July 29, 2026

Post-Colonialisms and Global Citizenship

Gustavo García-López

This dissertation investigates the trajectory of the Capoeirangolé group, linked to the Arte Manha Cultural Movement in Caravelas - Bahia, as a singular expression of capoeira angola and of its formative, aesthetic, and political potential. Through a historical reconstruction of street rodas in the 1980s and of the community-based experiences that consolidated in subsequent decades, the study develops a critical analysis of this historical process, examining the tensions between tradition, institutionalization, and social engagement. The survey, systematization, and historiographical analysis, in dialogue with ethnographic research and literary reading, seek to elucidate the sociopolitical mediations through which capoeira inscribes itself in the genesis and contradictions of the capitalist modernization process. The investigation is grounded in the categories of Marxist social theory and engages with anticolonial critical thought. Beyond official, literary, hemerographic, and academic sources, the study undertakes an unprecedented and exhaustive reading of representations of capoeira in the work of Jorge Amado, understanding them as a privileged source for accessing the social, cultural, aesthetic, and political imaginary associated with popular culture and its emancipatory potential. Methodologically, the dissertation proposes an innovation: the final chapter, entitled Chamada para um Passo a Dois, constitutes the return of the text to the very group studied, incorporating its analysis as a constitutive part of the work. In this way, the research affirms itself as a dialogical gesture and an act of co-authorship, in which theory and practice, science and popular knowledge, become parts of the same game - a toque de cavalaria in defense of the living and insurgent memory of capoeira angola.

Key-words: Arte Manha; Capoeira; Capoeira Angola; Capoeirangolé; Jorge Amado