Tucum, since Besouro’s body was resistant to metals. Another explains that his persecutors only got hold of
him because they made him sleep with a woman. As a consequence he lost the mandinga which protected
him, and his body, no longer bullet proof, succumbed to his aggressors. Besouro embodies therefore all the
key virtues and qualities of the valentão: the defiance of the police authorities, boldness and courage,
cleverness (malícia) and spiritual protection (mandinga). No wonder that a number of old mestres, among
them Cobrinha Verde and João Pequeno, claimed to be his cousin.^117
Since playing capoeira entailed a wide range of games, and the passage from friendlier modalities to
more confrontational ones, the risk of rule breaking was inherent in the game. Some sources seem to
suggest that disagreement between two players could result in serious injuries, especially if weapons were
involved:
Machete blow. Yesterday morning, Miguel Ferreira dos Santos and Gregório de tal [family name
unknown] were entertaining themselves playing capoeira, when Gregório seized a machete and hit
Miguel with a deep strike, which reached him at the occipital frontal region. The injured went for care
to the Santa Isabel hospital.^118Although mestres in charge of rodas during festivals usually tried to avoid any breaking of rules that would
lead to open violence, they were not always successful. Given the large audience watching the game, no
capoeira wanted to lose face. Festivals also attracted large numbers of players from different
neighbourhoods who did not necessarily know each other, therefore misunderstandings and rougher,
confrontational games were more likely to happen than in a roda among friends and acquaintances in one’s
own neighbourhood.
The festivals in themselves were prone to the eruption of violence for many reasons. They concentrated
thousands of people in a narrow space, many of whom consumed alcohol. In such a context it was easy for a
male to feel offended in his honour because some other male stepped on his foot, groped his lady or looked
at him in the wrong way. Desordeiros attended festivals with the explicit aim of starting some ‘confusion’.
Mestre Caiçara (see Figure 4.10), probably the last of this kind of troublemaker who enjoyed fighting above
all, related one of his rows at a festival as follows:
That was when I fought at the Ribeira [festival on Mondays following the Bonfim celebrations]. It
was opposite the old clubhouse of the Itapagipe, and [there was] a citizen who was chief investigator,
Juracy Otacílio. He was chief of the theft investigation. He was everywhere, you know, he was chief
of a team. He came to me and said:—Caiçara, don’t bother us! Don’t give us any work! Because I
loved to fight, just as a woman likes money! I arrived and there was the capoeira roda and I entered
[...] I started to sing, I started to jump, I started to drink, I started to bathe in beer. After a while the
owner of the stall [barraca] came. He always had some bouncers [capangas] with him who were
from the police...—I don’t want this kind of thing with me! Poor guy...I went and returned the table.
And then the fight started. And they started to hit me. And Caiçara over here, and over there, and
trying to avoid the blows. I was hitting them and they were hitting me. After a while they got hold of
me and arrested me. They took me to the police station on the Papagaio [Square]. After a while my
mother came or she went after the late Cosme Faria, who was an MP, he was one of the great lawyers
in Bahia.^119Mestre Noronha explained the frequent ‘disorders’ and ‘brawls’ at the festival of Santa Luzia do Pilar, in
the port area, through ‘the lack of understanding between the capoeirista, sambista and batuqueiro, and
120 THE CAPOEIRA SCENE IN BAHIA