Imagining Brazil in Africa: Capoeira's Transatlantic Roots and Routes

This article examines African cities as the newest nodes in the transnational circuitry of capoeira. An imagined Africa has long been an integral part of capoeira practice in Brazil, but only recently have Brazilian capoeiristas begun traveling to Africa. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Brazil and Angola, I explore capoeira's “return” to its imagined homeland and argue that defining this Global South flow is a reciprocal process of imagining: while Brazilian capoeiristas imagine Angola as holding the generative roots of their practice, Angolan capoeiristas imagine Brazil as preserving these roots. Youth in Luanda and Benguela embrace the practice as a way to heal a communal identity crisis resulting from nearly a half century of war. Both the Angolan and Brazilian capoeiristas mobilize capoeira to simultaneously root themselves in a local past and create a route to a global future of transnational mobility and cosmopolitanism. [Brazil, Angola, diaspora, capoeira, expressive culture].

Duke Scholars

Author Katya Wesolowski Cultural Anthropology