Chapter 2
Capoeira was the bridge
A Colombian boy who swore he would live in Brazil, capoeira as the bridge, and the arrival in 2002. The beginning of the story of Bairo Gonzalez.
Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez was born in Colombia, in 1982.
From the time he was a boy, he told anyone who would listen that one day he would live in Brazil. It wasn't a plan. It was a certainty spoken out loud, before there was any road leading to it.
The road came through a circle. Capoeira, the fight that is a dance and the dance that is a fight, was the first thing from Brazil he learned with his body. Before the language, before the country, came the rhythm of the berimbau. Capoeira was the bridge.
The ginga
People who have never played capoeira tend to think it is made of strikes. People who play it know it is made of ginga. The ginga is the movement that never stops: the body sways to one side, comes back to the other, and never stays still long enough to be taken down. In the roda, whoever stops, falls.
In 2014, UNESCO recognized the capoeira circle as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity. To a Colombian boy, it was something else: proof that Brazil already lived inside him before he ever set foot in the country.
Much of what comes later in this story is ginga. Fall to one side, come back on the other, never stay still long enough to be taken down for good.
No coincidences
Bairo says there are no coincidences and no accidents. There are purpose, dreams and execution. That sentence explains the boy who announced Brazil before he knew it, and it explains everything that would come after.
2002
In 2002, he arrived. He came with an education company, and he did not come to sweep floors: he held a management position. He was young to be in charge of anyone, and he was in charge.
The boyhood dream had come true. Brazil was real, and he was in it.
The first no
One day, Bairo wanted to follow his own path and leave the company. That was when he learned how an immigrant can lose the ground beneath him: no documents in hand, far from home, and afraid.
Hard years followed, with no direction and no safety net, as for so many immigrants before and after him. It took time to get back on his feet.
Anyone who has been through that learns something no school teaches. He likes to put it this way: the sun is for everyone, but shade, in the heat, is for the few.
What remained
The boy who had announced Brazil was in Brazil, with no footing, no direction and no one to ask. It would have been the natural place to give up.
He didn't give up. He started over, from the only place left: from zero. And he started close to home, with the person standing beside him.