19 October 1928: Out of Reform School Five Days Before the Fight

WHY THIS ARTICLE

The first great defeat of sporting capoeiragem is also its most unjust trial. To reconstitute the fight, the rulebook, and above all the biography of the loser, is to understand what was really at stake at the Circo Queirolo — and why the kimono weighs there heavier than courage.

A plural man, full version

No one having presented himself in São Paulo to face Omori, the impresario Eurico Palhares appeals to Rio — “a place reputed to shelter the worthiest representatives of the national art.” The reply: Oswaldo Caetano Vasques, called Baiaca, twenty-eight years old. Departure 12 October, arrival the 13th — both signalled by the press of the two cities.

His biography is a condensation of all the corpus has established on the capoeiras of the Republic. Four years in the Brazilian Navy, where he learns capoeiragem “in contact with the veteran sailors.” A commercial employee thereafter. And, in parallel: disturbances of public order, delinquent acts, arrests for vagrancy and forbidden games — down to that episode of 1 May 1928 when, “to deceive the police,” he lacerated his own arm with a penknife. A sailor in the nation’s service, a respectable employee by day, a vagabond by night, then challenger of a world champion: the plural man, full version. A detail the promotion conceals and the thesis exhumes: Vasques “came out of reform school five days before his departure for the Paulista capital.”

The promotional machine

The Circo Queirolo sells the fight with great fanfare: “The grandiose sporting spectacle,” “The most important and most emotional fight waged so far in this capital, capoeira against jiu-jitsu.” Vasques becomes “the most feared of the capoeiras of the famous butte of the Favela of Rio de Janeiro.” A preliminary fight against the Frenchman Leconte, the house champion, turns into a demonstration by the Brazilian — the press catches fire. The thesis will see in it what the observers of the era would suspect after the fact: “a deception aimed at promoting the encounter with the Japanese wrestler.”

Three taps on the ground

On 19 October, four rounds of three minutes are planned. In the third round, Vasques gives up — he taps three times on the ground, “the emblem of defeat and shame.” The press that had extolled him lynches him: “Not even a little boy of ten, without ever having seen capoeira or any kind of wrestling, would invest so little for victory.” He is accused of having sold the fight to maintain Omori’s invincibility: “Money made him forget that thousands of people made him their idol […] What a disappointment and what revolt!” And the supreme grievance, which tells the era: “He did not have the necessary patriotism to remember that, in that moment, he represented a nationality.”

Note what the indictment preserves: no one disputes his worth — the same journalist calls him “a perfect connoisseur of the unequalled Brazilian weapon and perfectly capable of beating the Japanese champion.” Argemiro Feitósa, who will soon challenge him, holds him to be “the best representative of capoeira.”

What the kimono did to the fight

The thesis’s analysis puts the trial the right way round. On one side, a world-class professional with hundreds of victories. On the other, a man “neither physically nor mentally prepared,” just out of detention, whose experience was limited to the “clandestine friendly bouts held in the street” — and whose principal motivation, in need, “was certainly money.” And a rulebook against nature: the compulsory kimono, already imposed on Cyriaco in 1909. The amateurs of the national game were indignant in a phrase that serves as a technical definition: “A kimono, heavy and easy for the adversary to hold… Come now, a capoeira held loses efficacy, for his advantage is fighting at a distance.” Held, capoeiragem dies; at a distance, it reigns.

In the post-defeat debates, the specificity of the game was stated publicly — while Vasques, himself, fell back into anonymity. A last trace: March 1930, “the malandro” Caetano Vasques, wounded by a bullet in the left knee after a gratuitous assault. The newspapers that had demanded of him that he “represent a nationality” devoted a news item to him.

SOURCES

National Library of Brazil: “Um capoeira brasileiro vae enfrentar Omori,” Diario Nacional, 13 Oct. 1928; “Jiu-jitsu x capoeiragem,” Diario Carioca, 12 Oct. 1928; “Capoeira, recurso de defesa incomparavel,” Diario Nacional, 19 Oct. 1928; “Constitue uma indecorosa mystificação as lutas no Circo Queirolo,” Diario Nacional, 21 Oct. 1928; “Para burlar a policia canivetou o proprio braço,” Gazeta de Noticias, 1 May 1928; “Ferido a bala,” O Jornal, 2 March 1930. — Malo, O., La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles (1905–1984), doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020, Part II, chap. A.1.

IN THE CORPUS

→ The “Japanese Giant” Measured One Metre Fifty-Five

→ Frisked by the Police, Applauded by the City

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. 19 October 1928: Out of Reform School Five Days Before the Fight. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 43. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/19-october-1928-out-of-reform-school-five-days-before-the-fight. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.