Pele’s role in helping to shape the modern identity of Brazil is rooted in his role in helping Brazil win the World Cup at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden and the global role that Santos took on shortly after.
Santos, during the Pele period, travelled around the world in the role of sporting diplomats. They crossed ideological divides and celebrated the political emancipation of nations emerging from colonialism.
Pele’s teams were instrumental in bringing soccer to countries where it was not played. They also changed the game in the traditional soccer nations. Pele became more than a “national icon” by embracing the Black Diaspora. He also became a pan-African symbol and a cosmopolitan icon.
Bob Marley, who was also hailed as a hero in the Global South, made it a point to wear Pele’s number ten shirt when the singer visited Brazil briefly in 1980. Pele was a symbol of freedom and art for Marley and many others.
Pele was a symbol of Black success in Africa, but not only because it was decolonizing.
Eusebio, the Mozambican footballer who represented Portugal as colonial masters on the international scene, first discovered his soccer identity while playing for the “Brasileiros”, a team that was created in the suburbs around what is now Maputo in tribute to the 1958 World Cup champions.
In fact, many African players in the capital city of Mozambique have been given the nicknames “Pele”, Garrincha, or Didi – three Black Heroes of the Brazilian National Team, and inspiration for million people across the African continent.
Global inspiration and domestic force
Pele’s career, which spanned 1956-1974, was a period when the Brazilian authorities claimed what they called “racial democratic” – that is, the belief that there was no discrimination against Brazilians who were not white.
This ideology masked the real struggles of Afro-Brazilians, and prevented debate on racial injustice. As Antonio Sergio Alfredo Guimaraes explains in his book “Classes, Racas e Democracia, it made racism unthinkable within Brazilian society.
These conditions shaped Pele’s life, and Pele’s experiences revealed how Brazilian style racism worked.
Pele retired from the Brazilian national team in 1970 after the third World Cup. He wanted to focus on his club career and business. Pele’s image was tarnished in Brazil when he retired from the national team.
Pele was under pressure from a dictatorial government to play for the national soccer team. The regime wanted political benefits out of any soccer victories on the world stage. Pele was also admonished and reprimanded by the white elite, who wanted to limit his role as an athlete and reinforce the position of Black people in Brazilian culture.
has criticised Pele for his approach in dealing with the Brazilian dictatorship, implying that he should have been more direct. Pele was subjected to coercion and threats from 1971, when he announced that he would be leaving the national team until 1974, when he finished his career with Santos.
In mid-1971, two farewell matches that were to be played in Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro in honor of his achievements were cancelled.
Pele refused to back down despite severe criticisms from certain quarters, made in the name an exacerbated nationalalism that portrayed him as a traitor or mercenary.
The greatest political legacy
One of the most fascinating chapters about the unsubmissiveness of a Black footballer in Brazil’s power structures was closed by the contested nature in which he left the pitch.
Pele’s determination to stand up to a military dictatorship and structural racism was the greatest political legacy of his life. He did so not only out of disgust for the torture carried out by the Brazilian dictatorship but also because he wanted to be recognized for his fame. Pele’s resolve to fight a dictatorship of military men and structural racism is his greatest political legacy.
Pele showed that the Afro-Brazilian did not belong in the entertainment and sport industry as was conceived by racist discourse. Pele went on to become a businessman, a university graduate and even the minister of sport for the 1990s.