Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

58 THE CONTEXT OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC
Figure 2.6 Stick fighting was popular among slaves in many Caribbean plantation colonies. ‘Bataille entre un nègre
français et un nègre anglais dans l’île St Dominique’. Eighteenth-century engraving by A.Brunias. Courtesy of
Dr M.Chatillon, Paris.
A similar distinction between friendly games and real confrontations was and is still made on the Spanish
American mainland. Stick fighting is documented since at least the early nineteenth century in Venezuela.
The sugar cane area of El Tocuyo in the former province of Barquisimeto, now Lara state, is one of the core
regions for its practice. Here ‘stick playing’ (jugar palo) is closely associated with the worship of St
Anthony and the seven dances executed after the procession known today as Tamunangue. Slave origins of
the manifestation are evident from rhythms and instruments, such as the cumaco drum. Dancers and stick
fighters call each other—regardless of their ‘real’ colour—negro or negra. 131 As with capoeira, the
Venezuelan practice of stick fighting spread to the poor mestizo population, but in contrast to Brazil, its
practice remained largely a rural phenomenon.
Stick fighting experienced an extraordinary development in Trinidad after emancipation, when it became
associated with carnival. The island only developed into a fully-fledged plantation society after the Spanish
crown offered French planters settlement on the island with their slaves, in 1783. French creole culture
remained dominant even after the English took over Trinidad, in 1797. Peter Mason asserts that
In the early days of slavery almost every plantation in Trinidad had its own gayelle or stickfighting
ring, where fighters would do battle with their 4–5 foot long sticks of hard poui wood, driven by the
sound of drums and the singing of the early chantwells. Much African mystique and spirituality
surrounded stickfighting; ‘bois men’ (from the French ‘bois’ for wood) were known to bury their
sticks in dead relatives’ graves and to leave them there three of four days until they were infused or
‘mounted’ with their spirit. 132
After slave emancipation, stick fighting contests took place during carnival, often arranged by a wealthy
sponsor. During the 1840s, calinda, a ‘combination of stick-fighting and dancing’ is first mentioned in
sources. 133 What so far had been practised only in the context of plantation and village contests was adopted
by the growing urban lower class living in the barrack yards of Port of Spain. Soon a dozen yard bands
emerged, very similar to the capoeira gangs in Rio de Janeiro, grouping men and some women from