Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

significantly during the 1980s. Prominent among them was M.Miguel, who after training with thousands of
consecutive kicks in his youth, started to realize that ‘in capoeira there is no direct confrontation’. 50
The founders of Cativeiro shared with the Captains of the Sand the critical assessment of the ‘martial’
capoeira of the Federation, and equally refused to become an ‘academy’. Yet instead of class they racialized
their discourse: ‘Capoeira has to be understood as a form of expression of a race’. They wanted to reaffirm
the black origins of capoeira, which was, according to them, being lost in the process of ‘sportification’.
They considered the art to be intimately linked to candomblé and as a consequence adopted a graduation
system where the colour of each belt stood for specific orixás: green for Oxóssi, brown for Omulu, yellow
for Oxum, purple for Xangô, blue for Iemanjá, red for Ogum, and the highest graduation, white, for Oxalá.
This attempt to sacralize and re-africanize capoeira occurred in parallel to the development of a new
black movement in São Paulo and other cities. The Unified Black Movement (Movimento Negro
Unificado—MNU), for instance, was founded in 1978, the same year as Cativeiro. Cativeiro’s overall
philosophy thus fitted into that new trend which re-asserted not only the importance of the Afro-Brazilian
heritage but also attempted to re-africanize popular practices, from carnival groups such as the blocos afro
to Afro-Brazilian cults. Umbanda, the most syncretic and popular of Afro-Brazilian religions, also went
through a process of ‘re-africanization’ during the 1980s.
Letícia Reis asserts that Cativeiro insisted more on the individual struggle to raise consciousness than
advocate collective social and political transformations. She also drew attention to the fact that most of the
colours adopted by Cativeiro coincided with the belts of the Federation, even though they were supposed to
carry a different meaning, and that this led to confusion among practitioners. In 1985 M.Miguel moved to
Salvador in order to learn more about the traditions of capoeira from the old mestres, and to pass on those
teachings to the different Cativeiro nuclei in São Paulo. Since Bahia still represented, for capoeira as well as
for candomblé, the recognized source of authentic tradition, this experience provided him with a new source
of legitimacy, both in São Paulo and beyond. 51 The style of the group changed accordingly, reafricanization
meaning, as in most other cases, a re-introduction of aspects identified with the Angola style,
which were considered more authentic and nearer to African traditions. This matched the change of
attitudes in the greatest Brazilian city and contributed, among other reasons, to the growth of the group. By
the end of the 1990s, Cativeiro had more than 100 teachers and mestres spread over seven states and nine
countries. 52 It also joined the Brazilian Confederation of Capoeira (CBC).
Other states and new constituencies
CONTEMPORARY CAPOEIRA 177
Capoeira practice spread throughout Brazil during the 1970s and 1980s, reaching all the states of the union,
and conquering the vast interior. Today capoeira is taught in every Brazilian city, as well as in smaller
towns and hamlets. The history of this expansion still remains to be written, and what follows is no more
than a cursory attempt to provide readers with an idea of the dynamics. In every state or city contemporary
teachers usually trace their genealogy to the pioneers who have introduced the art. The latter might not have
necessarily been the first to practise capoeira or to perform in public, but they were the ones who opened
academies and taught a first generation of students until they became teachers or mestres themselves. Thus
capoeira in Brasília, for example, owes much to Hélio Tabosa, who started teaching there in the 1960s,
M.Zulu (Antonio Batista Pinto), Adilson, Barto, Pombo de Ouro and Chibata. 53
In other states where local traditions of capoeira existed, such as Pará, Maranhão and Pernambuco, it is
still unclear how many of these previous practices were incorporated into contemporary styles. 54 In São
Luís, for example, some form of rough street capoeira seems to have survived well into the twentieth
century. Oral history records not much more than the names of ‘tough guys’ such as Luciel or Caranguejo