Decriminalization came soon in the form of a certificate that a teaching inspector issued on 9 July 1937 to
Mestre Bimba, acknowledging him as a teacher of physical education and registering his academy in the
Tororó neighbourhood with the Bahian Department of Education, Health and Social Security.^68 This date is
often interpreted as the official legalization of capoeira, which was not entirely the case, since street
capoeira still continued to be illegal. It was, however, an important step in that direction. The exhibition for
the state governor, which had contributed to the institutionalization of capoeira on a regional scale, was
later replicated on a national level. On 23 July 1953, Bimba met Getúlio Vargas, the former President
(1930–1937), dictator (1937–1945) and then democratically re-elected President (1951–1954). Vargas
allegedly said on that occasion that ‘capoeira is the only truly national sport’.^69 The nationalist discourse on
capoeira had finally made it to the very top.
These links with the powerful have often been used as evidence for Bimba’s ‘treacherous’ attitude, the
forgetting of his class origins, and his deliberate whitening of the art. Defenders, in contrast, emphasize his
astute tactics in making alliances with the powerful in order to guarantee the survival of capoeira and
avoiding trouble with the police for himself. In that context it is helpful to remember that Bimba—as so
many other famous capoeiras—did have some personal experience in confronting the police during this
youth. He must have been an exceptional fighter and also tough enough not to fear confrontations with the
police, since he took pride in having been arrested for the twenty-fourth time on the day of his twentieth
birthday, the reason always being for fighting.^70 In August 1936—when Bimba was in his thirties—a
newspaper still reported under the headline ‘It’s not easy to catch a capoeirista. He defended himself using
cabeçadas and rabo de arraias’:
Figure 5.4 Mestre Bimba with two friends, the scientist Nelson de Souza Oliveira and Newton Sales. Courtesy
of Jair Moura.
BIMBA AND ‘REGIONAL’ STYLE 137