Pelé faced racism amid the myth of Brazilian racial democracy

On November 14, 1995, when Pelé had already dropped the title of active player and started to carry the position of extraordinary Minister of Sports in the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, he showed a face that was little known. The King received members of the Marcha Contra o Racism movement to discuss the acts in memory of the 300th anniversary of the death of Zumbi dos Palmares.

Pelé, a black man on the ministerial team, could be a bridge between activists and the president.

But the idol went further. More than discussing the march, he defended black voting. “If blacks want an improvement in their social position and an improvement in Brazil in general, we have to put people in Congress to defend our race”, said the then head of Sport.

He also said that the synonym for politics in Brazil, at the time, was corruption – “but that blacks did not carry that mark”.

Edson Arantes do Nascimento, Pelé, died this Thursday (29), aged 82, under questions about his racial and political literacy. However, the idol took a stand against racism during his career, especially at times when the myth of Brazilian racial democracy gained power. Even with controversial speeches, he is seen by specialists as a black man whose professional performance carried social and political representation for his group.

When he took a stand, however, he gained disaffection. His speech in favor of voting for blacks and about corruption in the political environment caused discomfort among members of Congress. “I don’t believe he said that, but if he did, I’m going to make a war”, pointed out the then president of the Chamber, Luis Eduardo Magalhães (PFL-BA), in the sequence – in a note, at the time, Pelé later relativized his speech about corruption.

On the other hand, the speech about voting was welcomed by representatives of the black movement. “An institutional representation of blacks is very important to change the situation”, said journalist and doctor in education Edson Lopes Cardoso, general secretary of the movement.

Another objective of the meeting was to gain visibility and space in the media. In an interview with SheetCardoso recalls that they were surprised by Pelé’s reception, who not only listened attentively to the members of the March but also encouraged the presence of black people in politics.

For Cardoso, who is a militant in the black movement and author of the book “Nothing Will Bring Back”, it is naive to believe that a dark black man born in the 1940s was not racially aware. For him, the mere presence of the player in the national team and the excellence with which he acted were, in themselves, political acts big enough to change the collective imagination about what it is to be black.

The player’s political positions went beyond the racial issue. In 1969, when he scored his 1,000th goal, he asked that “never forget poor children, the needy and charities”.

In 1984, Pelé also supported the Diretas Já movement, in protest against the resumption of direct presidential elections. In 1994, when he said he might run for president, he declared himself a socialist.

On the other hand, the idol was criticized when he claimed that the player Aranha, from Santos, was hasty when contesting Grêmio fans who called him a monkey during the match for the Copa do Brasil in 2014. Pelé said that racism must be curbed, ” but it is not in a public place that it will curb”.

“Aranha was a bit hasty in wanting to fight with the fans. If I were to stop the game every time they called me a monkey or a creole, every game would have to stop”, he said, at the time, when commenting on the episode.

Pelé acted during the period when the myth of Brazilian racial democracy was growing more robustly, an ideology that, even today, discredits ethnic inequality in Brazil.

For the historian and creator of the História Preta podcast, Thiago André, the idol never stopped taking a stand against this theory. In 1988, the player participated in the campaign for the centenary of the abolition of slavery. In commercials aired by the government, he highlighted the role of the black population in building the country, not just in a manual way, but also in culture and sport.

“This seems to be very common today, but at that moment in history it was absolutely surreal that the greatest idol in the world and the greatest Brazilian of all time was appearing on television every day and giving this message”, he says.

In addition, the historian points out that the idea of ​​Pelé’s lack of political literacy arose after the player did not take a forceful position against the military dictatorship imposed between 1964 and 1985.

André points out, however, that the team was under great pressure from the government at the time so that Brazil’s excellence in football would act as a symbol of national unity. Pelé’s departure from the team at the height of the dictatorship is also seen as a protest by the player against the regime, which was faced with reprisals and persecution by the government and the extinct CBD (Brazilian Sports Confederation).

For him, the propagation of the idea that Pelé was racially and politically silent only serves to maintain racism. “This stigma remains because it is a racial stigma. The most resistant racial stigma in Brazil is that black people are useless and do not have emotional intelligence. It is this stigma that Pelé faced.”

Pelé started playing professionally at the age of 17 and, at 22, he already had 500 goals. At 29 he made the thousandth. He participated in a World Cup for the first time in 1958, and for the last time in 1970.

“The figure that remains for me is that of excellence. Pelé was a King despite Brazil”, concludes the historian.