In 1987, the Chao brothers and their cousin Santiago Casariego founded the band Mano Negra. Manu Chao said in Alt.Latino in 2011, "Mano Negra started playing in a subway in Paris before the band started to be known and selling records. We started in a subway for a living. This is what made the musicians of Mano Negra. And so the people using the subway in Paris was very eclectic. There was people from a lot of different countries, different cultures. So we have to be able to play all kind of music to please all the people in a subway. So that was a perfect school to learn a lot of different styles of music." Starting on a smaller label, the group released a reworked version of the Hot Pants single "Mala Vida" in 1988, which quickly became a hit in France. The group soon moved to Virgin Records, and their first album "Patchanka" was released the following year. Though the group never gained much fame in the English-speaking market, popularity throughout the rest of the world soon followed, reaching the Top 5 in the Netherlands, Italy and Germany. The band achieved some fame in South America with 1992's Cargo Tour, where it played a series of shows in port cities, performing from a stage built into their tour ship's hold. Mano Negra also performed a tour through much of Colombia in a retired train, the "Ice Express". Still, rifts began to grow among band members during the port tour and the following year's train tour; many band members, including Manu's brother Antoine, had left the group by the end of 1994. Following that year's release of their final album, "Casa Babylon," Manu Chao moved the band to Madrid, but legal problems with former bandmates led Chao to disband the group in 1995.