Mestre Juvenal (1919-1998)

Mestre Juvenal (1919-1998)

- Categories : Capoeira's Masters

Automatically translated from French. Thank you for your understanding.

Mestre Juvenal (31.01.1919 - 20.03.1998) was a Bahian, younger son of Maria Raimunda da Cruz, who was Indian.

He learned capoeira at a young age and was a shoe shine boy near the Lacerda elevator.

He was recognized Mestre de Capoeira in the 40s by Mestre Samuel Querido de Deus according to an interview with the latter in the Revista Cruzeiro, edition 0012 of 1948.

He played Capoeira on the ramp of the old Mercado Modelo and at the Festas de Largo.

He worked at customs and on the harbor docks.

Among his students, the following stand out among others: Reginaldo, Antonio, Evangelista and Romenil Assis da Cruz.

The latter was his son, whom he had had with his first wife: Nair Pereira de Assis.

Later, the master married Mrs. Olga Maria Santos da Cruz and they went to live in the neighborhood of Preguiça where they had a daughter: Olga Silva da Cruz.

One of Mestre Juvenal's sentences: "A capoeira é minha cachaça" (Capoeira is my cachaça).

Source text: CM Rouxinol 2020

Listen to Mestre Juvenal on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlmQxMhAGqY

Text by Boa Alma:

Juvenal Hermenegildo da Cruz, known in the capoeira world as "Juvenal engraxate", was one of the most pronounced names in Bahian capoeira in the 30s and 40s of the 20th century, a natural defender of Capoeira Angola, he did his rounds of capoeira on the ramp of the quays and he naturally attended a "Barracão" where rounds of capoeira were held in Chame Chame, alongside the shoemaker Osvaldo (student of Valdemar) and Samuel Querido de Deus, whose many claimed to be his teacher, although some of the sources attribute him to his lineage to master Waldemar da Paixão.

Very quoted by Mestre Noronha in his manuscripts, the same can be the famous Juvenal Nascimento who made the news in the main Bahian newspapers after entering the ring in 1936, it is also suspected that it is the same shoemaker Juvenal who frequents capoeira in the corresponding period. Dockworkers, like most of the former capoeirists, took advantage of the hours of rest, after meals, by the pier to practice, and teach the noble art of capoeira to those who wanted to learn it. Mestre Juvenal recorded a capoeira album in the 1940s, sung in Yoruba, Caboclo and Portuguese.

In the following excerpt, Mestre Juvenal is also mentioned by Jorge Amado during a column devoted to Samuel Querido de Deus in the novel "Bahia de Todos os santos" in 1944:

"The locks of white hair in Samuel Querido de Deus' carapinha have already started. Its color is undefined. A mulatto, of course. But a light mulatto or a dark mulatto, tanned with native blood or with traces of Italian in it. the angular face Who knows? the sea winds of the peach have given the face of Querido de Deus a color unlike any known color, new to all painters. He sets off in his boat for the seas in the south of the state where the fish abound. How old was he? Impossible to know on this Bahia wharf, because Samuel's canoe has been sailing for many years to return, a few days later, with fish at the market stall Modelo. But the old boatmen will be able to report that more than sixty winters have passed since the birth of Samuel. Because his head no longer has white hairs in the carapinha which seems eternally wet with sea water? More than sixty years with certainty. But even so, it There is no better capoeira player, for the festivities of Nossa Senhora da Conceição da Praia, the first week of December, than Querido de Deus. Let Juvenal, twenty years old, come the most agile, the most technical, let anyone come, and Samuel, the Querido de Deus, will show that he is still the king of capoeira in Bahia de Todos os Santos. The others are his disciples and they still look at him with astonishment when he throws himself on the "rabo de arraia", because he has never been seen so elegant ... "

Credits: Amado Jorge - Bahia de Todos os Santos - 1944

In this column by Jorge Amado, the little he talks about Mestre Juvenal is enough to ground his possible age, because the author quotes him as a 20-year-old boy, considering the fact that the column was written in 1944, we can then hypothesize that she was born in 1920; however, due to lack of concrete evidence, we will only remain on hypotheses.

In 1948, the journalist Cláudio Tavares, of the magazine "O Cruzeiro", made a long interview with the teacher and his pupils, where the title of the press article was "Zum, Zum, Zum Capoeira mata um". On the occasion in question, the master pronounced the following sentence "my cachaça is capoeira", alluding to other handlers taking advantage of their respective lunches for intoxication where confusion was inevitable. According to Tavares, he was not a thug, nor an exclusive professional of capoeira, who could be hired for any "small service" at the request of the big ones, like the other capoeirists of the time, Juvenal was a worker, a longshoreman who spent the hours of the day and even the night in the "hard / heavy".

The magazine "O Cruzeiro" was founded in 1928 and during the first decades of the 20th century it is considered the greatest vehicle for journalistic information of the period in question. In 1946, the magazine's team of journalists grew stronger with the hiring of French photographer Pierre Verger. This, by the way, is the pioneer among the photographers who have represented Afro-Brazilian culture, his photographs are very valuable documents for current professionals in the field of research, when it comes to the 1930s. to 60 of the 20th century. It is moreover himself, the photographer of the interview in question.

Text: Antônio Luiz dos Santos Campos (Boa Alma)

To know more about mestre Juvenal: https://velhosmestres.com/br/destaques-33

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