Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

24 COMPETING MASTER NARRATIVES
Militants from the Brazilian Black Movement (Movimento Negro) often sought inspiration and advice from
the more established US groups. Brazilian groups, in return, attracted growing interest among black US
militants, and as a result contacts were established and links intensified. Precisely at that time—the
1980s—Capoeira Angola was being revitalized in Brazil (see Chapter 7), and its practitioners started to put
forward more explicitly the idea that capoeira, and in particular the Angola style, stood for African identity.
One of the core groups in this process, the Grupo de Capoeira Angola Pelourinho (GCAP), regarded their
art as an expression of African culture and the continuation of a Bantu practice. That was still a provocative
statement in the authoritarian context of the 1980s, making it necessary for the group leader, M.Moraes, to
issue a disclaimer:
Defending the African-ness of capoeira does not mean that the GCAP is involved in any movement of
segregation, as some people tend to believe, but rather to call the attention of a part of society which
still persists in spreading the idea that capoeira is a genuine Brazilian manifestation, without taking
into consideration that the African black made a great contribution to our cultural formation. 79
Many other capoeira groups, even those practising less traditionalist styles, started to make widespread use
of terms and imagery associated with Kongo/Angola such as the zebra. In contrast with earlier denigrations,
Bantu and Angola were now reclaimed as positive symbols, metaphors for tradition. In the United States, an
exhibition hosted by the Caribbean Cultural Center in New York in 1991 was an important step in that
direction. Highlighting that ‘Kongo-Angola culture from Central Africa is one of the most dynamic and
pervasive forces in world culture’, its organizers explained:
In the Americas everyone practices some aspects of these Central African traditions in their daily
lives, but without recognizing these activities as having a Kongo-Angola origin. For example, rumba,
tango and samba, to name just three dances, are viewed in their respective countries as national
dances. In reality, these dances should be understood as Central African movement forms shared with
the world through their countries. 80
In recent years, a number of scholars have sought to provide further evidence for these claims, showing the
intensity and complexity of transatlantic links in the African diaspora and more generally the Atlantic
world. 81
With the globalization of capoeira, especially its expansion into the United States, Afrocentric scholars
and militants discovered capoeira as an appropriate tool to foster racial or diasporic consciousness among
African Americans. In fact some militants, (scholars or capoeira adepts) significantly contributed not only to
the diffusion of the more traditionalist capoeira Angola style in the United States, but also participated in
the elaboration of the angoleiro agenda in organizations such as GCAP.
In its broadest meaning, Afrocentrism stands for ‘an emphasis on shared African origins among all
“black” people, taking a pride in those origins and an interest in African history and culture—or those aspects
of New World cultures seen as representing African “survivals”—and a belief that Eurocentric bias has
blocked or distorted knowledge of Africans and their cultures’. 82 It that respect Afrocentric approaches
provide an important corrective of predominant, Eurocentric views about the African contribution to the
culture of the Americas, and in particular, of the so far hegemonic Brazilian nationalist discourse about
capoeira. Afrocentric interest in transatlantic links for instance contributed to replace capoeira in its wider
context and to rethink anew its relationship with other combat games of the diaspora, usually downplayed
or even completely negated by nationalist discourses that insist on its uniqueness and Brazilian-ness.