The jackknife game
By Roberto Pereira. Little is known about the use of the jackknife in capoeira of former times. Some scholars attribute its origin to a Portuguese…
Sailors, Moleques and “Heroes”: Capoeira in Maranhão in the First Republic
By Roberto Pereira. When the gunboat Lamego, of the Brazilian Navy, left São Luís, on 18th June 1887, the city breathed a sigh of relief.…
The imprisonment of capoeiras on Ilha Grande
By Myrian Sepúlveda dos Santos and Gabriel da Silva Vidal Cid. Background The history of the Dois Rios Correctional Colony, established in 1894 on the…
Classic sources of capoeira history: The Manuscripts of Mestre Noronha
Unlike many masters of his generation, Daniel Coutinho, better known as Mestre Noronha, could read and write. It was thus possible for him to leave…
Capoeira in the streets of São Paulo in the first decades of the 20th century
By Filipe Amado. Today we know that the history of capoeira is not restricted to Rio de Janeiro and Bahia. There is evidence in many…
The Diaspora of Rio de Janeiro’s capoeiras during the First Republic: the case of São Paulo
By Pedro Cunha. When we think of the historical process by which capoeira developed, we often overlook the rich exchanges that took place among people…
Prata Preta: an exiled capoeira
By KK Bonates – Luiz Carlos de Matos Bonates On 10 November 1904, a series of popular protests took place on the streets of Rio…
Seven Crowns
By Rômulo Costa Mattos. The construction of the memory about Sete Coroas, the most famous “criminal” of the First Republic At the beginning of the…