The study investigates the American presence and the Pan-Americanist movement in Brazilian Physical Education to understand how they contributed in the production of a sportive culture in the first half of the twentieth century. Uses journals published in the period between the years 1932 and 1950 as historical sources. Uses the theoretical repertoire of the New Cultural History in terms of strategies, tactics and devices. The evidences allows us to infer that the American presence, and Pan-Americanist movement as a catalyst, molded the Physical Education and a sportive culture in society, being both a desire for modernization by the Brazilian intellectuals and cultural colonization attempt by the government of the United States of America.
Physical Education; Sports; History