This article seeks to problematize, by means of an ethnographic, the limits of a Brazilian international cooperation mission conducted in Guinea Bissau, in which capoeira emerges as an instrument of diplomatic action within the context of South-South cooperation. This ethnographic survey focuses on the validation mission for the project entitled Capoeira and educational training for citizenship in Guinea-Bissau. The article intends to reflect on the meanings attributed to the mission, in order to understand the process of capoeira’s belated internationalization on the African continent, the fact that it took place under the tutelage of the Brazilian state in the context of the Bolsonarist government, in which cooperation with the global south was weakened, but also in which one of the forms of political denialism regarding the importance of Afro-Brazilian cultural practices in the Brazilian context is experienced.