Angélica Endiabrada

Anna Angélica, known as "Angélica Endiabrada", was a valentona - a tough woman skilled in physical combat - who became notorious in Salvador, Bahia between 1910 and 1920. She was a constant presence in newspaper headlines and police records as one of the feared "valentonas da Bahia".

"Endiabrada" - meaning "possessed by the devil" or "wild" - was not a mere nickname but an adjective given to women who demonstrated exceptional skill in hand-to-hand combat. Angélica earned this epithet after a confrontation with a civil guard in which she resisted arrest and struck the officer, breaking his mouth. This single act of defiance against authority crystallized her reputation in the popular imagination.

According to Antônio Vianna in "Casos e coisas da Bahia", Angélica was also known as a troublemaker who, when drinking, would break up bars in the capital city around 1910. The scenes were the streets, the brothels, the points of prostitution - the same urban geography that shaped male capoeiristas of the era. The reasons for conflict were jealousy, alcohol, personal feuds - the common currency of street life in old Bahia.

Angélica belonged to a generation of legendary female capoeiristas and valentonas whose stories were passed down in oral tradition. She was contemporary with Salomé, Maria Doze Homens, Chicão, Rosa Palmeirão, Massú, Catu, Almerinda, and Menininha - women whose histories involved confrontations with police, knife fights with razors, and even the deaths of famous male valentões.

The book "Mestres e capoeiras famosos da Bahia" by Pedro Abib (2009) contains a chapter titled "Maria Doze Homem e Angélica Endiabrada: Briga por moqueca" (Fight over moqueca), documenting an encounter between these two legendary women. The fact that their conflict warranted its own chapter demonstrates how significant these female figures were in the capoeiragem of early 20th century Bahia.

While no direct evidence proves Angélica was a capoeirista in the formal sense, the newspapers and police of the era labeled women like her as such. The mastery of navalha (razor), canivete (penknife), faca (knife), and punhal (dagger) suggests she was indeed part of the capoeiragem culture, as these weapons were the companions of post-slavery capoeira practitioners.

Angélica's story was remembered in literatura de cordel - the popular printed booklets that celebrated legendary figures. Along with Besouro Mangangá, Inocêncio Sete Mortes, and Maria Doze Homem, she became part of the folklore that kept the memory of old capoeiragem alive.

The doctoral thesis "Mulheres incorrigíveis: capoeiragem, desordem e valentia nas ladeiras da Bahia (1900-1920)" by Paula Juliana Foltran (2019, University of Brasília) represents the most comprehensive academic study of women like Angélica. Foltran's research in the Arquivo Público do Estado da Bahia identified hundreds of women engaged in street fighting during this period, definitively dismantling the myth that capoeira was exclusively a male domain.