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This article traces the development of Mexican football from its inception to the successful hosting of two World Cup finals. We place our analysis within a post‐revolutionary context that exalted the virtues of self‐discipline that sport could contribute towards the patriotic endeavour of 'improving the race'. We argue that the character of the post‐revolutionary state, in which a symbiotic relationship between public and private endeavours was encouraged, was reflected in the distinct way in which football developed in Mexico. Furthermore, it also influenced the way in which sporting culture contributed to the Mexican migrant experience in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If categories of‘race’ and nationality are social and historical constructions laden with irrefutable meaning and consequences, then ethnic identities, like any other forms of identity, are means to other ends that may or may not be particular. Twentieth-century indigenist histry in Brazil reveals how the cultural politics of indigenism and nationalism can coalesce in a tautological politics of identity that undermines individual liberty and democratic heterogeneity. The concepts‘post-indigenism,’‘post-nationalism‘ and‘post-identity’ point to the strategic suspension of the infinite heterogeneity of the political subject as a means to widen the ground of shared experience and common interests beyond the realm of hollow and oppressive essentialisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]