Street Capoeira and The Memorialization-92034388

Street Capoeira and the Memorialization
of Slavery in Rio de Janeiro

Matthias Röhrig Assunção
Capoeira is a combat game developed by enslaved Africans and Brazilian-born

Blacks on the streets and squares of port cities in late colonial Brazil. From the
1930s onwards, modernized styles such as Regional and Angola developed, which
moved practice to the closed spaces of schools (“academies”). This paper looks at
the re-emergence of street performances (rodas) in Rio de Janeiro, in particular
those of the “Rio Street Roda Connection” (2012–2016), amid the urban reno-
vation of the central areas for the mega-events of 2014 and 2016. Some of these
street rodas take place on locations that are highly significant for the history of
slavery, such as the Valongo Wharf. The article discusses to what extent playing
capoeira can be understood as a re-enactment of the history of slavery, and how
the street rodas and accompanying events contribute to the memorialization of
slavery and the resistance of the enslaved. It also analyzes to what extent disputes
over identity, ownership and urban territories contributed to the break-up of
the Connection.
Capoeira é um jogo de combate desenvolvido por africanos e crioulos escravizados

nas ruas e praças de cidades portuárias brasileiras no final da época colonial.
A partir de 1930, estilos modernizados conhecidos como Regional e Angola
apareceram, que mudaram a prática para o espaço fechado das “academias.”
Esse artigo examina a reaparição e crescimento de rodas na rua no âmbito da
“Conexão Carioca” (2012–2016), na época da renovação urbana de áreas centrais
do Rio para os megaeventos de 2014 e 2016. Algumas dessas rodas acontecem
em locais altamente simbólicos para a história da escravidão, como o Cais do
Valongo. O artigo discute até que ponto jogar capoeira pode ser entendido como
uma encenação da história da escravidão, e como as rodas de rua e eventos asso-
ciados podem contribuir para a memorialização da escravidão e da resistência
dos escravizados. Também analisa em que medida controvérsias em torno da
“apropriação” da capoeira, identidades e territórios urbanos contribuíram para
o fim da Conexão.
doi:10.3368/lbr.59.1.143 143
Luso-Brazilian Review 59:1
ISSN 0024-7413 • e-ISSN 1548-9957
© 2022 by the Board of Regents of the
University of Wisconsin System
144 Luso-Brazilian Review 59:1
S aturday, September 15, 2012, was one of those beautiful spring days in Rio
de Janeiro, a perfect 26 Celsius, neither too hot nor humid, or cold. When
approaching the site of the Valongo Wharf late in the morning, I noticed the
gentle breeze and thought: This is ideal weather for a capoeira street roda! It
was just after noon when Mestra Janja from Salvador, one of the most senior
female capoeira mestres of Capoeira Angola and an engaged activist for
Black and gender equality, opened the ritual circle or roda (where capoeira is
performed). She sang a traditional litany (ladainha) that sought to spiritually
prepare participants for the performance, whilst at the same time requesting
ancestral permission and benevolence. She was playing the gunga, or Brazilian
musical bow (berimbau), with the deepest sound. To her left stood Mestre
Célio, leader of the capoeira group Aluandê, playing the medium berimbau,
and next to him, on the viola, the musical bow with the highest pitch, Mestre
Carlão, the organizer of this third roda on the Valongo Site in Rio’s port area.
The capoeira orchestra was complemented by two tambourines, an agogô
(double metal bell), a wooden scrapper and an atabaque drum, played by other
mestres, teachers and advanced students. M Janja switched to a louvação (praise
song), and then to a corrido, which allows games to begin. Two experienced
capoeiristas, Mestre Moura from Caxias and Contramestre Coqueiro, were
crouched at the feet of the musical bow players. They had been accompanying
Janja’s praise song with inviting theatrical gestures, contributing to the opening
of the ritual space of the roda and now started the first game.
This third roda at the Valongo location was well attended by over fifty
capoeiristas (practitioners) plus a number of onlookers. In the middle of the
performance, Mestre Carlão stopped the roda to graduate a British student of
his, Charley, to become a “treinel,” in other words qualified to teach capoeira.
As custom demands, Charley had to play various mestres or advanced students
in a row to prove his skills. At the end of the roda, everybody descended the
steps towards the recently unearthed cobble stones of the former Valongo
Quay, where hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans were disembarked
between 1774 and 1831 to serve their new mestres. An elderly Black lady most
people only knew as Tia Lúcia sang a very sad song in Portuguese: “O mar o
mar que trouxe vocês, escravos, tristeza que chorou, deixou tua pátria para
aqui morrer, . . .”1
In my perception, this event signaled an important step in the coming
together of capoeiristas of different skin color, class, and neighborhoods from
Rio de Janeiro, as well as visitors, to remember capoeira’s roots in Africa and
the enslavement Africans endured in Brazil. As an academic I also felt happy
to have contributed to the whole event with a talk that took place prior to
the roda, in which I had tried to summarize some findings from an ongoing
research project about the Angolan Roots of capoeira. The talk thematized the
Assunção 145
“Benguelas,” as the enslaved Africans embarked in that Central African port

were called, and came to call themselves, in Brazil. I explained the combat
games existing in Southwest Angola today and highlighted their martial skills
with weapons such as the porrinho, a kind of wooden-carved cudgel. As a white
male academic from a European background, brought up in Rio de Janeiro
and having lived on both sides of the Atlantic ever since, I felt particularly
moved by what I perceived as a moment of healing the wounds of a terrible
past that will forever haunt the shores of this Ocean. At the same time, we
were also celebrating the resilience of enslaved Africans, who, against all the
odds, managed to develop and pass on the beautiful art of capoeira, carrying
thus a message of hope.
As a historian, I have always been fascinated by the ever-present past in
capoeira. As a practitioner, I am impressed by the change capoeira has under-
gone since I started to train in 1981. This article aims to show how capoeira can
become an exercise in public history of slavery, and Black post-emancipation
struggles. It seeks to assess the potential for uniting and healing, but also to
trace the disputes and conflicts in or around street rodas. It focuses on the
case of these street performances in downtown Rio de Janeiro, some of which
take place on core sites of Black memory such as the Valongo Wharf. In 2012,
the organizers of nine street rodas happening all over the city and suburbs
such as Caxias decided to pool their activities in a “Connection.” The expected
surge in visibility did take place, as more people attended the rodas and relat-
ed events. However, a number of issues also arose among participants which
resulted in the Connection disintegrating some years later. Having attended
these street rodas on a number of occasions since 2004, interviewed mestres,
and exchanged informal views with other participants, I want to reflect here
on these developments and uncover reasons for both growth and crisis.
This recent process is part of a change in the relationship between capoe-
ira and the public space and the role of capoeira in Brazilian society. It also
reflects the impact of new urbanization projects in the central port area
associated with the 2016 Olympics, such as Porto Maravilha. Hence the first
sections below summarize the changes affecting capoeira in the public space
up to the millennium and outline the transformation of the port area, before
examining in more detail the innovations introduced in recent years by four
“mestres” (mestres) from the Rio Street Roda Connection (Conexão Carioca
de Rodas de Rua) active in the central areas of the city. As I intend to show, the
transformation of the urban landscape contributed to the success or demise of
some rodas. Other factors were also crucial in this process, such as the inter-
nal organization of the rodas, the types of activity developed alongside them,
and the social and racial background of participants. Overall, this experience
contributed to increase self-consciousness and pride, but also made apparent
growing divisions over what capoeira is and who is entitled to speak in its name.
The Changing Role of Capoeira

in Rio de Janeiro’s Public Space
Capoeira was first documented in the 1810s in Rio de Janeiro. Most scholars
agree that it was based on prior African forms, although details of specific
inputs remain sketchy.2 The newly created professional police struggled to
repress this unruly practice.3 This “slave capoeira”4 was practiced and played
not only in backyards, but also in streets, on squares and hills surrounding
the city dwellings. The early capoeira already was played in a circle, roda in
Portuguese, surrounded by musicians, participants, and audience.5 As capoeira
expanded, during the second half of the 19th century, to the free lower classes,
its practice became even more visible. Despite periodic clampdowns by the
police, capoeiras (as practitioners were then called) were known for displaying
their skills in front of Catholic processions and military parades. Capoeira
gangs (maltas) throve in many neighborhoods and developed strong local
identities.6 Street fighting between capoeira gangs and the police, or between
rival gangs, were a common feature of imperial Rio de Janeiro.7 The celebrated
writer Machado de Assis (1839–1908) asserted that the main reason capoeiras
sliced up other people’s stomachs was the “erotismo de publicidade” and sug-
gested that newspapers should therefore stop reporting them.8
This eagerness for publicity was cut short by the Republican repression
when the practice of capoeira was banned by the new Criminal Code and
in effect eradicated from the streets of Rio in 1889–1890. The police chief
deported hundreds of capoeiras to a distant Atlantic island or exiled them to
other faraway locations, without proper trial.9 It seems that only in Bahia did
capoeira survive as a complex art form.10 Instead of becoming intertwined
with gangs and political culture as in Rio, practice there was more deeply
integrated in the Afro-Bahian culture. Rodas took place on Sundays in Black
neighborhoods. Although rodas could still be dispersed by police, they were
a common feature on squares during the festas de largo, or celebrations for
patron saints, from November to Carnival, in February.
The revalorization of the Afro-Bahian heritage in the 1930s and the drive
for modernization of the art led to important changes in its practice and its
display in new public spaces. Capoeira moved from the newspapers’ crime
pages to those dedicated to culture, sports, or folklore. Although capoeira
could now be performed at various types of public events—from the 1937
Afro-Brazilian Congress to a demonstration for the Brazilian Communist
Party in the 1940s—modernization took capoeira off the streets, and into the
so-called “academies.” In other words, the creation of formal capoeira groups
with uniforms, and the professionalization of the teachers or mestres, moved
practice to closed spaces.11 Many groups no longer wanted to play in the street,
as this was usually stigmatized as malandragem, that is, idleness and vagrancy,
Assunção 147
an association the modernizers and most practitioners wanted to avoid. Playing

in the street moreover carried far greater risks for one’s own safety.
The modernization of capoeira led initially to the emergence of two com-
peting styles, Regional and Angola. Although Angola is more emphatically
traditionalist, both retained a core of capoeira music, percussion, and lyrics.
With the migration of Bahians to the more industrialized Southeast region of
Brazil from the 1950s to the 1970s a new style developed there, which in many
ways merged elements from Regional and Angola, and later became known
as capoeira “Contemporânea.”12
Modernization changed the relevance of public spaces for capoeira prac-
tice. Contemporânea often focuses on effectiveness (to the point of some
practitioners participating in Mixed Martial Arts competitions) and acrobatic
performance, which are better and more safely trained in the special environ-
ment of a gym hall or “academy.” Hence street rodas in the second half of the
twentieth century represented a very minor element of “sportified” capoeira.
After capoeira’s revival in Rio de Janeiro in the 1950s, a handful of street rodas
took place with some regularity in the city, located at Quinta da Boa Vista,
near the Church of Penha and, during Carnival, at the Central Train Station
next to the samba school parades, as well as in the suburb Duque de Caxias.
Yet by the 1990s, all of these had disappeared with the exception of the Caxias
roda which survives to this day.13
As capoeira acquired more respectability as cultural heritage in the process
of “patrimonialization,” it again became more visible in the public space.14
However, though street rodas may be seen more frequently today, they are
usually one-off events by individual groups. Capoeira continues to be practiced
and played mainly in the closed spaces of the academies.15 For that reason
the organization of regular street rodas in various central locations in Rio de
Janeiro in 2012, known as the Carioca Connection of Street Rodas, departed
from the norm.
Port and City: Reconfigurations of Rio de Janeiro’s Central Area

The re-emergence of street rodas in central Rio must be understood in the
context of the great transformation of Rio de Janeiro’s port and adjacent areas.
Rio’s center had previously been subject to various major urbanization projects,
since the leveling of the Morro do Castelo and the erection of a belle-époque
“Central Avenue” implemented by mayor Pereira Passos at the beginning of
the twentieth century.16 Then in 2011, major works were launched to prepare
for two mega-events that the city hosted: participation in the 2014 Football
World Cup, and the 2016 Olympics, which took place exclusively in Rio.
The port area has undergone a series of functional changes in the course
of its history. During most of the colonial period, the disembarkation and
sale of enslaved Africans took place near the governmental palace, now
Paço Imperial, situated on Praça Quinze de Novembro. In the 1770s, these
activities were transferred to the Valongo beach, at the time still a suburb.
To facilitate disembarkation of enslaved Africans from slave ships anchored
in Rio harbor a stone quay was erected in 1811. The area became known as
the Valongo Wharf, as it was surrounded by warehouses, some of which
served as slave markets. The enslaved Africans went through quarantine,
health checks and recovery in this area. The stigmatization of the whole
neighborhood dates from this period, as contemporaries complained about
the smell of decomposing bodies of enslaved people who failed to recover
from the Middle Passage and whose corpses were disrespectfully dumped in
a mass grave nearby, known as the Cemitério dos Pretos Novos, or thrown
into the surrounding mangroves.17 With the formal (although not actual)
abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1831, the Valongo Wharf was
deactivated and the now illegal trade moved to more discreet locations
along the coast of Rio province. In 1843, the Valongo Quay was covered over
by another stone quay for the reception of the Bourbon princess Theresa,
who was to marry the Brazilian Emperor Pedro II, and thus its very name
disappeared from maps.
Due to landfills in the port zone the area became more distant from the
waterfront, and in the twentieth century the former Valongo site was trans-
formed into a square, the Praça Jornal do Comércio, erasing any memory of
the former infamous trade. The port itself, along the waterfront next to the
three old neighborhoods Saúde, Gamboa and Santo Cristo, was to a large extent
deactivated in 1970 because it could not be adapted to receive containers. Since
the nineteenth century the whole port area, including these neighborhoods
and the nearby Morro da Providência—the first favela, consisting of impro-
vised sheds on a steep hill considered unfit for conventional buildings—came
to be considered, in social terms, a marginal zone.18 Although all port areas
usually are stigmatized zones, as they contain red-light districts, in the case
of Rio this stigmatization extended well beyond the waterfront area itself to
include entire neighborhoods.
In contrast to the city center, most of this area was inhabited by
Afro-Brazilians, which of course contributed to its low esteem in the eyes of
the white elite. However, this area, known as “Pequena África” also became
a cradle of samba, the Afro-Brazilian cultural form consecrated as a symbol
of national Brazilian identity in the 1930s.19 The location known as Pedra do
Sal, home to some famous composers, was declared “national heritage” in
1987.20 The port area also was famous for its capoeiras in various moments of
its history, from Prata Preta, a leader of the Saúde neighborhood during the
1904 anti-vaccination riot, to the Bahian port workers who maintained the
legendary Central Station roda in the 1950s and 1960s.21
Assunção 149
The long neglect of the port area was only reinforced during the period of
the military dictatorship; the most significant “development” consisted in the
erection of a raised motorway (Perimetral) linking the city center to the main
exit road (Avenida Brasil), in 1970. The Perimetral further fragmented the port
area and contributed to the degradation of the squares and streets on which it
was superimposed. All these interventions contributed to the development of a
peculiar urban geography in central Rio de Janeiro, a deleterious split between
the port area and the neighboring business district known as the “Centro.”22
The economic bonanza of the 2000s and the successful bid for two interna-
tional sporting mega-events by the Lula government (2003–2010) provided the
opportunity for an attempt to revitalize and modernize the port area and inte-
grate it into the city. A consortium, Companhia de Desenvolvimento Urbano
da Região do Porto do Rio de Janeiro (CDUPR), was set up to implement the
“Porto Maravilha” plan. While its declared aims were full of promises for a
better life for the area’s poorer residents and the rescue of its cultural heritage,
critics saw it rather as a plan to transform the whole area “into a pleasure space
for the entertainment of a globalized elite.”23
However, even though only 3% of CDURP’s budget was dedicated to cul-
tural projects, cultural initiatives in the area grew in importance over the last
decade because of the involvement of a number of other social actors, interested
in the rescue of the port area’s cultural heritage. The 2000s were marked by
an impressive revival of repressed memories of Black oppression, such as the
excavations of the Valongo Wharf and the nearby Cemetery of New Blacks.
As mentioned, thousands of dead bodies had been dumped there until at least
1831.24 Later, houses were built on the site, erasing it from maps and public
memory. The dead only “returned” in the 1990s, when the owners of one
townhouse discovered human remains while carrying out a renovation. They
actively engaged in its rescue and ended up transforming the small house and
an adjacent building into a site of memory, which is still in private ownership
but now also hosts an association, the Instituto dos Pretos Novos (IPN). The
“Valongo Complex,” comprising this cemetery, the Valongo Wharf, and an
adjacent small park, is developing fast as a lieu de mémoire, or memory site,
for the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil. As Vassalo and Cicalo
have pointed out, this sudden “patrimonialization” can be explained by the
intersection of the “gradual assertion of multi-culturalism and ethnic-racial
diversity” and the revitalization projects, resulting in the active involvement
not only of city planners and administrators, but also of militants of the Black
Movement and committed academic researchers.25 All three groups agreed on
the importance of defusing negative representations of the port area, even if not
for the same motives. It was in this context of massive urban transformation
and battles over its direction and meaning that capoeira street rodas started
to be held in the Port and other central areas.
The “Carioca Connection of Street Rodas” (2012–2016)

In 2012, a couple of street rodas were already happening in the center of Rio
de Janeiro, at Cinelândia (with Mestre Manoel) and Arcos da Lapa (Mestre
Célio), two Black mestres from the traditionalist Angola style. Both lived in the
periphery but decided to hold their rodas in the city center for more visibility.
Initially, their rodas were not well attended. This can be explained by the fact
that Capoeira Angola is less popular than the more exuberant mainstream
style, Capoeira Contemporânea. At that point, Carlo Alexandre Teixeira, better
known as Mestre Carlão, a white mestre of the Angola style with long experience
of teaching capoeira abroad, returned to Rio from the UK.26 He was looking
for a space to organize his own roda. A friend, the Black composer, writer, and
radio broadcaster Délcio Teobaldo, described to him the changes happening
in the port area, and recommended he have a look at the excavations. Walking
by the Valongo site, Carlão happened to see one of the archeologists, Tânia
Andrade Lima, carrying out the excavations and collecting artifacts. She told
him about the importance of the site for the history of slavery and explained
that the official launch was being prepared. Inspired by the sinister story of the
Quay, he decided to hold a regular roda there once a month. The first Valongo
roda took place one week after the inauguration of the archeological site and
its opening to the public in June 2012.27
Carlão was then alerted by Mestre Célio that another roda had just started
on the same Saturday of each month under the historic Arco do Teles, next to
the Praça Quinze de Novembro. This roda was lead by Contramestre Fábio and
his partner Japa (who self-identify as being of mixed ancestry or mestizo). Both
were from “Marrom e Alunos,” the biggest Angola group in Rio at the time. The
Arco do Teles is located on a square next to the Guanabara Bay, where enslaved
Africans had also been disembarked and which had been part of the territory
of the capoeira gang called Malta da Marinha. Mestre Célio then suggested
that it would be better to coordinate these rodas to avoid clashes. He proposed
to join forces and link all the street rodas, creating what became known as the
“Carioca Connection of Street Rodas.” A number of other Capoeira Angola
mestres adhered to the idea, and in a matter of months nine rodas became part
of the Connection. Of these nine, four were located in central Rio (Lavradio,
Teles, Valongo, Cinelândia), two close to the center (República and Praça São
Salvador), one in the Southern zone, one in Caxias, and one in Niteroi on the
other side of the Guanabara Bay.28 In other words, the Connection managed
to link mestres and groups from very different social and racial backgrounds
and from a wide range of locations within the Greater Rio metropolis into a
working alliance.
The Carioca Connection was important in a number of ways for boost-
ing attendance at and visibility of these street rodas. First, by agreeing on a
Assunção 151
schedule of only one roda each Friday or Saturday of every month, timetable
clashes and enhanced competition between mestres were avoided. Second, all
participating mestres encouraged their own students to go to the other street
rodas, and often attended themselves. This increased the number of capoei-
ristas (practitioners) attending every roda. The result was a greater intensity
of performance, and a higher technical level of play (with more experienced
players present), which in turn helped to attract the general public. The more
people gathered, the more the street roda became visible to workers in the
area, passers-by, and tourists. Yet the significance of these street rodas went
well beyond audience numbers.
Many mestres emphasize that holding a roda in the street reconnects them to
the earlier traditions of capoeira. As explained above, before the establishment of
modern groups and academies, capoeira rodas always happened in the street. In
the words of M Cláudio, a Black mestre responsible for the roda on São Salvador
square, in a predominantly white middle-class neighborhood: “O Rio de Janeiro
sempre teve uma característica de roda de rua no passado. Penha, Quinta e a
roda da Central. Essas são as rodas que eu peguei ainda [before they stopped
happening in the 1980s].”29 At the same time, the rodas in the streets today are
different from previous street rodas. Now one particular mestre assumes overall
responsibility for organization, whereas before they were more spontaneous,
with no single person in charge. Mestre Cláudio, born in 1954, and hence the
senior of the Connection, makes a distinction between a “street roda” (roda de
rua) of former times and a “roda in the street” (roda na rua) by an organized
group that usually trains indoors.30 In terms of this distinction, Connection
events would be more correctly characterized as rodas in the street.
It is important to emphasize the difference between a roda in the street
and the rodas in the closed spaces of schools, gyms or “academies.” Not only
is the audience more restricted in the latter, but the whole “energy” is differ-
ent. In the street roda, as Mestre Célio explains: “Você está devolvendo ao
povo o que é dele de fato [. . .] A manifestação cultural tem que estar na rua.”
“Incorpora mais a coisa [. . .] A ancestralidade está muito mais presente [. . .]
A energia positiva” [está na rua]. Porque a capoeira não nasceu na academia,
mas na rua, na feira, no carnaval.”31 This different energy in the street comes
at a price, of course. Rodas in the street are by definition unpredictable. One
never knows who is going to enter the roda or who may want to start a fight.
A street roda therefore requires great skills from the mestre and his assistants
in charge, and the ability to avoid open fights or other types of problems. In
downtown Rio, for example, rodas may have to compete with other events,
loud music, and noise. Drunken people often enter the roda and have to be
dealt with. Contramestre Fábio relates that when they started to hold the street
roda underneath the Arco do Teles, arrangements had to be negotiated with
the people sleeping rough or vendors on the square and in the adjacent street.32
The attendance at some rodas has been greater than at others. The Roda
do Lavradio, which takes place in the middle of busy street market in the
central Lapa district, usually attracts many practitioners. Another reason is
the approach taken by its organizer, Mestre Célio:
Outra coisa: eu recebo as pessoas bem, entendeu? Eu gosto de receber as

pessoas, independente do estilo delas.[. . .] Se o camarada tá com corda na
cintura [a marker of Contemporânea style], vc trata ele bem assim mesmo,
entendeu? Você valoriza a capoeira do cara, valoriza o cara. Deixar o cara
tocar o berimbau, cantar, jogar. Ai o que acontece? Se o cara se sentir bem, na
roda do Lavradio, é por causa disso. Eu nunca fui de barreirar as pessoas. A
única coisa que eu sempre pedi na Lavradio é: sabe tocar, vai tocar. Não sabe
tocar, sai. Nunca proibi.33
Having been present at several rodas there, I can confirm that Lavradio attracts
large number of practitioners from all styles and also from all over the city,
suburbs and periphery. Other mestres used different means to attract new
audiences: for example, a complementary cultural programme. The Arco do
Teles roda is always followed by a samba-de-roda, the rural, Bahian form of
samba, which has been historically associated with capoeira in that state of
Brazil. As CM Fabio explains:
Foi ai que percebi também q tinha muito capoeirista que no final fazia samba,
mas fazia samba capenga, que era samba pela metade. Um samba que era mis-
turado, um samba de caboclo, de Zeca Pagodinho, de Martinho da Vila com
capoeira, era um samba muito misto [. . .] Então a gente começou a procurar
o samba rural mesmo, do Recôncavo baiano, do Sertão, do interior da Bahia
mesmo [. . .].34
In other words, that roda attempted to “rescue” another traditional cultural

form, which served at the same time to attract a different kind of audience to
the venue. In fact, the samba-de-roda is as well attended as the capoeira roda
that precedes it.
The Valongo roda probably went furthest in this quest to present more
than “just” a capoeira street circle. Mestre Carlão drew on his wide experience
as performer and his connections to artists and academics to transform the
street roda into a multifaceted cultural happening. The Valongo roda was
always preceded by another event. This could be a “knowledge circle” (roda
dos saberes), where academics or other professionals, for instance theatre
directors, would give a talk as mentioned above. Or a “work circle” (roda dos
fazeres), with professional dancers and musicians, in particular percussionists,
offering a free workshop to the audience. Each of these events attracted people
who would not normally go to a capoeira roda.
Assunção 153
Figure 1.
There is no doubt that one of the great achievements of the Carioca Con-
nection was the increased visibility of capoeira in the public space: the streets
of Rio. This was further enhanced by the effective use of social media, film,
and photography. Each roda was amply publicized on Facebook. A gifted
photographer, Maria Buzanovsky, invested much of her time in the systematic
coverage of street rodas. As Mestre Carlão remembers, “A mídia social ajudou
muito. As fotos da Maria, inegável. Trouxeram uma . . . foi uma redescoberta
da capoeira pela fotografia, porra, de alto nivel. Ela descobriu uma questão
muito legal dos ángulos, que ela pegou do [Pierre] Verger.”35 After each roda,
selected photos of the games were posted on social media. Mestre Carlão also
obtained support from a cameraman and filmmaker, Guilherme Begué, who
edited four-to-five-minute clips with highlights of the Valongo roda, which
Figure 2.
were also posted and became popular, given the high quality of the camera-
work, the skillful combination of talks and games, and the use of slow motion
and other techniques (see links to clips in the Appendix below). This internet
presence boosted the visibility of the rodas, in particular the Valongo roda,
and further increased attendance.
Although the Valongo roda started on 14 July 2012 as an improvised event,
relying only upon the support of volunteers, Mestre Carlão subsequently
managed to obtain financial support. In 2013, CDURP launched, together
with the municipal administration of Rio de Janeiro (prefeitura) the award
“Porto Maravilha Cultural” as a way to incentivize local cultural initiatives.
Mestre Carlão submitted the project “O Porto Importa—Memórias do Cais
do Valongo” (“The Port Matters—Memories of the Valongo Quay”). He
Assunção 155
Figure 3.
obtained funding later that year which allowed him not only to continue with
the three monthly “circles” already happening for more than a year, but also
to document the whole project through three new outputs: a photo exhibition
of Maria Buzanovsky’s work, a documentary film, and a book.36 While the
funding further enhanced the visibility of the Valongo roda, however, it also
enhanced disparities between the different rodas of the Carioca Connection,
and ultimately played a part in its demise.
Capoeira as a Catalyst and Healing Tool

As noted above, there is a consensus among capoeira practitioners in Brazil
that the connection between the oppressive past of slavery and capoeira is
Figure 4.
greater in street rodas. Hence the question arises as to what extent street rodas
can play a role in the memorialization of slavery and contemporary struggles
over its legacy. I am aware of the many possible meanings of “memory,” and
the inflationary use of this concept.37 However, given the gap between the
growing historiography on slavery and the popular perception of the slave past,
in particular among capoeira practitioners in Brazil, the distinction between
history and memory is still useful. By “memorialization,” I refer to the grow-
ing importance, in practitioners’ discourses and practices, of slavery as key
to understanding contemporary Brazilian issues such as inequality, racism,
and violence. As scholars have pointed out, memory is often associated with
the remembering of traumatic events.38 Subjectivity no doubt plays a greater
role in capoeira memory as opposed to historiography, where “vibes” are not
Assunção 157
Figure 5. Mestre Célio Gomes (Photo by Rui Zilnet).
an accepted form of evidence. Subjectivity, however, may be more effective

than academic rigor to induce emotions and fuel healing processes. Hence
the importance of memory as a partner to history, to assist in dealing with
traumas such as slavery and discrimination.
Brazilian society has been notoriously slow and resistant to dealing with
the skeletons in its cupboard. This is true for the memory of the military dic-
tatorship (1964–1985) as much as with the memory of slavery. A “politics of
silence” prevailed for a long time regarding the abuses of the military regime.
It was only from 2005 onwards that Brazil began to embrace, very timidly, the
“politics of memory,” with the installation of a Truth Commission.39 Regarding
Figure 6. Mestre Carlão (Photo by the author).
Figure 7. Contramestre Fábio.

Assunção 159
Figure 8. Mestre Claudio (Photo by the author).
Figure 9. Roda do Lavrádio with Mestre João Grande (Photo by Rui Zilnet).
Figure 10. Roda do Valongo with Mestre Graffit (Photo by Maria Buzanovsky).
slavery, the politics of erasure go back much further. For at least a century
after the abolition of slavery (1888), the dominant version of history was that
slavery in Brazil had been “milder” than elsewhere, that Brazil enjoyed a “racial
democracy” and that racial discrimination there was not systematic. This
only began to change with the growth of the Black Movements and the rapid
expansion of a revisionist historiography on slavery in Brazilian universities
from the 1980s onwards.
Many capoeira groups embraced full-heartedly this rediscovery of slavery as
crucial to the formative period of their art. At the end of the 1970s, for example,
an important group in São Paulo adopted the name Cativeiro, or “Bondage,”
a term closely associated with slavery in popular Brazilian Portuguese and
proclaimed that capoeira was “the expression of a race.” Around the same time,
another group—Capitães de Areia—replaced the first belt for practitioners with
a symbol of slavery, a chain. As the student advanced, the chain was replaced
by symbols of marronage and freedom.40 All groups that embraced Afrocentric
approaches incorporated slavery into their narratives, as part of their argument
of the essentially African character of capoeira. As Downey has shown for the
group Capoeira Angola Pelourinho (GCAP), which played a leading role in
this process during the 1980s and early 1990s: “GCAP’s version of capoeira’s
African origin explicitly refutes two rationales for calling the art “Brazilian”:
first, that capoeira was created by African peoples or from African elements
in Brazil and, second, that the essential catalyst for the art’s transformation
Assunção 161
into contemporary capoeira was slavery.”41 Hence, “many of the members of

GCAP thus see their practice of capoeira as a political project in the tradition
of slave resistance and maroonage [sic], or escape, in Brazil.”42 We can safely
expand this to many other capoeiristas in Brazil, to the point that the presence
of capoeira in the most famous maroon society, in 17th-century Palmares, is
generally assumed as a fact (for which there is absolutely no evidence). The
official recognition by the Brazilian state of existing discrimination against
Afro-Brazilians, that came with the democratization process in the 1980s, only
strengthened that connection.43
The superimposition of another quay on the Valongo Wharf a few years
after its dismantlement as a disembarkation site of enslaved Africans, and the
subsequent landfill and transformation of the area into a square, are emblem-
atic of the erasure of slavery from public history in Brazil. The same applies to
the building of residential homes on the site of the former cemetery of “New
Blacks.” As mentioned above, only in very recent times did that policy change
with the archeological work on the sites that compose the Valongo complex,
and the parallel with the changes regarding the memory of the dictatorship is
no coincidence. Only recently, for example, has a discussion taken off about
a museum dedicated to slavery and the Afro-Brazilian experience in Rio de
Janeiro.44 However, since the form and design of such a museum are already
causing controversy, and both the city and state of Rio de Janeiro are in a dire
financial situation, it seems that, for the time being, more spontaneous actions
by citizens to honor the memory of those engulfed by the slave trade will take
precedence on these sites.
Capoeira street rodas can fulfill various functions in this process of memo-
rialization. Although capoeira rodas are not primarily focused on staging the
history of slavery, this history is nevertheless present in various forms in the
roda. A number of songs thematize the oppression of the enslaved, and their
resistance through capoeira.45 In particular songs where the singer adopts the
positionality of the enslaved are testimony of how strongly Brazilian capoei-
ristas feel empathy with their suffering. Take, for example, the main verses of
a popular song in capoeira rodas:
No tempo do cativeiro
Quando o senhor me batia
Eu rezava pra Nossa Senhora, ai meu Deus
Como a pancada doía
Quando eu cheguei na Bahia, a capoeira me libertou
Até hoje ainda me lembro, das ordens do meu Senhor:
Trabalha negro, negro trabalha
Trabalha negro pra não apanhar.46
The issue of slavery and African ancestry is thematized by various mestres,

although with differing emphasis and meaning. M Célio rather emphasizes
the spiritual energy of the street roda that can connect to the past:
Muitos pretos morreram, muitos pretos cultivaram a capoeira, muitos pretos

sofreram para a capoeira estar aqui. O som do berimbau, ele vai buscar esses
cameradas ondes estão. [. . .] Essa energia estimula a vinda deles ao local. Eu
acredito que o som do berimbau traz esses mestres que já se foram. Como na
roda do Lavradio. [. . .] Aqueles capoeiristas que estavam ali, eles estão presentes
em forma de energia. Então eu acredito nisso.”47
The details he does not provide are easily verifiable. The Lapa district was home
to the Espada capoeira gang during the Second Empire (1840–1889). Many of
them would have roamed along Lavradio street, which runs along the Morro
do Santo Antônio, which was home to a favela where many famous sambistas
and batuqueiros lived until the hill was razed to the ground in the 1960s.48
For Contramestre Fábio, it seems clear that capoeira has a healing function,
in particular in those places haunted by the suffering of the enslaved:
Essa visão que eu tive do Arco do Telles, da gente fazer là . . . Da mesma forma
que lá no Valongo, da mesma forma que lá nos pretos forros [Cemitério dos
Pretos Novos], (esqueci o nome) locais onde teve sofrimento, locais onde
foram enterrado pessoas, [. . .] a gente tenta hoje transformar tristeza em
alegria . . . roda de samba, samba de roda, tenta botar o jongo, a capoeira, as
manifestações mais proximas dos africanos, dos afro-brasileiros. Na verdade,
quando falei de apagar a escravidão, seria transformar a dor em amor, o ódio
em carinho, seria issso.49
Several writers and activists have highlighted this extremely contradictory

nature of Rio’s port as an area of immense suffering but also of wonderful
creation.50 The “Circles of Knowledge” organized by Mestre Carlão on the
Valongo Wharf in many ways expanded memorialization into new dimensions,
by bringing to the audience information about new research from specialists of
slavery and post-emancipation. In various ways this has helped practitioners
to develop a rational understanding of the meaning of sites such as Valongo.
But capoeira’s strength, like that of other performing arts, lies not so much in
providing detailed historical information, but rather in acting as a catalyst:
provoking reactions which can be considered part of a healing process. As Sanja
Bahun wrote, “the production and reception of art affords one with a unique
opportunity to engage historical traumata at the level of a cathartic public
action, and under relatively protected circumstances of creative activity.”51
Theater performance can be a prime example of this catalyzing process.
The actors of the theater piece Lembrar é resistir (1999) used the former torture
Assunção 163
rooms of the political police (DOPS) in São Paulo as a stage for their perfor-
mance, mediating the encounter of the spectators with the empty cells, which
otherwise would hardly have had the potential to convey the horrors that
took place there. Since the agents of DOPS had removed most traces, such
as the graffiti of prisoners from the walls, only the theatre could restore
visibility to the torture chambers.52
How can capoeira street rodas produce similar results? Organizing capoeira
rodas at locations such as the Valongo complex and the Arco do Teles makes
it all but impossible not to engage in some way with memories of enslavement
and suffering. Yet that association is not necessarily automatic, and these sites,
even today, also still need the mediation of actors to fulfill their purpose of
memorialization. Capoeira street rodas contribute to restoring visibility to the
past of slavery on sites such as Valongo. The transformative power of the street
rodas comes through the intense emotional identification of most practitioners
with capoeira’s history, resulting in a heightened sensitivity to the energy, or
“vibes,” of locations such as Valongo or the Teles Arch, as highlighted by the
testimonies from Mestre Célio and Contramestre Fábio (and confirmed by
several participants I spoke to).
Afro-Carioca culture is heavily shaped by West Central African peoples.
Hence when asserting the presence of capoeiras from past times in the territory
of a street roda, this inevitably points to ancestor cults in the religions influ-
enced by African beliefs and Africans and their descendants in Rio, especially
Macumba and Umbanda. One key figure from a group of trickster entities
called “o povo da rua” is Zé Pelintra, the archetypical rogue in the white suite
of the malandro, and a red tie, red hatband and bicolor shoes. Zé Pelintra is
the archetypal capoeira of the past whose attire is still worn by some mestres
today on solemn occasions. Other capoeira ancestors have a more traceable
history through their exploits in the maltas, or in street rodas of the past.53
Many also see the very capoeira movements as a form of embodied knowl-
edge or “bodily archive” that link directly to the memory of slavery.54 The
theatricality of the game creates an emotionally charged atmosphere, where
players tend to identify with the capoeiras of the past or at least see themselves
as continuing this tradition. This sense of drama is contagious and involves
the audience.55 In other words, capoeira—just like other Afro-Brazilian forms
such as jongo, samba-de-roda and Candomblé—are privileged tools to con-
nect visitors to the deeper significance of the Valongo Wharf and the Arco do
Teles, as well as other memory sites. Following Downey, it is possible to argue
that capoeira enables whites or non-Blacks to feel stronger empathy with the
oppression of the enslaved, through intense capoeira training and learning
of malícia (cunning).56
Compared to a staged performance by actors attempting to transform
spectators into witnesses, capoeira has the advantage of wider inclusivity,
since any practitioner of the art can participate in the roda without previous
rehearsal. Knowing and respecting the rituals of capoeira provides a language,
and the roda a space for dialogue. As I can attest from personal experience,
playing capoeira next to or literally on the top of the remains of thousands of
enslaved Africans gives a distinctly palpable sensation of the African heritage
of the game.57 It also nurtures respect for the Africans who developed the art
under such terrible circumstances and passed it on to the next generations, so
that it survived until today. I therefore believe playing capoeira on sites such
as the Valongo Wharf has a healing function too, because it appeals not only
to a rational identification with the victims of enslavement in Brazil, but to the
feelings and emotions of practitioners and audiences. Playing, singing, or just
watching capoeira played in the roda in this environment becomes in effect
a tribute paid to enslaved African ancestors. Yet institutional racism, added
to frequent informal discrimination, make public memory of slavery a very
contested terrain in Brazil. It is hardly surprising that these issues, which reflect
and reverberate broader conflicts in Brazilian society, also surfaced among
capoeiristas of the Connection. In addition, street rodas often take place in
locations that are subjected to territorial disputes and social conflicts, as the
next section is going to show.
Capoeira in Disputed Territories

In the case of the Carioca Connection, territorial, social and identity disputes
all played a role in its demise in 2016, only four years after its creation. One
important conflict arose over capoeira’s ownership and was informed by iden-
tity politics and social exclusion. The appropriation of Afro-Brazilian popular
cultural forms by other social classes or racial groups has generated debates
in Brazil since at least the 1980s. The spread of African-derived forms beyond
their original constituency, although generally seen as positive, also resulted
in various negative developments. The corollary of expansion often was the
disempowerment of Afro-Brazilian artists, especially those from lower-class
backgrounds.
A further concern is the frequent erasure of the African contribution in
hegemonic discourses. Nationalist narratives, for example, rather emphasize
the “Brazilian” character of popular forms such as samba. These issues tended
to acquire significance as the transition to democracy generated huge expec-
tations regarding an end of racial discrimination. Despite significant progress
in some areas, however, equality between Black and other citizens have failed
to materialize in society as a whole, and discussions between different social
actors and groups at times become acrimonious. The growth of virtual inter-
action via social media has also stimulated polarization.58
Assunção 165
Among capoeira practitioners this debate has quite a long history, as appro-
priations—that is, not only the practice of capoeira by whites or foreigners,
but also attempts to modernize or “sportify” it and erase its Afro-Brazilian
traditions—were already apparent at the end of the 19th century. Angola-style
capoeira constituted itself very much as a reaction against the emergence of
the Regional style, which was seen by traditionalist mestres as a sell-out of
capoeira traditions, with too many concessions being made to modern martial
arts requirements or Western-style competition. Mestre Bimba and his fol-
lowers in Bahia, as well as the Senzala group in Rio, have often been accused
of “whitening” capoeira. Capoeira Angola, by adopting a traditionalist stance,
claimed to resist appropriation by middle-class whites or a capitalist logic.59
The extent to which such claims corresponds to reality, is of course, another
matter, as most Afro-Brazilians practice the Contemporary, not the Angolan
style of capoeira. It seems that over the past decades, fueled by the impressive
globalization of the art, a kind of consensus has emerged to the effect that
anybody can practice capoeira, regardless of ethnicity, class, gender, and age,
but that whoever enters the game has to respect the roda, or what in capoeira,
in analogy to Afro-Brazilian religions, are called the “foundations” of the art.
Mestre Célio notes that even the Afro-Bahian tradition of Candomblé has
many white adherents today, and explains, “Tem que respeitar os princípios.
Eu sou a favor de quem apoia a nossa cultura. A cor da pele não importa.”60
Self-identifying as Black, “our” for him of course refers to Black culture in
Brazil. This openness, a key feature and also a strength of modern capoeira,
is relatively easy to implement in terms of participation in a roda, in the street
or the academy. Everywhere players wanting to enter the game need to abide
by the rules implicitly established by the mestre in charge (and which can also
be made explicit if needed). Yet that does not necessarily mean everybody
has the same legitimacy to represent or talk in the name of the art. As more
militant Black capoeiristas like to point out: “Capoeira é para tod@s, mas não
é de tod@s.”
Even more complicated, of course, was the situation of the Valongo roda, a
place loaded with intense symbolic value. There is probably no other location
in Brazil that at present represents more strongly the suffering of enslaved
Africans. For that reason, UNESCO has recently recognized the Valongo as a
World Heritage site.61 The fact that a white mestre was in charge of the capoeira
roda here, contrary to the general expectation, did of course raise questions,
concerns, and criticisms. It also led to an interesting change of views and
attitude in Mestre Carlão himself, to what he called a “fundamental rupture”
in his capoeira practice. Firstly, he rediscovered his own African heritage. He
started remembering more intensely his grandmother, Oscarina, daughter of a
Black woman and a Portuguese. He composed a special ladainha for her—the
initial “litany,” or monologue usually sung by the mestre in charge that starts a
capoeira roda. One may read this as a means to gain additional legitimacy, but
it also reflects the fact that whiteness in Brazil is constructed very differently to
the US, and that the majority of Brazilians classified as whites also have some
part of African ancestry. Greater fluidity of racial boundaries means appro-
priation issues are dealt with differently, as most Brazilian feel therefore more
entitled to make use of Afro-Brazilian culture and artefacts. This is what makes,
as Peter Fry has shown, all the difference between feijoada and soul food.62
In response to this questioning of his role, Carlão tried not to monopo-
lize the gunga (the musical bow with the deepest sound that leads the whole
capoeira orchestra) when holding the roda on the Valongo site, passing it on
to some other experienced mestre or player soon after he started the roda:
“Eu aprendi a dar espaço. Aprendi a pisar atras, ou pisar do lado. E dar espaço
a fala negra, aos protagonistas da história africana do Rio de Janeiro.”63 Yet
clearly that was not enough. As M Carlão himself reports, he was constantly
being questioned, particularly by Black capoeiristas, over his role as, “um
mestre de capoeira branco num lugar de memória negra, falando de história
negra, sobre a nossa história.”64
Tudo isso Matthias, doeu muito. Mexeu muito com meu ego, com minha
branquitude, com o que eu vinha fazendo até então, e eu comecei realmente a
dar muito mais espaço e repensar minha situação nas pedras pisadas do quais
do Valongo. Como eu posso ajudar a colaborar? Não parando de falar, porque
eu quero continuar falando sobre isso. . . . mas dando espaço e discutindo, para
aprender? Não para parar de falar, mais para aprender como fazer melhor.65
In other words, Mestre Carlão got caught up in the debate over the “place
of speech” (lugar de fala), which is becoming an issue in some discussions,
in particular with militants of Black Movements. Given the slow progress
of affirmative action, they feel that Blacks are still delegitimized in a society
dominated by hegemonic discourses that tend to negate Black experience, and
for that reason are considered white standpoints. Although Black academics
theorizing about the place of speech recognize that “the social standpoint does
not determine a social consciousness of that point” and that whiteness is more
of a “metaphor of power,”66 in practice the “place of speech” theory is often
applied more literally by capoeiristas. In other words, what social actors do and
say can become less important than the positionality they occupy in a society
which in recent years has been increasingly polarized by binary worldviews.
Some people also thought that a location like the Valongo Quay required
some kind of religious ceremony before a roda. Indeed, religious groups from
Afro-Brazilian faiths such as Candomblé and Umbanda (as well as from other
denominations) make libations on the Quay and in the Cemetery of New
Assunção 167
Blacks to honor the deceased ancestors and remember their suffering.67 Yet
Mestre Carlão, not being an active practitioner of Afro-Brazilian religion, was
not ready to organize or take the lead in this practice, and thus was very much
in line with the current relationship between capoeira and religion. Capoeira
rodas, at least modern ones, are usually ecumenical, meaning that each par-
ticipant can invoke their own deities for protection, but there is no exclusiv-
ity.68 If every mestre can worship or honor their own God(s) before or after
the roda in his academy, there is no mandatory link between Afro-Brazilian
capoeira and Afro-Brazilian religion. However, given the historical weight of
the Valongo Wharf as the most important memory site of the horrors of the
slave trade, it is small wonder that expectations for rodas in this location can
be very different.
To make matters worse, the dispute over ownership intersected with
other issues. There is a general expectation that money generated by capoeira
should be shared. How to accomplish this is, of course, another matter. The
project “O Porto Importa” received funding which was spent according to a
schedule on several activities. It also included some funding of other street
rodas of the Connection. In a meeting, the leaders of these rodas decided
to pool the money for one event that would feature the prestigious Mestre
João Grande, disciple of the legendary Mestre Pastinha, established since
the 1990s in New York. The workshop took place at the Fundição Progresso,
with the veteran mestre leading the Lavradio street roda as a special highlight
(6 September 2014). Yet in the aftermath several people and some groups
felt that in some way the project had not supported them sufficiently and
that its figurehead, Mestre Carlão, was reaping more personal benefits than
were legitimate. This kind of conflict is, in my experience, quite common,
especially in societies such as Brazil where corruption is rife. Corruption is
acknowledged as one of the key problems Brazilians face, but at the same
time seems so pervasive that it also results in an attitude of resignation and a
suspicion of anybody who manages to obtain some funding. In addition, the
socially inferior position in which most Black practitioners find themselves
in relation to most white capoeiristas contributes to expose the fissures in
the capoeira community.
Mestre Grauna, for example, a Black capoeira teacher from the Pedra do Sal
neighborhood and one of only two mestres residing and teaching in the port
area quickly identified Carlão as the enemy: “Veio de fora, de São Gonçalo,
José Carlão do Valongo, ganhou 150 mil, meteu o pé, deu volta por todos os
capoeiristas amigo dele, certo? A verdade é essa.”69 Although the Valongo
Wharf is located today in a kind of no-man’s land, activists from nearby neigh-
borhoods claiming the heritage of Little Africa also disputed Carlão’s role.
In other words, the Valongo roda got caught in a territorial dispute between
locals versus intruders.
Mestre Cláudio summarized the problem as follows: “Quem ganha dinheiro

com a capoeira? Somo nós, os negros? São os brancos, que tem acesso a boa
escola, universidade.”70 The actual situation may not be quite so clear cut,
as a number of Black mestres make a very reasonable living from capoeira;
nevertheless, Mestre Cláudio’s assessment reflects a general tendency that is
undeniable. The existing imbalance and unequal access to opportunities cause
resentments, especially among Black mestres who have not managed to obtain
university degrees or access to the international capoeira “jet-set.” The situa-
tion has been exacerbated by the repeated attempts of Brazilian governments
to regulate the profession, which in theory meant allowing only graduates in
Physical Education, in the majority whites, to teach capoeira. This was fiercely
resisted by many groups and is to this day hardly enforced in practice.71 As
Wesolowski argues, this new discourse of professionalization is “reshaping
arguments over authenticity, ownership, and representation of capoeira.”72
The older consensus over capoeira’s inclusiveness is hence again being tested
in the twenty-first century.
As a result of these various unfulfilled expectations and controversies, the
links between the rodas of the Carioca Connection became more tenuous.
Some mestres and key players ceased to attend specific rodas as a result of
these disagreements (which intersected with others of a more personal nature).
Although one may argue over the importance of each issue that came up, the
incontestable fact is that the “Carioca Connection of Street Rodas” ended up
divided into factions and by 2016 had disintegrated.
Does this make the whole experience not worthwhile? I don’t believe so.
The controversies generated are of the type needed to advance discussions of
problems that Brazilian society has been avoiding for too long. As Sanja Bahun
points out, performing arts can have an important role in this: “But, perhaps
controversy, or the invitation to pose unsettling questions in the public sphere,
is exactly what the transitional justice art needs to do: to encourage, prompt,
even force, the culture of dialogue.”73Another aspect that affects each roda is
its specific environment. While Valongo and Arco do Teles both have strong
links to the memory of slavery and the trade, Valongo Wharf is of course by
far the most evocative of this past. However, this unique appeal of Valongo
Wharf is not matched by other factors that are also important for the suc-
cess of street rodas. Other Connection rodas are located in sites that attract
visitors more easily. The Arco do Teles is located between the Praça Quinze
de Novembro, revitalized since the removal of the raised motorway, and the
beginning of the Rua do Ouvidor, which has developed as a leisure point with
bars and restaurants next to three important cultural centres, among them
the impressive Centro Cultural do Banco do Brasil (CCBB). The Lavradio
roda is established on a street corner next to a busy market in the burgeoning
Lapa neighborhood. The São Salvador roda is positioned on the square of that
Assunção 169
name, which has become another “point” over recent years, with irregular
street performances and surrounding bars, in the midst of a relatively central,
middle-class neighborhood.
The Valongo roda, in contrast, had to motivate its participants to venture
to a location that, for all the grandiloquent discourses of renovation, can still
hardly be seen as integrated into a vibrant cultural or leisure area. The Porto
Maravilha plan has not, or not yet, met most of its targets. The economic and
political crisis has brought construction to a halt. The area has lost a part
of its former population through eviction, but the new middle classes have
not arrived. The result is a fragmented, often seemingly surreal, landscape:
some districts of the port—for example, Conceição Hill and around Praça da
Harmonia—form enclaves in which the original population still cultivates
traditional sociability; others—for example the areas around Pedra do Sal
and Praça Mauá—have developed as leisure zones, attracting consumers from
different backgrounds and various parts of the city. But these “islands” are
surrounded by an urban landscape juxtaposing empty spaces, the result of
eviction and demolition, and new, hypermodern but often empty buildings,
which still seem out of place. For that reason, not many people walk along the
Valongo site, especially in the evenings or at weekends, with the exception of
occasional tourists following the African Memory route. In sum, the Valongo
roda could only thrive as long as enough committed capoeira practitioners or
people interested in talks or workshops would turn up.
Having attended the Valongo roda at different moments over five years, it
seems to me that after initial enthusiasm the capoeiristas and the audiences for
the Knowledge or Work Circles tended to drift apart, most people attending
either one or the other. What they all had in common, however, was that they
were not locals in the strict sense of the term, that is, inhabitants of the port
area. Although there is some important local activism (most notably from
the Pedra do Sal quilombo and the Providencia Hill), what some authors have
described as “grassroots activism” in the port area is nonetheless to a large
extent the product of the interest and mobilization of inhabitants of other
parts of the city.74 In other words, the Valongo roda became the victim of the
unfinished great transformation, that had promised a “wonderful harbor,” but
devastated more than it rebuilt the port area.75
Attending a roda there was hence more of a commitment than going to any
of the other roda locations. I believe there came a moment when a number of
those who frequented it no longer thought that regular attendance was nec-
essary. Again, that does not lessen the importance of the fifty rodas that took
place there over more than four years, as they had a transformative power for
their participants, established the Valongo as a location for capoeira (other
groups have been holding occasional rodas there ever since), and contributed
to making it a core site of Black memory in Rio de Janeiro.
Conclusion
During the five years of its existence, the Carioca Connection demonstrated
how collaboration between capoeira mestres and groups increased attendance
of street rodas in Rio de Janeiro. The Connection contributed to making the
Valongo Wharf and other locations linked to Rio de Janeiro’s past of slavery
more visible and to advance reflections about how to heal the wounds of
one of the greatest crimes against humanity. Similar to experiences on other
sites associated with a sinister past, in Valongo this memory was “activated
through perfomance,” that is, “through the embodied actions of performers and
spectators.”76 Furthermore, the rodas, especially on the Valongo site, helped
to fuel an important discussion about memory spaces of the African experi-
ence in Brazil, the role of capoeira and its practitioners in this, and the role
of whites or non-Blacks in the process of Black memorialization. Embedded
in the wider and ambivalent context of urban renovation and gentrification,
especially in the port area, the street rodas did not escape the many conflicts
over the appropriation of urban space—conflicts that involve many parties:
the inhabitants of the neighborhoods of the port area, corporate groups,
real-estate speculators, local authorities, academics, NGOs, and militants
of Black movements or political parties. The conflicts over the ownership of
capoeira and the memorialization of such sites adds a further dimension to
material disputes over urban territories—and it is likely that all these battles
will intensify in the future.
NOTES
1. See the documentary clip of the third Valongo Roda at https://youtu.be
/b4HSXaFRU9Y.
2. Carlos Eugênio Líbano Soares, A capoeira escrava e outras tradições rebeldes no
Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850 (Campinas, São Paulo: Editora da Unicamp, 2001). M. Thomas
J. Desch-Obi, Fighting for Honor: The History of African Martial Art Traditions in the
Atlantic World (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2008). Matthias
Röhrig Assunção, “Engolo e capoeira: jogos de combate étnicos e diaspóricos no
Atlântico Sul.” Tempo 26, no. 3 (September 2020): 522–56.
3. Thomas H. Holloway, “ ‘A Healthy Terror’: Police Repression of Capoeiras in
Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro,” Hispanic American Historical Review 69, no. 4
(November 1, 1989): 641.
4. Carlos Soares, A capoeira escrava.
5. The strongest, and most well-known evidence of this is the famous engraving
“Capoera ou danse de la guerre,” based on a drawing by Johann Moritz Rugendas,
Voyage pittoresque dans le Brésil (Paris, 1835).
Assunção 171
6. Carlos Eugênio Líbano Soares, A negregada instituição: os capoeiras no Rio de

Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Prefeitura da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro, Secretaria Municipal
de Cultura, Departamento Geral de Documentação e Informação Cultural, Divisão
de Editoração, 1994).
7. Marcos Bretas, “A queda do Império da navalha e da rasteira: a República e os
capoeiras,” Estudos Afro-Asiáticos, no. 20 (1991): 239–56.
8. Machado de Assis, Crônicas (1859–1888), Vol. 4, (Porto Alegre: Jackson Inc,
1944), 227–30.
9. Luiz Sergio Dias, Quem tem medo da capoeira?: Rio de Janeiro, 1890–1904 (Rio de
Janeiro: Arquivo Geral da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro, 2001). Antônio Liberac Cardoso
Simões Pires, Culturas circulares: a formação histórica da capoeira contemporânea no
Rio de Janeiro (Curitiba, Brazil: Editora Progressiva; Fundação Jair Moura, 2010), 51–84.
10. Matthias Röhrig Assunção, Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial
Art (London; New York: Routledge, 2005), 91, 122–23. Antônio Pires, Culturas circu-
lares, 164.
11. The Portuguese term mestre refers only to proficiency in a profession, unlike its
English translation “master,” which can also mean the owner of enslaved people. This
is why mestre is kept in its original Portuguese form here.
12. Matthias Röhrig Assunção, Capoeira: The History, 192–203. Also see https://
capoeirahistory.com/the-project/.
13. In 2006 the Brazilian Ministry of Culture/IPHAN initiated the process that
recognized the capoeira roda and capoeira mestres as “immaterial heritage” of Brazil
(2008). In 2014 UNESCO inscribed the capoeira circle in the Representative List of the
Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. See UNESCO Office in Brasília: “Capoeira
becomes Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity,” 26.11.2014. http://www.unesco.org
/new/en/brasilia/about-this-office/single-view/news/capoeira_becomes_intangible
_cultural_heritage_of_humanity/.
For an assessment, see Vivian Luiz Fonseca and Luiz Renato Vieira, “Capoeira—a
Brazilian Immaterial Heritage: Safeguarding Plans and Their Effectiveness as Public
Policies,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 31, no. 10 (July 3, 2014): 1303–11.
14. In Salvador, a regular roda is hold at Marcado Modelo, and one group there
(“Raizes de Rua”) claims to practice “street capoeira,” as opposed to the other styles.
15. There is some debate today over the precise extension of the area referred to as
“Little Africa,” in particular if it also includes neighbourhoods such as Cidade Nova
further inland.
16. Christopher Gaffney, “Mega-Events and Socio-Spatial Dynamics in Rio de Janei-
ro, 1919–2016,” Journal of Latin American Geography 9, no. 1 (2010): 7–29.
17. Tania Andrade Lima, Glaucia Malerba Sene, and Marcos André Torres de Souza,
“Em busca do Cais do Valongo, Rio de Janeiro, século XIX,” Anais do museu paulista:
história e cultura material 24, no. 1 (April 2016): 306. Cláudio de Paula Honorato,
“Valongo, o mercado de escravos do Rio de Janeiro, 1758–1831” (MA Thesis, Univer-
sidade Fluminense Florianápolis, 2008), 137.
18. Tania Andrade Lima, et al., “Em busca do Cais do Valongo,” 318. Anne-Marie
Broudehoux and João Carlos Carvalhaes dos Santos Monteiro. “Reinventing Rio de
Janeiro’s Old Port: Territorial Stigmatization, Symbolic Re-Signification, and Planned
Repopulation in Porto Maravilha | A reinvenção da zona portuária do Rio de Janeiro:
estigmatização territorial, ressignificação simbólica e repovoamento planejado no
projeto Porto Maravilha.” Revista Brasileira de Estudos Urbanos e Regionais 19, no. 3
(August 25, 2017): 493.
19. Claudio Honorato, in Carlo Alexandre Teixeira, Roda dos saberes do Cais
do Valongo (Rio de Janeiro: Associação Cultural Ilê Mestre Benedito de Angola,
2015), 50. For a documentary film about the Central Station Roda, see Vimeo.com
/capoeirahistory/rodadacentral.
20. Hebe Mattos, and Martha Abreu, “Relatório histórico-antropológico sobre o
quilombo da Pedra do Sal: em torno do samba, do santo e do porto,” Pedra Do Sal:
relatório técnico de identificação e delimitação (Rio de Janeiro: Ministério do Desen-
volvimento Agrário/Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária, 2010), 15.
21. Anne-Marie Broudehoux, “Reinventing Rio de Janeiro’s Old Port Broudehoux,”
7. Examples of this are the two ostentatious new museums on Praça Mauá designed
by prestigious architects. But that was not all: CDURP raised 7.3 billion Brazilian
reais through exemptions from building restrictions (CEPACS), which allowed for
the construction of highrises of up to forty floors to accommodate businesses, new
“Yuccie” start-ups and middle-class residences. Luiza Farnese L. Sarayed-din, Faizah
Binti Ahmad, and Rosilawati Binti Zainol, “Rio de Janeiro’s Transformations for the
Mega-Events: History, Urban Regeneration and Grassroots Creative Experiences in
the Port Area,” In Frontiers of Planning (Brisbaine, Australia, 2013), 6.
22. Anne-Marie Broudehoux, “Reinventing Rio de Janeiro’s Old Port Broudehoux,” 7.
23. For M Carlão’s biography, see Daniel Granada, Stefania Capone, and Matthias
Röhrig Assunção, Pratique de la capoeira en France et au Royaume-Uni (Paris: L’Har-
mattan, 2015), 222–242.
24. Júlio César Medeiros da Silva Pereira, À flor da terra: o cemitério dos pretos
novos no Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro: Garamond Universitária: Rio Prefeitura
Cultura Arquivo da Cidade, 2007); Cláudio de Paula Honorato, “Valongo, o mercado
de escravos.”
25. Simone Vassalo, and André Cicalo, “Por onde os africanos chegaram: o Cais do
Valongo e a institucionalização da memória do tráfico negreiro na região portuária
do Rio de Janeiro,” Horizontes Antropológicos 21, no. 43 (2015): 41.
26. For Mestre Carlão’s biography, see Daniel Granada, Pratique de la capoeira,
222–42.
27. Mestre Carlão, interview by Matthias Röhrig Assunção, Rio de Janeiro, April
10, 2017.
28. http://portalcapoeira.com/capoeira/eventos-agenda/calendario-da-conexao
-carioca-de-rodas-nas-ruas.
29. Mestre Claúdio, interview by Matthias Röhrig Assunção, Rio de Janeiro, April
11, 2017.
Assunção 173
30. Ibid.
31. Mestre Célio Gomes, interview by Matthias Röhrig Assunção, Rio de Janeiro,
April 11, 2017.
32. Contramestre Fábio “Chapeu de Couro,” interview by Matthias Röhrig Assunção,
Facebook Messenger, June 6, 2017.
33. Mestre Célio Gomes, interview.
34. Contramestre Fábio “Chapeu de Couro,” interview.
35. Mestre Carlão, interview. Pierre Verger was a French photographer and anthro-
pologist who took hundreds of iconic pictures of capoeira in the 1940s.
36. Carlo Alexandre Teixeira, Roda dos saberes. Available at: https://kabulartes
.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/roda-saberes-dos-saberes-do-cais-do-valongo.pdf. The
film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAQranIgycA. For more on the ‘knowledge
circles’ and the outputs of the project, see Victoria Adams, “Urban Reforms, Cultural
Goods and the Valongo Wharf Circle: Understanding Intervention in Rio de Janeiro’s
Port Area,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 40, no. 5 (November 2021): 696–711.
37. Kerwin Lee Klein, “On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse,”
Representations 69, no. 1 (January 2000): 127–50.
38. David C. Berliner, “The Abuses of Memory: Reflections on the Memory Boom
in Anthropology,” Anthropological Quarterly 78, no. 1 (2005): 197–211.
39. Nina Schneider, “Breaking the ‘Silence’ of the Military Regime: New Politics of
Memory in Brazil,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 30, no. 2 (April 2011): 198–212.
40. Letícia Vidor de Sousa Reis, O mundo de pernas para o ar: a capoeira no Brasil
(São Paulo: Publisher Brasil, 1997), 175–95.
41. Greg Downey, “Incorporating Capoeira: Phenomenology of a Movement Dis-
cipline” (PhD Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1998), 78.
42. Ibid., 79.
43. This also led to the creation of institutions to support black empowerment (for
example the Palmares Foundation, active since 1992) and the introduction of affirmative
action by the Lula governments (2003–2010).
44. http://portomaravilha.com.br/noticiasdetalhe/4907 The initial idea put forward
by the former municipal secretary of culture Nilcemar Nogueira and a group of activists
was to create a “Museum of Slavery and Freedom,” or MEL in the Brazilian acronym,
next to the Valongo complex. After consultation with other agents and institutions
concerned, the name was changed to “Museum of the Afro-Brazilian History and
Culture” (MUHCAB).
45. Matthias Röhrig Assunção, “Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Mar-
tial Art,” in Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic, ed. Nancy Priscilla Naro, Roger
Sansi-Roca, and David Treece (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 199–217.
46. This is the version sung by M Boca Rica, in 2011 for the Angolan Roots of Capoeira
project. This song of unknown authorship and with multiple variations dates back to
the 1980s, according to Mestre Cobra Mansa (personal communication). See for exam-
ple http://www.capoeira-music.net/all-capoeira-songs/all-capoeira-corridos-songs
-n/no-tempo-do-cativeiro/.

48. For a cartographic insight into these transformations, consult the Rice University
project at www.imaginerio.org.
49. Contramestre Fábio “Chapeu de Couro,” interview.
50. Hebe Mattos, for example, states that the port is “the place where the miracle
literally happens”; whilst Luiz Antônio Simas highlights that here “a process of death
is subverted into a process of assertion of life” thanks to the “true civilizational heroes”
that lived in the port area. See their statements in Carlo Alexandre Teixeira, Roda dos
saberes, 39, 69, 71.
51. Sanja Bahun, “Transitional Justice and the Arts: Reflections on the Field,” in
Theorizing Transitional Justice, ed. Claudio Corradetti, Nir Eisikovits, and Jack Volpe
Rotondi (Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington, VT, USA: Ashgate, 2015), 157.
52. Rebecca J Atencio, “Acts of Witnessing: Site-Specific Performance and Tran-
sitional Justice in Postdictatorship Brazil,” Latin American Theatre Review 46, no. 2
(2013): 7–24.
53. Take for example Brancura, a famous player of pernada carioca, one of the forms
derived from historical capoeira. See Luiz Antonio Simas, in Carlo Alexandre Teixeira,
Roda dos saberes, 69.
54. Júlio César de Souza Tavares, “Dança da guerra: arquivo-arma” (MA Thesis,
Universidade de Brasília, 1984).
55. For descriptions and analysis of the theatricality of capoeira games and the rela-
tionships between players and musicians, see Greg Downey, “Incorporating Capoeira”;
Daniel Granada, Stefania Capone, and Matthias Röhrig Assunção, Pratique de La
Capoeira En France et Au Royaume-Uni (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015); Sergio Armando
González Varela, Power in Practice: The Pragmatic Anthropology of Afro-Brazilian
Capoeira (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017) and Sara Delamont, Neil Stephens, and
Cláudio Campos, Embodying Brazil: An Ethnography of Diasporic Capoeira. (New
York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017).
56. Greg Downey, “Listening to Capoeira: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and the
Materiality of Music,” Ethnomusicology 46, no. 3 (2002): 491.
57. On rainy days the Valongo roda took place at the Instituto de Pretos Novos.
58. Recently, for example, the use of an African-style turban by a white girl after
cancer treatment generated heated discussion on the internet. See: https://www
.cartacapital.com.br/sociedade/turbantes-e-apropriacao-cultural, #VaiTerBrancaDe-
TurbanteSim, http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/cotidiano/2017/02/1861267-polemica-so
bre-uso-de-turbante-suscita-debate-sobre-apropriacao-cultural.shtml.
59. This claim was presented as an academic argument in the 1980s by Alejandro
Frigerio (1989). The problem is that Frigerio took the declarations of angoleiros at
face value, ignoring completely what capoeiristas from other styles thought about
stylistic differences.
Assunção 175
61. “Rio’s Valongo Slave Wharf Becomes Unesco Heritage Site,” Latin America &
Caribbean, BBC News, July 10, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america
-40552282.
62. Peter Fry, “Feijoada e ‘Soul Food’: notas sobre a manipulação de símbolos étni-
cos e nacionais,” in Para inglês ver: identidade e política na cultura brasileira (Rio de
Janeiro: Zahar, 1982).
63. Mestre Carlão, interview.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid.
66. Djamila Ribeiro, O que é: lugar de fala? (Belo Horizonte: Letramento, 2017), 583.
67. Two high-profile events that included religious ceremonies were the centenary
of Abdias do Nascimento’s birth and “Herança Africana” (for details see Márcia Leitão
Pinheiro and Sandra Sá Carneiro, “Revitalização urbana, patrimônio e memórias no
Rio de Janeiro: usos e apropriações do Cais do Valongo,” Estudos Históricos (Rio de
Janeiro) 29, no. 57 (April 2016): 67–86).
68. One recent exception is the “Capoeira Gospel”—an attempt to adapt capoeira
to the requirements of the Pentecostal churches and hence subordinate the practice
to their dogma. See Mariana Schreiber, “ ‘Capoeira Gospel’ cresce e gera tensão entre
evangélicos e movimento negro,” BBC Brasil, October 14, 2017.
69. Mestre Grauna (Celio Augusto Braga), interview by Matthias Röhrig Assunção,
Rio de Janeiro, July 29, 2018.
70. Mestre Claúdio, interview.
71. Neuber Leite Costa, “Capoeira, trabalho e educação” (MA Thesis, Universidade
Fluminense da Bahia, 2007).
72. Katya Wesolowski, “Professionalizing Capoeira: The Politics of Play in
Twenty-First-Century Brazil.” Latin American Perspectives 39, no. 2 (March 2012): 84.
73. Sanja Bahun, “Transitional Justice and the Arts,” 161.
74. Luiza Farnese L. Sarayed-din, et al., “Rio de Janeiro’s Transformations.”
75. Possibly Rio’s port area may experience a similar experience to Salvador’s cen-
tral Pelourinho neighborhood, whose modernization rested “on a Unesco-supported
canonization of selected residents of the neighborhood as producers of practices
that function as both commodities and a civilizing, supposedly shared milieu called
‘culture’,” but ended up expelling most residents. John F Collins, Revolt of the Saints:
Memory and Redemption in the Twilight of Brazilian Racial Democracy (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2015), 3.
76. Rebecca J. Atencio, “Acts of Witnessing,” 19.
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Assunção 179
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Appendix: List of Conexão rodas (2012–2016)

9 rodas, 4 in central Rio (Lavradio, Teles, Valongo, Cinelândia), 2 close to the centre
(República and São Salvador), 1 in Southern Zone, 1 in Caxias, 1 in Niteroi.
1a Roda—Grupo Aluandê—Mestre Célio, Treineis Fagnon e Érida. Roda da Feira da
Rua do Lavradio no 1o sábado de cada mês, a partir das 10:30hs.
2a Roda—Grupo Casarão Capoeira Angola . Mestre Athayde Parreiras. Roda da Praça
da Cantareira, Niterói na 2ª sexta de cada mês, a partir das 20hs.
3a Roda—Grupo Reconca Rio. Contramestre Fábio e Japa. Roda do Arco do Teles
(praça xv) no 2o sábado de cada mês . a partir das 14hs.
4a Roda—Grupo Kabula Rio. Mestre Carlão. Roda do Cais do Valongo no 3o sábado
de cada mês . a partir das 10:30hs. [No longer active]
5a Roda—Escola de Capoeira Angola . Contramestre B2. Roda no 3o domingo dos
meses de março, jun, set. e dezembro (roda trimestral). Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas/
Corte do Cantagalo . a partir das 10hs. [No longer active]
6a Roda—Grupo Volta ao Mundo . Mestre Cláudio, Treineis Ludmila e Guilherme.
Roda da Praça São Salvador no 4o sábado de cada mês, a partir das 15hs.
7a Roda—Grupo Ypiranga de Pastinha . Mestre Manoel, Treineis Leandro e Cliff. Roda
a Cinelândia na última sexta-feira de cada mês, a partir das 19hs.
8a Roda—Grupo Angolinha . Mestre Angolinha e Contramestre Japa . Roda do Museu
a República no 5o sábado dos meses de março, jun, ago. e nov . a partir das 18hs.
9a Roda—Conexão Caxias. M Peixe, CM Grafitt de Caxias. Roda em Caxias no último
domingo de cada mês, a partir 10hs.
Source: http://portalcapoeira.com/capoeira/eventos-agenda/calendario-da-conexao
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Street Capoeira and the Memorialization

of Slavery in Rio de Janeiro

Capoeira is a combat game developed by enslaved Africans and Brazilian-born

Capoeira é um jogo de combate desenvolvido por africanos e crioulos escravizados

“Benguelas,” as the enslaved Africans embarked in that Central African port

The Changing Role of Capoeira

an association the modernizers and most practitioners wanted to avoid. Playing

Port and City: Reconfigurations of Rio de Janeiro’s Central Area

The “Carioca Connection of Street Rodas” (2012–2016)

Outra coisa: eu recebo as pessoas bem, entendeu? Eu gosto de receber as

In other words, that roda attempted to “rescue” another traditional cultural

Capoeira as a Catalyst and Healing Tool

Figure 5. Mestre Célio Gomes (Photo by Rui Zilnet).

an accepted form of evidence. Subjectivity, however, may be more effective

Figure 6. Mestre Carlão (Photo by the author).

Figure 7. Contramestre Fábio.

Figure 8. Mestre Claudio (Photo by the author).

into contemporary capoeira was slavery.”41 Hence, “many of the members of

The issue of slavery and African ancestry is thematized by various mestres,

Muitos pretos morreram, muitos pretos cultivaram a capoeira, muitos pretos

Several writers and activists have highlighted this extremely contradictory

Capoeira in Disputed Territories

Mestre Cláudio summarized the problem as follows: “Quem ganha dinheiro

6. Carlos Eugênio Líbano Soares, A negregada instituição: os capoeiras no Rio de

47. Mestre Célio Gomes, interview.

7a Roda do Cais do Valongo (Clip). Accessed May 4, 2022. https://www.youtube.com

técnico de identificação e delimitação. Rio de Janeiro: Ministério do Desenvolvi-

Appendix: List of Conexão rodas (2012–2016)

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