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The International Journal of the

History of Sport
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Sport and Politics in the Brazilian

Estado Novo (1937–1945)
a
Maurício Drumond
a
Department of History, Sport: Laboratory of the History of Sport
and Leisure, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Largo de São
Francisco 1, sala, 311, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Published online: 04 Jun 2014.

To cite this article: Maurício Drumond (2014) Sport and Politics in the Brazilian Estado
Novo (1937–1945), The International Journal of the History of Sport, 31:10, 1245-1254, DOI:
10.1080/09523367.2014.922550

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 The International Journal of the History of Sport, 2014
Vol. 31, No. 10, 1245–1254, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2014.922550

Sport and Politics in the Brazilian Estado Novo (1937 –1945)

Maurı́cio Drumond*

Department of History, Sport: Laboratory of the History of Sport and Leisure, Federal University of
Rio de Janeiro, Largo de São Francisco 1, sala 311, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

This article aims at analysing how the government of Getúlio Vargas in Brazil,
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especially during the dictatorial period known as Estado Novo, used sport as a means of
propaganda. In order to achieve this goal, I first examine how the government acted in
uniting the Brazilian sport field, which was divided in factions representing different
political groups, who struggled over the control of the organisation of sports in the
country. Then, I analyse how this pacified sport field was used as a means of
propaganda for the government. Finally, I look at the official intervention in the sport
organisation with the creation of CND, assessing the objectives behind its creation.
Keywords: politics; Estado Novo; Getúlio Vargas; Brazil; authoritarianism

1930 was a year of political change in Brazilian history. The military movement that
led Getúlio Vargas to the presidency of the country in the ‘1930 Revolution’ was a
response to the profound discontent of the political reality in Brazil during the 1920s.
The First Republic was then seen, especially by the urban middle classes, as a lair of
corrupted politicians and rigged elections, controlled by a decadent rural oligarchy.
The repercussions of the 1929 crisis on the country and its economy contributed
to the increasing discontent that gave strength to the coup d’état that erupted on
October 3.1
The victory of the revolutionary movement and the empowering of Vargas in the
position of president of the provisional government, with dictatorial powers, in
the beginning of November, marked a new era in the Brazilian history. In the 15 years of
the first Vargas government, Brazil went through a series of changes that restructured its
political, economic, social and cultural scenarios. Regarding the cultural life, this period
marked the promotion of samba and football as iconic elements for a new definition of
national identity, symbols of a new image of the Brazilian man that represented the new
government. Their close relationship with the masses, a new element to be considered in
the Brazilian political culture, and their portrayal as elements of national representation
draw football and samba closer to the government project of construction of a new national
image.
Gradually, as Vargas’s provisional government grew stronger, and became first a
constitutional government in 1934 and then an authoritarian government in 1937, under
the brand of ‘New State’ (Estado Novo), the insertion of sport, and especially football,
grew stronger. This relationship would reach its peak in 1941, when sport was inserted in
the official corporative State with the creation of the Conselho Nacional de Desportos
(National Sports Council), or CND.

*Email: msdrumond@yahoo.com.br

q 2014 Taylor & Francis

 1246 M. Drumond

However, this was the final movement in a long process. In this article, I first examine
how the government acted in uniting the Brazilian sport field, which was divided in factions
representing different political groups, who struggled over the control of the organisation of
sports in the country. Then, I analyse how this pacified sport field was used as a means of
propaganda for the government. Finally, I look at the official intervention in the sport
organisation with the creation of CND, assessing the objectives behind its creation.

Settling Disputes in Brazilian Sport

Brazilian sport was divided since its early days. At first, disputes between sporting elites in
Rio de Janeiro, the country’s capital city, and São Paulo, its economic centre, had marked
serious rivalries and resentments. The Confederac
ão Brasileira de Desportos (Brazilian
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Sports Confederations – or CBD) emerged in 1916 in Rio de Janeiro, led by officials from
different metropolitan clubs, and had been since under control of delegates Rio de Janeiro.
CBD was in charge of most sports in Brazil, from football to cycling, boxing and chess.
Football was definitely the leading sport, and the representatives of CBD used to say that
the money they received from football was what made possible investment in other sports.
The Brazilian Olympic Committee (BOC) was also connected to the heads of CBD, who
controlled practically all sport in Brazil.
This group was led by Arnaldo Guinle, a representative from Fluminense Football
Club and a member of one of the wealthiest and most influent families in the capital. The
football ruling elite from São Paulo, however, resented the bigger influence the officials
from Rio de Janeiro had on the organisation, and were constantly debating their role in the
confederation. As a result, many political disputes were fought, culminating on the
withdrawal of players from the state of São Paulo from the 1930 World Cup in Uruguay.2
In the preparations for the World Cup, the Football Federation from São Paulo
demanded to choose one of the members of the Brazilian team manager group. In light of
the refusal from CBD, who chose only managers from Rio de Janeiro, the paulistas
(people from São Paulo) refused to let any of their players play for the Brazilian team,
which was formed mainly by paulistas. As a result, the Brazilian team did not go further
into the competition, being eliminated in the first stage. The Uruguayans were the
champions, holding the world title in the Olympic Games of 1924 and 1928, as in the first
World Cup in 1930.
The success of the close neighbours led the CBD to edit the Rio Branco Cup, an
international dispute between Brazil and Uruguay disputed in a single match. In 1931, the
match took place in Rio de Janeiro, and Brazil won the Cup defeating Uruguay by 2-0. In
the following year, the match was held in Uruguay, in Estádio Centenário, the stage of the
World Cup finals two years before. It was the debut in the national team of two of the most
significant Brazilian players of the period, the striker Leônidas da Silva and the defender
Domingos da Guia. They would become the symbols of a new ideology of racial
miscegenation that would characterise the new Brazilian racial identity in the making,
characterised in the writings of Gilberto Freyre and popularised through many different
media, such as music and sport. Against all odds, Brazil defeated Uruguay with a team
composed of players almost entirely from Rio de Janeiro. This was the first time that
Vargas wrote about football in his diary, which was published decades later: ‘In the
afternoon . . . I watched the parade with the Brazilian footballers who returned
victoriously from Montevideo’.3
If football was in the spotlight in the sports scenery, other sports lacked attention from
public officials and the government. In the preparations for the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 1247

Games, there was hardly any support for the Brazilian athletes. Claiming to have
insufficient funds in the national treasury, Vargas denied any financial support to send
athletes overseas. Vargas paid his respects attending the festival held in Fluminense’s
stadium, the self-nominated ‘Olympic Day’, where many sportive acts were organised and
the profits were converted in financial support to pay for the athlete’s expenses. The
federal government also helped to settle an agreement between the BOC, headed by
Guinle, and the National Association of Coffee Exporters, who made some cabins of the
ship Itaquicê available for the athletes, along with 55,000 coffee sacks they were supposed
to help selling on their way to California. The taxes required for disembarking were higher
than the amount available and some athletes never set foot in Los Angeles. The only
highlight of the Brazilian athletes was the participation of the first Brazilian woman in the
Olympic Games, the swimmer Maria Lenk.4
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Less than a month after the departure of Itaquicê, a revolution broke out in São Paulo,
fighting for the establishment of a Constitution in Brazil, which was still ruled dictatorially
by Vargas since 1930, and the end of federal intervention in the state of São Paulo. The
paulistas resented their lack of power and were also fighting for a greater participation in
national politics. The Constitutionalist Revolution, as it is called, lasted less than four
months and ended with the defeat of São Paulo. Nevertheless, many of the claims made by
the paulistas were later implemented by Vargas, who had to yield to the pressures of
redemocratising the country and establishing a long-lasting peace with the political leaders
of São Paulo.
In the following year, 1933, Brazilians saw their third Constituent Assembly draft a
new Constitution that would be implemented in 1934, the first Grand Prix of the City of
Rio de Janeiro and the first Rio – São Paulo football tournament, which would unite
through football the city of São Paulo to the capital of Brazil. However, this tournament
had as its main motivator another dispute within the Brazilian sports field. The dispute
between two groups that sought to rule Brazilian sport hidden behind the banners of
amateurs and professionals.
In spite of all the modernising discourse and the new image regarding the role of
workers in Brazil,5 many still considered football as an amateur practice. In fact, the
practice of shamateurism had been constant in Brazilian football since its early stages. But
at the end of the 1920s, a growing number of Brazilian footballers started leaving their
clubs to join professional teams in Europe and South America (in Uruguay and Argentina).
Many Italian descendants, such as Filó (Anfilóquio Guarisi, who played for the Italian
national team in 1934) adopted the Italian nationality and never returned to Brazil. This
problem led to the formation of a group in favour of professionalising football in the
country, something that would somehow follow the directives of the new government’s
mentality of supporting registered workers. However, the defenders of amateurism were in
control of the CBD at the time. Guinle, one of the patriarchs of Brazilian football and an
influential agent in the sport field, had been away from sport politics for a few years and a
new ruling elite had been forming alongside the new political figures that emerged with the
new government. The clash of the old and new groups led to a secession of the
professionals and the clubs they represented from the Brazilian Sports Confederation
(CBD) in 1933, forming parallel sporting organisations in the country. Differently from
CBD, the professional sporting organisations were specialised in their own sport, and,
naturally, the Brazilian Football Federation (Federac
ão Brasileira de Futebol, or FBF)
was their main representative and the only all-professional entity. In many different states
in the country, clubs would abandon or join CBD mostly for political reasons, without any
real regard about amateurism of professionalism.
 1248 M. Drumond

The first Rio – São Paulo football tournament was then created by FBF in order to
attract popular clubs from other states, hinting the possibility of a future tournament
involving clubs from other regions.6 The tournament was not successful and another
edition was not successfully organised until 1950. The disputes between CBD and FBF
and the other professional organisations continued until 1937, and the government, who
had important allies on both sides, sought to mediate a truce a few times, as in the event of
the Berlin Olympics in 1936.
During the preparations for the Berlin Olympic Games, the struggle achieved its peak.
Even though the Brazilian Sports Confederation (CBD) and their athletes were registered
in most sports international federations as the rightful representatives of Brazilian sport,
Guinle and his group managed to hold control of the BOC, due to good connections with
members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The impasse was formed as each
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group claimed to be the one true representative of sport in Brazil and should therefore
represent the country in the Olympic Games, something that would certainly bring greater
legitimacy in their national quarrel. On the one hand, athletes could not compete if they
were not registered with their international federation, and, on the other hand, only athletes
registered with the IOC could take part in the competition. Consequently, isolated, neither
organisation would be able to compete in the Games. But the solution to this problem did
not come easy.
After an extensive debate on the sport pages, filled with mutual accusations, each
organisation sent their own delegation to Germany, in two different ships. The COB
delegates agreed to the union of the entities for the duration of the Games, with the
allegation that if the athletes could not sign up for the Games, it would be a great shame for
Brazilian sport. But the delegates from CBD were openly against this agreement.
According to Luiz Aranha, president of CBD and close friend of Vargas, only the Brazilian
Sport Confederation would compete, or ‘neither one nor the other’.7 A few days before the
opening ceremony, Vargas interfered personally and decreed that all athletes could take
part in the Olympic Games. The results, as usual, were not impressive. This was the last
time Brazil left the competition without a single medal won, and no other Summer
Olympic Games were held until the end of the first Vargas government, in 1945.
The end of this division came in 1937, with the event of the ‘pacification of sports’,
through an agreement headed by representatives from Vasco da Gama and América signed
on July 17.8 Soon, other clubs joined the new football organisation, which included FBF
and CBD. In the new arrangement, FBF and their officials would command football
organisation in Brazil (with separate professional and amateur championships) and CBD
would be responsible for the Brazilian representation abroad, a prerogative they already
detained, as they were the official FIFA affiliates.
The 1934 World Cup had already been a proof that FIFA was sided with CBD. On the
occasion, Brazil sent a team composed of mostly amateur players who played for CBD
affiliated teams and eight professionals who had been hired by CBD especially for the
international tournament, such as da Silva and Valdemar de Brito.9 The Brazilian delegation
was headed by Lourival Fontes, the chief of the Brazilian Department of Propaganda,
something that shows the importance the football competition had for the government.
However, the results did not match the hopes of the government. Defeated by Spain in the
first match, Brazil was eliminated in the worst World Cup campaign of the country.
Therefore, the pacification arrangement set in 1937 did not prove to be very profitable
for CBD, as well as for amateur clubs. Shamateurism was no longer cost-effective, as
amateur clubs would not play against professionals and would not share the greater
audiences and high sums. After July 1937, Brazilian sport was united under the auspices of
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 1249

the government. A few months later, in November, Vargas would perform the coup d’état
that would end his constitutional mandate and begin his dictatorial mandate, in the regime
known as Estado Novo (New State).

Sport and Propaganda

The political use of sport as a means of propaganda was not something new in the 1930s
and was a common feature in many other Brazilian regimes, authoritarian or democratic.
Brazil had hosted important sporting events with the support of the government, including
a regional Olympics held on the Brazilian independence centennial celebrations, in 1922,
known as the Centennial Games.10
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During the period of Vargas’s government, the use of sport, and football was the main
sport in Brazil, became more frequent. Public celebrations involving sports became one of
the symbols of the regime, especially after the creation of Estado Novo. Sport and public
celebrations worked together creating an image of a prosperous and strong nation, where
new generations were formed under the influence of sport and, because of that, were
destined to greatness. At the same time, these public festivities celebrated the ‘new’ – a
new government, a new regime, a new country with a new future. The celebration of the
new was connected with the rupture with an allegedly old, outdated and superseded past.
And it was a new generation of Brazilians that would be able to overcome this past, under
the guidance of their leader, who claimed to be above the many disputes that divided
society.
This fascist-inspired ideal had in sport an important character, as it would be one of the
means to perform the improvement of the Brazilian people, or the Brazilian ‘race’ as it was
said at the time. The symbolic power of sport became even more apparent for Vargas in
1932, when the Brazilian football national team defeated the world-champions Uruguay in
Montevideo. The festivity mobilised the population and many intellectuals and opinion
makers celebrated the ‘racial democracy’ of Brazilian football, pointed to as one of the
reasons for its success. Much in the line of thought of Gilberto Freyre, one of Brazil’s key
sociologists of the interwar period, that sought to understand Brazilian racial identity
through the race mixture that was characteristic of the country. Freyre’s ideas coincided
with the government’s attempt in creating a national identity based in new terms, and the
myth of racial democracy had a strong representation in football. Scholarly books did not
share the sports pages popularity in spreading the new ideal through the population. Freyre
himself had written about Brazilian football, associating this alleged uniqueness in
Brazilian football to the racial mixture present in the country’s formation.
José Lins do Rego, a prominent Brazilian writer, wrote the following in the foreword
of a book dedicated to the Brazilian victory in the 1932 Copa Rio Branco:
The boys that triumphantly represented us in Montevideo were, in fact, a portrait of our racial
democracy, where Paulino, the son of an important family, joined the negro Leônidas, the
mulatto Gradim, and the white Martim. It was all done in the good old Brazilian fashion.
Reading this book about football, I believe in Brazil, in the eugenic capacities of our mestizos,
in the energy and intelligence of the men, with mixed blood, forged by the Brazilian land that
gave them an original quality that will someday astonish the world.11
This new generation had their apotheosis in public festivities. Brazilian holidays such as
the ‘Day of the Race’ and the ‘Day of Youth’ celebrated this ‘new Brazilian race’ in a
spectacular manner. Those celebrations were usually held in football stadiums or on the
streets, with children and teenagers marching, wearing uniforms, in a grandiloquent
 1250 M. Drumond

theatralisation of the fatherland and their leader, omnipresent in the festivities by the
hundreds of his portraits distributed to the participants, to be held with pride.
Celebrations in football stadiums became increasingly common. Among all the public
festivities in football stadiums, the one that became the symbol of Vargas’s government was
the Labour Day parade, on the firsts of May, in São Januário Stadium, in Rio de Janeiro. The
stadium received the official celebrations in four years (1940, 1941, 1942 and 1945), which
counted with the participation of the president, the Minister of Labour and many other
government officials. Entrance was free and the bleachers were filled with people. There
was a parade with athlete-workers representing many areas of the economy, carrying
messages thanking the president for his support, his picture and other signs. Vargas then
entered the stadium in an open car, saluting the crowd and headed to the presidential seats.
After the national anthem and many speeches, Vargas used to sign a decree establishing a
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new labour law, as the law of the minimum wage, signed in the stadium in 1940.12
Other events such as the matches in honour of the Brazilian soldiers who were leaving to
fight in Italy, in 1944, or the opening of Pacaembu Stadium, in São Paulo, were also important
civic festivities connected to sport. Held on April 27, 1940, the inauguration of the city
stadium was a celebration of national reach that had the presence of Vargas himself, and also
of governors of other states and the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, the capital city. The event also
had a parade of athletes from different states, as well as Argentina, Uruguay and Peru. In his
speech during the inauguration ceremony, Vargas used the opening of the stadium as an
example of the accomplishing capacity of the regime:
The sober and beautiful lines of this powerful mass of iron and concrete are not only
remarkable as architectural expressions; they are also an affirmation of the capacity and
creative effort of the new regime, in the execution of its program of acomplishments.13
The stadium was portrayed as a symbol of the new era. While the world was at war, the
Estado Novo showed its power by building great monuments for the people. And this was
not only in football. 1940 was also the years in which the São Paulo automobile race track
was inaugurated.
Motor races were another important sport mobilised by Vargas’s government as a
means of propaganda. In 1933, the first Rio de Janeiro auto racing grand prix was
organised, known as ‘The Gavea Track’.14 The grand prix took place every year until
1954, with a brief pause from 1942 to 1946 due to World War II. The Brazilian
government financed the event through the Department of Propaganda or the Ministry of
Justice.15 The international competition set Brazil as a leading country in South America
regarding a modern competition such as automobile racing, and was also a public display
of the state capacity in organising an international event. Moreover, it was also a great
opportunity to elevate the nationalist feeling of the population, as Vargas described his
feeling in the 1934 edition:
October 2 – 4
October 3, anniversary of the Revolution, there was no festivity. I watched it bitterly. On this
day, we only had the auto race. It was an exciting spectacle: a large crowd, a hard track, a
dangerous race, some accidents and many who stopped before the end. In the end a Brazilian
won. How strong is the national feeling! [ . . . ] I was accompanied by the Argentine
ambassador and some ladies. As I struggled to maintain decorum, I was deeply touched, afraid
that tears would flow if a stranger had won. And I was analyzing myself, taken by that strange
feeling that I tried to suppress.16
Irineu Correa won that grand prix (he would die in the following year in an accident on the
same track – a track so dangerous that it was nicknamed ‘The Devil’s trampoline’17).
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 1251

Other Brazilian drivers became famous driving in the street track, exalting the image of the
new government, and the propaganda department was there to record and publicise
everything. Sport, among other areas such as education and tourism, was an important
vehicle of the nationalistic message. Sporting success was essential in that regard, and in
order to assure Brazilian sport would be organised and would follow the government’s
directives, an official intervention took place in 1941.

State Intervention in Sports

Claims for a federal intervention in Brazilian sports could be heard in Vargas’s
government before the beginning of the Estado Novo. In 1937, before the coup d’état that
would create the Estado Novo, Congressman Pádua Soares stated that ‘the government
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should receive absolute powers for a semi intervention’ in sports.18 At the same time,
Captain João Alberto, who received the task of creating a project for the organisation of
sports directly from Vargas, suggested the creation of a Department of Physical Education,
a government organisation that would control all sports in the country and ‘would not
admit interference from any other Ministry’.19
However, in spite of the early requests for the intervention on sports, official action
came only in April 1941, after years of study and debate. On April 16, the Decree-Law
created the National Council of Sports (CND), within the Ministry of Education and
Health. The CND had the role of ‘orienting, supervising and encouraging the practice of
sports in the entire country’.20 In other words, the Council had total control over sport, the
‘absolute powers’ Soares had mentioned earlier.
In fact, the Decree-Law and the intervention in sports went beyond the creation of
CND. All governing structure of Brazilian sport was altered. According to the legislation,
each sport, or group of sports, could be organised in only one confederation in the country;
this confederation should necessarily be a member of the international association of the
related sport. Each state, territory and the capital city would have a specific federation
associated to this confederation. Therefore, the law avoided future break-ups in the sport’s
governing bodies as seen in 1933 and returned full control of sport to the Brazilian Sport
Confederation (CBD).
After the settlement that ended the internal division in Brazilian sport in 1937, CBD
was responsible only for the representation of national teams in international disputes.
Local tournaments were controlled by the Brazilian Football Federation (FBF), which was
now extinct, passing all their assets and liabilities to CBD.21
The Brazilian Sport Confederation becomes once again the most important sport body
in the country, organising football, tennis, athletics, rowing, water polo, handball and any
other sport with the exception of sailing, boxing, basketball, fencing and chess, which had
their own specific confederation. Football, however, was described in the Decree-Law as
‘the essential sport in the Brazilian Sport Confederation’.22 Eventually, each sport would
have its own confederation, and the Brazilian Sport Confederation became solely
specialised in football, renamed as Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF), in 1979.23
The Council had control not only over the governing bodies of sport, but also over sport
clubs. Any statute of a sport club or organisation had to be approved by the CND in order to
be validated. If the petitioning statute did not match the necessary requirements according to
the CND officials, their organisation would have no legal recognition. One of the new
requirements was the removal of any reference to a foreign belligerent nation. As a result,
many clubs connected to German and Italian colonies had to be renamed, especially in São
Paulo and in the southern states, where the presence of European immigrants is bigger.
 1252 M. Drumond

The sport press received the new legislation with enthusiasm. The few criticisms that
appeared were about the clauses that established the maximum of one foreign athlete per
team and that led naturalised foreigners to leave clubs, claiming that the nationalisation of
sports should be more thorough.24 In fact, one of the most influential sports journalists
from São Paulo, Thomás Mazzoni, wrote a book celebrating the new moment the Brazilian
sport scenery was going through. ‘Sport in Service of the Country’, with a foreword dated
‘April-May 1941’, was written right after the Decree-Law was published and represents a
defence of the Estado Novo regime, and of all other authoritarian governments’ relation
with sport.
Therefore, it is only because of the intervention and with the spirit of November 10, in the
doctrine of the current regime, that we could take new routes! The sportive November 10
should be complete! Exterminating ‘assemblies’, ‘legal systems’, ‘pacts’, ‘investigations’,
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‘chieftain’, is extinguishing politics, personalism and clubism. It is giving a straight the path
and a sane life to sport!25
Mazzoni sees the government intervention as the ‘sportive November 10’, in a reference to
the date of the coup that started the dictatorship of the Estado Novo. He shows the
antidemocratic ideal that was typical of many authoritarian nations of the period, against
assemblies, legal systems and personalism. According to the journalists, Brazil was
adjusting to a new era in international sports, based on authoritarian models of
organisation. However, even after the creation of CND, the control of the Brazilian State
over sport was not complete. The Council was handed to the same oligarchy that
controlled sport before, a group with deep connections with the government. More
important than controlling sport was assuring that no other dispute would weaken
Brazilian sport, an important tool in the government’s propaganda.
Vargas’s dictatorial government of the Estado Novo collapsed in 1945, after the end of
the war, but many of the structures he created continued functioning. CND was one of
those structures. The sport governing body continued through the democratic times and
was maintained by the 1946 Constitution. During the Brazilian military dictatorship
(1964 – 1985), it lived one of its strongest periods, and was extinct only in 1993.26

Conclusion
When analysing sport during the government of Vargas, it is easy to see how the political
field tried to approach it. The disputes that at first were fought within the national sport
organisation reflect tensions that could be noticed throughout the entire period, between
the old national oligarchies and the new groups that emerged with Vargas. It is
interesting to notice some of the contradictions here observed. Even though the
valorisation of labour was one of the chief banners of Vargas and his regime, the group
that was closest to the president and ruled sport still defended amateurism and was
fiercely against professionalism. The other group led by Guinle, representatives of the
old oligarchy that controlled sport in the 1910s and 1920s, that had fought
professionalism for many years, turned to this new ideal in an attempt of recuperating
the control they had lost.
Sport, however, was not something seen as unimportant by the government. It played
an important part in the official propaganda, especially in conveying messages of
optimism, nationalism, racial democracy and physical enhancement of the Brazilian
people. The new image of the Brazilian man had in sport (mainly football) one of its
strongest icons. Sporting victories represented the success of the nation, and public
celebrations linked the sporting prowess to the new regime.
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 1253

The intervention in sport was the last move in the battle for control of sport. More than
controlling sport, it was important to ensure the government’s dominance in order to avoid
future disputes and divisions. Such dominance continued after Vargas’s government,
throughout most of the twentieth century. As in many other areas of society, Vargas’s
impression in the organisation of sport moulded the sporting practice in Brazil for
generations.

Notes on Contributor
Maurı́cio Drumond has a PhD in Comparative History and is the author of many articles and books in
Portuguese, including ‘Estado Novo e Esporte: a Polı́tica e o Esporte em Getúlio Vargas e Oliveira
Salazar (1930 –1945)’ [New state and sport: politics and sport under Getúlio Vargas and Oliveira
Salazar (1930 – 1945)].
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Notes
1. For references in the English language regarding the 1930 Revolution and the government of
Getúlio Vargas, see Levine, Father of the Poor?; Hentschke, Vargas and Brazil.
2. For other moments of dispute between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, see Soter, Enciclopédia
da Selec
ão.
3. Vargas, Diário, 164.
4. Petrik, 1932 – Uma Aventura Olı́mpica.
5. Vargas’s relationship with the working class was one of the main pillars of his government
policy, which is now known as Trabalhismo (Labourism). One of the first measures taken by
Vargas in the presidential office was the creation of the Ministry of Labour, Industry and Trade,
established in November 26, 1930. The Constitution of 1934 would officially establish Labour
Courts, even though their roots were already in action since the beginning of the Vargas era.
For more information, see Gomes, A Invenc
ão do Trabalhismo.
6. It is worth noticing that at the time there was no Brazilian tournament of clubs. Due to the size
of the country and the poor means of transport, most clubs would only face their local
opponents. Playing against popular teams, notably from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, the two
most important football centres in Brazil, was a rare and profitable opportunity.
7. Jornal dos Sports, July 30, 1936, p. 1.
8. “Para a maior glória do football brasileiro,” Jornal dos Sports, July 18, 1937, p. 2.
9. See Drumond, Estado Novo e Esporte, 96.
10. For more information regarding the Centennial Games of 1922, see Malaia and Melo, 1922
Celebrac
ões Esportivas do Centenário.
11. Cited in Silva, Mil e uma noites de futebol, 168.
12. Correio da Manhã, May 3, 1941, p. 6.
13. “A visita do sr. presidente Getúlio Vargas a São Paulo,” Estado de São Paulo, April 28, 1940,
p. 7.
14. Melo, “Before Fittipaldi, Piquet and Senna.”
15. Lourival Fontes, chief of propaganda, said that the Gavea Track was a ‘sportive tradition’ that
should persist even in times of crisis, as the one Brazil faced during World War II, even with all
the difficulty in importing petrol. National Archives, Gabinete Civil da Presidência da
República, box 510; Decree-Law no. 2,950, January 16, 1941. Published in Diário Oficial da
União, January 18, 1941, p. 957.
16. Vargas, Diário, 331.
17. Melo, “Before Fittipaldi, Piquet and Senna,” 262.
18. “O governo quer apressar a oficializac
ão dos sports,” Jornal dos Sports, January 3, 1937, p. 1.
19. “Intervenc
ão federal nos sports,” Jornal dos Sports, February 5, 1937, p. 4.
20. Decree-Law no. 3,199, April 14, 1941. Published in Diário Oficial da União, April 16, 1941,
p. 7453.
21. “Várias esportivas: a extinc
ão da FBF,” Jornal dos Sports, April 25, 1941, p. 12.
22. Decree-Law no. 3,199, April 14, 1941. Published in Diário Oficial da União, April 16, 1941,
p. 7453, article 16.
23. Sarmento, A Regra do Jogo, 145.
 1254 M. Drumond

24. “A regulamentac
ão dos esportes,” Jornal dos Sports, April 16, 1941, p. 10.
25. Mazzoni, O Esporte a Servic
o, 20.
26. Manhães, Polı́tica de esportes no Brasil.

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