Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

CAPOEIRAGEM IN RIO DE JANEIRO 91
games and real fights—was almost completely severed. Bodyguards and other people only interested in
fighting techniques used its attacks as weapon but no longer showed any interest in the game. Street rodas
apparently disappeared, although they may have survived in some shantytowns, such as the hills of São
Carlos or Salgueiro or some working-class suburbs. 109 When rival carnival associations started a fight,
capoeiro techniques could suddenly re-emerge. 110 The skill that consisted in administering unbalancing
kicks to the rhythm of drums also survived in another game, the batuque. The Cariocan batuque remained
visible, especially during carnival. The poetess Cecília Meireles observed it during the 1930s:
[…] During carnival, in the stronghold of Praça Onze [central square in Rio], they dance it endlessly,
and since the nature of the black in Brazil is good and conciliatory [sic], the kick which they use are
only sketched, and it even happens that one dancer keeps the other’s balance holding him in his arms
while, at the same time, he throws him off balance with his foot. The fall is thus frustrated, and the
game continues. That is why, in their language, they call it ‘the game’. 111
The subterranean survival of capoeira in some shantytowns and suburbs, as well as the interest of some
martial artists (such as Sinhozinho) for its fighting techniques right into the middle of the twentieth century,
will be crucial to understanding why Rio de Janeiro could play such an important role in the revival of
capoeira as an art and a sport from the 1950s onwards (Chapter 7). The substantial changes capoeira, its
social context and its cultural meaning underwent throughout the nineteenth century in Rio de Janeiro
should also warn us against simplistic assumptions about combat games representing ancestral practices
remaining unchanged over centuries. The comparison and contrast with capoeira in Bahia, examined in the
next chapter, will confirm how important the local context was for the evolution of the art.