Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

Claiming that capoeira originated in Angola allowed Pastinha to ‘re-Africanize’ a practice at a time
reformers such as Bimba claimed that capoeira was Brazilian altogether, and had been entirely developed in
the New World. Pastinha did not entirely reject that opinion, but in contrast to Bimba thought it important to
emphasize the ancestral link with Angola. It is not easy to summarize Pastinha’s position regarding the
question of capoeira origins, since most of his statements were made in answer to specific questions or
challenges and he shifted his emphasis over the years. The sentence ‘Capoeira came from Africa’ in his
ladainha ‘Bahia, nossa Bahia’ has been interpreted as an indication that capoeira came, as a fully developed
art, from Africa. In his manuscripts Pastinha refers on several occasion to the question of origins. Under the
heading ‘Capoeira is the fight of the fights’ he asks for instance:

Why is Capoeira the second fight? Because the first one is from the caboclos [Pastinha means here the

native Brazilians and their descendants], and the [one of the] Africans joined with the dance, parts of

the batuque and parts of the candomblé, [and] they looked for their modality. In each parish an

African [had] the responsibility to teach, to make it the weapon against his persecutor, they

communicated through improvised chants, danced and sang plots, invented tricks and games [...]^50

Angelo Decânio interprets this reference to the ‘first fight’ being of that of the caboclos as an ‘indicator for
the Brazilian origin of capoeira’.^51 If that were the case, why did Pastinha emphasize the role of the
Africans teaching ‘in each parish’? Another passage seems however to confirm that Pastinha believed the
caboclos and the Jejes (Brazilian denomination for the Gbe-speaking Fon and Ewe from Dahomey) hade
both made a contribution towards capoeira:

With faith and courage to teach the youth of the future I am only looking after this marvellous fight

which was left as a child, aquired from the primitive dance of the caboclos (Indians), from the

batuque, and the candomblé originated by the Africans from Angola or Jejes.^52

The question of capoeira origins was already a tricky one then. It seems that no detailed oral tradition about
its Angolan origins any longer existed at the time, beyond the generic belief shared by practitioners—and
documented since Manuel Querino at the beginning of the nineteenth century—that it was a ‘game from
Angola’, and some occasional references to Luanda or Angola in capoeira songs. That is, angoleiros could
not rely on such a powerful connection as that of candomblé ‘nations’, where liturgical language, names of
ancestors, kings and gods provided strong links to the ancestral homelands. Pastinha was caught
between several constraints. The reaffirmation of the Angolan heritage was not unproblematic in the
Brazilian context. The assertion of African-ness itself was still perceived in Brazil as ‘unpatriotic’ and
‘divisive’. Both populist and military regimes were always keen to suppress any attempts of autonomous
black organization. In 1937, for instance, the Vargas Regime dissolved the moderate Black Movement
(Frente Negra Brasileira, founded in 1931 in São Paulo) along with all other parties.
Claiming Angola as a marker of traditionalism represented a challenge even within the Afro-Brazilian
community. As we have seen, the Nagô (Yoruba) had established a hegemony over Afro-Bahian culture and
religion, which was consolidated in the 1930s. ‘Bantus’ were, among both academics and Afro-Bahians,
considered as inferior and not faithful to traditions. Proclaiming a revivalism based on Angola represented
therefore a double challenge and even a temerity. That might explain why Pastinha welcomed the n’golo
hypothesis by Neves e Souza who visited his academy in the 1960s (see Chapters 1 and 2) and occasionally
mentioned or even adopted the myth of the Zebra dance in later years. Yet he always remained less

156 PASTINHA AND ANGOLA STYLE