Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

chiefs implemented that we know of the existence of a slave practice called capoeira. Even though police
records unfortunately do not tell us everything we would like to know about it, they still allow us to infer
some important aspects of early nineteenth-century capoeira.
Slave capoeira, 1808–1850
When I saw Vidigal
My blood ran cold
If I am not fast enough
The quati rat will lick me
(Popular verse about Major Vidigal,
famous for his harsh treatment of capoeiras) 15
CAPOEIRAGEM IN RIO DE JANEIRO 71
Felipe, a slave from Angola, was taken into custody on 10 September 1810. He seems to have been the first
individual arrested for ‘capoeira’ by the Royal Police Guard created two years earlier. Guard records list the
individuals detained during subsequent years (1810–1821) and reveal some important details about the
earliest form of capoeira we know of. Leila Algranti, the first historian to have made a systematic use of this
source, found that capoeira accounted for 438 (9 per cent) of the 4,853 grounds given for arrests. It was
second only to escapes of slaves. 16 Carlos Eugênio Soares looked more specifically at these first known
victims of police repression in Rio. Out of the several hundred individuals arrested for capoeira during these
years, as much as 91 per cent were slaves. 77 per cent of the detained were Africans and 10.6 creoles (with
the rest of unspecified origins). 17
The provenance of these first capoeiras caught in the net of state repression is also crucial for the
discussion of its African origins. Eighty-four per cent came from West Central Africa, 9 per cent from East
Africa (Mozambique) and only 7 per cent from West Africa (mainly Minas and Calabars). 18 The modest
participation of West Africans could lead to the conclusion that their contribution to the development of the
art was not important. One should however keep in mind that this percentage is consistent with their overall
proportion among Africans in Rio, which never amounted to more than 7 per cent before 1850. 19 Therefore,
their presence can also mean that there was some kind of West African input into capoeira from a very early
stage.
The breakdown of the West Central African origins is even more revealing. Over 40 per cent of them
came from northern Congo, including the Cabindas, Congos and Monjolos, representing a higher
percentage than their share of the African population in the city. Slaves from northern Angola (mainly
Angolas, Rebolos, Cassanges and Cabundas) accounted for almost a third of all slaves from the Kongo/
Angola region, which corresponds roughly to their overall proportion among African slaves. The slaves
from southern Angola (Benguelas and Ganguelas) are not quite as prominent among the arrested capoeiras
in that early period as one would expect, since they already represented then the largest group of Africans in
the city, and supposedly brought the capoeira ancestor n’golo along with them. They account for only 23
per cent of the arrested West Central Africans. Soares rightfully points out that one should look more at the
estuary of the Congo river and northern Angola for possible African origins of capoeira, and that ‘diverse
ancestral practices’ entered in its genesis. 20 Given the participation not only of Africans from different
macro-regions but also of creoles in capoeira at that early phase, he concludes that ‘we cannot affirm that
capoeira was an exclusively African activity. In reality, it seems that it was the fruit of a combination of
dispersed African traditions and creole cultural “inventions”‘. 21 As we have seen in Chapter 2, the problem