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Title of Dissertation : LION OF THE NORTH: Popular Culture, Identity, and Insurgent Memory in Pernambuco, Brazil (1906 - 1997)

Mateus’ research investigates how popular culture shapes identity in the state of Pernambuco, in the Northeast of Brazil, throughout the 20th century. Encompassing oral history, ethnography, and archival research, Mateus explores how collective memory reinterprets past rebellious events within a cultural context to foster community identity. The local collective memory of insurgence is actively crafted through narratives, a discourse of tradition, and cultural expressions, shaping a legacy of social struggles. Pernambuco’s population has crafted defiant narratives, rooted in historical contexts such as “effective” colonization, expulsion of “foreigners,” runaway slave resistance, colonial revolts, liberal revolutions, social banditry, political activism, and more. Cultural manifestations related to music, dance, literature, and visual arts—such as frevo, maracatu, and forró—commonly refer to Pernambuco’s history of resilience, reflecting the region’s mixed ethnic and racial heritage.