• Belo Horizonte
     FOLK CONGRESS 
    September 1964

    M Gildo Alfinete in M Zoião, 1999:

    «The first trip of the group with my participation was in 61 [probably in 1964 as we show below - velhosmestres.com], when we traveled to Belo Horizonte invited by the Catholic University, the entourage being: Mestre Pastinha, me (Gildo Alfinete), Roberto Satanás, João Grande, Albertino da Hora and Toinho.»

    Joares Marcelo dos Santos Patines in 2021 to the velhosmestres.com:

    «My dad [Juares Fioravante Patines, who took the two photos] that the plane tickets were bought by some politician and that there were various people there from other parts of Brazil. The folks of Rio Grande do Sul mixed quite a lot with the capoeira guys and went out to eat and chat. Mestre Pastinha was quite interested in the machete dance and the chula dance. My dad said Mestre Pastinha didn't see well any more, but was talking some.
    On the balcony photo there's my granddad smoking a cigar and Mestre Pastinha's people to the [left] side of the balcony.»

    • ?,
      M Pastinha,
      Moreno (Albertino da Hora),
      Gildo Alfinete,
      Roberto Satanás
      Playing: Toinho and João Grande
      Photo: Juares Fioravante Patines
      Tênis Clube Minas, BH, 1964
      Collection: Joares Marcelo dos Santos Patines

    • To the left on the balcony:
      Moreno (Albertino da Hora) talking to M Pastinha,
      João Grande (back turned),
      Toinho?
      Photo: Juares Fioravante Patines
      BH, 1964
      Collection: Joares Marcelo dos Santos Patines

    • (earlier photo enlarged) To the left on the balcony:
      Moreno (Albertino da Hora) talking to M Pastinha,
      João Grande (back turned),
      Toinho?
      Photo: Juares Fioravante Patines
      BH, 1964
      Collection: Joares Marcelo dos Santos Patines

    • Phys. Education teacher of Belo Horizonte (BH),
      M Pastinha,
      Gildo Alfinete,
      Roberto Satanás,
      Toinho,
      João Grande,
      Moreno (Albertino da Hora)
      Belo Horizonte, 1964

    • Read below

    • Read below

      On the photo bateria:
      Toinho,
      M Pastinha,
      João Grande,
      Moreno (Albertino da Hora),
      Playing:
      Gildo Alfinete and Roberto Satanás
      BH, 1964

    • Bateria:
      Toinho,
      M Pastinha,
      Roberto Satanás,
      Gildo Alfinete
      Jogando:
      Moreno (Albertino da Hora) and João Grande
      BH, 1964

    • Read below

    • Read below

    Belo Horizonte, 1964

    Good capoeira doesn't fall

    • page 1

      -

      A GOOD CAPOEIRA DOESN'T FALL.
      REGINA BEKER
      Photos Antonio Hernandez

      A good capoeirista doesn't fall. But if he does one day: he does it well. Who says alot that he's going: doesn't go. As he doesn't go: won't come either. Who doesn't open himself: will die without loving anybody. The money who doesn't give is the work of who doesn't have it.

      Capoeira already told that he came. Came to fight. Berimbau confirmed: there will be fight for love. Sadness, man.*

      *BERIMBAU - Baden Powell and Vinicius de Moraes, 1964

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      page 2

      CAPOEIRA ALREADY ARRIVED

      The night of Internation Folklore start tomorrow. Who had the good idea was Dom Serafim*. Mestre Pastinha, the king of capoeiras from the Bay of All Saints is already in the town with this capoeira group. Mestre Pastinha's demonstrations will be on the 19th, 20th and the 21st of this month, at 21 hours in the Gym of the Minas Tennis Club. And the collected money will be used to build the new building of the Catholic University of Minas Gerais, that has its anniversary this month.

      * Serafim Fernandes de Araújo (Minas Novas, 13th August 1924 – Belo Horizonte, 8the October 2019) was a brazilian cardinal and an archbishop emeritus of Belo Horizonte.

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      page 4

      SADNESS MAN

      Capoeira exists in these parts, coreographical attraction of Sunday parties of humble and creole people, making the markets beutiful with their movements and colorful sambas. And as in football, the mixed-race and fast, it gets the mythological wings to beat the strong opponents.

      Art and good humor, black and popular, get together to entertain the tourists' eyes, it has the favourable rhythms to form the roda of the sons of the people. The fans with white eyes rolling in the black faces sing with red gums to the glory of the fighting boys. And they keep in order the capoeira roda to block noisy interruptions and the weakening of the gymnasts with their stimulating copies.

      The thing ends only when the weakest apeals for the retiring strategy, or the exhaustion and the sweat catch the capoeiras, to show that there will be no losers or winners. And the music, that was made agitatedly or violently, or slowly or rhythmnically - accompaning the movements of the capoeiras, slows down and dies in the smooth scratching of the caxixis. Except, when the fight is for love.

      Various capoeira styles are practised in Brazil, mainly in Bahia, where the blacks' blood has mixed more in the people to make them love the intensity the pure things of the anonimous people. São Bento Grande, São Bento Pequeno, Mandinga Lisa and Benguela - a game which used the knife - are the types of capoeira that are equally noble and responsible. And there are schools that are very specialized such as the Academy of Corda Braço, in the Liberdade neighborhood and the Centre of Capoeira de Angola, on the Pelorinho slope. It's there that mestre Pastinha, the dean of the Bahian capoeiristas, initiates the boys to the secrets of the ginga and the body moves.

      There are names that will be always remembered. Samuel Querido de Deus, Besouro, Onça Prêta are named constantly by the today's capoeira mestres of Salvador. Manteiga, Inspetor, Chico Zabelê and Mané Urubu, who would take up forró, before heading to the Bahian capoeira on the neighborhood.

      Capoeira's history is not always happy, but Chico Zabelê's history is the saddest. Fast as a jararaca-snake in the kicks he made himself more feared than a dangerous snake. He worked on the market, selling fresh fish, that he himself caught. If there was a quarrel with the Town hall or the police soldiers, it was Zabelê's time to talk with his feet to defend the weaker comrades. When he saw that the things went really south, Chico didn't become a hero: he took his feet and made a run for it. Not without putting the bravest in the faces on the ground.

      On one morning the Bahian lawmen made a dirty plan. And when the fight was heating up a group of strong guys jumped on top of Chico, while the criminal hands shut the market gates. The great wave fell fully on Chico's chest. He was dominated and tied up by the soldiers. Then they put Zabelê on the ground, with his feet set on a peroba-tree trunk. And they hit his knees with a mallet, breaking his two fighting feet. Saddness man.

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      page 5

      FIGHT FOR LOVE

      The bantu black's brought from Congo the gingas, negaças and body moves. All of it in the very complicated ritual to please the saints. And an important part was the berimbau, pandeiro and reco-reco music.

      The creole liturgy was winning over the angolans and frightening the white slave masters. Negroes couldn't carry weapons, but the armed standing white guy wouldn't win the black guys who was lying down and barefeet.

      The dutch invasion came and the negroes walked boldly to Alagoas. They erected more than 20.000 quilombos on the Serra da Barriga having republican ambitions. They built a fortified city under Zumbi's command. In these parts there were coconut and palm tree forests, which gave the name to the Palmares Republic.

      But the creoles didn't live only on coconuts. They made war expeditions to plunder the neighboring farms. They freed their colleagues from captivity and snatched necessary food supplies. Capoeira wasn't used as only a liturgy any more: it became a weapon of the warmonging quilombolas.

      Twenty four very well armed expeditions tried to destroy the creole Republic. And nothing. The barefeet negroes were tougher than the modern blunderbusses, swords and horsemen. It took 7.000 strong portuguese and a Domingos Jorge Velho to end the Palmares of black Zumbi and his capoeiras.

      Then came the great time of great adulteries. The miscegenation and the mulatas who were less sweet and more arrogant and skillful preserved the capoeira tradition for the street fights. D. João came, saw how the things were and was afraid for his royal crown, due to the vengeful capoeiras insubordinates to the forest captains. And he passed the decree to prohibit capoeira.

      The street riots continued with Pedro the First, Pedro the Second and worsened with the Republic proclaimed by Deodoro. And the Marechal found a way to provide capoeiras and vagrants with prison cells for two to six months, with the jurisprudence of the new Penal Code. To be a capoeira chief and the belong to a gang was considered an aggravating circumstance punished double.

      It was then when the first political wiseasses started to use capoeiras as electoral corporals. And they put together experienced groups of hired guns to guarantee their political districts. Deodoro became furious and sent Sampaio Ferraz to banish political capoeiras to the Fernando Noronha island, as any subversive today.

      But the subversive capoeira was already framed in the noble mulatto blood. Little by little it was streamlined, systemized even to win forums of national gymnastics with the emergence of specialized schools. And even the «Guia da Capoeira», in all caps, was launched on the Bahian streets in 1907.

      Capoeira was becoming the great national creole sport. But the fight for love is still today the only incentive of capoeira.


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