Pelourinho, Brazil: home of beautiful women and capoeira

Brazil has been selected as the country to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. It is also the second country after Nigeria with the largest population of people of Black African descent. The Games will take place in Rio de Janeiro and other surrounding venues.

Eleven hundred miles (1773 Kms) from Rio is Pelourinho, Brazil, once the site of slave pens and auction blocks. In the 1990's, a major restoration effort resulted in making Pelourinho a highly desirable tourist attraction. It has been placed on the national historic register and has been named a world cultural center by UNESCO.

Pelourinho, also known as Bahia, means "place to lash the slavors" in Portuguese which is the national language. Today, there is something colorful to see along every street in Pelourinho, including churches, cafes, restaurants, shops, pastel-hued buildings, and beautiful women.

Slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1850, but before then, the slaves had created a form of dance that was really a self-defense method known as capoeira. Capoeira Brazilian Pelourinho, a form of martial arts, was founded by Mestre Lazaro da Bahia in 1995.

Capoeira is also practiced in the United States, and instructors often visit Atlanta. Ayron Johnson of Marietta, Ga. trained in Capoeira Angola with Brazilian instructor Mestre Moraes, co-founder of the Grupo de Capoeira Angola Pelourinho (GCAP), in 2002.

(Capoeira photo property of Atlanta WingChun.)

©2011 Tomi Johnson. All rights reserved.