Tide of Football

Meanings and Sociabilities of the First Football Pitch in the Maré Complex

Abstract

The article examines the centrality of Campo do Minas Gerais in the constitution of identities and sociocultural dynamics in the territory. Recognized as the; community's first soccer field, the study reconstructs its trajectory through a methodological approach that integrates oral history and ethnography, allowing for an understanding of the daily practices and memories that shape this space. The results show that the field went beyond its sporting function, constituting a multifunctional space for leisure, coexistence, and sociability. The June festivals, birthdays, and other celebrations held there transformed it into a hub for community relations, where emotional bonds, solidarity networks, and shared senses of belonging were woven. From an ethnobiographical perspective, the authors demonstrate how residents' narratives reveal processes of identity construction rooted in their lived experience of the territory. The memories evoked about the countryside not only narrate a past, but also produce meanings that reaffirm the symbolic power of leisure as a social and cultural practice. Thus, the study interprets the leisure space in the favela as a cultural and memorial territory, in which community ties are configured as forms of (re)existence in the face of stigmas and processes of urban exclusion.