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In the world · Migration · 26 November 2014

The capoeira circle, UNESCO heritage, and Colombia

In 2014, UNESCO declared the capoeira circle heritage of humanity. In Colombia, it has trained students for over 30 years. Capoeira as a bridge.

bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published

On November 26, 2014, UNESCO inscribed the capoeira circle (roda de capoeira) on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, during the 9th session of its Intergovernmental Committee, in Paris. The decision recognized an Afro-Brazilian practice that was born as resistance to slavery and is now played in many countries. Colombia is one of them: in Bogotá, Cali, Medellín and other cities, capoeira groups have been training students for more than three decades.

What happened

The nomination was submitted by Brazil, with the work of the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute (Iphan), and approved by the committee's decision 9.COM 10.8. In the official description, UNESCO defines the circle as something that is at once a fight and a dance: two players in the center, the others around them, singing and playing instruments. The text highlights the hierarchy that sustains the tradition, with master, assistant master and disciples, and learning through observation and imitation.

UNESCO also recorded the meaning of the practice. The circle, the text says, is an affirmation of mutual respect among communities, groups and individuals, promotes social integration and keeps the memory of resistance to historical oppression. In UN News coverage in 2014, the message was direct: capoeira expresses Black resistance in Brazil during slavery.

In Colombia, capoeira took shape from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Some public portraits of this presence:

  • Capoeira Nativos, a group created in Bogotá with more than 35 years of history, today with bases in Bogotá, Bucaramanga, Medellín and Villavicencio and a presence in nine countries, according to the group itself;
  • Capoeira Nagô, which maintains a cultural group at Universidad del Valle, in Cali, and also operates in Barranquilla, Medellín, Bogotá, Armenia, Pasto, Popayán and Jamundí;
  • Instituto Distrital de las Artes (Idartes), of the Bogotá city government, which in May 2024 offered free workshops in capoeira, maculelê and puxada de rede at the Casona de la Danza.

Why it matters

Capoeira travels without a passport. Those who join a circle in Bogotá learn to sing in Portuguese, to play the berimbau and to know part of Brazil's African history before setting foot in the country. For many people, their first contact with Portuguese may be a ladainha (a litany) sung in the circle.

That makes capoeira a true bridge, in the most literal sense. It carries Brazil abroad without an embassy and brings to Brazil people who already arrive knowing a bit of the culture. At a time when the country receives immigrants from almost 200 nationalities, according to OBMigra, it is a form of integration that begins before the border.

In Bairo's view

For Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez, this bridge has a name and a history. Born in Colombia in 1982, he says that since he was a boy he said he would live in Brazil, and that capoeira was the bridge: the Brazil he learned with his body, before the language and before the country. He arrived in 2002. The full account is in Capoeira was the bridge.

In his reading, capoeira teaches what an immigrant's life demands: the ginga, the movement that never stops. In the circle, whoever stops, falls. For Bairo, falling to one side and coming back from the other was the way to get through the attempts that did not work out before the seventh, told in The no is the base of the yes.

He often says there are no coincidences or chance events, only purposes, dreams and execution. And that the sun is for everyone, but shade, in the heat, is for few. In his view, the circle is one of the few places where everyone plays under the same sun: master and student, Brazilian and foreigner.

Where this meets the ecosystem

In Bairo's story, capoeira is the original bridge, and the word comes back when talking about CLAIN, the AI agent orchestrator that links the ventures he founded, and about the Global Language of Xperienc Global Labs, the proposal for a clinical second-opinion teleconsultation in which patient and specialist each speak their own language. The idea is the same as the circle's: take language out of the way so people can meet.

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