slaves worked as street vendors. Pedlars literally crowded the streets of Rio, selling food and many other
objects. The exercise of a craft was a further important slave occupation implying a higher status. Slave
artisans laboured in almost every skilled trade, especially in carpentry and masonry, but also as shoemakers
or tailors. Some owners also forced their younger slaves into prostitution. Last but not least, slaves worked
as artists, being employed by sculptors or painters, or playing in music bands.^5 The groups of musicians
known as barbeiros (because many of them—free or slaves—worked as barbers) were crucial for the fusion
of styles and the circulation of instruments from different traditions that has characterized Brazilian music
ever since.^6
What made urban slavery so different were its peculiar labour arrangements. In many activities, slaves
enjoyed a relative freedom of movement, unimaginable on plantations. Slaves working in the streets were
not under the permanent surveillance of an overseer. In some professions they even enjoyed more autonomy.
Many owners made their slaves rent out their labour to others. Some of these ‘slaves for hire’ (negros de
ganho) had to deliver a fixed sum to their owners at the end of the day, which meant they could earn more
and keep the difference. This allowed negros de ganho to acquire their own peculium, and eventually even
purchase their freedom. Given the variety of slave activities, and the different ranks or status associated with
each of them, slaves formed no undifferentiated, homogenous mass. The slave’s position was furthermore
determined by the status of his or her owner; a slave of a wealthy elite family, for example, benefited from
the consideration due to his master. Since many urban slaves were not under permanent surveillance from
an overseer, they were exposed to a more collective type of social control from the dominant white society—
and this was precisely the terrain where capoeira was to play a crucial role.
Living conditions for slaves in Rio de Janeiro were, however, far from being good. Slaves had to live in
overcrowded accommodations and they were exposed to the disastrous sanitary conditions that prevailed
throughout the nineteenth century in the city. As a consequence, many slaves suffered from infectious-
parasitic diseases such as tuberculosis and dysentery. They were also more exposed than plantation slaves to
the epidemics that devastated Rio on many occasions. The city was ravaged by at least eight major
epidemics of smallpox alone between 1825 and 1850.^7 As a result, mortality rates among the slave
population in the cities could exceed those on the plantations.
Fear of black slaves haunted the European nobles, who disembarked in Rio less than 20 years after the
insurrection which had destroyed another thriving sugar economy based on slavery in French Saint-
Domingue, and killed all whites left on that part of the island. For decades, the ‘horrors of Haiti’ were part
of the collective fears of wealthier Europeans, representing a sad lesson about the dangers of exporting
liberal and revolutionary ideas to the colonies. The newly arrived Portuguese nobles found that they had to
live in a world dominated—at least visually and numerically—by slaves, and endure the noisy
manifestations of what Europeans considered a ‘brutish’ (boçal) culture.
In this context of intense cultural confrontation, capoeira is, for the first time, systematically mentioned in
written sources. The whites in charge of the city’s security became increasingly concerned by the
subversive potential of slaves ‘playing capoeira’. This does not necessarily mean that capoeira did not exist
in previous decades. As Carlos Eugênio Soares pointed out, some of the patterns of urban slave resistance were
already in place by the mid-eighteenth century. Slaves infringed restrictions imposed by owners and the town
council, assembling at night, going on the rampage to settle accounts, and carrying blades or other
weapons.^8 But to date, historians have found only one single eighteenth-century document that briefly
mentions capoeira. Dating from 1789, it refers to the arrest of a mulatto slave called Adam, accused of
being a capoeira.^9 Historically, this term denominates the practitioner—today called capoeirista—whilst
capoeiragem is often used, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century, for the practice itself.^10
CAPOEIRAGEM IN RIO DE JANEIRO 69