The sport prescribed in the countries of Latin America: Overview and characteristics of the laws

Abstract

It maps and analyzes the main sports laws and official government bodies that regulate and manage sport in Latin America, understanding the nature of the documents and their main constitutive elements, namely: title, year of creation and general objectives. This is an exploratory and documentary study, using documental critical, the comparative method and the evidential paradigm as a theoretical-methodological approach. The sources are made up of the official sports laws of 19 Latin American countries. The analyzes allowed us to establish the following categories: a) countries whose sports laws are specific and which only contain the term sport in their name; b) countries whose sports laws are identified with numbers; c) countries whose sports laws have mixed nomenclature. Twelve countries conceptualize sport in full in their documents. We realized that the way sport is presented in the laws probably shows the signs and traces of how it is thought, seen and materialized in each country. We understand that the laws are an important milestone for the development of sport in countries. In addition to them, we point out that it is essential that a medium and long-term sports policy be thought out in each context.