Bentinho

Bentinho, also known as Nozinho Bento, was an African who became captain (capitão) of the Companhia de Navegação Bahiana—a pioneering steamship company serving the Bahian coast and Recôncavo. As a boat commander, he likely traveled the Bay of All Saints and the ports that connected Salvador to the sugar plantations of the interior.

What makes Bentinho significant to capoeira history is a single, crucial fact: he was the first teacher of Manoel dos Reis Machado, who would become Mestre Bimba, the founder of Capoeira Regional and one of the most transformative figures in capoeira's history.

Around 1911, when young Bimba was twelve years old, he began learning capoeira from Bentinho at the Estrada das Boiadas in Salvador's Liberdade neighborhood—a predominantly Black area formed by freed people after abolition in 1888. The training took place at a location known as "Clube União em Apuros". The apprenticeship lasted approximately four years.

According to Bimba's own account in a 1936 interview with the newspaper A Tarde: "I adapted various blows from what is called capoeira de Angola, the style practiced by my mestre, the African Bentinho".

The training methods were harsh by later standards. Bimba himself recalled: "Mestre Bimba costumava recordar um golpe formidável aplicado por Bentinho, que o acertara na cabeça, provocando um desmaio até o dia seguinte" (Mestre Bimba used to recall a formidable blow applied by Bentinho that struck his head, causing him to faint until the next day). The rodas at Estrada das Boiadas were described as "bravio" (fierce) with intense berimbau rhythms.

The movements Bentinho taught included the foundational vocabulary of capoeira: meia lua de frente, meia lua de compasso, meia lua armada, aú, cabeçada, chibata, rasteira, raspa, tesoura fechada, balão, leque, calcanheira, encruzilhada, and deslocamento.

After completing his training around 1915, Bimba began teaching what he had learned. He taught "Capoeira Angola" at the port authority of Bahia for more than ten years before beginning to develop his innovations that would become Capoeira Regional.

What happened to Bentinho after Bimba's apprenticeship is not recorded. His dates of birth and death remain unknown. He exists in history through the singular but profound fact of having transmitted capoeira to the man who would revolutionize it.

As an African-born capoeirista active in the early 1900s, Bentinho represents a direct link to the art's African roots—one of the last documented connections to the generation that carried capoeira from Africa to Brazil or learned it directly from those who did.