The sports scene as a political dispute arena: between recited memory and deletion of trails

Abstract

The present text discusses how two elements of sportive life from Piauí – the soccer stadium “Albertão” and the Tiradentes soccer team – were treated as triggers of the dispute between two majority political groups on te Piauiense political scene, during the 1970s and 1980s. They were treated as signs of the first government of Alberto Silva (1971-1975) andwere applauded by his allies as synonymous of inscription of the state in a context of prosperity and developmental euphoria, constant with the political scene in effect in Brazil in times of Civil Military Dictatorship, and they were rejected by his opponents for being considered the reassurance of presence of that government on history and memory of the Piauiense society. In this article, we discuss how such disputes manifested themselves on political wars established between those groups and signed themselves in the ways of political scene. Therefore, as historical sources, official documents, newspapers that circulated in that period were analyzed, besides the photos used by the government in its official letters and oral reports, that, under the theoretical interlocution with Michel de Certeau, Réne Rémond, Paul Ricoeur and Paul Veyne, Michel Pollak, among others, contributed to the analytical elucidation of the theme.