Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

CONCLUSION 209
The impressive proliferation of the practice around the world obviously raises the question to what extent
capoeira can still express Afro-Brazilian values. No doubt that capoeira’s globalization and transformation
into a capitalist commodity contribute to a dilution of its ‘original’ meanings and undermines its
‘authenticity’. On the other hand, people around the world playing Afro-Brazilian instruments, singing
Portuguese songs composed by slaves and their descendants and moving according to African-derived
aesthetics remains a major achievement in a world dominated by Hollywood, Nike, Sony, Coca-Cola and
Microsoft. Brazilian capoeira instructors teaching gringos the ginga are thus the effective ambassadors of
African-derived, Bahian and Brazilian culture. This remains true even if capoeira is also permanently coopted
and hijacked by corporations such as Nokia or the BBC. That is not a new development. Furthermore,
the use of capoeira to advertise other products also helps the art to gain more recognition and to increase its
symbolic capital.
Throughout this book I have often questioned the idea that capoeira has always and only been a tool
against ‘the’ oppressor, and attempted to show that the insertion of the art in each specific historical context
was more complex than the simple dichotomy accommodation versus resistance can account for. The
apology of vagrancy constitutes a negation of dominant values, but still remains within parameters of
dominant discourse. The malandro is not a revolutionary. Elite politicians or corporations use capoeira to
win elections or sell products. Thus the art is constantly hijacked by different social actors to serve purposes
alien to its ‘original’ meanings. Does that indicate capoeira is co-opted and mainstreamed once and for all?
All practitioners still repeat the ‘mantra’ of capoeira as cultural resistance—interestingly enough
regardless of their individual style. Even though the institutionalization and commodification of the practice
allows deconstructing this affirmation in many instances, the very insistence on resistance by adepts
remains meaningful. Resistance is as much a question of intention as of objective criteria, and as such needs
to be taken seriously. Perhaps one should not interpret resistance in the sense of a total refusal, as a rejection
of acculturation or of any outside influence. Capoeira has always adapted to changing contexts by reappropriating
external elements, from both subaltern and hegemonic cultures. Yet the acculturation urban
capoeira went through was not a one-sided process of accommodation to dominant structures in contrast to,
for instance, the heroic resistance of maroons in the backlands. As I have tried to show, creolization and
acculturation entailed a number of different processes, which do not fit easily into a rigid opposition
between resistance and accommodation. Acculturation is not necessarily a totalizing process leading to
accommodation, but ‘has rather to be understood as the use of a resource, often only partially utilized’. 6
The strict dichotomy between resistance and accommodation does not allow an understanding of the
more subtle mechanisms through which individual adepts and capoeira groups interact with dominant,
hegemonic structures. The dialectics of structure and agency are perhaps better grasped through alternative
concepts such as re-appropriation and self-affirmation. Re-appropriation does not necessarily include
identification with the adopted elements and their inherent value system. As a matter of fact, successful selfaffirmation
often incorporates alien elements and values. 7
Throughout history, capoeira has, by means of re-appropriation and self-affirmation, brought people
together and conquered social space. Here lies one of its most important, even though not often recognized
meanings. Capoeira might not be directly significant for party politics, but it is so for the politics of gender
and race. Capoeira often constituted an alternative ‘black space’, where dominant values of white
superiority did—as a general rule—not prevail. The institutionalization of the art has undermined that
aspect, but in some respects it always was and still is an advantage to be black in rodas past and present.
This means both black and white adepts learn to behave according to alternative models of inter-ethnic
relations. Capoeira thus provides a space for the apprenticeship of equality and racial democracy. Therefore
it contributes to develop citizenship and to make racial democracy less of a myth and more of an every day