Manuel dos Reis Machado  Manuel dos Reis Machado, commonly called Mestre Bimba (; November 23, 1899 – February 5, 1974), was a "mestre" (a master practitioner) of the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira. He founded the "capoeira regional" school, one of the art's two main branches. Machado was born in Salvador in the year 1899 but was not officially registered until 1900, resulting in some confusion surrounding his date of birth. Despite him being born in 1899, 1900 is the date most commonly known and published. The son of Luiz Cândido Machado and Maria Martinha do Bonfim, Machado was born at the Bairro do Engenho Velho, Salvador. The nickname "Bimba", whose literal meaning was "phallus", came up as a result of a bet between his mother and the midwife during his birth. His mother bet that he was going to be a girl and the midwife bet he would be a boy; after he was delivered, the midwife revealed that he was a boy by pointing between his legs at his "bimba". In the context of Brazil, "Bimba" also meant "beating". He started learning capoeira when he was 12 years old, with a "Capitão da Companhia Baiana de Navegação" (Navigation Captain) from Estrada das Boiadas (present day Bairro da Liberdade) in Salvador, called Bentinho, even though in those days capoeira was still being persecuted by the authorities. He would later be known as one of the legendary founding fathers of contemporary capoeira, (the other being Vicente Ferreira Pastinha, also known as Mestre Pastinha), the father of modern "capoeira angola". Machado was a coal miner, carpenter, warehouse man, longshoreman, and horse coach conductor, but mainly a capoeirista. At 18, Bimba felt that capoeira had lost all its efficacy as a martial art and an instrument of resistance, becoming a folkloric activity reduced to nine movements. It was then that Bimba started to restore movements from the old capoeira (later known as Angola), added movements from an extinct African fighting style called batuque – a type of martial art that he learned from his father (of which his father was a champion), as well as introducing movements created by himself.