Abstract
This article seeks to understand how Kandandu, as an expression of Black people’s right to the city, was consolidated as a landmark of Belo Horizonte’s Carnival, as a place of recognition and inclusion of Black people. Kandandu is the event that brings Belo Horizonte’s Afro blocks together and opens the city's Carnival festivities. For the development of the present research, a contextualization of the capital of Minas Gerais was carried out, highlighting aspects of the socio-spatial segregation that dates back to the city’s origin, supported by a theoretical framework that contemplates the dimensions of space, segregation, culture and politics. The ethnographic research regarding two Afro blocks, Angola Janga and Magia Negra (Black Magic), was used herein along with interviews and documentary research to understand the establishment of Kandandu. The results indicate that the Carnival, specifically the performance of Belo Horizonte’s Afro blocks, notwithstanding its playful and spectacle dimension, is guided by the endeavor to acknowledge and empower Black lives, as well as to promote the city's occupation, especially the central region, by historically excluded communities and groups, in a culture-making and city-making process that is embodied by Kandandu.
Keywords:
Racial segregation; Culture; Resistance