Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

THE CONTEXT OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC 65
Slaves from different origins practised combat games throughout Plantation America in their free time,
mainly on Sunday afternoons or during festivals such as carnival. They practised them alongside other
‘pastimes’ such as playing music and dancing. What were friendly games in this context acquired new
meanings when contests became more serious: to settle a dispute, to prove one’s honour or to win a prize.
Prize matches for masters, in particular, would not allow for many of the original African meanings to be
passed on, even though they might help to keep alive a specific type of combat technique. Even when used
as a weapon in fights, combat techniques acquired new meanings given that conflicts in plantation societies
were of a different order to those of pre-colonial or contemporary Africa.
Hence, in the Americas, the combat techniques practised by slaves were usually known as ‘games’ that were
‘played’ and were not perceived—as in Africa—as primarily ceremonial dances or state rituals. They still
fulfilled important functions in the slave community. Even though they served recreational purposes they
certainly had deeper meanings than just pastimes. Combat games could help to reconstitute a community, to
settle disputes or to re-affirm ethnic pride in a society that discriminated against the slaves’ original cultures.
Slaves also relied on their beliefs and magical practices for best performances, although we have no
evidence that creole combat games were always closely or exclusively linked to one particular religious
practice as it had been in Africa. If many made use of ‘witchcraft’ to support their strength, this was not
necessarily an intrinsic part of any game, and thus the relationship between both could be loosened over
time without affecting the practice. Therefore, despite the important links with religion to be examined in
more detail for capoeira, it appears that most combat games in Plantation America were not considered an
intrinsic part of a specific religious practice. Some combat games in the diaspora, however, were embedded
in wider religious manifestations, such as the stick fighting in the procession for St Anthony in Venezuela
or capoeira played during celebrations for Bahian saints (see Chapter 4). They therefore could constitute an
aspect of a complex expression of popular culture that went beyond the narrow limits of a mere combat game.
As we are going to see, this also applies to capoeira and might be one reason for its survival.
A striking analogy among Afro-American combat games is the coexistence of different modalities using
similar techniques in different contexts: friendly game, rougher competition, or real fight. As has been
suggested for capoeira, 149 this ‘strategic ambivalence’ between various modalities probably constitutes a
key heritage of slavery, since it does not seem to have featured prominently in African combat games. We
will need to pay particular attention to this when dealing with capoeira, and as well as comparing this with
the modalities, or styles existing in other martial arts. 150 The examples of stick fighting and ladjia suggest
that circularity and mutual borrowing existed between different combat games and question the belief in a
necessary single origin for any of them.
We can now attempt to sketch briefly the situation in Brazil before examining, in the next chapters, the
development of capoeira in more detail. Although no evidence is available so far for the early colonial
period, later sources attest the existence of not only one, but various combat games in Brazil. The Bavarian
painter Rugendas, who provided us with very detailed descriptions of slave culture, observed slaves stick
fighting during the 1820s:
It is also necessary to mention a sort of military dance: two troops armed with poles stand in front of
each other, and the skill consists for each to avoid the thrusts that the adversary strikes at him. 151
Stick fighting and dancing has survived well into the twentieth century through manifestations such as the
maculêlê in Bahia and the maneiro pau in Ceará.
Undoubtedly the most prominent of all combat games in Brazil was and is capoeira. It is mentioned in the
nineteenth-century sources of many provinces: Pará, Maranhão, Pernambuco, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and São