In a favela in Rio de Janeiro, Douglas Rufino has been “saving lives” for twenty years by transmitting to young people the values of jiu-jitsu, a very popular martial art in Brazil.
The dojo where he leads the training is located at the very top of the Morro do Cantagalo favela, on a hill overlooking the wealthy neighborhoods of Ipanema and Copacabana.
At 41, this former world champion is a reference for the beneficiaries of the Cantagalo jiu-jitsu social project, which he joined in 2003, three years after its creation.
Its objective: “to give a better future” to the young people of the favela, where professional opportunities are rare and where the population lives under the yoke of drug traffickers.
The most talented can dream “of making a living from this sport, like me and many of my friends,” Douglas Rufino told AFP.
The walls of the dojo are decorated with frescoes representing him, shaved head and raised fist, alongside other young people from this social project who have made a career in this sport.
This martial art from Japan has seen the development of a Brazilian variant very popular with MMA fighters, with formidable techniques of immobilization on the ground.
But for the pupils – children, girls or boys, teenagers, but also adults – it is also a school of life.
“A lot of children are rebellious when they arrive and become disciplined,” says 17-year-old Fabiano dos Santos Guedes. “That’s jiu-jitsu, you learn respect and discipline,” adds this teenager dressed in a gray kimono.
Other young people who grew up in Morro do Cantagalo are professional wrestlers, or teach this martial art abroad, in Sweden, Singapore, the United States or Portugal.
“I can say that jiu-jitsu saved me. I could have followed another path,” said Douglas Rufino, crowned lightweight world champion in 2006.
In the favelas, many young people are recruited by gangs of drug traffickers.
But you have to overcome many obstacles to make a living from jiu-jitsu.
Unlike football, where the most talented players can earn millions before their twenties, it takes years to build a career in this martial art.
“You have to be very persistent to make money. For eight or ten years, it doesn’t pay off, you just invest to reap the rewards in the future,” he explains.
Beatriz Freitas, 22, a Brazilian lightweight champion born in another Rio favela, dreams of winning the world title.
But if she does not succeed, this young black woman would be content to be an “excellent teacher” of jiu-jitsu, a sport where women are still a minority.
“When I started practicing this sport, three years ago, I was in a very stressful period of my life and I was aggressive, at school and at home. Jiu-jitsu gave me change your attitude,” she says.
But Brazilian jiu-jitsu has also been the subject of controversy in the past.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was mostly practiced by wealthy young men who wanted to learn self-defense techniques, says sociologist Bruno Cardoso.
In Rio, many fights in the streets or in bars involved “pitboys”, young muscular white people from wealthy neighborhoods who walked around with pit bulls and were associated with the practice of jiu-jitsu. Some of them targeted homeless people.
“There were emblematic cases which really involved jiu-jitsu wrestlers, which was a fashionable sport, but the press tended to generalize”, estimates the sociologist.
Scandals have tarnished the image of this martial art, but the situation has evolved over time, and thanks to the efforts of teachers to teach their students that jiu-jitsu is not synonymous with violence.
“Today, everything is much quieter, says Douglas Rufino, jiu-jitsu is seen more as a competitive sport, or a practice of well-being”.
08/19/2023 10:41:15 – Rio de Janeiro (AFP) – © 2023 AFP