For more than 200 years, starting in the early 16th century, there was slavery in Peru, mostly people kidnapped from Africa who had first been brought to the eastern coast of South America and then taken to Peru. The descendants of these people are today’s Afro-Peruvians: people fully Peruvian but with a lively cultural tradition of their own which includes music and dance.

Afro-Peruvians live mostly in the coastal area of Peru – in the capital city of Lima, and in small towns to the north and south, all the way from Nazca in the south to Piura in the north. One town considered to be an important center of Afro-Peruvian culture is a couple of hours by car (or bus) south of Lima. Called “el Carmen,” it maintains the important Afro-Peruvian form of the Christmas celebration called the “hatajos de negritos.”

For the “hatajos de negritos,” groups of men and boys dance through the streets accompanied by a violin, some of them carrying statues of baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary on their shoulders. These processions start on the night of Christmas Eve and end in the late morning of Christmas day. The participants rehearse for weeks to learn the steps they will use as they dance in the procession. In addition to dancing as a group, each of them dance individually before the image of baby Jesus…and in addition to the religious element, there is some friendly competition to see which one dances best!

Girls are not allowed to participate in these processions, although they certainly can watch them. But – they have their own, smaller, procession a few days after Christmas in which they dress all in white and dance with their own steps.