the feet and head-butts, some argue, could be delivered by men in chains.
Moreover, many oral traditions claim that the practice of capoeira allowed
those slaves who escaped and survived to establish communities in the bush
to defend themselves from the groups of armed men who sought to appre-
hend and return them to captivity.
Written records alluding to the art date only to around the last cen-
tury of the slave experience (beginning in 1770), and in them capoeira was
identified, not with African Brazilians, but with a Portuguese bodyguard of
the viceroy. Throughout the nineteenth century, references to capoeira
identify it not with the rural settings of the folk histories but with urban
centers such as Recife, Salvador, and Rio de Janeiro. The art was generally
associated with the street, petty crime, and social disorder into the early
decades of the twentieth century. Contemporary traditions echo this earlier
disreputability. For example, it has been traditional to receive a nickname
at one’s batizada(“christening,” or acceptance into the art). This harks
back to the necessity of a street name among earlier capoeiristas. As one
might expect with an art of the street, the traditional way to learn capoeira
was by observing play, by playing, or by using it in street defense. Any in-
struction was extremely informal. Brazilian author Jorge Amado in his
novel Jubiabágives several accounts of capoeira as it existed on the streets
of his native Bahia. These vignettes reflect both the unstructured way of ac-62 Capoeira
Theatrical reproduction of the maculelé dance associated with capoeira. (Julie Lemberger/Corbis)