ABSTRACT
In Latin America, there is no clear definition of “sport” culture; generally, sports in Latin America conjures up conversation among males, focused on one sport: soccer. Sports vary from country to country, and, increasingly, women’s sports and women’s participation in sports are gaining respectability and importance in the Latin American region. Latin American soccer stars have transformed the game, and Lionel Messi, Luis A. Suárez James Rodríguez and Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior are household names among modern soccer aficionados. The Latin Americans have never looked back since that debut performance, and three Latin American nations have won the World Cup a total of nine times. Baseball, during the twentieth century, took hold in the Caribbean nations, Central America, Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia. During the early 1990s, Mexico’s Julio César Chávez was the undisputed light/welterweight champion of the world, and Latin American boxers dominated several weight classes for much of the twentieth century.
