Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

CAPOEIRAGEM IN RIO DE JANEIRO 81
of the arrested capoeiras, increasing to 33 per cent in 1890, whereas blacks counted for 36 and 30 per cent
respectively in these years, the rest being considered pardos or not being qualified in terms of colour.
Almost all of those classified as whites seem to have been of Portuguese or more generally European
origins: ‘Europeans’ (identified by their place of birth) made up as much as 22 per cent of the arrested
capoeiras in 1885, and 17 per cent in 1890. 65
During the second half of the nineteenth century, capoeira became increasingly popular among members
of the different armed corporations. The National Guard, with a significant number of coloured free men in
its ranks, was the first institution to be infiltrated by capoeiras, at least from the 1850s onwards. Police
chiefs became increasingly worried about the growing numbers of capoeiras causing problems, who were in
fact members of the National Guard. In subsequent years, the army and even the police showed clear signs
of being infiltrated. This ‘strange symbiosis’ between the military and the capoeiras challenges any simple
dichotomy between forces of order and those of slave or black resistance. 66 It also explains why the waves
of repression against capoeiras launched for instance in 1843 or 1878 were ultimately unsuccessful in
eradicating the practice. The multiple and discrete webs of patronage and protection prevented any
repression from being too systematic.
Capoeira even made some inroads into the upper ranks of Cariocan society. Isolated elite practitioners of
capoeira seem to have always existed. A militia lieutenant known as Amotinado, for instance, is reported to
have used head butts and kicks to protect his patron, the Viceroy Marquis de Lavradio, in his erotic
adventures in colonial Rio de Janeiro. 67 Knowledge of capoeira is also attributed to the infamous major of
the militia, Vidigal, who became the right arm of the first Police Intendant, in 1808, and as such was
responsible for the ruthless repression of capoeira and batuques. 68 Yet during the last decades of the Empire,
a more significant number of elite or middle-class males, especially from the armed forces or bohemian
circles, learned capoeira fighting techniques. Some, such as future president of the Republic Floriano
Peixoto and his police chief in Rio, Sampaio Ferraz, became instrumental in the repression of the practice in
which they had themselves indulged. Yet others, especially the journalist and caricaturist Raul Pederneiras
and the Portuguese writer Plácido de Abreu Morais, left us the very few detailed descriptions of the art and
its rituals. 69 The most prominent of all was José Elísio dos Reis, the son of the Count of Matosinhos, owner
of the influential republican newspaper O País. Nicknamed Juca Reis, he made himself known for
brutalizing a famous French actress on the stairs of a theatre, in 1877. He was involved in a number of other
street brawls in subsequent years and deported by the new republican government in 1890. 70
To what extent these social changes impacted on capoeira practice is not easy to assess. The Portuguese
brought along their own traditions of lower-class fighting, resistance and urban bohemia. The stick game
(jogo do pau) was the traditional art of self-defence practised by peasants and shepherds in the northern part
of the country, especially in the Minho province, but also in Spanish Galicia and the Azores—precisely the
areas most immigrants came from. In these regions, young males always carried a stick of approximately
1.60m length with them. Fighting techniques were transmitted from generation to generation, and by the end
of the nineteenth century at least, they were also taught in backyards (patios). When rivalries among young
men or between entire villages erupted during local markets, festivals of patron saints or pilgrimages, the
stick was the main weapon they relied on to fight. 71 Aluísio de Azevedo gave an insightful account of how
Portuguese migrants used sticks to fight Brazilians in his acclaimed novel O Cortiço (1890). In one of the
key scenes, Jerônimo (the Portuguese migrant) confronts Firmo (the mulatto capoeira) as both aim to
possess Rita, the gorgeous Bahian woman. 72
Cascudo suggested that the massive use of sticks and other offensive weapons in Cariocan capoeira after
1850 is due to Portuguese influence. 73 However, as we have seen in Chapter 2, stick fighting was prominent
in many Southern African societies, and we can take it for granted that also some of the slaves deported to