Cultural History

The text discusses the construction of the image of “country of football,” associated with Brazil during the second half of the 20th century, based on the performance of the Brazil squad in the World Cups. At first, we describe the history of the introduction and of the process of popularization of football practice at the beginning of the 20th century. Then, we discuss the importance of the international competitions for the association between the sport and the national identity, already in the first half of the last century. If the expression “country of football” is traditionally associated with the several wins of the Brazil squad in the World Cups, such as in 1958, 1962, and 1970, the text shows how the roots of this imagery can already be found in the 1920s and 1930s. In this period, tours of Brazilian clubs to Europe and the national squad’s participation in the France World Cup, in 1938, led to the first recognition of the technical virtues and individual skill of South American players. Finally, we show how, from the 1990s, despite some wins and cups, there is a kind of identity crisis of the “country of football,” calling into question the adequacy of the metaphor in the early 21st century.

The cultural policies of the left-wing government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in the new millennium saw a shift back to funding and patronage of the arts after years of defunding and commodification of cultural production. However, despite leading to a renaissance of cultural activity, Chavista cultural policy also retained a modernist rationality that treated cultural production as objects to be classified and quantified. Official cultural policy in Venezuela has historically developed alongside popular-cultural formations that draw on alternative conceptions of culture that stem from everyday life. The official and the everyday have developed in tandem and, sometimes, at cross-purposes. Many scholars look to policies and states as the producers of change, but it is at the level of the everyday that we can see the emerging possibilities that define cultural movements in search of social change.

Cuban cuisine brings together the island’s histories of colonial relations with Spain and the culinary traditions of Africans, Amerindians, Chinese laborers, and those who migrated from Haiti and Jamaica. This dynamic food draws from these traditions and the island’s tropical climate to create a rich and multidimensional cuisine. Cuba’s food system is also deeply tied to Cuban national politics and international trade. Under socialism Cuba has had a fifty-year-old food-rationing system, and the majority of Cuban foods are imported. Despite these changes, Cuban household cooks work diligently to create complete meals, and they bring together the ingredients for various special occasions throughout the year.

Since the early 1960s, Mexican women writers have relentlessly fought to become recognized within a traditionally male-dominated literary canon.

In the 20th century, women’s writing began to flourish, in many cases emerging as a counternarrative to the patriarchal discourse that had dominated the literary scene for decades after the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). The work of women writers can be examined according to three different phases: from 1960 to the 1970s, 1980 to the 1990s, and 2000 to the present, and by highlighting in particular a group of women writers from the northern border region, who have faced additional obstacles in their path to becoming published writers. All in all, each of the writers discussed here contributes to a snapshot of the literature written by women from the 1960s to today. The chronological trajectory of their literary voices underscores Mexico’s rich cultural and historical past through the eyes and voices of those traditionally silenced and marginalized in the patriarchal and hierarchical spaces of power.