“Adiós soccer, here comes fútbol!”: Transnationalization of the Mexican Sports Communities in the U.S.

Abstract

This article discusses the sport dynamics of the Mexican communities in the United States in the context of soccer. From the analysis of Mexican groups which immigrated to the American territory, and from their soccer practices (of resistance), this research questions whether we would be witnessing a sportive “latinoamericanization” of the U.S. through the soccer practices. As a counter-response to a homogenization and subordination, the Mexican Americans (and, by extension, the Latinos in general) have created new cultural practices (and, among them sportive ones) that put together Mexican traditions with American values of society constituting, in that way, “a third space”, which extends beyond the borders of both national States. This paper, therefore, examines why a growing number of migrants strengthens relationships with their communities of origin in Mexico through the (re)creation of a soccer world itself, expressing thereby a “transnational mexicanity”, which is not “harmonic” by itself, but marked by conflicts. In this “new mexicanities” gender, class and ethnic, national and local conflicts – which occur simultaneously in the U.S. and Mexico, influencing each other – appear.