Black Combat Arts Institute.
EPISTEMOLOGY · METHOD
The Archives That Only See Capoeira When It Enters Public View
6 MIN READ
The Brazilian press archives reveal capoeira only when it enters the public game — the practice among equals, in the favelas, remains almost unknown.
WHY THIS ARTICLE
Press sources are treated as windows onto the past. The thesis names their blind spots: they record capoeira when it is public and spectacular, and miss the ordinary game whose ends are neither political nor economic.
Profusion and blind spots
For the study of capoeira, the thesis was tributary to the press archives of the National Library of Brazil — their profusion, but also their blind spots. These sources reflect reality only partially. The cultural vitality within the lowest social strata is not the object of particular attention. When capoeira enters the public game, it appears to us; but what of the capoeira practised in the favelas, among people of the same social condition, whose ends are neither political nor economic? We know little or nothing.
A caution against the visible
The archive lights the stage and leaves the rest in shadow. To write history from the press is to risk mistaking the visible, public capoeira for the whole — and losing the ordinary game that never made the columns.
Why it matters
What the sources show is shaped by what they were interested in. A history honest about its archives must name what those archives could not see — the private game among equals.
SOURCES
La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles (1905–1984), thèse de doctorat, Université des Antilles, 2020 (General conclusion: the profusion and blind spots of the National Library of Brazil press archives).
IN THE CORPUS
→ The Prohibition That Wasn't
→ The Shared Structure Nobody Could See
→ Reading Capoeira from Rio, Against a Century of Bahia
HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE
MALO, Olivier. The Archives That Only See Capoeira When It Enters Public View. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 95. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/the-archives-that-only-see-capoeira-when-it-enters-public-view. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.