“Black is Culture”. The phrase appears on t-shirts and banners across Brazil. It is more than lazy stereotyping. No float during Rio de Janeiro carnival is more eagerly anticipated than the Blocos Afros. No footballer is more highly vaunted than the “next Pelé”.

And nowhere is Afro-Brazilian culture more vaunted than in Pernambuco. Jutting into the Atlantic ocean, this black and mestizo dominated state survived for centuries on its slave-driven sugar trade.