Soccer as ethnic-racial and nation challenge: tensions about the practice in Otavalo (Ecuadorian Andes)

Abstract

This article is interested in the soccer topic in the indigenous milieu in the region of Otavalo, topic that is still little addressed by anthropologists and social scientists. The aim is, on one hand, to show the local reappropriation of a “global” game —through the attempt of historical reconstruction of soccer appearance in this region, the attention to connectedness, the morality dimension and the production of masculinity— and, on the other, to relocate the local practice of soccer in Otavalo in a broader context. In this way, the grasping of soccer by indigenous people from Otavalo highlights tensions between the reproduction of a racial vision of the Ecuadorian society and the challenge of this unequal society, through reappropriation of ethnic-racial features and through sport competition. Consequently, soccer in Otavalo constitutes a means, for indigenous people, to integrate the contemporary world and to offer an alternative conception of the nation, beyond the “mestizaje” and multiculturalist ones.