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Rio de Janeiro (AFP) – Pelé was the absolute “king” of the ball, but the Brazilian star’s relationship with politics was much more ambiguous and there was no shortage of criticism for his silence against the dictatorship and racism.
When asked about the lead years of the military regime (1964-1985) in Brazil, in the documentary ‘Pelé’ about his life released by Netflix in 2021, the three-time world champion replied: “For me at least, it didn’t make any difference ( …) Football continued the same”.
In that same tape, Paulo César Vasconcellos, a figure in Brazilian sports journalism, highlights that Pelé “accepted and lived with the regime, which treated him well because he knew how important he was.”
The eternal shirt 10 “was characterized by its absence of taking a political position,” he says.
When Pele was at the height of his career, after winning a third world title in Mexico in 1970, the ruling military missed no opportunity to use his image for political purposes.
Many photos show him together with the dictator Emílio Garrastazu Médici, the most “hardline” general of the regime who tortured hundreds of opponents, with a balance of at least 434 dead or missing.
In these images, Pelé appears smiling, passing his arm or raising the World Cup trophy at his side.
“He had the behavior of a submissive black, who accepts everything, who does not protest anything,” says Paulo Cézar Caju, a teammate in the 1970 victory, who nevertheless reproaches him for this attitude.
“Socialist”
But other, more surprising photos have reappeared on social networks in recent days, when the news about the deterioration of his health went around the world.
There is a haughty Pelé, wearing an elegant gray hat, but above all dressed in a yellow shirt with the legend, in large letters: “Diretas já” (direct elections now), the slogan of the movement that called for the end of the dictatorship and the presidential election in direct universal suffrage.
That photo, from 1984, was on the cover of the leading Brazilian sports magazine Placar, with the headline: “Pelé de cabeça nova”. The literal translation is “Pelé has a new head”, a new mentality.
In another little-known chapter of the “King’s” life, in 1989 he announced that he could run in the 1994 presidential elections and claimed to be a “socialist.”
In the end, he was not a candidate, but he was sports minister of the center-right president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, from 1995 to 1998.
During his time in the portfolio, he worked hard to modernize Brazilian soccer and defend the rights of players against their clubs, which would have earned him, according to local media, the fury of the all-powerful FIFA president at the time, the also Brazilian Joao Havelange.
“It made me love Brazil”
Pelé, Brazil’s first black superstar, has also drawn criticism for his lack of commitment to the fight against racism.
“They called me ‘black’, ‘monkey’, but I didn’t care (…) I prefer to set an example for my family and my fans. That’s my fight,” he said in an interview quoted in 2020 by the newspaper ‘ The country’.
“I am completely sure that I helped Brazil much more with my football and my way of living than many people who make a living from politics,” he said in the Netflix documentary, recalling that he dedicated his thousandth goal to children. hungry in Brazil, in 1969.
Some reproach him for not having condemned racism more firmly. But others believe that just seeing a black man succeed at that level in his field of knowledge was reason enough to feel pride and hope.
“Pelé was the first person who made me love Brazil,” Silvio Almeida, one of the country’s leading black intellectuals, tweeted after his death.
“Seeing a black and Brazilian man, like me, being indisputably the best at what he did made me think that despite everything, there was something to believe in,” wrote the future Human Rights Minister of the president-elect of left, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
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