Manuel Henrique Pereira, known as Besouro Mangangá, was from Bahia, illiterate, and born in 1895.

The son of enslaved people, he left home at the age of 13. He often went to the marketplace, where he met Mestre Alípio, an African who had been enslaved and who possessed deep knowledge of capoeira and the secrets of the Orixás, becoming his apprentice.

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A feared, brave, and mystical figure, surrounded by mysteries, Besouro became an exceptional capoeirista, to whom alleged supernatural abilities were attributed, among them the power to transform into a beetle to escape gunfire.

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He led several confrontations against the police. He always wore an amulet (patuá) around his neck, was believed to have a closed body (spiritual invulnerability), and at the age of 29, he fell victim to betrayal: he was deceived and stabbed in the back with a tucum knife, the only weapon capable of piercing his spiritual protection.

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He was abandoned at the Santa Casa de Misericórdia, where the doctors, upon recognizing him as Besouro, deliberately left him untreated until he died, and he was buried in a shallow grave as a pauper.