Speaker Series
African Soccer Players, Labor Strategies and Emigration across the Portuguese Colonial Empire
Files
Description
When the great soccer player Eusébio left the field following Portugal’s 2-1 defeat to England in the 1966 World Cup semifinals, he was awash in tears, fiercely clutching his red and green jersey – the national colors of Portugal. Yet, Eusébio was neither born nor grew up in the Iberian nation; instead, a Mozambican, he was one of the many Africans who made their way from Portugal’s colonial territories to the metropole from the late 1940s until the conclusion of the colonial period in 1975 in order to ply their athletic skills. Like Eusébio, many of these African players performed spectacularly on the field, significantly elevating the play of their respective club teams and vaulting the Portuguese national team to unprecedented levels, even as Portugal brutally suppressed a series of nationalist insurgencies in its African territories. This paper examines the experiences of these African soccer players as they attempted to negotiate this politically-charged environment and strove to consolidate their post-athletic futures. I argue that despite the otherwise extraordinary nature of these individuals’ lives, their experiences suggest strong continuities with, and affinities to, well-established African labor strategies, including seeking occupational advice from more senior employees (i.e. fellow players) and engaging in secondary migration in order to improve working and living conditions. Indeed, while many players initially sought to pursue their social improvement objectives on the field, many others subsequently parlayed the ability to travel to Portugal to commence (or continue) their studies and/or to secure long-term employment; both pursuits were intended to safeguard these athletes’ futures beyond the end of their playing days. This paper also contends that the process of cultural assimilation that helped players adjust to their new surroundings commenced in the urban, “colonized spaces” of Africa and, thus, well before they arrived in Portugal. Ultimately, these players’ experiences illuminate the cosmetic and limited nature of the Portuguese dictatorship’s (1926-74) labor and social reforms – even when applied to the nation’s highest-profile wage-earners – but also some of the ways that Africans could creatively, if carefully, exploit opportunities generated by shifts in the social, occupational and political landscape in the waning decades of the Portuguese empire. Todd Cleveland is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Croft lectures are free and open to the public.
Publication Date
4-24-2017
Relational Format
archival material
Recommended Citation
Cleveland, Todd, "African Soccer Players, Labor Strategies and Emigration across the Portuguese Colonial Empire" (2017). Speaker Series. 26.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/croft_spe/26