Throughout the Brazilian Empire (1822-89), authorities considered
playing capoeira an ‘unacceptable behaviour’ requiring
immediate correction in the form of whipping and forced labour
in the Navy dockyards. The Republican Penal Code (1890) outlawed
it together with vagrancy. Repression, although brutal, was
often unsystematic and inefficient. In Bahia, in particular,
capoeira further developed during the last decades of the
nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century,
especially among port workers (sailors, fishermen, stevedores).
Here it became a complex manifestation with elaborated rituals,
and constituted an integral part of wider Afro-Bahian popular
culture. Together with samba-de-roda and the batuque it had
a prominent place in the multi-cultural cycle of celebrations
to honour Catholic saints and associated African divinities
(December to Carnival).
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