Palenque San Basilio

The free-black community of Palenque San Basilio is the most renowned runaway slave community in Colombian history; however, many aspects of the origins and nature of the town remain unclear. Situated in the mountains of the Sierra del María about seventy kilometers from Cartagena de Indias, in the municipality of Mahates, Palenque San Basilio stands as a testimony to the resistance of enslaved Africans and their descendants and to their insistence that they could be loyal citizens ready to contribute to the shaping of Colombia's society.

Palenques and Cimarrones

Enslaved Africans accompanied the early European conquerors in the Americas, and from the outset individuals struggled for their freedom through flight. They sought to establish themselves in inhospitable areas of northern South America whose difficulty of access offered natural protection from their persecutors. The word palenque is derived from the wooden palisades they built as a defensive measure around the fugitive communities. The palenques were typically agricultural communities that sought self-sufficiency; however, they were also defensive centers surrounded by high wooden palisades, defensive ditches, and sharpened wooden stakes to entrap the unwary attacker.

During the early colonial period, groups of runaways were usually led by escaped Africans. These leaders sometimes called themselves kings, referring to an African nobility or aristocracy and thus drawing legitimacy from their social standing in Africa. For example, Domingo Biohó, the self-styled rey de arcabuco, or king of the swamps, was also known as the king of La Matuna, the palenque he led. However, historians suggest that it was unlikely that members of royal families in Africa would have been sold into transatlantic slavery, and these references to African nobility may have been devices adopted by powerful military leaders to enhance their standing before their communities. Still, it is also recognized that many enslaved Africans were captured during military excursions and thus most of them had military experience that served them well in their attempts to defend themselves once they were able to escape their enslavement in America. As the colonial period wore on, though, the leadership of these communities changed. Later leaders were far more likely to be enslaved criollos, or people of African descent born in the Americas, and they typically called themselves captains or governors rather than kings.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, runaway slaves became the bane of colonial governors, especially around Cartagena de Indias, the most important port of entry for enslaved Africans arriving into Hispanic South America. These runaways escaped from mines, from haciendas, and from towns, and regrouped to form defensive communities. From their fortified camps, they sallied forth to rustle cattle, steal indigenous and other women and children, and rob travelers, terrifying the European populations of the area. The relative strength or weakness of the Spaniards and their allies shaped their response to the cimarrones (runaway slaves). At times the Spanish aggressively sought to destroy the palenques, whereas at other moments they were forced to negotiate uneasy truces with them. An example of this at the beginning of the seventeenth century was the community led by Benkos (Domingo) Biohó. The name Biohó probably comes from a region of Guinea-Bissau in West Africa. Some historians suggest that Domingo Biohó was a member of an African royal family from Guinea who in 1599, together with his wife and several other enslaved companions, escaped his Spanish owner, Juan Gómez, and eventually formed the palenque La Matuna. Successive governors of Cartagena sought to deal with the challenge of the palenque until finally in 1612 a negotiated settlement was achieved through which the fugitive slaves were recognized as free and granted privileges by the Spanish crown. The former slaves promised to return any new escapees, and they were given free passage to enter and leave the city of Cartagena; Biohó himself was granted the privilege of dressing as a Spaniard. However, in 1619 he was challenged by the guards as he sought to enter the city; violence resulted, and he was quickly tried and hung. Domingo Biohó's legacy lived on through the colonial period as the image of the rebel fugitive slave leader took hold. His name became synonymous with that of the strong African leader. Between 1600 and 1790 historical references can be found to the hanging of several individuals such as Domingo Bioo, Domingo Biho, and Dominguillo Bioho, testimony to the power of this indomitable rebel leader's legend. It was within this historical trajectory that other groups of runaways created communities such as Palenque San Basilio at various moments during the colonial period.

Palenque San Basilio

Palenque San Basilio was created by fugitives who regrouped after escaping from the destruction of other palenques, such as Tabacal, Matudere, and Arenal, at the end of the seventeenth century. The first documentary references to San Basilio date from 1713, when a group of cimarrones came to an agreement with the bishop of Cartagena, Fray Antonio Mariá Casiani. Although it is tempting to associate Palenque San Basilio with Domingo Biohó's La Matuna, the historical documentation suggests only that San Basilio was created by fugitive slaves and that the Spanish were never able to reconquer them. In order to win the fugitives over to Christianity in the beginning of the eighteenth century, Casiani, with the governor's consent, granted San Basilio's residents a general pardon with the understanding that the former slaves would not harbor future runaways. Nicolás de Santa Rosa was the captain of the community and he reached an agreement with the bishop after the prelate arrived in the palenque. They built a church and a baptismal font, and the bishop said mass and christened the town San Basilio Magno, since he was a member of the order of Saint Basil. He appointed a parish priest and put the church under the care of Saint Michael the archangel. He then took a census, counting some 234 souls in the town. He read the terms of the agreement before the congregated community, and everyone accepted it and confirmed Nicolás de Santa Rosa as their leader. The town's official posts were filled and it was agreed that the community would elect its own leader and that no whites would be admitted to the palenque except for the priest. From that moment, the settlement reappeared intermittently in historical documents so that in 1772, for example, San Basilio was described as a población de negros, or a black community, created by runaway slaves.

The isolation of Palenque San Basilio allowed particular cultural forms to develop or to be maintained within the community. For example, the people of the town traditionally have not mixed with other populations and even today speak their own particular language, Palenquero, which is recognized as a derivative of a Bantu-based language with much vocabulary of Kikongo origin. Linguists argue that the origins of Palenquero can be traced to West Central Africa, the region from which enslaved people known as Congos and Angolas came. The existence of its own language has enabled Palenque San Basilio to preserve its social cohesion and the unique identity of its residents.

Until the end of the nineteenth century palenqueros (residents of Palenque San Basilio) were extremely isolated from the rest of Colombian society, with a closed agricultural economy that shaped the community's material life. They grew rice, corn, yucca, plátano (plantains), ñame (yams), and peanuts, and they raised cattle. Only with the cultivation of sugarcane in the early twentieth century did San Basilio begin to integrate into Colombian national life. Contemporary Palenque San Basilio consists of the town and the surrounding mountains, where cattle graze and the crops are grown. The women of the palenque have usually had the most contact with the outside world, since they sell their products in the city while the men take care of the cattle and prepare the ground for crops of yucca and ñame.

Social Structure

The basic social category in San Basilio is the cuagro, an age group with both male and female members. Compounds consisting of several households are divided at their fundamental level into these cuagros. Some anthropologists suggest that it is through this social grouping that work is organized and that rituals such as weddings and deaths are enacted. Because of the historical context in which palenques developed—a state of perpetual guerrilla warfare—the ideal of fighting and aggressive struggle has also become an integral part of San Basilio's culture and can be seen in the number of successful world-class boxers who have come from the town.

In contemporary Colombia, Palenque San Basilio stands as the symbol of the autonomy of black communities. Nonetheless, changes in the twentieth century have altered San Basilio's internal political and social structures. Community issues were traditionally discussed in meetings of the townspeople under the direction of a committee led by a respected elder through a consultative approach, but this hierarchy has been broken by the intrusion of foreign political forms. This loss of autonomy has not been purely negative. For example, Article 70, added in 1993 to the 1991 Colombian Constitution, formally recognized Afro-Colombian ethnicity and the right of black communities to claim title to land they have traditionally worked; however, in practice this continues to be a highly charged political and economic issue and has led to violence.

See also Runaway Slaves in Latin America and the Caribbean

Bibliography

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De Friedemann, Nina S. Ma Ngombe: Guerreros y ganaderos en Palenque. Bogotá, Colombia: Carlos Valencia Editores, 1987.

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Schwegler, Armin. "Chi ma Kongo": Lengua y rito ancestrales en El Palenque de San Basilio (Colombia). 2 vols. Frankfurt and Madrid: Ibero-Americana, 1996.

Zuluaga R., Francisco U. "Cimarronismo en el suroccidente del antiguo Virreinato de Santafe de Bogota." In De Ficciones y realidades: Perspectivas sobre literature e historia colombianas: Memorias del Quinto Congreso de Colombianistas. Compiled by Alvaro Pineda Botero and Raymond L. Williams. Bogotá, Colombia: Tercer Mundo Editores, with Universidad de Cartagena, 1989.

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