A formação do jiu-jitsu brasileiro em Salvador e no Rio de Janeiro: um estudo histórico comparado

Abstract

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a globally practiced and consolidated sport. It is a sport practiced on all continents, with organized federations and confederations. Faced with this phenomenon and its relevance in Brazilian society, this study sought to investigate the historical process of institutionalization of the modality, understanding the formation of the first federations as an organizational framework that allows pointing out the beginning of the organized sport modality. This process began, according to the sources investigated in this research, in Rio de Janeiro with the foundation of the Jiu-Jitsu Federation of Guanabara, in 1967, authorized by the Brazilian Sports Confederation. From this experience, the modality was consolidated and expanded throughout Brazil. In Salvador, there were previous contacts with the modality, which went through several attempts to organize and consolidate itself, but it was only in 1996 that the city received the first organizational entity of the modality, the Bahia Jiu-Jitsu Federation. Given this scenario, it was decided to use the methodology of Comparative History, understood as a way of dealing with the process of organizing the modality at the national level, based on the experience of Rio and Janeiro, its consolidation and expansion to other cities, with a specific focus on Salvador. With regard to the investigated sources, a survey of specific productions in the field (books, biographies and specialized magazines), semi-structured interviews with relevant masters of the modality and context in question, survey of information in the digital collection of Hemeroteca Digital and the newspaper O Globo . In view of the above, we can point out that the founding process of the first federation of the modality, in Rio de Janeiro, was marked by disputes, with notable resistance from the Judo and Boxing federations, which were responsible for organizing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competitions previously . The process in Salvador, on the other hand, was a consequence of the reception of local Judo masters, who joined Charles Gracie and worked for the institutionalization of the modality in the capital of Bahia.