was apparent when the English Football association and many other European associations did not send teams, despite Uruguay’s offers to offset travel and accommodation costs.

The inaugural World Cup played out similarly as to what is expected today of the event – high ticket demand, passionate fans, rivalries, threats of violence, and of course, a stage for discussion.

Uruguay and Argentina proved to be the biggest rivalry of the event, a rivalry that called back to the 1916 Campeonato Sudamericano held in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In fact, much of the posturing typical of World Cups could be seen in the 1916 Campeonato Sudamericano.

This tournament, highlighted in From Beauty to Duty: A Footballing History of Uruguay, 1878-1917 by Martin DaCruz, highlighted racial injustices faced by players of color. Controversies surrounding players of color, such as Uruguay’s Juan Delgado, spread beyond Uruguay and framed discussions of the sport itself. The 1916 Campeonato Sudamericano soon found itself as a platform to discuss issues of race and inequality.

These discussions were framed by the complicated topic of national identity as people grappled with their beliefs about race and their desires to see their nation succeed in a transnational sporting event.

The inaugural World Cup helped cement the idea of South America as a hotbed for the sport, with Uruguay as it’s hub. Subsequent World Cups, such as the second held in Mussolini’s Italy or the recently held 2022 World Cup in Qatar, demonstrate how transnational soccer events can facilitate discussion, harkening back to the discussion of race and national identity during the 1916 Campeonato Sudamericano.

Mussolini didn’t just want to host a tournament; he wanted to show off “New Italy.” Everything from the massive stadiums to the way the event was organized was meant to prove that his government was efficient, modern, and powerful. It was one of the first major examples of a country using a global sporting event to boost its international reputation.

The authors talk about the “Double Victory.” It wasn’t enough for Italy to host a cool party; the national team (the Azzurri) actually had to win the trophy to prove their “superiority.” The players were basically treated like symbols of the state, and the pressure to win the final against Czechoslovakia was massive because a loss would have been a political disaster.

This article shows that the mix of sports and politics isn’t new. Italy 1934 set the stage for how governments use “soft power” to distract from domestic issues or build national pride. It’s a good reminder to look past the scoreboards and think about what’s actually happening behind the scenes of big global events.