Carioca feature. Pt02 - Malandragem

Okayyyyyyyyyy now you saw my impressions after 6 months of Rio style. I have learned a bit more now and I'll tell you one thing first: I thought I was understanding, but now I can say I did not clearly understand what is malandragem. The one thing I know now is that I do not understand much more than before, but at least I know it.

Malandagem has it's root deep down Rio de Janeiro's book. The early mixing of the population, being the second most africainized of all Brazil (Salvador de Bahia is the first) has a lot to do with it. Malandragem is the attitude of urban survival and I do believe now you find it in a lot of places, just that the brazilian have given it a name. Maybe because here is it quite "romantic". We were explained by Mestre Toni Vargas (capoeira master that I deeply respect) that there were various type of malandro, his dad for instance was a snooker malandro. It involved a very neat appearance and master the pool. The idea was to bring people to bet against them and try whatever it takes to win, without loosing the confidence and the appearance of complete mastering. It's like a heist, but for everyday's life. So to come back to capoeira, you can find in old videos masters coming to the capoeira meeting in white suit and white hat coming to play. They are deceiving people, they will bring you to their favorite pitch and then win you over with their art.I believe that even what I write is just a part of malandragem as you must adopt it as a philosophy of life, a survival guide. It has survived up to date and the carioca have this feature as part of their way of life. One deviation would be people trying to profit from anything without really caring of their surroundings. They have a small circle of trust because they are trying to profit from anybody so the circle is always thinning out. These people are so busy trying to profit out of you and trying not to be used that it becomes their major activity. Being "malandro" is actually quite cool if you are able not to push it too hard, otherwise you end up not trusting people and loosing other's trust.