EVENT INFORMATION

11
October
1890

The Republic criminalizes capoeira in its penal code

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📅 11 October 1890 📍 Brazil

The Penal Code promulgated by Decree 847 placed capoeira in a chapter on “vagrants and capoeiras” and prescribed imprisonment for practicing it in public. Capoeira had developed through African diasporic knowledge and Black community life; criminalization carried forward older policing of Black bodies and public space into the Republic. This law did not target only formerly enslaved people, but its racialized enforcement shaped the freedoms of Black residents after formal emancipation.

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People in this event

capoeiristas

Manoel Deodoro da Fonseca

Organizations in this Event

Provisional Government of the Republic

police and courts