This navy officer took a degree at the School of Physical Education of the Army and became the chief
instructor of the Centre of Physical Education of the Navy (CEM), both in Rio de Janeiro. After training for
two years with Artur Emídio, Lamartine felt confident enough to launch, with official support, a programme
of capoeira instruction for marines. Two hundred soldiers and eight officers, including the CEM
Commander and the CEM ju-jitsu instructor, started to train in March 1961 under the orders of Artur
Emídio, Djalma Bandeira and Lamartine, thus ‘re-establishing the moral of capoeira as a national fight
modality’. The plan was to train capoeira instructors, who would then teach capoeira in all navy units, and
in particular to the marines serving on the aircraft carrier Minas Gerais, symbol of Brazil’s modern military
power.
Lamartine had previously spent two months in Bahia researching capoeira, where he trained with a
student of Bimba. He also tried to learn from Bimba and other reputed angoleiro mestres, but his interest in
the art was met with suspicion. Lamartine declared that the great capoeiras were mystery-mongers who did
not want to teach their kicks. He admitted to have falsely befriended them and concealed his real intentions
in order to extract information from the old mestres. In return, they filled his head with the most fantastic
tales, which they made up on the spot. One can detect here a pattern that was to become quite common in
subsequent years: young fellows from the cities of the Southeast travelling to Bahia in order to extract all
the mysteries of the art from old mestres, mainly for their own, or their group’s benefit. Lamartine
subsequently published a capoeira handbook, with detailed instructions for training in capoeira on its own.
It was reprinted many times under the suggestive title ‘Capoeira without a master’.^11
The repeated capoeira exhibitions and the dissemination of capoeira ‘academies’ in Rio started to have an
impact. During the early 1960s capoeira had already conquered a significant public space, and since Rio
still was, for all practical purposes, the capital of Brazil, this had national repercussions. A small group of
people started what they called ‘Operation Capoeira’, a concerted attempt to raise public awareness of
capoeira. The capoeira teacher André Lacé was responsible for a radio programme called ‘Roda de
Capoeira’. Broadcast by the state-owned Radio Roquette Pinto, in 1965 and again in 1974, it promoted both
the art and the capoeira events that were happening in the city. At this stage film directors and musicians
also became interested in capoeira, Wanda Maria recording the ‘Samba do berimbau’ and Ed Lincoln ‘Na
onda do berimbau’. The emerging Bossa Nova movement contributed the inspiring hit ‘Berimbau’,
composed by Baden Powell and Vinicius de Moraes. Capoeira scenes figured prominently in movies such
as Pagador de promessas (1962, directed by Anselmo Duarte) and further contributed to making the
performers (M.Canjiquinha, Pitu) known to a wider public.^12
Capoeira also spread more informally through street practice, especially in the poorer neighbourhoods in
the Northern Zone. Paradigmatic of that process is the street roda in Caxias. It was originally set up for a
festival dedicated to St Anthony by two young brothers who were training with M.Barbosa (student of
Paulo Gomes) during the early 1970s, and then established as a regular event on Sundays. At first only poor
children played, their intention being to enjoy capoeira whilst earning some spare change from the
audience, and the established mestres did not bother to attend and legitimize the venue with their
presence. Yet the roda attracted a growing number of youngsters and developed into a major event where
the upcoming stars of Cariocan capoeira could measure their skills (see Figure 7.1). Despite voicing
criticisms, younger mestres such as Gegê, Silas and Touro ended up attending, especially during the festival.
Later M.Russo and Rogério assumed the direction of the Caxias roda.^13 Other important street rodas were
regularly held at the Quinta da Boa Vista, the central train station and in Flamengo.^14
Whilst the capoeira of Artur Emídio and other Bahians was expanding in the northern zone of Rio,
another success story took place in the more elegant neighbourhoods along the waterfront, known as the
southern zone. After a trip to Bahia in 1964, where they trained with M.Bimba for some months, the urban
CONTEMPORARY CAPOEIRA 169