Negro Mendes and the fight for the city from the Afro-Peruvian

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the ways Negro Mendes occupies urban places in the city of Rio de Janeiro. This musical group performs Afro-Peruvian music and was formed in 2002 mainly by Latin American immigrants. Our goal is to show that Negro Mendes destabilizes ideas related to expectations about the legitimized Peruvian national identity. Therefore, Negro Mendes challenges signs of identification linked to the Peruvian people, as well as meanings about inhabit the city of Rio de Janeiro. For pursuing this purpose, we developed ethnographic fieldwork with Negro Mendes between 2013 and 2017. As we aimed to produce knowledge from our relationship with the group, we followed its members in various situations that somehow intersected with Negro Mendes. This included numerous journeys through places associated with private life, as well as journeys related to the public enjoyment of urban inhabitants, such as festive events, cultural centers and nightclubs. With this fieldwork, in the paper, we discuss Peruvian migration in light of the process of legitimization of certain symbolic repertoires within the Peruvian national project, historically based on the notion of mestizaje. We also consider Negro Mendes' strategies to create their public. These strategies involve interacting between established musical genres and the negotiation of expectations around the group's repertoire. In this way, we highlight the importance of a network of regional solidarity built from diverse and sometimes turbulent interests. Those elements dialogue with and stress multiple references to Peruvian nationality and the fact of inhabiting Rio de Janeiro. Thus, Negro Mendes offers us perspectives to imagine the contemporary musical cities of the Global South.