In 1971 he arrived in London, where he started teaching in a Dance Academy for a year. He toured Europe
for three years, teaching in different cities, before returning to Brazil.^113
Another pioneer in Europe was Martinho Fiúza, who came to Germany in 1978 and started to teach in
Munich. M.Paulo Siqueira arrived in 1980, and set up a capoeira school in Hamburg. They were followed
by hundreds of other capoeira teachers—not always mestres—that came during the 1980s and settled in
different cities of Western Europe, mainly in Germany, France, Italy, England and the Netherlands, later in
Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal. They are part of a wider migration movement,
whereby, for the first time in the history of Brazil, rather than to receive immigrants, hundreds of thousands
of its citizens have left the country.
Capoeira was disseminated in various ways within Europe. As in the United States, some senior mestres
moved from Brazil to Europe. Mestre Canela set up his group Mangangá in Italy in the early 1980s. In 1987,
Senzala teachers M.Peixinho, Sorriso, Garrincha e Toni Vargas spent six months in Europe, realizing
workshops and the first European Capoeira Encounter.^114 Subsequently M.Sorriso founded a Senzala group
in Montpellier (France), and from 1989 onwards M.Gato established Senzala groups in Newcastle and
Harlow (Britain). M.Umoi, a student of M.Cordeiro and Alcides from Brasília, took his group União na
Capoeira to Portugal in 1990. M.Ousado, a student of M.Zé Pereira in São Paulo, settled in London with his
own organization, Argola de Ouro, in 1992 and later took capoeira to Singapore.
Another way capoeira was disseminated was through younger teachers that belonged to major Brazilian
groups, and who maintained close links to a senior capoeira figure in Brazil. Thus M.Beija-Flor set up in
Paris, and M.Sylvia Bazarelli and CM.Marquinhos in London in the mid-1980s, teaching the style of
M.Sombra, leader of the Senzala group from Santos, who came from Brazil to attend tbeir graduation
ceremonies.^115 M.Pastel, from the ‘street capoeira’ style of Mercado Modelo in Salvador, created Raizes de
Rua in London in 1997, and maintains a weekly roda open to all styles (see Figure 7.8). During the 1990s,
many big groups from Brazil—Abadá, Artes das Gerais, Cordão de Ouro, Muzenza, Palmares, Filhos de
Bimba, etc.—established nuclei in many other cities that further contributed to the globalization of
capoeira.
Finally, as in other places, capoeira spread in Europe through a number of younger teachers, not all of
them fully qualified for the task. Most came to the Old Continent in search of a better life and the capoeira
boom seems to offer those who often do not possess formal qualifications a means of survival. Thus some
young Brazilians, who were rather average capoeiristas in Brazil, have auto-graduated themselves with the
mestre title. They are known in the capoeira universe for having acquired their master belt ‘on the plane’
during their flight to Europe. The problem of auto-graduated mestres and teachers without supervision,
already an issue in Brazil, is aggravated abroad by the almost complete absence of peer control. In
particular any new region to which capoeira spreads constitutes a kind of Wild West for the art, where
almost everything goes. A number of Europeans with only superficial knowledge of capoeira and Brazilian
culture also started to teach. They might distribute glossy leaflets praising their academies and events, but
have no senior mestre really supporting their work. This has resulted in growing concern among qualified
teachers and mestres, who insist on maintaining standards and raises the issue of ‘institutionalization’ of
capoeira outside Brazil.
Initially, capoeira professionals in Europe felt rather isolated and were usually happy to co-operate with
teachers from other groups regardless of individual styles. Some venues became crucial for the growth of
European capoeira. Since 1988, M.Paulo Siqueira has been organizing the yearly summer meeting in
Hamburg, attended by many Brazilian mestres. It developed into one of the biggest capoeira events in
Europe during the 1990s, every year attracting hundreds of practitioners from many countries. Cláudio
Samara and Luíz Carlos (Marreta) started to organize the Amsterdam Easter meeting in 1991; which has since
188 CONTEMPORARY CAPOEIRA