Perhaps, the most iconic symbol of the Afro-Colombian community is that of the palenquera. Their faces are splashed across every guidebook, every advertisement for the country, every travel blog rhapsodizing about Colombia’s colorful culture. They are the face of Cartagena. They are not, however, from Cartagena.
Sara Jane Armstrong, a travel blogger, is taking us through the cultural history of this community – who are they, where did they come from and how do they adapt their African roots to the Colombian communities that they now live in.
From SJ,
The bright, voluminous dresses and head-wraps represent the style of their town, San Basilio de Palenque- unmistakably African. They carry fruit baskets on their heads, the only resource their village has in abundance, on the long journey through adverse conditions to reach Cartagena. While San Basilio de Palenque being so secluded from the rest of Colombia is one of the key reasons it has prevailed to this day, it means that resources and economic opportunities for its people are slim. Thus, these women travel to the tourist-trodden streets of Cartagena search of opportunity. With the attention they drew from tourists, journalists and photographers, these women quickly came to embody the lively spirit of the city. Few, however, delve into the curious history of palenque culture and how they came to be.
History of the Afro-Colombian community
The first of the slave rebellions of northern Colombia were born in Santa Marta. Founded in 1525 on the backs of indigenous and African slave labour, the workers that built her walls burnt them to the ground. Fleeing in droves to Colombia’s densely forested interior, the escaped slaves formed communities of their own, known as palenques. Despite continual efforts from the Spanish to eradicate them entirely, many of the people, and the cultures they brought with them, survived. The most famous of the palenques formed by these rebellious bands of Africans, and the only one still standing in Colombia today, is San Basilio de Palenque.
Right in the centre of the town stands a statue- a carved man fighting free of his chains, reaching out in the direction of Africa. It depicts Benkos Biohó, son of the king who ruled the islands off modern-day Guinea-Bissau, kidnapped by Portuguese slavers in the late 16th century. Passed through slavers hands on the gruelling transatlantic voyage, he was eventually sold to a Spanish merchant in Cartagena, Colombia. Outraged by his own kidnapping, by the foul treatment of slaves by said kidnappers, and by the horrific conditions faced by slaves in Colombia, Biohó rebelled. Alongside his family and 25 other slaves, Biohó established a base for his band of escaped slaves near the town of Tolú. From here, they launched a series of guerrilla-style attacks, freeing slaves and killing their enslavers. These were eventually quelled, when the governor of Cartagena offered them a patch of land as way of a peace offering. This land became San Basilio de Palenque.
Biohó was betrayed, hung and quartered, but his community lives on. A dusty, swelteringly hot town replete with thatched roofs and brightly dressed palenqueras. Reminiscent more of the villages I visited in eastern Africa than the ones in mainland Colombia, San Basilio de Palenque represents a unique blend of the cultures that built her. The language spoken is a variation of creole, a fluid mix of various African dialects, Spanish and Portuguese.
Despite my own limited knowledge of African languages, I travelled alongside an Ethiopian girl, who was regularly excited by the snippets of speech we heard all around us. When transporting slaves across the Atlantic, traders attempted to form groups that had no common languages. Their objective was to make it more difficult for them to communicate, and thus more difficult to incite revolution. The unique confluence of dialects was developed as slaves from all over Africa sought liberation and were brought together as one greater community, each bringing their own languages and their own cultural heritage. Their brand of creole, I am told, most closely resembles the Bantu dialects of central Africa, far from their founder’s roots in Guinea-Bissau.
In neighbouring Brazil, one of the most prominent Africanisms in society is the curious blend of Portuguese Catholicism and African Animism. Religious ceremonies are conducted openly, almost exactly replicating those of their west African ancestors. Though less prevalent in Colombia, there is still a modest practice of syncretistic faiths. Many of the Africans that escaped during the early days of the transatlantic slave trade in Colombia maintained their faith, and carried it with them to San Basilio de Palenque. They practice very specific funeral rights, the cabildo lumbalú, wherein elders in the community conduct drumming, singing and dancing to help the deceased souls pass into the next world. This ceremony invokes the Bantu deity Calunga, with the Congolese notion of purgatory being referred to as a ‘Calunga line’. This line is often associated with water, specifically the Atlantic, and is thought to symbolise the space that slaves had to travel between their living world in the west and their homeland. Churches in Cartagena went so far as to confiscate cabildo drums, while Catholicism was still strictly enforced under the Spanish rule. This, is the only overtly African religious ceremony still popular and prominent in Afro-Colombian culture, a decisive break from the unilateral authority of the Catholic church across most of Latin America.
The influences of African music and African dance are also a popular spectacle on the streets of Cartagena. Dance troupes perform elaborate champeta routines in traditional dress, bands of folk musicians providing their rhythm. Thought to have emerged from the Colombian palenques, champeta is a fusion of African musical styles, like soukous, and Caribbean styles, including reggae. In the social hub of Plaza de la Trinidad, in Cartagena’s popular Gethsemani region, tourists and locals alike sip shots on church steps and watch champeta performances. Overwhelmingly African in style and sound, you feel less and less like you’re in Colombia with every step.
Yet, it is important to recognise that this is Colombia. Afro-Colombians make up a significant portion of the population, particularly amongst the costeños of the Caribbean and Pacific regions. Still facing discrimination for their unusual language and economic backgrounds, palenqueros are slowly gaining recognition for the impact they have had upon Colombian culture. Whether in style, in music, in tradition or in language, African culture is woven into the the country’s history. One group, through dogged resilience, shook their shackles and transformed the culture of their new pocket of the world. An African king, stripped of his titles and powers, fought to create what is now an utterly unique and thriving culture and community- ‘the first free people of the New World.’
{Words by Sara-Jane Armstrong, Website: Listen To The Wild, Instagram: @listento.thewild }
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