When Capoeira Meant Gangs, Not Grace

WHY THIS ARTICLE

Capoeira is remembered as an art of the oppressed. The thesis recalls a harder early meaning: an instrument of the maltas, bands warring over the city — capoeira as social disorder, not only resistance.

Two senses of one word

At the beginning of the twentieth century, capoeiragem — a feminine noun — generally designated the Brazilian wrestling, while capoeira(s) named its practitioners. The word carried a double charge: a bodily art, and the activity of the maltas.

The maltas and the city

Capoeiragem was an integral part of the maltas — bands in struggle among themselves for the control of urban spaces — within which it became an instrument of social disorder (Soares, 1993). At the same time, these bands wove close relations with figures of power, entangling the game in the politics of the street.

Why it matters

Before capoeira was ennobled into heritage, it named a practice of gangs contesting the city. To recover that meaning is not to demean the art but to refuse a sanitised origin.

SOURCES

La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles (1905–1984), thèse de doctorat, Université des Antilles, 2020 (Introduction/Part I: capoeiragem and the maltas; A. L. C. S. Pires, 2001; Soares, 1993)

IN THE CORPUS

→ The Legend of David Against Goliath

→ The Writer Who Turned a Crime into a Noble Art

→ Capoeira Was Born in the Batuque Circles of the Church Square

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. When Capoeira Meant Gangs, Not Grace. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 101. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/when-capoeira-meant-gangs-not-grace. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.