Capoeira in Recife: the Tough Guys & the Troublemakers

   
We know much about the history of capoeira in Rio de Janeiro thanks to work of Jair Moura and Carlos Eugênio Líbano Soares. Likewise, we have a lot of information about its history in Bahia thanks to the research of Frede Abreu, Antonio Liberac Cardoso Simões Pires, and others. However, there is significantly less known capoeira's past in the city of Recife, the capital of the state of Pernambuco, despite being one of Brazil's largest metropolitan areas and a major port city.

Bernardo Alves, a researcher who wrote a book about capoeira in Pernambuco discussed his findings in an interview with the group CICA (Centro de Instrução de Capoeira Angola) that was published in their journal, Biriba, in April 2002.

In the interview, Alves touches on many different themes: the various identities of capoeiristas of early twentieth century Pernambuco, the consequences of the lack of organization, and the "ethics" of capoeira.

Here is an excerpt of their conversation:

CICA: The fact that the maltas came together to fight, this rivalry between them, shows us that there was not solidarity around this work, but only a shock. Do you think that this also determined the lack of development of capoeira in Pernambuco?

Alves: I don’t believe so. It was more like partisanism. So, there were those that supported the more famous groups of the 4th Infantry Battalion and the guys that supported the other one that was famous, the band of Pedro espanhol, the Espanha. There were the criminals doing security for the officials. They would go there cheering and the capoeiras in the front were doing security work. In truth, they weren’t interested in doing security. They wanted to play. If you took out the capoeiras who were supporting this group, the others would come in and make trouble, breaking it up with clubs. But I will answer your question. So, there was this partisanism. In Bahia, capoeira was preserved because the Bahian preserved capoeira in the academies. If the academies had not been created, the same thing would have happened there that happened here [in Recife]. Those from here were expelled and those from there stayed around. A large majority of capoeiras from Bahia stayed there. So, they transformed this thing into a dance, or something; they disguised it; there was this disguise that did not happen here. I believe that they stopped passing capoeira from generation to generation and it ended. There wasn’t this passing down between generations, and there in Bahia this happened because of the existence of academies… you always have those guys that say no, this is a thing of the people, it has to be spontaneous, it can’t happen in the academies. But if there had not been academies, it would have disappeared in Bahia as well.

CICA: Did you not find any references to organized groups? Be it on the stage or in fights?

Alves: It was a neighborhood thing. The capoeira from Madalena didn’t enter in Coellos. He wouldn’t go under any circumstances. They are tribes. This is a very primitive thing.

CICA: Without a system nor an academy, capoeira here was more about malandragem… So, in the past the only people who practiced capoeira were the tough guys and bullies?

Alves: Yes. Remember that there were these two currents of capoeira in Pernambuco. That this here was the tough guy, and this here was the troublemaker. The tough guy was the guy who was more ethical, had more scruples. And the troublemaker was the guy who wanted to create trouble. He arrived and started fighting. But the tough guy, no. The tough guy was more dangerous than the other. It wasn’t a technical dispute. It was a fight to really knock the other out. Nascimento Grande was a very interesting guy. He was funny, that is, he would knock the other guy down and afterwards, he would carry the guy on his shoulders to the hospital and say, “Look, take good care of this friend of mine, here is some money, ok?”

CICA: Was there any kind of ethics between the capoeiristas in hand-to-hand combat?

Alves: Among the tough guys.

CICA: And among the troublemakers?

Bernardo: Among the troublemakers it was anything goes and a little more.

Extremely interesting! Would you be as genteel as to carry on your shoulder and pay the medical bills of the person you knocked down?

We'll be presenting works that highlight the history of capoeira in other cities over the next few months.

Do you know anything about the roots of capoeira in your city (perhaps you are the roots - especially if you are reading this side of the blog!)?

The whole conversation (in Portuguese) can be found in the FICA-DC archives.
  

Build Your Own Archive: Afro-Latin America, 1800 - 2000

  
The book "Afro-Latin America, 1800 -2000" by George Reid Andrews is an excellent overview of the history of the African Diaspora in Latin America, including the Caribbean. While it seems like an impossible task to succinctly cover such an immense subject, the author does a superb job examining and presenting major, overarching historical themes - such as the wars of independence, the institutional policy of “whitening” the population, and the oppression of blacks - and then applying specific examples from the different countries of Latin American and the Caribbean, comparing and contrasting results and consequences.

Brazil, with the largest population of African descendents in the area, gets much attention in the book, and the author talks about capoeira as well as other African traditions, including samba, that came to be defined as essential to the cultures of the countries of Latin America.

Here is a little of what Andrews has to say about capoeira:

This was the martial art of capoeira, a combination of dance and kick-boxing based on Angolan antecedents and developed into a distinctly New World discipline and aesthetic by African slaves. The term and the phenomenon first appeared in Brazilian documents in the 1770s. By the 1790s and early 1800s, capoeiristas were organizing themselves into the maltas, or gangs, that became as much a part of nineteenth-century urban life in Brazil…


… the capoeira gangs were entirely male and based on rigorous codes of secrecy and loyalty to the group. Betrayal of the code meant harsh punishment, up to and including death… capoeira was closely tied to seaports and the sea...


… capoeira gangs in Rio de Janeiro sought to acquire control over the hiring of dockworkers in the port. Frustrated in their effort, they turned to protection rackets and other forms of criminal activity, dividing the city into small fiefdoms and fighting violent turf wars against each other. The gangs somewhat rehabilitated their public image in 1828, when they joined forces with the army to defeat a mutiny by German and Irish mercenaries. During the second half of the century they sought to establish patron-client ties with powerful protectors by hiring themselves out as bodyguards and “enforcers” of important politicians and businessmen. But… the violence of the intergang struggles provoked intensifying police repression and the eventual outlawing in 1890 of “the exercise of agility and corporal dexterity known as capoeira.”

and later in the book:

Brazilian authorities undertook a similar war against capoeira, which was outlawed by federal statute in 1890. In Rio de Janeiro, police arrested more than 600 suspected capoeiristas and sent them to the penal colony on the far offshore island of Fernando de Noronha. Organized capoeira gangs were eliminated from the capital, and from all Brazilian cities except Salvador, where police repression continued through the 1920s and 1930s. According to elderly practitioners of the sport, the police would tie captured capoeiristas to horses and drag them through the streets at full gallop back to police headquarters. As a result, they jokingly recall, they always practiced near police stations so that, if arrested, they would be dragged a shorter distance.

This book is packed with interesting information. We will present more relevant finds in the future.

"Afro-Latin America 1800-2000" is available in the FICA-DC Archives library thanks to the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
   

Exploring the History of Capoeira

   
In July 2008, the Brazilian magazine “Revista de História da Biblioteca Nacional” (History Magazine of the National Library) published the article “Berimbau Universal” by Lorenzo Aidé.

The article was published soon after Iphan recognized capoeira as a national patrimony in 2008. It reports that between 2007 and 2008, researchers produced an inventory of texts related to capoeira, including books, movies, and more. They also interviewed seventeen mestres, including Mestres João Pequeno, Russo, Leopoldina, Nestor and others. (Not for nothing, but only seventeen mestres? There are more than seventeen mestres in the city of Salvador alone.)

The article relates a bit of the history that the inventory revealed. And here, we present a little of that:

… The common sense, sacred origin myth associates the practice of capoeira with a rural environment: in the slave quarters, slaves demonstrated their resistance to captivity by training the marital arts inherited from their African ancestors, but they disguijavascript:void(0)sed these arts with dance and music so as not to spark the suspicion of the overseers and plantation owners. There is no documentation that confirms this theory. “There does not exist a single register of capoeira in Palmares, for example. It was more present in the port cities than in the quilombos”, explains Maurício Barros de Castro, Doctor of Social History from USP and assistant coordinator of the study.

Urban and marginal art. The oldest registration of capoeira that is known comes from Rio de Janeiro and dates to 1789. It is a document related to the liberation of a slave named Adão, who had been imprisoned for practicing “capoeiragem”. In the following century, “o capoeira”, in the masculine [the gender of the word], is already a figure recognized in the port cities. In these cities, the streets were areas of intense business, where those known as “escravos de ganho” [non-slaves who rented themselves out for work] dedicated themselves to sporadic work. In this atmosphere, people began to form groups, dispute territories, provoke fights and riots, and get in trouble with the police. The capoeira was the father of the malandro.

It is curious that in Salvador during almost all of the 19th century, the term “capoeira” does not appear. The art form was the same as that in Rio and Recife, but the press and the Salvadoran police used all sorts of synonyms to describe those marginal figures(“valentões”, “bambas”, “navalhistas”) and their crimes (“rabo de arraia”, cabeçada”, “rasteira”, “pontape”). Could it be that the word only came along later? Mauricio Barros de Castro doesn’t risk this conclusion, preferring to highlight another important point of the objective: that of stimulating new research. “Despite the work done by the researchers like Antonio Liberace, Fred Abreu, there is still much to be discovered in relation to 19th century Bahia, unlike Rio de Janeiro, about which we know very much,” he says.

In Recife, the study received much enthusiasm for the same reason – it is another city where there is not much documentation the subject. Known as the land of frevo, the capital city was also the place of much capoeiragem until police persecution reduced the presence of the practice, forcing practitioners to hide it within other popular manifestations. The steps of frevo were inspired by capoeira during Carnaval, pulling the cords with razors clenched in their fists, between twirls and pirouettes.

… It would not be an exaggeration to say that capoeira influenced the formation of our urban popular culture. Capoeiristas made up maltas, and they were also present in Brazil’s most significant conflict – capoeiras enlisted (and were enlisted) heavily in the War of Paraguay (1864-1870). In the political sphere, they created the Guarda Negra (1888), in defense of the monarchy and abolition, and served in three cities as political thugs – protecting both republicans and conservatives. In exchange, the authorities turned a blind eye to their street-fighting games…

Overall, this is an informative article and the inventory is an exciting project that may change the way we think about capoeira, but it raises important concerns about relying heavily on documented materials in re-constructing a history of a phenomenon that has largely been preserved orally.

This problem is further highlighted by the incredible fact that only seventeen mestres were interviewed. Police and war records are given priority over the knowledge of mestres. Surely there is much more important information left to be collected from the many mestres and long-time capoeiristas who were not interviewed.

Here is a link to the entire article (in Portuguese).

The “Revista de História da Biblioteca Nacional” is an excellent magazine, and each month it almost always includes an article pertaining to capoeira or some similar subject. And of course, it includes many other interesting historical topics including an article on the King of Belguim’s 1920 visit, when he scandalized Rio de Janeiro’s high society and drew crowds of carioca spectators as he took his morning bath at Copabana beach. O la la!
   

War Songs of the Nagoas and the Guaiamuns

The following bit comes from the June-July- August 1996 edition of the Brazilian newsletter Capoeirando:

A musical relic from the last century

In the Toque de Berimbau [musical section of newsletter] the first registration of the musicality of capoeira in the 19th century: a song of challenge between the two great capoeira groups: the Nagoas and the Guaiamuns.

The Guaiamuns sang:

Terezinha de Jesus
Abre a porta e apaga a luz
Quero ver morrer Nagoa
Na porta do Bom Jesus

And the Nagoas responded:

O castelo içou bandeira
São Francisco repicou
Gaiamum está reclamando
Manuel Preto já chegou

These were part of a capoeira song and were registered by Plácido de Abreu in his book Os Capoeiras* in 1886 in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The author called it a "tune" and it reveals the conflict between the two groups in the 19th century: the Gaiamuns and the Nagoas. These groups were divided into various factions based on city neighborhoods.

Today, these "tunes" have significant historic value as they confirm the presence of music in the conflicts as well as the name of the capoeira groups, and they reveal the presence of Manoel Preto, who was then one of the leaders of the Nagoas.

Interpreting this “tune” we can understand a little better the culture of capoeira of the maltas [gangs] of the 19th century. This song is the oldest registration of musicality related to the practice of capoeira.

*ABREU, Plácido de. Os Capoeiras Rio de Janeiro. Tip. Escola Seraphim Alves de Brito 1886. p. 03

In her book The Hidden History of Capoeira, author Maya Talmon-Chvaicer offers further insight into the song, including a translation:

Documents and illustrations from the early nineteenth century bear witness that musical instruments were played during the capoeira game, but no description of songs is provided. It is only toward the end of the century that various sources mention songs connected to capoeira. Abreu wrote that before rival capoeira groups got into a fight they would challenge their rivals with songs like the one the Gaiamus sang:

Terezinha de Jesus
Open the door and turn off the light
I want to see dead Nagoa
At Bom Jesus' door

The rival team would answer:

The fortress raised a flag
São Francisco answered with a drum beating
Guaiamu is complaining
Manuel Preto has shown up.

Manuel Preto was the Santana group leader's nickname and put the fear of God into his enemies' hearts. The Nagoas used images that belonged to their spiritual world. The flag, as described above, was used to communicate with the world of the dead. This is evident in the flag waving during funerals. São Francisco, a Catholic saint, used a drumbeat to overcome the Guaiamu. Africans compared their deities to the Catholic saints and worshipped them while hiding their African deities behind Catholic ones. Saint Francis was syncretized with the orixá Orunmila, the great benefactor of humanity and its principal adviser. He reveals the future through the secret of Ifa, the supreme oracle. He is considered a great healer. The drums warn against imminent danger but also communicate with other worlds and possess supernatural powers that infuse Manuel Preto with such strength that the "Gaiamu is complaining".

The Guaiamu were influenced mainly by Christianity, which is evident in their challenging song and their use of the names Therezinha (little Saint Theresa) and Jesus and the images "open the door and turn off the light", signifying the notion of extinguishing the life of the Nagoa and opening the doors of heaven for his soul. Songs used as challenge were widespread in the Yoruban cultures in the context of war. They had remarkable psychological influence. Evoking the memory of extolled victories, eminent warriors, spirits, and ancestral fathers that help in the war effort, songs were supposed to cheer up fighters and frighten their enemy. As Yoruban culture was very influential among the enslaved population from the mid-nineteenth century onward and as the Capoeiras were increasingly associated with belligerence, we can see why the ritual challenge was connected to song in the late nineteenth century. These songs were soon categorized as "war songs".

Both the book and the newsletter are packed with information about capoeira. We will be posting more from each in the upcoming months.

If you have something you would like to share with the community, please send it to: ficadcarchives (at) gmail (dot) com

Capoiera in Rio in the 19th Century

… The key year for capoiera in Rio is 1870. For various reasons, the War of Paraguay (1865 – 1870) was a turning point in its history. Rounded up by the hundreds and sent to the battlefield, they [capoeiristas] became famous for their feats of bravery in hand-to-hand combat, and they gained the respect of government officials. They returned as heroes. They re-took control of the maltas [gangs] that they had abandoned when they “volunteered” to fight in the south.

It was not simply a return. The conservative elite that dominated the political life of the nation, in one way or another, was enthused by the martial fervor of those at the battle front. It was also greatly impressed with the violence of the street fights upon the return of the veterans. From this moment forward, for reasons that remain unclear to this day, the capoeiras entered definitively into the political agenda of the elite monarchy of the Imperial Court of Rio de Janeiro.

The malta that became a kind of legend in the political-electoral life of Rio at this time was Flor da Gente. It dominated the community of Glória, a noble part of the city, full of mansions and landed estates of the elite of Rio. In 1872, Flor da Gente entered with fury into the violence that characterized the electoral disputes of the empire.

… During the eight years that the “political capoeiras”- as the opposition press called them- dominated the corridors of the power of the city. With the support of powerful patrons, they infiltrated the police force…

The party ended in 1878. The conservatives fell, bringing with them Flor da Gente. The repression that fell on their heads was severe, but it was not enough to eliminate them. For the next ten years, they continued to control the political violence in the city, until they were forced out once and for all by the moralistic and republican energy of Sampaio Ferraz in 1890.

This excerpt about the history of capoeira in the city of Rio de Janeiro at the close of the nineteenth century comes from an article published in the Brazilian magazine Nossa História in March of 2004. The article, entitled “A era de ouro da capoeira” (“The Golden Age of Capoeira”) and written by Carlos Eugênio Libano, includes an excerpt from a small publication of the time called “Os capoeiras” that depicts a street fight among capoeirstas. It also reflects upon the origins of capoeira, and talks about the rivalry between the great malts of Rio de Janeiro, the Nagoas and the Guayamus. The article is quite comprehensive and very well-written (in Portugese). It’s worth a read.

If you want to read the rest of the article, it is available in the library of FICA-Bahia.