‘Big country, giant stadiums’: Toponymy of public stadiums during the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship and the discourses of reconciliation, 1964-1985

Abstract

The article covers 14 big stadiums built by state governments between 1964 and 1985, 12 of which named after governors affiliated with Arena. The goal is to highlight the naming of stadiums as atool in the political culture of the pe-riod and as a mechanism that, decades later, remains active in legitimizing a shared past. The investigation also explores un-told stories about these stadiums drawing on documentation from various databases, such as the Arquivo Nacional and the Biblioteca Nacional, and contextualize it with historiographi-cal issues related to the dispute of memories in Brazilian society regarding the dictatorship. The research highlights the articulation between government and civil society in the naming and maintenance of stadium names, the constitution of these spaces as places of memories and the adoption of procedures that naturalize the past in a non-critical way.