inaugurated by the ‘Week of Modern Art’ in 1922, did these attitudes start to be channelled into more
tangible proposals. Perhaps inspired by the already mentioned O.D.C., Anibal Burlamaqui designed the first
method for a national gymnastics based on capoeira, launched as a pamphlet in 1928.^46 As the preface of his
work stated, it was ‘a battle cry for brasilidade’ (‘Brazilian-ness’). The author, a sportsman, practitioner of
Swedish gymnastics, athletics and boxing, departed from earlier nationalist views insofar as he recognized
the slave origins of capoeira. According to him, runaway slaves invented the art. They did not build on
previous African traditions, but rather developed it in the intimate contact with nature and whilst resisting
their capture: the maroons, ‘fraternizing with the animals’ in the wilderness, ‘jumping from one [tree] to the
next like monkeys’, became ‘extraordinarily dexterous’. They developed a ‘strange game of arms, legs,
head and rump, with such an agility and such violence, able to give them a fabulous superiority [over the
slave catchers]’. The last sentence became a catchphrase repeated ad infinitum by future generations of
capoeiristas. I think Burlamaqui should be given credit for inventing the powerful myth of runaway slaves
creating capoeira in the wilderness.
The development of capoeira, according to Burlamaqui, ‘encapsulates, although still a bit confused and
ill defined, all the elements for a perfect physical culture, in accordance with our environment.’^47 His
proposal was simple: ‘I, therefore, being a Brazilian, loving where I belong to, idealized a rule to offer it
and make it a sport, an exercise, a game [...]’. His proposal, once more reflected the idea that capoeira, in
order to serve national ideals, had to be hygienized, adapted, and reformed. Yet for the first time, someone
had developed a concrete training method based on these nationalist principles.
After 1920 racial theories came increasingly under attack in US academia. Anthropologists such as Franz
Boas (1858–1942) and later Ashley Montagu (1905–1999) challenged all the common assumptions of racial
Figure 1.1 Myth: the romanticized and anachronistic image of the mulatto capoeira projected back into colonial times.
Drawing from Luiz Edmundo, O Rio de Janeiro nos tempos dos vice-reis (1763–1808), (Rio de Janeiro, 1936); Albert
Sloman Library, Essex University.
COMPETING MASTER NARRATIVES 17