1) A Changing Country

Brazil was a melting pot of cultural influences from Europe, Africa and Asia. The country was the last in the world to outlaw slavery (1888) and as it entered the 20th century there were questions about its future identity. As slaves became free there was certainly a clash of the traditional castes of Brazilian society. Those that were from Europe and rich had lost some power, and those that had been slaves now had freedom. Among the old Euro-based elites racism was real, and it was very hard for those with African or Indigenous backgrounds to receive equal opportunity. The end of the 19th century saw the rubber tree economy explode in the Amazon jungles of the Brazilian state of Pará. Without slave labor many immigrants from Asia moved there in hopes of gaining their own riches, similar to the gold rushes in the western United States. The nouveau riche created elegant towns and theaters around this economic boom.

The Brazilian martial art, capoeira, had roots in African and Indigenous methods and was frowned upon my many of the elites. Capoeira fights were banned nationally from 1890-1930 and seen as the way of street hoodlums. The country found itself searching for an identity that could compete with other modern nations.