Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

CAPOEIRAGEM IN RIO DE JANEIRO 77
any futile and arbitrary reason, such as a ‘suspicious’ or ‘strange attitude’, or lingering at a corner, was
enough to arrest slaves and to a large extent even free coloured individuals. The data from several prisons
suggest that capoeira remained an important reason for detention throughout the nineteenth century. From
288 slaves that entered the Calabouço jail during the year 1857–1858, 80 (31 per cent) were arrested for
that reason, and only 28 (10.7 per cent) for running away. 40 Out of 4,303 arrests in Rio police jail in 1862,
404 detainees—nearly 10 per cent—had been arrested for capoeira. 41
What treatment awaited detained capoeiras? As we have seen, immediate ‘correction’ was initially
administered in the form of whipping. During the first years of repression, capoeiras were given between
100 and 300 lashes in jail and then released. In 1824, the government substituted the whipping of capoeiras
by three months’ work in the navy dockyards. This was not necessarily a lighter punishment given the
conditions of labour and detention there. 42 This verdict was applied to slave and free alike. Two weeks
later, however, another instruction recognized that free and freedmen needed to appear before the judge due
to the dispositions of the 1824 Constitution that granted them citizen’s rights. It does not seem, however,
that the arrested free capoeiras ever enjoyed that right. By indulging in ‘unacceptable’ behaviour associated
with slaves, it was as if they had also been stripped off their recently acquired Brazilian citizenship. A new
instruction issued a couple of months later introduced a cumulative punishment for slave capoeiras:
whipping and forced labour in the dockyards. At that stage some slave owners complained against what
they saw as an unacceptable intrusion of the government in their private property affairs.
The liberal reforms of the 1820s and 1830s brought some modest improvements for captives. A decree by
the Minister of Justice Diogo Antonio Feijó from November 1831 limited the number of lashes given to
slaves to a total of 200, and no more than 50 lashes were to be given on a single day. 43 But this did not
fundamentally alter the way capoeiras, slave and free alike, were dealt with. On the contrary, the 1820s also
registered growing violence against slaves and blacks, and after the failed rebellion of Muslim slaves in
Salvador, in 1835, the government adopted again tougher measures. In 1845 a new police chief established
that slaves arrested for capoeira were to be administered 100 lashes after which they were to serve one
month on public works. In the case of free capoeiras, authorities increasingly resorted to drafting them into
military service or imprisoning them under other charges, more likely to result in jail sentences (vagrancy,
disorder, or non accomplishment of earlier promises of ‘good behaviour’). 44
The slave whippings usually took place in the Calabouço jail at the bottom of Castelo hill, assigned
exclusively to slaves (see map). Owners sent their captives here for whipping, and were charged a fee. The
Aljube was originally an ecclesiastical prison, which the Church had agreed to lease to the government for
common convicts. Many prisoners were however locked up without due process or sentence for years.
Sanitary conditions in both prisons were beyond description, and many slaves or free people did not leave
them alive. Only the House of Correction, built in the 1830s, offered slightly better conditions. The navy
arsenal was the main destination for arrested slave capoeiras, once they had been administered their
immediate ‘correction’. The jail and working places of the navy arsenal were spread over various locations:
a prison-ship, the Presiganga, where prisoners worked during the day and were locked up during the night;
the arsenal prison on the Cobras Island, with free and slave inmates, and the Dique, or dockyards, on the
same island, for the construction of which slaves and other inmates were employed during the years 1824–
1861. 45 Especially during their terms in the navy arsenal, slaves and free capoeiras were forced to socialize
with other prisoners. The jail population of these years consisted not only of common criminals charged
with theft, assault or murder, but equally of many individuals arrested for violating curfews or public order.
Sailors and political prisoners (the most prominent of the latter being Cipriano Barata, the revolutionary
leader from Bahia), constituted two sizeable groups through which arrested capoeiras were exposed to new
ideas and new forms of organization. Soares noticed a ‘high degree of social exchange’ between slaves and