Abstract
The subject of this dissertation is the Brazilian combat game capoeira. Capoeira is the
totality of a reaction based movement game between two people played to music in
a circle of people (called a roda). Capoeira was originally a mobilisation of the cultural
heritage of enslaved Africans in a Brazilian context. There exists more than one
foundation myth about the origins of capoeira. A popular one however, is that
capoeira developed as a method of resistance to prepare themselves for an escape
from plantation slavery, a set of martial arts practises disguised as a dance, which
then developed in the quilombos, the maroon communities of escaped slaves. The
capoeira practised today is arguably closest to cultural forms called capoeira or
vadiacao (loafing around) that existed in the reconcavo (bay) of Bahia and Salvador in
the North East of Brazil, although in Rio de Janeiro other influences such as
Portugese knife fighting and the samba duro (hard samba) have influenced capoeira.
I am interested in the capoeira manifested in the roda livre (“free roda”) of Caxias, an
underprivileged suburban municipality of Rio de Janeiro. The roda livre takes place
in a street market in the centre of Caxias on Sunday afternoons. The roda of Caxias
has a sophisticated political ideology of resistance that I will expand upon. The
theme of resistance in capoeira is central to my dissertation, I will explore the ways
that this specific manifestation of capoeira in Caxias is mobilised as a political and
didactic form of resistance.
I conducted fieldwork among the Caxiense capoeirista’s in August and September
2003. I used semi -structured interviewing of key informants, and the technique of
participant observation which was facilitated by me being a capoeira player for the
last seven years. I found DaMatta’s insights into Brazilian culture (1991), Freire’s
Marxean analysis of social relations (1970), and Bourdieu’s analysis of capital (1983)
particularly useful as tools to understand the roda livre and Mestre Russo’s teaching.
This discussion of capoeira is specifically related to the capoeira as manifested in the
roda livre, and the groups of capoeiristas that participate in it. The theories and
conclusions of this essay do not apply to capoeira in general, but rather focus on the
roda livre and associated capoeira groups.