Football as Sport Diplomacy: Ritualized Rivalry and Nation-Making in Peru and Chile (1927–1933)

Pahuacho Portella A. · International Journal of the History of Sport (2026) · DOI: 10.1080/09523367.2026.2721405

Resumen

Before Peru and Chile met regularly through national teams, their football rivalry had already begun to take shape through clubs. Between 1927 and 1933, visits by Santiago Football Club, Colo Colo, Alianza Lima, and Atlético Chalaco were followed closely by the press and surrounded by receptions, trophies, and public gestures of fraternity. These matches took place after decades marked by the War of the Pacific and the unresolved Tacna-Arica question, allowing both countries to face each other again in a competitive but not openly hostile form. In Lima, newspapers such as El Comercio and La Crónica gave meaning to those encounters by contrasting styles of play, praising sporting courtesy and reading Peruvian victories as evidence of technique, discipline and collective elegance rather than revenge. Chivalrous amateurism operated not as a transparent description of behaviour on the pitch, but as a moral code through which rivalry could be imagined and judged. The Combinado del Pacífico gave this process its clearest expression in 1933, when former rivals appeared together as a binational team. International football rivalries in Latin America could therefore emerge at club level before being formalized through national-team competition.

Instituciones: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú