As Diego Armus and Stefan Rinke point out in their introduction to this volume, the long neglect of sports by historians of Latin America has been replaced by a remarkable recent reversal. Del football al fútbol/futebol serves as a useful introduction to the current state of Latin American football scholarship; more importantly, it indicates possibilities for enriching this research.
The contributors demonstrate football's utility for understanding subjects that have interested other scholars of Latin American sport, such as the modernization of urban areas, the articulation of national identities, the politics of popular culture, and the character and influence of the mass media. This last is reinforced by the reliance of many contributors on sources produced by the sports and popular press, another way in which the volume resonates with the historiography of football in Latin America and elsewhere. The volume's more significant contribution comes with its authors' willingness to...
