The Princess’s Black Guard

WHY THIS ARTICLE

The guarda negra is the episode most cited to prove the capoeiras’ civic virtue. The file deserves better than a pious image: replaced within the electoral system of the era — that of the capangas — it reveals men inserted at the heart of power, not raised against it.

Freedmen around the throne

On 13 May 1888, Princess Isabel signs the Golden Law: slavery is abolished. In the months that follow, a close protection forms around her — “composed for the most part of newly freed Blacks, avowed capoeiras. They pledged her their allegiance, and defended her with all their strength, her and the monarchy on the verge of collapse.”

The image strikes: the men the nascent Republic would criminalise two years later physically defended the princess of abolition against the republicans. Coelho Netto made of it the moral proof par excellence: “money was not the sinew of war; civic values were. The capoeira was no mercenary.”

Two correctives: money, and the system of the capangas

The thesis brings two correctives. The first is a documentary reservation: “nothing indicates that money was not an additional motivation for the members of the guarda negra.” Gratitude toward the abolitionist and payment for the service do not exclude each other; to make of them disinterested knights is already to rewrite.

The second is a framing: the black guard was not a moral exception but a particular case of a general insertion. “Many capoeiras hired out their services to the various political parties of the city, as capangas: hired hands charged with protecting, above all with doing violence to political opponents and intimidating the small number of voters.” The system lent itself to it: the vote was neither open to the illiterate — the majority of Brazilians — nor secret; the identity of voters was known to all, and physical pressure an ordinary electoral instrument.

Actors, not symbols

Replaced within this frame, the black guard changes meaning. It does not prove that the capoeiras were civic angels; it proves that they were actors in the political game — sought by the Crown as by the parties, trading a rare competence: the mastery of force in a city where force made elections. This is a far more significant position than that of the disinterested hero: men officially consigned to the margin, in reality indispensable to the functioning of power — monarchic one day, partisan the next. Neither perpetual resisters nor soulless mercenaries: professionals of force in a system that consumed it.

The Black-versus-White narrative cannot house the black guard — capoeiras defending a white princess against the Republic. Real history can.

SOURCES

Soares, C. E. L., “A guarda negra: a capoeira no palco da política,” Textos do Brasil, 14, 2008, pp. 50–51. — Coelho Netto, “O nosso jogo,” Jornal do Brasil, 28 October 1923 (National Library of Brazil). — 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. B.2.

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HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. The Princess’s Black Guard. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 31. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/the-princesss-black-guard. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.