Soccer and Capoeira

Soccer and Capoeira

The 2010 World Cup will be reminded in history as one of the most important happenings of the 21th century, not by the plasticity of the moves or the beautiful goals, but because of its social and political meaning.

This event mobilizes millions of people around the world and soccer is an excellent way to transmit the desired message of racial equality, because it's a mass sport practiced in equality by rich, poor, black or white people. Beyond that, most of the national teams are composed by player that got different skin colors playing together, also these teams challenge themselves in equality because there isn't a genetic supremacy of any group over the other, what also doesn’t exist in any other sport.

The fact of the World cup being hosted by Africa, in special by the South Africa, has an even bigger meaning, because this country lived under a racial segregation regime, Apartheid, for many decades. After the prison release of its main leader, Nelson Mandela, the country walks on to build a multi-racial democracy.

It's in this context that soccer and capoeira are together, because this art was created by the blacks’ necessity to assert themselves as a group and to preserve their cultural roots. Capoeira is the fight of an oppressed people for equality and freedom, it's the purest manifestation of the black resistance against physical, cultural and social oppression. And, as the soccer, capoeira is a mass sport that has the power of joining people independent of the skin color, religion believes or ethnic.

Therefore, the South Africa World Cup represents another victory in this secular war against the racism, it is the proof that we are all the same and the difference between people isn't the skin color, but the opportunities that arise throughout life and how they are taken.

UBUNTU !!!