Honour and Dignity: The Peru Case at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin

The 1936 Olympic Games are considered to be the explicit union of sports and politics. Many studies have analysed the accomplishments of Jesse Owens at Hitler’s Olympics. However, football provides another collision between sports and politics at the same Olympic Games, which also impacts the debate regarding the relationship between sports and politics. That relationship is rarely studied. Football had been out of the Olympic programme of the 1932 Los Angeles Games and returned to the programme for the 1936 Berlin Games. However, on its return there was an incident in the match between Peru and Austria in the second round of the tournament. It all started when a spectator invaded the field and kicked an Austrian athlete. The match was restarted and Peru won the game in overtime. After the game the Austrians formalized a protest and FIFA set up a European committee to review the case. Through historical analysis, from official documents and newspapers of that time, this episode showed two points: that FIFA was a Eurocentric entity; and that sports and politics go together, after all, since in the rescheduled new game, Peru, as a protest and in a demand for dignity, withdrew its entire delegation from the Olympic Games.