Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

16 COMPETING MASTER NARRATIVES
a ‘Guide to Capoeira or the Brazilian gymnastics’, a first attempt to systematize capoeira movements,
establishing the difference between the various types of postures, feints and blows. 37 The federal deputy
Henrique Coelho Neto (1864–1934) claimed to have discussed the same idea with two friends at the time.
According to him, they even considered sending a project to the Brazilian parliament that would establish
capoeiragem as a compulsory discipline in state owned institutions and the barracks. They ‘gave up that
idea, however, because other people found it ludicrous, just because that game was…Brazilian.’ 38 Coelho
Neto was an influential nationalist writer whose residence was a favourite meeting place for intellectuals. 39
He also practised capoeira and expressed his strong views about the matter in an article he entitled ‘Our
game’, where he reiterated his view that capoeira should be taught in colleges, barracks and battleships
because it ‘harmoniously develops the body and is a means of self-defence superior to all others which are
praised by foreigners […]’. 40
The idea that capoeira was ‘our game’ gained increasing popularity among nationalist, middle-class
Brazilians. The journalist Raul Pederneiras for instance published an extensive article entitled ‘The National
Defence’ (1921), in which he reiterated all the previous arguments to support the view that capoeira suited
Brazil more than any imported sport. 41 Another journalist synthetized his strong view about the fighting art
to which the Brazilians should give preference in the suggestive appeal: ‘Let’s cultivate the capoeira game
and feel revulsion for boxing!’ Many other writers, including Coelho Neto, picked up his slogan. One of
them complained that Brazilians were unfortunately ashamed of capoeira, ‘but we get ape-likely,
ridiculously carried away with that brutish, Afro-British thing called boxing’. Echoing da Cunha he
recommended:
If you want to cultivate an elegant game, adequate for self-defence, a game of noble dexterity which
is not brutal and demeaning, there you have our unsurpassable and invincible capoeira game, a game
born from racial and environmental factors which shaped our nascent race. 42
Racial stereotypes concerning the ‘weakness’ of ‘mixed-bloods’ were sometimes associated with the cliché
of the supposed physical inferiority of the ‘Negro’. Thus Adolfo Morales de los Ríos (1887–1973), an
Argentinian engineer and writer residing in Rio, reiterated the idea that ‘the capoeiragem is a creation made
by the weak—the Negro and the mestiço—against the strong: the white. The vigour of the latter is
challenged by the cunning of the others’. 43 More common though was to contrast the strong white and black
with the feeble mestiço, which ‘explained’ why capoeira was not primarily relying on physical strength, but
rather on dexterity. Luis Edmundo (1878–1961) in his description of the archetypical mulatto capoeira,
which he inaccurately transplanted back into the colonial period, clarifies that ‘the capoeira’ despite not
having ‘the athletic complexion of the Negro and not even the healthy and vigorous look of the Portuguese’,
still commands respect. ‘All his strength resides in this amazing elastic dexterity, in front of which the
European tumbles, and the African, astonished, retreats’. 44 Like so many other authors, he identified both
negative and positive aspects (courteous, defender of the weak, deeply religious) of the capoeira and
admitted the possibility of his ultimate redemption: ‘Basically he is bad because he lives where there is
trade in vice and crime. Socially, he is a cyst, but he could be a flower’. 45
Having identified qualities and defects of both the Brazilian race and character, one issue inevitably arose.
If the racial type could be improved through ‘whitening’, could the national character also be enhanced by
eliminating its most negative aspects? In that respect eugenics were to race what hygienization was to the
culture of the popular classes. Writers such as Mello Moraes and Coelho Neto only deplored the
‘degeneration’ of capoeira and considered the possibility of redemption from its ‘vices’, but made no
concrete plans how this was to be achieved. Only during the period of intense cultural renovation