connected with their competitive nature. Individual movements, syncretic (and synthetic), were driven by the intent to beat the opponent. Because sports games were interactive, specific gestures could not be predetermined, nor could they become the rational outcome of an ideomotor principle, as defined by Leal de Oliveira. The game’s structure relied on immediate experience and empirical knowledge, which meant that its technical progression emerged out of an “experimental basis.”151 A product of a school of vices, outside the scope of state pedagogy, this alternative motor habitus did not fit into the project of a respectable citizen, educated by a nationalist school, the Catholic Church, and the corporative system.
Although ambitious, this educational project was not very effective, especially when translated into the colonial context. Policies on the colonial ground highlighted the potential benefits of a control over sports associations, a cheaper and more effective form of ruling. Basic institutional structures of social life that provided a structure for social participation and identification, sports associations maintained an ambiguous statute: they could be loyal servants of indirect-rule policies but, when not properly surveilled, could turn into hubs of anticolonial resistance.
In Mozambique
In Mozambique the Mocidade Portuguesa became responsible for overseeing the statutes of all associations whose activities entailed youth participation.152 In 1942 a new decree integrated “within Mocidade Portuguesa’s educational centers all school associations, canteens, school funds, excursion funds, secondary school philanthropic funds or associations, professional schools, farming schools and agricultural management schools.”153
The principle of exclusion inherent in the activity of the Mozambique MP persisted in the 1956 law for the reorganization of overseas sports activities, the first piece of legislation (drafted after a research mission154) that sought to bring all sports practices, generally speaking, within the fold of the state. The 1956 law and the subsequent legislation that established Conselhos Provinciais de Educação Física (Provincial Boards of Physical Education) for each region, drew inspiration from DGEFDSE regulations: 63 percent of the content of the 1957 Mozambican law replicated this document.155 The colonial legislation defended the use of private associations to promote the state model of physical education. Associations and clubs were expected to organize gymnastics classes, otherwise their athletes would be excluded from all competitions.156 This law disapproved of sport-as-spectacle; competition was acceptable only when under the tutelage of the state.157 The opinion issued by the Câmara Corporativa (Corporative Chamber),158 and written by the prominent Portuguese physical education theoretician Celestino Marques Pereira, suggested the need for the state to swiftly find a frame for the problem of indígena sport:
The physical education of the indígena populations in the overseas provinces is a current problem that has a significant impact on the future and progress of these territories. The excellent results attained in previous efforts by some private and official entities indicates that a gradual resolution of the problem is likely. The câmara considers that this is a matter of great importance in the much wider issue of the indígena’s welfare and believes that various sports entities serving the economic life in the overseas provinces may contribute effectively to the resolution of the problem, if only the state, through its own organs, helps them with the necessary guidance, stimulus, and support.159
The new Conselho Provincial de Educação Física de Mozambique (CPEF, Mozambique Provincial Council of Physical Education) was entrusted with the elaboration of “plans and solutions for the gradual integration of native gymnastic and sports activities in the current diploma’s regime.”160 In the discussion that took place in the Conselho Legislativo (Legislative Council), Governor Gabriel Teixeira expressed the view that, despite the enthusiasm among indígena athletes, “even in the furthest corners of the bush,” there remained the “impossibility of, given their cultural state, [their] adaptation to the rules created by the civilized.”161 Although the law on the right of association published in May 1954 did not discriminate against indígenas, the fact that they did not possess any political rights contravened that legal disposition.
Managing Exclusion
In Lourenço Marques, the approval of the statutes of suburban football clubs by the colonial state—for the most part in the thirties—brought about a situation where official recognition was made along discriminatory lines: in local competitions, settlers’ clubs were separated from African clubs. Gradually, however, local authorities would adopt a policy of reaching out to populations discriminated against within the field of sport. This was a slow process defined by tensions and indecisions within the colonial state and its institutions, which were permeated by conflicts such as the one that opposed a metropolitan state struggling to demonstrate the nonracist character of Portuguese colonialism and a local settler community largely resistant to any such form of openness. The activities of the Mocidade Portuguesa, by excluding the indígena populations, and the resistance of a large portion of settlers and their elites to any political outreach, clashed with the goal of social integration, which was particularly pressing in urban contexts. The need to tailor a new official model of physical practice to the specific challenges that defined the period from the mid-1950s onward highlighted the state’s inability to impose its conception of a proper education of the body. The political effect of segregation preoccupied the colonial rulers; the case of sport was especially troubling because of its capacity to bring people together, to cement identities, and to raise consciousness. The postwar political scene, namely in terms of the multiplication of the processes of independence in Africa and the eruption of armed conflict in Angola in 1961, in Guinea-Bissau in 1963, and in Mozambique in 1964, called for other ways of addressing the indígena issue. Furthermore, the context of postwar economic modernization, albeit deficient, meant that the state framework had to be reconfigured with a view toward the stabilization of the African labor force. These structuring elements in the evolution of the colonial field of power spilled over into sports practices and consumptions.
In 1947 the Catholic Indo-Português club was integrated into the AFLM. The following year the Portuguese state allowed athletes’ transfers between the colonies and the metropolis.162 In 1949, the SNI’s leader, Captain Montanha, when answering a request by the Associação Africana de Inhambane, stated, “We have been recognizing for long that it is a good policy to support indígena associations, giving them all necessary help, with the main objective of creating an associative spirit among the indígena masses and, simultaneously, to take those associations to cooperate with the government’s colonizing and civilizing work. In my opinion, it is through this process that we will achieve a slow and useful assimilation.”163
In 1952 the creation of a second division of the AFLM, composed mostly of a second line of settlers’ clubs, also included two teams organized by mestiços: Atlético de Lourenço Marques and Vasco da Gama. The fact that the latter club came from the AFA prompted a long debate within colonial institutions. The DSAC advised against the inclusion. They were afraid that the registration in the AFLM championship of a team composed almost entirely of “nonwhite” players could give way, through football’s actual competitive logic, to a public-order management problem.164 The governor general, Gabriel Teixeira, on the contrary, supported the inclusion. Still, this openness was indeed an attempt to reach out to mestiço elites.165 The new competition, besides having granted these clubs access to “downtown football,” stimulated the circulation of players between the AFA and the AFLM. The number of athletes that shifted from one association to the other was hardly meaningful, but their performances, on the one hand, and the fact that transfer virtually meant getting a job, on the other, raised football’s value as a vehicle of professional integration.166 The establishment of a second division was also a response to the growing dissatisfaction among the boards and the supporters of a few settlers’ clubs, who felt discriminated against by the notables that ruled over local football. This aspect of integration highlights the fact that social management was not confined to the dichotomies indígena/civilized
