Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art

Pelourinho Square in the old city centre.^66 The move to that impressive town house in such a central
location contributed towards the success of Pastinha’s group.^67
During that period only a few other angoleiros were still teaching. M.Waldemar, supported by M.Traira,
maintained a school in the Liberdade neighbourhood. M.Caiçara and M.Sete Molas opened academies in
that same area, whilst M.Cobrinha Verde taught in Chame-Chame and later Amaralina, M.Gato in Calabar,
M.José Domingos and M.Rafael in Roça do Juliana, M.Curió at the Ladeira de Saude and M.Espinho
Remoso in Fazenda Grande. Other angoleiro mestres, such as M.Canjiquinha and M.Bigodinho, thought it
necessary to make concessions to the expanding Regional and ended up teaching a mixture of Regional and
Angola.^68 And most of the other mestres who taught did not deliver the same kind of systematic teaching as
Pastinha. The fact that just half a dozen of other veteran angoleiros (out of many dozens considered to be of
mestre level) managed to establish and maintain schools with regular teaching further contributed to
enhance Pastinha’s core role for the continuity of the Angola style.
During the 1960s the CECA became widely recognized as the main school of capoeira Angola. As
F.Abreu explains:

The Sunday roda of Pastinha’s academy filled the gap left by the discontinuation of the other Sunday

rodas of Waldemar da Paixão, in Pero Vaz [...] and Cobrinha Verde at the Mirante do Chame-Chame

[...]—which had been animated meeting points for the Angoleiros of Bahia.^69

M.Pastinha taught every Tuesday and Thursday (later also Friday) evening, and held an open roda on
Sunday afternoons, which many famous mestres used to attend. Pastinha slowly built up a group of
advanced students, many of whom later became mestres and teachers in their own right: João Pequeno, João
Grande, Boca Rica, Gildo Alfinete, Bola Sete and others.
Despite the fact that some women capoeiras existed among the older generation, few if any women in
Bahia trained and became advanced students in Pastinha’s academy or any other schools of the city. The
mestre repeatedly lamented the fact that women in Bahia were not training capoeira since ‘the women must
also take her share in the defense of the home’.^70 His emancipationist views on the matter crystallized in
the famous saying that ‘capoeira is for man, child and woman’.
M.Boca Rica reveals that Pastinha represented much more than a mere instructor of physical education for
his students:

Pastinha was an excellent mestre, a humble person, a friend, you understand? I considered him my

second father. Any place he went, he took me along with him, he liked me very much [...] We talked...

Sometimes I went there [to the academy] early...during the week I went there early to talk with him

until the start of the class. He put the wooden bench and told us to do the movements. Half moon from

the front, half moon from the back, the stingray’s tail...He set out the chair [for us] to give a

stingray’s tail over the chair, under the chair, and in the middle. He put the oldest one to explain [to

the others] the rhythms, the name of the rhythms, the significance of all this.^71

From the 1960s onwards tourists started to visit the academy to watch the ‘authentic’ capoeira Angola.
Visitors to the academy usually pointed out that Pastinha’s academy was well looked after, ‘organized’, and
offered an ‘equilibrated and methodized teaching’.^72 An inscription over the door of his academy stated his
African revivalism: ‘Angola, mother capoeira. Slave mandinga [witchcraft] in the quest for freedom; its
beginning has no method, its end is not conceivable for the wisest capoeirista’.

160 PASTINHA AND ANGOLA STYLE