The Pan-American Games, begun officially in 1951 in Buenos Aires and held in every region of the western hemisphere, have become one of the largest multi-sport games in the world. 6,132 athletes from 41 countries competed in 48 sports in the 2015 Games in Toronto, Canada. The Games are simultaneously an avenue for the spread of the Olympic Movement across the Americas, a stage for competing ideologies of Pan-American unity, and an occasion for host city infrastructural stimulus and economic development. And yet until this volume, the Games have never been studied as a single entity from a scholarly viewpoint.
Historicizing the Pan-American Games presents 12 original articles on the Games. Topics range from the origins of the Games in the period between the world wars, to their urban, hemispheric and cultural legacies, to the policy implications of specific Games for international sport. The entire collection is set against the shifting economic, social, political, cultural, sporting and artistic contexts of the turbulent western hemisphere. Historicizing the Pan-American Games makes a significant contribution to the literature on major games, Olympic sport and sport in the western hemisphere. This book was previously published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.
Introduction: The History and Relevance of the Pan-American Games
Cesar R. Torres and Bruce Kidd
1. The Original Pan-American Games? The 1937 Dallas Pan-American Olympics
Mark Dyreson
2. Turning the Country into an "Immense and Clamorous Stadium": Perón, the New Argentina, and the 1951 Pan-American Games
Raanan Rein
3. Una Antorcha de Esperanza: Mexico and the 1955 Pan-American Games
David J. Wysocki Quiros
4. Historical Erasure and Cold War Inter-American Relations: The Chicago 1959 Pan-American Games
John MacAloon
5. Colonial Olympism: Puerto Rico and Jamaica’s Olympic Movement in Pan-American Sport, 1930 to the 1950s
Antonio Sotomayor
6. Cultural Ambassadorship and the Pan-American Games of the 1950s
Brenda Elsey
7. Drug Testing, Sex Verification, and the 1967 Pan-American Games
Sarah Teetzel and Cesar R. Torres
8. The 1971 Pan-American Games and the Search for Colombian Modernities
David M.K. Sheinin
9. ‘The Event That Shook the Whole World Up’: Historicizing the 1983 Pan-American Games Doping Scandal
Jan Todd and Daniel L. Rosenke
10. Cuba’s Challenges Hosting the 1991 Pan-American Games and the Spectacle of the Revolution’s ‘Soft Power’
Thomas F. Carter
11. Paving the Olympic Dream: The Politics of the 2007 Pan-American Games in Rio de Janeiro
Guilherme Nothen
12. Canada and the Pan-American Games
Russell Field and Bruce Kidd
Biography
Bruce Kidd, A former Olympian, has written extensively about the history and politics of the modern Olympic Movement and international sport. He is a Professor of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto.
Cesar R. Torres is Professor in the Department of Kinesiology, Sport Studies, and Physical Education at The College at Brockport, State University of New York. He is a fellow in the National Academy of Kinesiology and a former President of the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport.
