Mestre Onça Preta

Cícero Navarro, known as Onça Preta (Black Panther), was a short, skinny mulatto man whose name once "made brave men and bullies run". Born into poverty in Salvador on January 27, 1909, he became one of the bridge figures between the first and second generations of Bahian capoeira mestres.

As a boy, he witnessed the brutal persecution of capoeiristas by Police Chief Pedro de Azevedo Gordilho - the infamous "Pedrito". The cavalry chief conducted a systematic massacre of the old mestres, not in open combat but through capture and assassination. The bodies would appear days later, shot in the forest, their backs opened by knife cuts. Onça Preta remembered the fallen: Besourinho, Doze Homens, Mãozinha, Antônio Galindéu, Geraldo Chapeleiro, Finado Manteiga, Nagé, Paulo César de Moura, Gasolinha, and many others.

Onça Preta himself did not escape Pedrito's wrath. At a roda in Julião, in Cidade Baixa, the police arrived unexpectedly - the lookout had failed to sound the cavalry rhythm warning on the berimbau. The soldiers charged into the gathering. Onça Preta fell among the horses and had his legs "massacred, opened in deep wounds". He spent fifteen years treating them with herbs, prayers, and mandinga, refusing to see doctors for fear of amputation. The deep scars on his legs remained visible for the rest of his life.

He trained under multiple mestres of the old guard: Samuel Querido de Deus (considered by many the greatest capoeirista of 1930s Salvador), Vicente Pastinha, Besourinho, Vitor Agaú, Gasolina, and Aberrê. According to O Cruzeiro magazine (1948), he was a student of Aberrê. He trained at Matatu Preto alongside Aberrê, Geraldo Chapeleiro, and others who gathered there on Sundays.

In 1936, Aberrê challenged Onça Preta to a match on May 16 in Salvador - a sign of the competitive respect between them. Years later, when Aberrê died suddenly in 1972, Onça Preta mourned: "We had lost a great master, an excellent friend".

His name appears in Mestre Noronha's manuscripts as one of the founders of the legendary Gengibirra roda, which in 1941 came under Mestre Pastinha's command after the older masters died. On February 23, 1941, he was among the founding members of CECA (Centro Esportivo de Capoeira Angola) alongside Aberrê, Amorzinho, Antonio Maré, Daniel Noronha, Livino Diogo, and others.

He participated in landmark cultural events: the 1937 II Afro-Brazilian Congress in Salvador, where he performed his famous game with Samuel Querido de Deus before intellectuals like Edison Carneiro and Jorge Amado; and a 1938 roda at Itapagipe photographed by American anthropologist Ruth Landes, whose images now reside in the Smithsonian Institution.

In the late 1950s, Onça Preta moved to Rio de Janeiro. On July 21, 1960, together with fellow Bahian angoleiros Mucungê, Dois de Ouro, Baleado, Imagem do Cão, and Roque, he co-founded Grupo Filhos de Angola. He claimed to be the first Bahian capoeirista to perform capoeira and maculelê shows in Rio. In 1963, he played pandeiro on Mestre Paraná's historic LP recording.

His fame extended beyond capoeira circles. Jorge Amado mentioned him in his works, and O Cruzeiro magazine featured him in 1948. In 1972, O Dia newspaper profiled him - by then working as a servant at a child care hospital, his fighting days long past but his knowledge of traditional Angola intact.

He performed at Rio's Circo Voador in 1982, then moved to São Paulo in 1985, where he stopped teaching capoeira. He died in 2006 at 97 years of age, one of the last living links to the pre-persecution era of Bahian capoeira.

When asked about Mestre Bimba's Capoeira Regional, he was unsparing: "Where have you seen capoeira where you grab the opponent and the men stay stuck together? Bimba can forgive me... But the real capoeira, for me, is only Angola".