Black Combat Arts Institute.
SOUTH AMERICA · EXTINCT
Mandinga
A game of opposition built on cunning, once played in Rio de Janeiro within the circles of the capoeiragem: feints, evasions and feigned strikes prepare the unbalancing of the opponent. The art of the trap prevails over strength.
ORIGINS & SOCIAL FUNCTIONS
Played formerly in Rio de Janeiro in the circles of the capoeiragem, the mandinga carries in its very name the aura of cunning and protective knowledge that the Black Atlantic attached to the Mandingo peoples, malice as prestige, the trap as art.
THE GAME
An opposition game built on cunning: feints, evasions and feigned blows prepare the adversary's unbalancing. The art of the trap prevails over strength.
PLACE IN THE FAMILY
The mandinga isolates the family's third weapon, beside the touch and the fall, the simulacrum: the feint developed into a full language. It is the purest expression of the principle by which the game rewards illegibility over force, and its name became, in capoeira, the very word for the art's untranslatable cunning.
SOURCES
Olivier Malo, La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles, 1905–1984, doctoral thesis in History, Université des Antilles, 2020.
HOW TO CITE THIS ENTRY
MALO, Olivier. Mandinga. In: The Atlas of the Black Combat Arts [online]. Black Combat Arts Institute, 2026. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/atlas-en/mandinga [accessed date].
RELATED PRACTICES
→ Capoeira, Cunning over strength, the carioca game
→ Batuque, Carioca circle complex
→ Pernada, Feints and unbalancing