Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

148 PASTINHA AND ANGOLA STYLE
de Couto Ferraz, and Reginaldo Guimarães, supported by Artur Ramos, decided to make the Second
Congress not a mere academic event, but a wider celebration of Afro-Bahian culture. They chose the month
of September because that was a moment when the most important terreiros organized activities that could
be attended by a non-initiated public. 1 The participants visited the most esteemed shrines of the city and a
number of respected candomblé priests took part in the proceedings. Newspapers covered the event, in
particular the Estado da Bahia for which Carneiro wrote on a regular basis. One of the outspoken aims of the
Congress was to end police persecution of candomblé and the wider repression against Afro-Bahian culture.
Carneiro also promoted the foundation of a federation of candomblé houses (‘Union of Afro-Brazilian
Sects’), which, once constituted, elected Martiniano Bomfim as its first president.
Alongside candomblé, capoeira figured prominently in the programme of the congress as a marker of
Afro-Bahian culture that the organizers wanted to see rehabilitated. They rented the tennis court of the
Itapagipe Club for an ‘Exhibition of Capoeira de Angola’. Carneiro was not interested in the emerging
Regional style, for which he showed only contempt. In line with his research on the ‘Bantus’ in Brazil, he
rather invited some of the most famous angoleiros of the time to perform their art: his friend and informant
Samuel Querido de Deus, Aberrê, Onça Preta, Barbosa and Juvenal. 2
The congress thus offered, alongside the already mentioned prize matches and the exhibitions during the
civic celebrations of 2 July 1936 by Bimba and his group, another entirely new public context for a capoeira
performance. The art was definitively overcoming the ostracism that had contained its practice for so long.
Edison Carneiro even sought to found a ‘Union of Capoeiras of Bahia’, similar to the ‘Union of Afro-
Brazilian Sects’ that he effectively helped to create. 3 Yet in the case of the capoeira union his plan did not
go beyond a declaration of intentions.
The organizers of the congress valued what they considered to be the traditional form of Bahian capoeira.
By promoting a greater visibility for capoeira, the congress reinforced the ongoing shift in public opinion,
which made capoeira increasingly perceived as a ‘popular pastime’ instead of a criminal activity. As early
as 1936 the newspaper A Tarde had published a picture of a capoeira roda at the Ribeira festival, entitled:
‘Dexterities of a group of capoeiristas, yesterday, in Penha’. This constituted an important innovation, since
reports on the religious festivals had so far never included iconographic representations of capoeira. If
journalists were now selecting a capoeira photo to represent popular festivals, they were encouraging the
perception of the art as integral part of Afro-Bahian culture. 4 Vadiação thus started to be recognized as an
art form and an expression of Afro-Bahian identity.
Mestre Pastinha’s re-assessment of traditional Bahian vadiação and his struggle for the establishment of
the Angola style took place in this context of shifting paradigms. All these developments made his
programme advocating a symbolic return to Angola more likely to succeed. The 1930s–1940s also saw the
emergence of the most famous revivalist movement in the Caribbean, Rastafarianism, which spread over the
world in subsequent decades. At a time when Rastafarians in the mountains of Jamaica reinvented a new
world religion based on the exaltation of Ethiopia (the only African country to have avoided colonial
occupation), capoeiras in Babia started to reaffirm the strength of their Angolan heritage. Ras Tafari,
enthroned in 1930 as Haile Selassie I, claimed a direct line of descent from King Solomon, 5 also a popular
figure invoked by capoeiras in their ‘prayers’ (ladainhas) and songs. No wonder that these parallel
developments intersected at a later stage: today many angoleiros identify with and make wide use of Rasta
symbols.