Vicente Ferreira Pastinha (Mestre Pastinha) was born in 1889, son of Spanish José Señor Pastinha and Doña Maria Eugenia Ferreira.

His father was a businessman, owner of a small grocery store in the historic center of Salvador.   
His mother, with whom he had little contact, was a black woman of Santo Amaro da Purificação was washer and was selling acarajé.  
He knew Capoeira at the age of eight, initiated by an African was called Uncle Benedito, who decided to teach his art he saw him fight against another boy much bigger than him. Pastinha spent every afternoon to work out in the street Tijolo Salvador.   
This is where he learned to be a winner. 
He lived a happy childhood, although poor and modest, attending morning classes from high school Arts where he learned to paint. In the afternoon he trained in capoeira. At thirteen he was the most respected neighborhood boy.   
His parents enrolled in the marine apprentice school, not wanting them to continue capoeira they felt for vagrants. 
He discovered the secrets of the sea while teaching capoeira to his friends.   
At 21, he returned to El Salvador, decided to devote himself to painting. In his free time, he trained in Capoeira secretly, as his practice was always a crime at the beginning of the century.   
In 1941, he founded the Centre Sportif de Capoeira Angola Pelourinho in. This was his first Capoeira academy.   
The uniform of his students was black pants and a yellow shirt. Pastinha worked hard to promote Capoeira, representing Brazil and black art in different countries.   
At 84, ill and physically impaired, he was living in a small room of Pelourinho with his second wife, Doña Maria Romelia.    
He had abandon the former headquarters of the Academy because of financial problems.   
His unique resource had acarajé that sold his wife. In April 1981, he participated in the last roda of his life.   
On Friday 13 November 1981, Mestre Pastinha died at age 92, blind and paralyzed from a stroke.