UC San Diego

This thesis examines the historical and contemporary context of Major League Baseball in Latin America with particular attention to the colonial logics and processes of racialization embedded in the sport. Considering the US baseball presence in Latin America within a broader history of US domination of the region, I illustrate how the business of baseball both mimics and reproduces 1st/3rd World hierarchy and asymmetrical power relations. To demonstrate the extent to which colonial difference pervades the sport, I consider how Latin American player deviance and inferiority is policed and overdetermined by a white listening/perceiving subject. I examine how the white listening/perceiving subject’s vigilance of Latin American behavior produces the racialized figure of the “coño”, against which, in contrast, the normativity and acceptability of the white subject can be gleaned. I detail how the racialized qualities of the “coño” are rooted in histories of Eurocentric anti-Blackness and work to maintain and further white supremacy. Finally, I document aspects of the Latin American player experience, offering a glimpse at how players navigate and confront the business of baseball and the manifestations and expressions of white supremacy within it.