Translated by Shayna McHugh

Source: http://www.capoeira-palmares.fr/lucia_cv.htm

Lúcia Querino was born in Salvador, Bahia on May 15, 1955. She has been a student of Mestre Nô since 1971, in the academy Orixás da Bahia in the neighborhood of Massaranduba, where she was the mestre’s first female student. She received the professor corda in 1979 and taught capoeira in Salvador until 1992. Later, she taught in Santos (Sao Paulo state), where she worked with an NGO called Casa de Cultura da Mulher Negra (House of Culture of Black Women). She moved to Paris in 1996 and founded the Grupo Capoeira Palmares de Paris together with Pol Briand.

Lúcia gave classes in several locations in various neighborhoods and has done capoeira workshops for professors of physical education in 1999 and 2000. She also continues to work in caring for the elderly. 

Beginning

One day, my best friend Lúcia invited me to visit Mr. Máximo, her boyfriend’s uncle. We went to Mangueira, in the neighborhood of Massaranduba. Everyone was cheerful and friendly, and the conversation lasted for hours.

Then we heard the sound of an atabaque coming from an adjacent street. Mr. Máximo stood up and said that although the conversation was good, he had to go to the roda. He was the one who armed and tuned the berimbaus and pandeiros. He was also a ridiculously good pandeiro player. At night on the street, along with three or four friends, he would play pandeiro and viola and they would sing until the early hours of the morning. In the academy, the only instrument he didn’t play was atabaque; Tutú took care of that. Mr. Máximo wasn’t a capoeira student, just a capoeira fan. Everyone respected him. He was the only one who Mestre Nô would allow to play in the roda with shoes on. His rolê was the fastest I had ever seen, and he didn’t get dizzy.

That afternoon, I asked to go see the capoeira:

“I’m dying to learn capoeira, Mr. Máximo.”

I was almost seventeen years old, and I was curious. It was the first time I had met someone who was linked to capoeira. I had seen the art during the street festivals, but my mother would never let me get close. I remember one day during the festival of Boa Viagem that she grabbed my hand and pulled me away just as I was going to see the roda that was taking place right in front of the church. The only things I knew about capoeira was that it involved a berimbau, that people played and did movements, but I didn’t know which movements. My mom always pulled me away from the rodas, saying that capoeira was useless, but she never explained.

Mr. Máximo took us to the roda. On the way, Mr. Máximo talked about capoeira, about how good it was, and said that there were some incredibly skilled players there. I said that I was eager to learn it (why? I don’t know) and he encouraged me, but didn’t tell me that there were only men in capoeira. If he had said that, I wouldn’t have gone. In those days, young women stayed far away from men, on their mothers’ advice. If we came across a group of men on the street, we would cross to the other side in order to pass.

The sound of the atabaque got louder. We stopped in front of a one-story white house, and Mr. Máximo knocked on the closed door. An ugly man who they called Barriga (Belly) opened the door. We went in and everyone was hanging out and talking – about 25 shirtless and sweaty men, blacks and mulattos. I was scared. The room was large and the floor was made of cement, and the walls were white. There were two windows facing the street, but these were closed. A breeze entered through the back door, which faced the sea.

I stayed strong despite my fear. Mr. Máximo took me to a man sitting on a bench near the back door. “Nô, I brought this girl here; she wants to learn capoeira.”

The man looked me up and down.

“It’s true, I really do want to learn capoeira. And I will learn.”

“We’ll see.”

“How much is it?”

He said it was 15 cruzeiros. The classes were on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings.

“Okay then. I’ll come next Saturday. I’ll be your first female student.”

In those days, no one called Nô a mestre yet.

“We’ll see,” he said, not making a big deal of it.

The roda was about to start. I left and went back to Mr. Máximo’s house, where Lúcia was waiting for me. I told her I was going to start capoeira, and asked her to join me. But she said no, and even scolded me, but I didn’t care. I still had to convince my mother, who would have to pay the monthly fee.

I took the opportunity on Monday, because my mother was in a good mood.

“Mom, there’s a capoeira school over by Lúcia’s boyfriend’s house. There are a ton of girls there, and I want to learn. It’s 15 cruzeiros. Will you let me?”

“Why do you want to learn capoeira? You’re already useless!”

“Oh come on, mom, what do you have against it?”

“Capoeira is a fight for vagabonds, a thing of the blacks!”

I insisted. “But Mom, it’s so beautiful! The girls over there already play capoeira, you should see it. Please let me!”

Finally, she accepted it. Later, when my father got home, I told him.

“Capoeira is very good,” he said, “But I wanted you to take swimming lessons.”

So I started capoeira ready to learn, despite the fear I felt of the people, and my dislike of the environment that I started to frequent because of capoeira. I wasn’t rich, but I also wasn’t used to that type of people, who spoke in slang, cursed, smoke, and drank. It was a shock. I built up a tolerance to accept that world of which I disapproved, but I had found a good reason to accept it to a certain degree: capoeira.

At the time, Saturday’s trainings went from 1 PM to 6 PM; Sunday’s training was shorter because it was Sunday. Sometimes on Sunday, we would go to Ribeira to play after training.

The name of the group was Retintos. There was technical training of capoeira movements, stretching – especially of the abs and torso – training with a bag (two sacks filled with a mixture of sand and dirt covered by another sack of softer fabric, which hurt to hit), and training of instruments, especially on Sunday. There was also training for fist-fights, training for defense from knives and clubs that Barriga led (though I didn’t participate in these when I was new) with wooden knives and machetes that we used to do the exercises, training of maculelê, and everything was determined by Nô, who commanded the group. The room would be closed until the moment before the roda began, and the floor would get all wet. We would have to wipe it off before the roda. Grande, Dinelson and Goliás led the classes. Nô didn’t go in the roda or play with new students; it was the three instructors who handled the beginners. It was rare for Nô to lead the classes.

On the first day of training, I already knew Tutú, who encouraged me a lot in capoeira. But when I first met him, I was afraid of him. He was a black man about seventy years old who looked only fifty, with an enormous neck and a voice like thunder, and his hands looked like giant claws. When he grabbed someone, he wouldn’t let go. He was fierce, an ex-wrestler of Valdemar Santana’s era. In those days, the Baixa do Petróleo was a famous place. They said it was a place of troublemakers, of bad people. And Tutú was respected there by everyone, both good people and bad people. However, he really liked to drink. And then he would beat his chest and say,

“My name is Tolentino Nicolau dos Santos!”

When he was angry, he wouldn’t recognize anyone. If he got ahold of a club, he would break everything. At home he had a wife – his second – some kids, a club all decorated with colored paper, a machete and a revolver. Later, after I earned his trust, he showed me.

One time he arrived at the academy starting trouble, and provoked the good capoeira players. It was a type of challenge.

“These guys think that they’re good, but they’re nothing, I’d break any of them in a fight.”

And he kept going like that, cursing, until the boys called him into the main room. Then Tutú grabbed a club that was more than a meter long, which was always kept ready behind the door. He planted himself with his back against one of the pillars in the room, with the club forming a horizontal barrier in front of his body.

“Come on, everyone!”

And the boys went. Ferra-Brás, Pacífico, João Miséria, Dinelson, Golias, Elias, and others were there – about eight – all good capoeira players. We beginners watched from a distance.

Each one tried to attack Tutú and he blocked them all. They all got bruised up – on the shins, the feet, the arms.

“I told you you’re nothing. You’re all soft-butts,” yelled Tutú, and left the room and went into the office in front.

Nô, a calm man who was incapable of cursing out anyone, didn’t like these things, and that’s probably the reason why he no longer came to give classes after he moved to Boca do Rio, even though he was the mestre of the academy. He came to watch from month to month, he conducted the batizados, and he prepared the students who were about to graduate.

On Carlos Lopes Street

Our group had to move out of the space in Mangueira, so we went to the candomblé temple of Mr. Dudú, which had a small and crummy room. Then Tutú found us a place on Carlos Lopes street, number 53, in Massaranduba, which was a school. The classes were Tuesdays and Thursdays at night, Saturdays from 1 PM to 6 PM and Sundays from 9 AM to noon. Tutú would move the students’ desks and chairs to another room, and at the end of the training (except on Saturdays) he would have to put everything back in its place. Even with the heat and fatigue, he would insist on doing this. He would swear and make gestures and block the exit, and in an instant everything was put back in its place. About four years later, Mr. Martim, the president of a development society who talked a lot with Tutú, managed to get the whole building for capoeira.

There were three rooms separated by a wooden panel and three steps. We started with just the upper room, but then filled the place up with the growing number of capoeiristas.

There was a white circle painted on the cement floor, which Tutú was always painting and repainting. The instruments were on one side, played on foot behind another painted line. The students stood on each side, the stronger ones standing closer to the instruments, and a bench for visitors made up the fourth side of the square.

In the roda, the atabaque was placed in the middle of the other instruments. We would begin games at the foot of the atabaque; the berimbaus were on the sides. There was no buying of the game. You only entered when the berimbau called or when Nô signaled. Only recently has there been this game of compra-compra.

The three contra-mestres worked from the beginning to the end of the trainings. They would divide the class into groups – older students, newer students – and each student would train with one of the three. They also had the responsibility of controlling the roda when a violent visitor arrived. In these cases, Grande would block the exit, with arms crossed, watching the roda from in front of the open window. If the other contra-mestres couldn’t take care of the visitors, then he would enter. Nô and Barriga played berimbaus, Mr. Máximo liked to play berimbau and pandeiro, Tutú stayed on the atabaque, and the other instruments were for us to play.

The mestre was Nô; he gave the rules in the capoeira. But the brains of the group was Tutú. He was the one who fought to get our own space; this was his dream and he dedicated all his effort to it. He did everything he said he would – going here and there and even doing chores for the neighborhood politicians in order to gain favors. He would be a plumber, a painter, a stonemason, anything to gain a friendship, and then he would ask favors. It was Mr. Martim who gave him the opportunity to get close to these people. We used to go to parties given for important people. Tutú would also invite politicians, deputies, and civil cervants to come to our academy on Saturdays.

One Saturday afternoon when I had been taking classes for two months, I was training with Golias when Nô arrived. He sat down and talked with Tutú. When the roda began, he called me to play. I didn’t have any malícia in the game, but I knew how to do the movements. He liked me, and from then on he would play with me once in a while, and correct something.

On Saturdays, the roda began around 4 o’clock. Once, when I had been training for about three years, but I still didn’t have much malícia, Nô said at the beginning of class:

“Hey people! Around three o’clock, doctors so-and-so are coming to visit us. I want to see beautiful games in order to show our visitors that we’re doing good work here.”

Tutú, who was standing alongside, added, “Beautiful games! Not a hint of violence! After they leave, then you can kill each other.”

Everyone began training – the older students with Nô and Tutú, and the younger students with the contramestres. There were a lot of people; we were already filling up half of the lower room.

I was in that room with two girls, sisters, who had joined about three months earlier. They belonged to a folkloric performing group and they thought they were the best things on earth. We heard the booming voice of Tutú coming from the front room:

“Get ready, because the visitors are arriving!”

We went up, and Nen, the older girl, said to me:

“Look, you won’t forget what Tutú said, right? We’re going to play a friendly game.”

“Okay, I know…”

I was being honest. I was going to obey what Tutú had said. We arrived in the room and took our positions. Since there were visitors, there had to be introductions: Tutú introduced Nô to the politicians. Nô introduced us:

“We are honored with your presence here in our modest academy. I now present to you our group Orixas da Bahia, and since we don’t have much to offer you except a small demonstration of our work, we are going to do a short capoeira roda.”

Mr. Martim and the politicians thanked him and took their seats on the visitors’ bench, smiling. Tutú and Nô crossed the room. Nô crouched in front of the atabaque, which at the time was placed in the middle of the other instruments, and Tutú stood alongside the instruments, observing. The contramestres began to play the instruments. Nô sang a ladainha and then invited the newest student to begin the game.

Everyone played. The politicians watched with interest, especially when women played, which was rare. Until it was my turn to play. I was going to play with Nen. We played a high game and a low game. In the middle of the game, she gave me a chapéu-de-couro that hit me in the middle of my back, which taught me never to believe anything a capoeirista says.

I changed my ginga, ready for revenge. When she opened up, I gave her a solid benção that made her stumble. Just then, her sister bought the game. Since there were visitors, Nô let her buy in without stopping the roda. I felt a bit of fear, but I was ready to fight. I played well until the berimbau called, and she didn’t manage to do anything to me.

The games continued for an hour and a half, for the politicians to see.

Iê! – yelled Nô to stop the roda. Everyone clapped, the politicians stood and each one gave a little speech, and then they went off to talk with Tutú and Nô. We went back to playing. Later, I found out that Tutú had gotten a large check that was enough to renovate the space, and received the promise that we could have the whole building.

Eventually the roda ended, and I went to the dressing room. Since there were few women, we changed first so that the men could use the dressing room afterwards. When I arrived, Nen was complaining to her sister that her chest hurt because of the benção she received. I was wearing a shirt with an opening in the back, and I felt pain where I had been hit. They told me that there was a mark on my skin.

“I played a friendly game with you,” I said. “You were the one who gave me the chapéu de couro.”

They fell silent. I had made mistakes in the past, but I had believed that these girls, since they were about equal to me, and could be trusted. From that day forward, I trusted neither old nor new students. This is how my distrust was awakened – at the cost of a slap to the face, blow to the back, rasteira, or a lash from a little branch that Nô used to keep around in order to hit the legs of anyone who hesitated.

I learned capoeira in a tougher way. Even so, I saw and felt its beautiful side. I admired the capoeiristas of my era. They were good. I always aimed to learn more. I was a good student, despite the fact that Nô ignored me. I didn’t miss a single class. I was always there, training, taking falls. The girls who showed up to train – only after we had moved to Carlos Lopes Street, because when we were back in that crummy space, no one showed up to train – they would try to get close to Nô.

I don’t know how it is in other places, but it was common for young women to cozy up to the mestre or to the good capoeiristas in order to enjoy certain privileges or to learn more, to get special attention and protection. Nô, along with all capoeiristas, or the majority –was a hunk. I always treated him with respect, student-to-teacher and teacher-to-student. To me, he was a mestre and I never even thought about setting my sights on seducing him. Because of this, the mestre treated me roughly. Not in the roda, but in words and gestures. I was often bitter. He didn’t tell other women “Go into the roda and do your movements right” as he did to me; and it wasn’t just because I was the most experienced in capoeira. He only stopped treating me coldly when I started to date Dinelson, contra-mestre number 2 of the group, after a year. After that he was softer and would even chat with me.

After a student had been training in the academy for five or six months, there was a test that was performed without the student’s knowledge. It was to test their endurance, their “guts,” and if they had really learned something during their time in training.

On one of the roda days, unexpectedly, the student, who had already been playing in the roda after the first weeks of training, but had been played with gently, would enter the roda; and on that day the Mestre would give the signal for one of the more advanced students to buy the game. If the new student wasn’t playing, the advanced student would invite them. Then the new student would get played hard, attacking, being attacked, counter-attacking, receiving rasteiras, playing high, playing low, for an extremely long time. He didn’t even know that he was undergoing a test, a type of private baptism by fire. Only later, sometimes during another class in the following week, would the mestre talk about the new student’s performance on that day, if it was good or bad. And then the student was allowed to wear the belt, which the mestre gave to him.

Some students gave up after the test and never returned to the academy, not even coming back to hear what the mestre would say. This is what happened to Val; after his test, he stopped training even though he had been playing for six months. Val was always very delicate. He suffered from asthma. I encouraged him to try capoeira, and since we were like brother and sister he came to class. Afterwards he told me that he couldn’t take it. But that didn’t stop him from joining the military police. When I left Bahia, he was a lieutenant, preparing for the exam to reach the rank of captain.

He was very smart, a tall and thin black boy. He was the pride of a poor family in the illegal settlement of Mangueira. My mom took care of him from when he was seven until he was twelve, to help care for his asthma. We were really good friends. Before joining the police, he applied for a position in the government and was the first-place candidate; I even read it in the Offical Newspaper. But he was never appointed to the potition. He got disgusted with it. Despite the excuses that they invented, he knew that he was prevented from the job because he was black. So he had to enter the police academy.

He was the strong arm of the family; he even had an older brother, who was known as Nego Dinho and was a criminal. This brother was reported on in the newspaper because he got shot repeatedly in the doorway of his house and didn’t die. After spending three years in prison, he was ended up completely paralyzed, and Val took care of him.

Grande’s Challenge

One of Nô’s favorite students, Antônio Cerqueira, was called Grande (Big) because of his size. He had graduated after four years of training, and he thought that because of his size and experience, he was better than his mestre. He had already made a name for himself in Mangueira and Itapagipe, where he was well-known and respected. In the academy, all the new students were afraid of him, including me. Sergipe was the only one of the experienced capoeiristas who could handle him; he was half of Grande’s size, but very skilled. Sergipe was the third contramestre; the first contramestre was Grande himself, the second contramestre was Dinelson, and the fourth was Golias, who was the only white person in the group. To us, he was “high society,” because he was from the upper-middle class, from the Bonfim neighborhood.

Grande was a very special capoeirista. I’ve never seen anyone like him. He had a fantastic ginga, and he could make himself so small while playing on the ground! Besides his accurate movements, he had a way of turning his eyes so that he looked like the Devil, which was scary, especially to new students. It was scary, but it demanded respect from whoever entered the academy. He was really a lion. He only played when the game got really nasty, and that’s where he demonstrated that he was a very efficient capoeirista: he entered the roda and quickly resolved the problem. The game only lasted a long time if he played with a snake like himself, like Sergipe, who had been a student of mestre Caiçara. Sergipe left his academy because of some problems and entered Nô’s group, where he was accepted by Nô, Tutú, and the others. They got along so well that when Nô received an invitation to teach in Curitiba, he sent Sergipe in his place. In Paraná, Sergipe had a family and never forgot Nô.

At the time, we were training in Dudú’s candomblé temple in Mangueira.

Grande challenged Nô on a Saturday, in front of all the academy’s students and some visitors. Nô was arming the berimbaus. Grande entered, his shirt slung over his shoulder, with his swinging gait as always. He stopped in front of the mestre and said:

“Hey, Nô. Today it’s either you or me.”

Nô looked at him inquisitively. Grande often joked around, and Nô didn’t take him seriously.

“What did you say, amateur?”

“You heard me. It’s either you or me today.”

Nô put down the berimbau. Everyone had heard. I don’t know how it would be today, but in those days he had to accept the challenge. Nô wore a black belt that signaled his status as the mestre. He took it off, walked towards the atabaque, fastened the belt around the drum and said:

“We’ll play. If you get the better of me, I’ll leave. But if you lose, you’re the one who leaves.”

Grande was both taller and younger than Nô, 23 years old compared to the mestre’s 35. He had a strong body, a good ginga, and in the capoeira roda he was very tricky. Outside the roda he was a loyal friend, but in capoeira he made no alliances with anyone, neither the weak nor the strong. Nô was always calm, and was very skilled. Today he says that he knew he would win the challenge, but I knew that others doubted that Nô could win. Nô was good at capoeira, but we had never seen him play a really hard game like Grande, Sergipe, João Miséria, Ferra-Bráz, and others. We were scared that Grande would win and take over the academy. Then he would get even more puffed up with pride, and beat up everyone – and we beginners would get the worst of it.

Tutú arrived to play atabaque. Everyone went to the roda. It was obvious that Nô was angry. João and Dinelson began to play berimbau, and the game began, without a ladainha or any song at all. The atmosphere was heavy, and the tension was palpable. Whoever played instruments, played instruments, and everyone else was silent.

There were moments of one gaining the advantage over the other, and then the tables turned. Nô prepared Grande until finally he gave him a fantastic rasteira that caught both his legs and sent him with his butt to the ground, and completed it with a blow to the head. Grande was angry and tried to punch Nô, but others stopped him. João wanted to fight with Grande. An argument ensued. Grande left. Even though he had won, Nô remained agitated, and the roda didn’t continue that day. No one was in the mood for it.

Grande still tried to get revenge from time to time, together with Elias and Valcir, two other ex-students. They would wait for him on street corners, but they never managed to get him. Nô was a good capoeirista, and he also didn’t hang out alone. He had with him Ferra-Bráz (Branding Iron), who was nicknamed this because of his chapa which seemed like a mark with a branding iron; also João Miséria, who later abandoned capoeira when he found religion; Zéca the short guy, who was missing his left arm yet was still dangerous; Dinelson who was a friend of the mestre and stayed in the academy after Nô moved to Boca do Rio. Grande finally gave up and tried to start his own group, but it never succeeded, except for a student named Pelé who was very good. He began to drink, and stopped being the great capoeirista he once was.

He sometimes still visited the academy, but always when Nô wasn’t present. Tutú let him enter. Later, he left Massaranduba and moved to a peripheral neighborhood. Dinelson was invited to his group’s batizado. There were no graduated capoeiristas in the area, so that’s why they asked Grande to take charge of the group. We went, but I saw him playing and it was a disappointment. He had nothing left.

I continued training in the academy until I graduated, and then I kept training. I never stopped learning. When I left Coutos to return to Salvador, I took classes along with my daughter Clívia. My professor was Pelé, a student of Um-por-um, a capoeirista from Mangueira Street. He gave classes at night in the Orixas da Bahia acaemy with a group of six students, all capoeiristas who had stopped training for some reason and were coming back. This was my case, because although I gave classes, I had stopped taking classes.

I was always in the middle of the class, right up front listening to those who were more experienced.

I dedicated myself a lot to capoeira. For ten years, I taught students and did good work, even though I was in the shadow of my ex-husband. But I’m very aware of how seriously I took my work. Capoeira was a very strong element in my life, the rope that always secured me when I was close to falling off a cliff, a very important art that really changed my naturally violent nature, despite my mother not seeing capoeira in my life as a good thing.

For her, as for many people of that time, capoeira was synonymous with criminality, blacks, and vagabonds. When she was mad at me, she would even say, “You’re already useless, and even more so now that you’re a capoeirista and dating a capoeirista. You won’t amount to anything!” I got very angry.

My mother disliked capoeira so much that she stopped paying the monthly fee so that I would give up. I don’t know why she didn’t force me to stop; she had the power to do so. I was sad when she didn’t pay; I cried and pleaded with Nô and Tutú. Tutú was the president of the group. He told me that there was no need to cry, and I could keep training without paying. So I kept going to classes both during the week and on the weekends.

It was in capoeira that I met my ex-husband, who helped me a lot in my learning. We even became rivals in the roda, so much so that Nô forbid us from playing together. I trained a lot; I really dedicated myself to capoeira and to my serious relationship with Dinelson. My mother disapproved of this, too; she thought that capoeiristas were not good people. But I didn’t care.

Our relationship continued, and we had an engagement party with many capoeiristas present. It was a crazy party. Now things were serious – and despite the fights and lots of jealousy, things went on. Sometimes I had a premonition that it wouldn’t work out. But at the same time I thought that time would make everything right. We were very young. I always thought that something was missing in my feelings about him, but I didn’t know what it was. We went from engagement to marriage, and capoeira was always present in my life.