“One Against Half a Dozen”: The Illustrated Manual of 1921

WHY THIS ARTICLE

One document, one story: the Revista da Semana article of 7 May 1921 is the only manual of its time to join drawing to description. Its technical reading lets one follow a technique across a century — from Rugendas to the queda de quatro — and correct a fundamental received idea.

The opening plea

The article opens in a patriotic fanfare: “a sporting exercise […] exclusively Brazilian, unsurpassable as personal defence […] the national game par excellence, capoeiragem, so ignored today, can very well be systematised […] and is incontestably superior to all other sports in matters of self-defence, because, alongside other qualities, it furnishes a sure defence of one against half a dozen adversaries.” One against six: the hyperbole comes from Murat and will make its fortune. There follows the praise of the “personal defence system worthy of honourable references” of his friend Aleixo — for Pederneiras, nationalism is not purism: “novelty and evolution were not judged antinomic with the promotion of the national struggle, quite the contrary.”

Then comes the part that makes the document a treasure: the techniques of the elders, named, described, drawn — rasteira, quengo (cabeçada), calço, pé de panjuca, pantana, pulo de sapo. “All these blows still exist today, even if some names are different.”

The rasteira, and the art of “combing”

“The capoeira lowers himself rapidly, presses his hands to the ground, and sweeps horizontally one of his legs, having first taken care to comb — that is, to make disguised steps, deceptive threats, so that the partner does not discover the movement.”

Two treasures in one sentence. First a vanished word: to comb (peneirar, pentear) — the preparatory feint, attested as early as 1906 in the review Kosmos and still in Burlamaqui in 1928: “to play the arms in all directions in the ginga, so as to disturb the adversary’s attention and prepare the best blow.” The simulacrum has had its verb for over a century. Then a complete technical genealogy: this old rasteira, hands on the ground, is the one O.D.C. already distinguished from the “modern” standing form; the kneeling position, hands to the ground, was sketched by the Austrian draughtsman Thomas Ender in the nineteenth century; it survives today under the name queda de quatro. A gesture followed step by step from the Empire to our day.

And the thesis draws from it the capital correction: “contrary to the commonly held idea, the specificity of the national struggle is not the existence of kicks, but the use of the hands as supports to strike with the foot, to move or to dodge.” Leg-play, every school in the world has. Hands that become feet — that is where capoeiragem begins.

The quengo, “like the blow of the rams”

“The cabeçada or cocada requires much exercise to be given with efficacy: the quengo (the head) was played like a ball, by the impulse of the body, at a distance of a metre more or less, like the blow of the rams; here was verified the agility of the executant and the assured mastery that made one avoid missing the target…” Failing which, the author warns with his caricaturist’s verve, one risked “banging with the thinking-box into the nearest wall.”

This head-butt launched at a distance, “like the rams,” has its pedigree too: it is exactly the Jogar capoera described by Rugendas a century earlier — “two champions hurl themselves at each other, and seek to strike with their head the chest of the adversary […] rushing one against the other, roughly as the bucks do.” The capoeiras Pederneiras observed from his balcony practised the head-butt in the manner of the slaves of the colonial period — before the modern variant, close combat, imposed itself.

A magazine article, six names of blows, two period drawings in support — and the technical continuity between the Empire and the Republic, established gesture by gesture. The archives of the body exist. One need only know how to read them.

SOURCES

Pederneiras, R., “A defesa nacional,” Revista da Semana, 7 May 1921; Kosmos, 1906; Cordeiro, C., Kosmos, 1906 — National Library of Brazil. — O.D.C. (1907); Burlamaqui (1928), p. 42. — Rugendas; Ender, Th. — Malo, O., La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles (1905–1984), doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020, Part I, chap. C.5.

IN THE CORPUS

→ The Cartoonist Who Learned Capoeira from His Window

→ Winning by Falling, Touching Without Touching

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. “One Against Half a Dozen”: The Illustrated Manual of 1921. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 38. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/one-against-half-a-dozen-the-illustrated-manual-of-1921. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.