SPORTS AS PRESCRIBED IN LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES: OVERVIEW AND CHARACTERISTICS OF LAWS

ABSTRACT This article aims to map and analyze the main sports laws and official government bodies that regulate and manage sports in Latin America, comprising the nature of the documents and their central constitutive elements, namely: title, year of creation, and general objectives. This is an exploratory and documentary study using critical-documentary analysis, the comparative method and the evidential paradigm as a theoretical-methodological approach. The sources are composed of the official sports laws of 19 countries in Latin America. The analyses allowed us to establish the following categories: a) countries whose sports laws are specific and contain only the term sports in their name; b) countries whose sports laws are identified with numbers; c) countries whose sports laws have mixed nomenclature. Twelve countries conceptualize sports in full in their documents. We perceive that the way sports are presented in the laws shows the signs and traces of how they are thought, seen and materialized. We understand that the laws are an important milestone for the development of Latin sports. Beyond the laws, we point out that it is of paramount importance that a medium- and long-term sports policy be thought out in each specific context.