Agnelo Promenade
MESTRE WALDEMAR IN CORTA BRAÇO
Pierre Verger, 1948
THE PREVIEW
We have 14 photos by Pierre Verger in Corta Braço*, Liberdade, Salvador. For what we know Verger sent those to the Life Magazine in the United States (we found 9 photos in the Life archive). We don't yet know if these were published in the magazine.
In the study of Lühning and Pamfílio of 2012 titled «The winding ins and outs between oral history and photographic documentation: capoeira in Salvador on Pierre Verger's photos» they identified among others a group of photos which they described like this:
h) [later group 8] Other place in Liberdade, possibly also in Corta Braço, still without exact identification - 14 photos.
Also saying that: The photos of the groups 7 and 8, were mentioned by Verger in his notes as being from a place called Corta-Braço, part of the neighborhood of Liberdade, although visibly from two different places. The smalled group of photos shows people to the side of a mud hut, all in working clothes, however not identified.
THE YEAR
We read in Lühning and Pamfílio, 2012, that: [The notebooks with almost daily notes of Verger in French, relating to the possible perios of documentation] inform in telegraphic and sometimes obscure style, names of contacts, visited places, his work on the negatives, photos and revelations, as f.ex. in 20/11/1946 "... port portos capoeira ...", in 11/4/1948 [Sunday]: “... Corta Braço - Waldemar capoeira...” or then in 23/10/1948 [Saturday]: “... Waldemar - Port - Juvenal...”.
This takes us to the confirmation that the year of the photos is 1948, probably April.
THE PLACE: THE CREATION OF CORTA BRAÇO
* The "invasion" of Corta Braço, in 1946[!], today the neighborhood of Pero Vaz, was the first social movement, in Salvador [..]. Carvalho and Pereira, 2014.
The occupation started in August of 1946, in the beginning only a few families occupied the area, most of them the ones that lived close to the place [..]. According to some old inhabitants, the name comes from the fact that there was a thick buchland which sheltered all kinds of thieves that attacked and injured with knives the passer-bys who took the alternative road between the Liberdade Road and the Baixa de Quintas. Araújo, 2010.
The year of 1946 registers the first great collective invasion in the city of Salvador, the invasion of Corta-Braço, situated exactly in the popular Liberdade neighborhood, which, despite the constant juridical and police actions to be desoccupied, is legalized in 1947 as an act of dispossession by the then governor Otávio Mangabeira, the final tow of the New State and of the return to the process of democratical election. Souza, 1991
The land was liberated to the inhabitants of the place on the 1st May of 1947. Newspaper O Momento, 1948
But what place exactly in Corta Braço? Evidently it's some square - note the posters on the door and on the window (we only manage to read number 9 on it).
Our study makes us to believe that the street of this roda is called Agnelo Promenade. It is not known what the name of the promenade or street would be. Searching in the old newspapers we didn't encounter 'agnelo promenade' nor 'agnelo street'. M Bigodinho in 2003 mentioned Padre Antônio street in connection to the Back of Agnelo, but we are waiting for some confirmation.
[..] during its first years, between 1946 and 1948, Corta Braço became the headquarters of weekly meetings of Mestre Waldemar's capoeira roda. Some years later the roda turns into a hut [..]. Santos, 2018
In the past yeard we have collected various mentions of "Agnelo" in the words of old masters and researchers**. The Agnelo Promenade possibly came about after 1946 and had a bar/club and a litte shop. Close to these establishments M Waldemar later had his hut.
** Read more below after the photos!
The creation of Corta Braço
We can speculate that the roda however was close to the crossing of the Liberade Road and the Agnelo Promenade. See the map below!
(New) Pero Vaz Street (red)
1964: Carybé
In 1964 the artist Carybé made a painting called Waldemar's Shrine (there is no hut-shrine on the painting). We can see a street roda and a small house looking like a bar (de Agnelo?). There is also a (Heaven?) slope and a cowboy with an ox on a street or (Liberdade?) road. These details well support our above localization.
THE PARTICIPANTS
Velhosmestres.com is posting all the 14 photos down below. On one of them to our eys M Waldemar manifests himself (red square) clearly. He is 31 years old, short, perhaps still without the moustache that he sports 5 years later on Brill's 1953 photos.
Besides him it's possible we identified M Zacarias (blue square), who started to learn with Waldemar in 1942. You can compare him with the photos of 1955 from Mário Cravo's place.
NB! These are the earliest photos of M Waldemar and Zacarias that we know of.
THE GALLERY OF 14 PHOTOS
About Agnelo
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M Lua Rasta
-[..] in M Bigodinho's, Resistencia, Lapinha, later Agnelo Bar, M Waldemar's roda.
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M Nestor
[..] Besides the little Agnelo shop, where you could drink cachaça during the roda [..]
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Frede Abreu
[..] The activities of the hut kept on going until the 1970-s, when it "started to deactivate slowly, taking place only for some more time, in Liberdade, Pero Vaz (where it was born), in front of the Agnelo Bar".
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M Bigodinho
The first hut, a hut covered with palm leaves, was there on Padre Antônio Street, there at the Back of Agnelo.
2003 -
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Pedro Abib
Mestre Bom Cabrito used to go to the rodas that took place on Sundays at the entrance of teh old Pero Vaz, in front of the Agnelo shop, in the Liberdade neighborhood, run by Mestre Waldemar, in the end of the 1970-s.
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M Barba Branca
The first time I saw capoeira was in Pero Vaz in Agnelo in a "shop" [..] when I was 13/14 [1968] [..]
On the crossing of the Pero Vaz Street with the Padre Antônio Street nowadays there's a roda (marked with an 'R' on the map above!) organized by a group called Capoeira Barro Negro.
