From Brazil to Russia: Capoeira, a Tool for Decolonization?

Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian art form that combines ritual, play, music, and fighting elements. Created by slaves in the Northeast of Brazil, arguably in the seventeenth century, capoeira has been historically associated with the power of the weak. It has been used as a martial art to fight colonial oppression. During the twentieth century, it became a codified ritual that politically worked closely with the Black Marxist movement in Salvador, fighting for the recognition of the African heritage in Brazil. During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, capoeira has expanded globally. However, its spirit for liberation from dominant ideologies continues to captivate practitioners in Brazil and abroad. In this presentation, I describe how practitioners have used capoeira in Russia and how this country's practitioners have interpreted this art's rebellious spirit in a post-Soviet context. Finally, I contrast the subversive configuration of capoeira with the efforts made by dominant state powers to use martial arts in general as a political tool to show strength, authority, and subjugation of others.

Sergio González Varela - Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Warsaw, Poland. He worked previously at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, from 2010 to 2022. He holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of London (University College London). He was awarded the Fulbright distinction as a visiting professor in 2016 and is a member of the National System of Researchers in Mexico. His research topics deal with the anthropology of ritual, religion, performance, tourism, and globalization. He is the author of the books, El arte de engañar: ensayos de antropología social (2022), Capoeira, Mobility and Tourism: Preserving an Afro-Brazilian Tradition in a Globalized World (2019), Entre dos mundos: la antropología radical de Paul Stoller (2018) and Power in Practice: The Pragmatic Anthropology of Afro-Brazilian Capoeira (2017).