Palenque Palenque! An Intense and Uplifting Celebration of Culture & Identity.

The annual Festival of Drums and Cultural Expressions of Palenque is a celebration of the unique culture and identity of San Basilio de Palenque. It is a demonstration of the enduring resistance of the first free town of the Americas and indicative of the rich cultural diversity found in Colombia. Last year, La Libertad Sublime visited to learn more about what Palenque represents in terms of the diaspora, music, tradition and power.

Diappora - Diaspora

/dʌɪˈasp(ə)rə/

The dispersion or spread of a people from their original homeland.

It is difficult to think of Palenque, or its festival, without thinking of the diaspora. A settlement established by those escaping the ravages of slavery in the 17th century, Palenque and its early inhabitants fiercely defended this independence to the extent that it has endured to this day. A piece of Africa, as performers Justo Valdez and Viviano Torres pointed out. In doing so, the town has become synonymous with Afro-Colombian identity and culture. Its annual festival of drums and cultural expressions is the most vivid manifestation of this culture and identity, and the ideal moment for a gathering of the diaspora. While Palenque itself is an expression of the African diaspora, disseminated through the horrors of slavery, the town counts on its own diaspora. Like many rural towns throughout Colombia, its inhabitants have a long history of migration; to nearby cities such as Cartagena and Barranquilla principally, but also further afield to places like Bogotá and internationally to neighboring countries and beyond.

The festival was originally conceived as an occasion for the settlement’s diaspora to come together and strengthen their shared culture and identity. Iveth Herrera Miranda is an example of Palenque’s near diaspora; she was born in Barranquilla to Palenquero parents and runs the Kasimba cultural centre there promoting food and dance as expressions of Palenque's culture. The centre takes its name from the hollows traditionally dug out of creek banks and used for washing clothes in Palenque in times gone by. Iveth, like many of Palenque origin living in cities like Cartagena and Barranquilla, stays with family members when visiting for the festival, and expresses satisfaction that the festival has grown from what was traditionally a day to celebrate the role of colonizers (Columbus day) to being a celebration of the particularities of Palenque culture.

Cultural leader Iveth Herrera is from the Palenque diaspora in Barranquilla, where she runs the Kasimba cultural centre. Photo courtesy of Iveth Herrera.

Like Iveth Herrera, Sidney Reyes Reyes, a researcher, music collector and radio presenter, also hails from the Palenque community in Barranquilla. Sidney speaks of childhood trips to San Basilio de Palenque as being the highlight of every year, and he continues to visit as frequently as possible. For Sidney, Palenque represents a town and community that has led a valiant resistance since the era of colonialism, maintaining its honor and a sense of freedom despite the many challenges and obstacles it has faced.

Researcher, collector and radio presenter Sidney Reyes Reyes. Photo courtesy of Sidney Reyes Reyes.

Kairen Gutierrez grew up in Cartagena, where from an early age she was exposed to racist and discriminatory comments focusing on the color of her skin and her Palenquera background. This discrimination led Kairen to a life dedicated to political and community activism on behalf of Palenque and other Afro-Colombian communities throughout the region. Kairen is in no doubt of the importance of the festival: ‘(the festival) is the moment, the stage, the meeting, the most important date for the Palenque diaspora, every year...it’s the opportunity to enjoy and share our culture’. Figures like Kairen, involved in national Afro-Colombian networks such as Procesos de Comunidades Negras (PCN) have been pivotal in establishing the festival as a reference point not only for those with familial ties to Palenque but also for Afro-Colombian communities in distinctive regions of Colombia, such as the Raizal population from the islands of San Andres and Providencia and the many Afro-Colombian populations located on the country´s Pacific coast. Increasingly, the town and its festival are attracting interest from the African diaspora throughout the Americas.

The festival at Palenque welcomed artistic acts from Colombia's Pacific coast, another hotbed of Afro-Colombian identity in the country.

Tamia Jordan is the director of intercultural student affairs at Emerson College in Boston. Her work had previously seen her travel with students from the U.S. to Ghana as part of a music exchange program. Making connections with the African diaspora has been a long-held objective for Tamia, and she had previously travelled to Havana, Cuba, and Portobello in Panama in order to forge such links. While on her first visit to Colombia in 2018, Tamia visited Palenque, and established a relationship with the Palenquero hip-hop group Kombilesa Mi, whom she would later help bring to Emerson College in July 2022. Months later, Tamia was back in Palenque for the festival, which she views as the type of experience that assuages the heartache etched in the DNA of those who can trace their ancestors to the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade.

Tamia Jordan, visiting from the U.S. with friend Jeanné Anderson, poses for a picture with the legendary Justo Valdez, of Son Palenque.

Filmmaker and researcher Carolina del Mar Fernandez emphasized the importance of technology in terms of allowing younger generations of Palenqueros to establish connections with their peers of African origin elsewhere in the world, at a time when black pride messages are much more pronounced than in the past. It seemed appropriate that among all the colorful murals which decorate the town with messages exalting pride in the community, its identity, and its achievements, there were but three words in English: Black Lives Matter. Singer and cultural ambassador Viviano Torres sees the festival as the perfect occasion for these disperse communities and cultures to come together, with the drum as the central pillar, while Justo Valdez, leader of the legendary Son Palenque, highlighted how more and more people arrive at the festival these days to hear ‘the music of the African diaspora’.

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Músika - Music

/ˈmjuː.zɪk/

An art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color.

Originating from the Latin «musica» which is derived from the Greek term «mousike», which makes reference to the education of the spirit, placed under the patronage of the muses of the arts.

It is an impossibility to think of Palenque without music. Music is both a link to the past of Palenque and the bridge which connects the town and its inhabitants to the nations and peoples of the African continent, from where their ancestors had been seized and sold into slavery centuries ago. Music is the language which courses through the diaspora from Palenque to Port-au-Prince, Havana and San Juan and across the waves to Kinshasa, Lagos and Nairobi. In Palenque, music marks the times of joy, such as its festival, and also times of sadness, such as during the Lumbalú funeral traditions, where days of mourning are filled with wailing, prayers, songs and dance as a way of aiding the transition of the departed, a ritual that can be traced back to Bantú territory in western Africa.

Researcher, collector and picotero Don Alirio. Photo courtesy of Don Alirio.

Palenque has also been at the vanguard of the popular music scene throughout Colombia. It was in Palenque and among Palenquero communities in Cartagena and Barranquilla that genres from the Congo, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa (among others) gained popularity at the picó sound systems from the 1970s onwards. However, the importance of Palenque as an entrance point extends far beyond then. For Don Alirio, an avid record collector, picotero, and researcher, San Basilio de Palenque does not receive the national acclaim it merits in relation to the popularity of Salsa music: “The first manifestations of Afro-Antillan rhythms such as Son Guajiro, Son Cubano or Son Montuno, were made in Palenque, not Barranquilla, and not Cali”. These rhythms were interpreted by a group of musicians with a musical legacy of almost a hundred years of tradition, a group known today as the Sexteto Tabalá. Their exposure to Cuban rhythms as far back as the 1920s has been credited to contact with Cuban engineers who had visited the region to share knowledge of sugar cane production, and who in the process, brought instruments of African origin such as the marimbula. This group, under the guidance of maestro Rafael Cassiani Cassiani (until his death in 2022), has made a massive contribution in terms of putting Palenque, and Palenquero culture, on the map at a national and international level, as well as playing a fundamental role in the perpetuation of this rich musical and cultural legacy through the training and teaching of subsequent generations. This musical apprenticeship forms younger generations in the tambor-drumming, dancing and singing required in traditional rhythms such as Bullerengue, Chulapa and the Mapale.

Marimbulas in the casa cultural of Kombilesa Mi in Palenque. The instruments were originally introduced to the Palenque community by Cuban engineers visiting Colombia in the 1930s.

All of these rhythms and dances are present throughout the three days of a festival where the tambor is the “central epicentre” according to Viviano Torres. Viviano was a leading figure in the development of Terapia music scene in the early to mid-eighties. Effectively, this genre saw artists from Palenque, Cartagena and Barranquilla reinterpret the rhythms and melodies of the hugely popular African music which dominated the local picó culture from the 1970s onwards. Rhythms such as soukous (from the modern-day Democratic Republic of Congo), highlife (from Nigeria and Ghana), mbaqanga (from the townships of South Africa) or benga (from Kenya) ruled the local sound system culture throughout the Caribbean region following their arrival through the ports at Cartagena and Barranquilla. These records were so highly sought after by the owners of the picó sound systems that they would fund trips by the so-called “corresponsales” to find records throughout the Caribbean and even further afield to cities such as New York and Paris, as well as making the ultimate pilgrimage to cities such as Kinshasha, Lagos, and Nairobi, in search of new music to set their picó apart. Many of these records were held as treasured exclusives by sound systems and as such, all evidence of their identity was concealed, with covers guarded jealously and labels scratched off.

Musician and cultural ambassador Viviano Torres during the 2022 festival in Palenque.

For researcher and collector Sidney Reyes Reyes, it was difficult to put into words the affinity he felt upon hearing these genres as a youth, music that “connected us to the motherland, a magical experience that strengthened the invisible thread which connects us as African descendants”. As a young man growing up in the midst of the mighty picó soundsystems of Palenque and Cartagena, Viviano Torres would use a handheld device to record the hypnotic guitar driven melodies transported from far foreign lands. The languages of the lyrics may have been unfamiliar, but the underlying rhythms were not: “I said to myself that when I heard an African rhythm, a soukous rhythm, or a mbaqanga rhythm...if we took out the harmony of a soukous, what you hear is what (music) sounds like in Palenque, or if we’re listening to a mbaqanga, and we take out the harmony, I’m listening to bullerengue, so I thought of us and them as the same, that we have a lot of similarities”. Inspired by these African genres and other Caribbean rhythms which blasted out of picós such as compa, cadence and zouk, Viviano embarked on a musical career under the stage name of Anne Zwing and forged a path which set the tone for the Terapia and later the Champeta genres which melded these hugely popular foreign rhythms with locally inspired lyrics. Viviano made an effort to include lyrics written in the Palenquero language to make sure that these new genres resonated strongly with the local community.

Justo Valdez & Son Palenque onstage on Saturday night at the festival.

Another giant of the Afro-Colombian music scene, and pioneer of the incorporation of the Palenquero language in popular music, is Justo Valdez, leader of the emblematic Son Palenque. Before taking to the main stage in the square on Saturday evening, Justo could be found wandering throughout the streets of Palenque in a typically flamboyant outfit. Like Viviano, Justo Valdez was one of pioneers of Terapia and Champeta Criolla music in the region and was pivotal in the promotion of the Palenquero language. Justo stated that Son Palenque have always fought for their language and culture, and pointed out that anthem of Palenque, which he wrote, was recognised by Unesco when it awarded the status of cultural patrimony for the town (Unesco, 2005). Like Viviano and Justo, among the revellers at the festival were other giants from the local music scene with legendary groups such the Estrellas del Caribe and the Grupo Son San forming part of the line up on the main stage in the square over the weekend, in addition to numerous acts highlighting the rich folkloric traditions of Afro-Colombian communities from both of Colombia’s coastal regions. However, the main attraction was a group hailing from the smallest country in Africa, the island nation of Sao Tome and Principe, that was making their first visit to a distant region where their music has been celebrated since the early eighties.

Grupo Son San perform "A Pilha La Roz" to a delighted audience on Saturday night.

The popularity of the group Africa Negra in Palenque, Cartagena and Barranquilla is a testament to the power of the picó culture. For Don Alirio, these soundsystems eliminate the boundaries between musical genres and countries, allowing picoteros, selectors and DJs to take revellers on a musical journey across space and time. Such a dissolution of the linguistic and cultural boundaries that separate nations and regions of the world allowed a group such as Africa Negra, led by their iconic frontman General Joao Seria with lyrics in the local Forro language (a form of Creole language incorporating aspects of Portuguese with traditional local languages), to be hugely popular in the town of Palenque and among its diaspora who speak the Palenquero creole language and Spanish on the opposite side of the Atlantic ocean. The popularity of the group is attributed to the arrival of their second LP (‘Carambola’ recorded in 1983) to Cartagena. The record proved a hugely popular hit among local audiences and was a treasured exclusive of the El Conde picó for an incredible sixteen years until the identity of the song was finally discovered (Fukafra, 2015). For Don Alirio, the group’s guitar driven style broke the mould of the African genres that had been hitherto popular in the soundsystems despite being clearly influenced by Congolese rumba rhythms.

Africa Negra perform "Vence Vitória" to a rapt local crowd on the Friday of the Festival.

The group’s visit saw them perform in Palenque on the Friday and Sunday of the festival, with a performance in between in the neighborhood of Nueva Colombia (a Palenquero enclave in the centre of Barranquilla), in between. For those lucky enough to see these concerts, it was a hugely significant experience. Political representative Kairen Gutierrez expanded on this: “...for the palanquero community, we were used to hearing these songs, at the picós and on vinyl records, but we had never seen them live and direct, and so for the community, especially the older inhabitants, they couldn’t believe that they were seeing Africa Negra right there in Palenque...it was really beautiful”. It seems that the feeling was mutual, with band leader Joao Seria telling media outlet RTSP (2022) that they never knew their music had been so popular in Palenque and Colombia for such a long time and expressed his honor at how well the band had been received. The cherished performances to a rapt local audience would take on even greater poignancy following the sudden death of Joao Seria in May 2023.

General Joao Seria of Africa Negra posing in front of the Gran Lobo picó during his time in Barranquilla and Palenque in October 2022. Their appearance in Palenque would take on added poignancy following his sudden death in May 2023. Photo courtesy of Julio César Lobo.

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Tradisio - Tradition

/trəˈdɪʃ.ən/

The transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on in this way.

The festival in Palenque is a celebration of, and an effort to maintain and conserve, the traditions which define the town and its identity. These traditions can be traced all the way back to the establishment of the town by its iconic founder Benkos Biohó, who had led a party of people escaping slavery towards the mountainous region to the south-west of Cartagena in the 17th century. Following several attempts by Spanish soldiers to recapture these cimarrones (known as maroons in English), a royal decree eventually recognized the autonomy of the town in 1714, as researcher and filmmaker Carolina del Mar Fernandez pointed out, a full 90 years before the independence of Haiti.

The spirit of resistance exemplified by the Cimarrones lives on in Palenque: "We are daughters of Cimarron strength".

The relative isolation enjoyed by the town in the years since allowed the inhabitants to maintain many of the traditions that had crossed the ocean with their ancestors. These traditions are central to the identity of the town and its inhabitants and as such form the centrals pillars of their annual festival. Visitors to the festival can attend and participate in workshops across the weekend including ones focused on the Palenquero language, traditional dances, braided hairstyles, local gastronomy and ancestral medicines, among others. Singer and activist Viviano Torres sees all of these as central to the identity of Palenque and views the town and its festival as representing “...the preservation, the conservation of our Afro identity”. Each and every cultural tradition encountered during the festival is imbued with the complex and rich identity which defines the town and its people.

The Palenquero creole language is one of the 69 recognized languages in Colombia, in addition to Spanish, and it is a fusion of Spanish with African Bantu languages. It is estimated that there were once more than 70 African languages spoken in Cartagena (BBC, 2016) at the height of the slave trade which brought these representatives of so many ethnic groups and nations across the ocean in the harshest manner imaginable. These languages may have faded into the past in Colombia, but their legacy lives on in the traces found within the Palenquero language. The language runs through all the events which take place during the weekend and is visible in the many murals which decorate the town and its houses. Political activist Kairen Gutierrez emphasized the importance of the festival as a way of perpetuating and strenghtening the many cultural expressions of Palenque, and pointed out that the Palenquera language was the most important way to maintain their cultural identity. The 1991 constitution declared Colombia to be a pluralistic nation, seeking to redress the damage caused to the nation’s many ethnic communities with the push for a homogenous national identity dating back to the 1886 constitution and beyond, including the establishment of Spanish as the sole officially recognized language. Article 10 of the 1991 constitution stipulated Spanish as being the official language of the nation but enshrined the official status of other ethnic group’s languages and dialects within their territories (Derechos del Territorio). One result of this plurilinguistic approach has been the spread of ethno-education schools and institutions across the many diverse communities found in the country. San Basilio de Palenque is of course not the exception in this case and there are such ethno-education schools in the town and within Palenque communities in Cartagena and Barranquilla. As Kairen pointed out, the festival and its celebration of the language among other cultural expressions is a vital tool in guaranteeing the cultural identity of Palenque.

"Ancestral identity and culture united in the rhythm of peace"

As mentioned above, each component of the festival is infused with significance in terms of its relation to the identity of the first free town in the Americas. The braiding of hair is of course synonymous with Afro identity, yet the workshops offered to visitors elaborate on the profound significance incorporated into individual designs, such as how in the time of the establishment of the settlement at Palenque, braided hairstyles were used as a way to share clandestine maps needed to escape slavery. As Iveth Herrera, part of the Palenquera community in Barranquilla and founder of the Kasimba cultural centre, revealed: “When I began to learn how to make braids, I learned the history of braids, (how they were) maps to freedom, and a history of rebellion”.

Maestro Rafael Cassiani Cassiani (RIP). Photo courtesy of El Beat.

Palenque’s rich cultural history and identity saw the town and its cultural representations, including its music and dance, in addition to its social, medicinal and spiritual practices, added to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2005 (Unesco, 2005). One manner through which these traditions are maintained from generation to generation is the Kuagro, a form of social organization based on family networks across shared age groups. Kuagros are the cornerstone of community life in Palenque, and membership of a one entails a lifelong commitment (including participation in funeral processes) to a shared sense of responsibility and solidarity. Researcher and filmmaker Carolina del Mar Fernandez worked on making the acclaimed film El Beat, alongside director Irene Lema, which traces both the history and enduring cultural wealth of the town. Part of the film includes extensive footage and conversation with maestro Rafael Cassiani, the deceased former leader of the emblematic Sexteto Tabala. Carolina witnessed first-hand the dedication of maestro Cassiani in passing on this rich cultural legacy from generation to generation: “Cassiani understood the importance of the younger generations learning their music, and about their music, (as a way for them) to understand where they came from...(he) would always talk of the Kuagros, of the importance of the Kuagros, traditionally and to this day. When he died, his Kuagro was there to bid him farewell”.

Filmmaker Carolina del Mar Fernandez and Kombilesa Mi frontman and activist Afroneto celebrate the prizes won by "El Beat" at the Quibdo film festival. Photo courtesy of El Beat.

One of the most representative ambassadors of Palenque identity and culture throughout Colombia and internationally in recent years has been the group Kombilesa Mi (My Friends in Palenquero), whose rap-folklorico has seen them bring their language and culture to newer, younger and more diverse audiences. Steeped in the history and cultural identity of their town, the group’s members were involved in activities throughout the weekend, offering workshops on traditional drumming and dances, participating in demonstrations of the language and other customs, or merely receiving visitors to their home and cultural centre near the town’s main square. Despite their huge success in recent years, they never got to present their unique take on hip-hop on the main stage. However, as the Saturday night wore on, and the older members of the community took some needed rest, these youthful ambassadors of a proud Palenquero culture were central to the alborada, a procession of drumming and dancing throughout the streets of the town on the cusp of dawn. Watching the exuberance of the procession move through the town, with the flag of Palenque being waved proudly at its forefront, it was not difficult to interpret that the future of the town and its unique culture was in safe hands. And that maestro Cassiani could indeed rest easy.

Palenque's younger generations show that the town's unique cultural identity is in safe hands as they lead the "alborada", a procession through the town on the cusp of dawn.

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Polé - Power

/ˈpaʊə/

The capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events.

"a political process that offers people power over their own lives"

The festival of drums and cultural expressions in San Basilio de Palenque is a riotous mix of music, identity and culture. But it is also a demonstration of pride in the resistance that is at the very core of the town and its inhabitants. This sense of pride, etched into the identity of Palenque, stretches all the way back to the founding of the town in the 17th century. Palenque is a statement of resistance against two of the great evils of human history: colonialism and slavery. This sense of resistance can also be found in the very fact that the town, and its unique identity and culture, has endured, despite the numerous challenges it has faced.

The emblematic statue of Benkos Biohó by the main square of Palenque.

As researcher and collector Sidney Reyes Reyes commented, it’s a town that has resisted “...all the battles since the colonial period, and above all maintained its honor and objective of liberty”. This pride is evident in the manner in which the community speaks of their language, their culture and the impact the community has had on Colombia. Palenque is of course known for being the first free town in the Americas, yet this is not the only first; one of the very first Colombian actors to appear in an international production was the Palenquero Evaristo Márquez, who starred alongside Marlon Brando in the historical drama Burn, and the first Colombian to hold a world title in boxing was the Palenquero welterweight Kid Pambele. Despite the pride in these achievements, Palenque and its inhabitants have faced marginalization, discrimination and racial prejudice. Viviano Torres recalls his early musical recordings being looked down upon outside of the Palenquero community due to where the music came from.

The flag of Palenque on a mural in San Basilio de Palenque (photograph from 2018).

Political representative Kairen Gutierrez vividly recalls the racial abuse she was exposed to as a child in Cartagena, and cites these experiences as being formative in terms of her later activism, having been told by her mother that she would face these attitudes all her life and that she should always hold her head high as a Palenquera. Kairen would go on to become an active member of Procesos de Comunidades Negras (PCN), a nationwide organization focused on strengthening links between, and empowering, Afro-Colombian communities throughout the country. The PCN is organized around a set of regional palenques (located mainly throughout the Pacific and Atlantic coastal regions) which work with a national coordinating committee and with technical teams at a national and regional level, with today’s palenques serving as “...spaces for discussion, decision making, and policy orientation” (Escobar, 2008, p.224). Kairen cites the importance of an organization like PCN in fostering greater connections between Colombia’s dispersed communities of African origin and in promoting events and festivals like the one in San Basilio de Palenque, which she refers to as a “cultural strengthening of the roots”. Resilience has been an absolute must for communities in many of the regions where the PCN is most active given the hardships, historically and ongoing, caused by the conflicts which plague much of rural Colombia.

Political representative Kairen Gutierrez represents the interests of Palenque and other Afro-Colombian communities through her involvement in Procesos de Comunidades Negras and in the political sphere. Photo courtesy of Kairen Gutierrez.

In addition to the marginalization and racism experienced by the community, San Basilio de Palenque, like so many other towns and communities throughout Colombia, also had to deal with the internal armed conflict and the horrendous acts of violence which have been a feature of it. The surrounding Montes de María sub-region is an area of huge attraction due to its fertile soils and strategic location in terms of transport routes and proximity to marine ports. These factors meant that it was highly sought after by guerrilla groups and right-wing paramilitaries during the most intense years of the armed conflict. The result of this dangerous cocktail was a brutal wave of violence wrought on rural communities in the region. According to the National Centre of Historical Memory (2019), between 1985 and 2017, there were over 3,000 selective murders and 117 massacres in the region. The year 2000 was a particularly gruesome year with the El Salado massacre (on the outskirts of Carmen de Bolívar) seeing 60 unarmed and innocent civilians brutally murdered by 450 AUC paramilitaries (El Espectador, 2023). Similar massacres were perpetrated against Afro-Colombian communities at Maria la Baja and San Juan Nepomuceno in the same year. The geography of the region, like so many others in the Colombian countryside, is tinged with painful memories of loss. Travelling to Palenque from Barranquilla, the road runs past the Canal del Dique, which links the port at Cartagena to the Magdalena River. According to Colombia’s transitional justice system (JEP), there are an estimated 9,000 bodies in the depths of the canal (El Heraldo, 2022), perhaps accounting for just a fraction of the estimated 121,768 who were forcibly disappeared between 1985 and 2016 throughout Colombia (Comisión de Verdad, 2022).

While the community at San Basilio de Palenque was of course impacted by this terrible wave of violence, it did not suffer on the scale as some of the surrounding communities did during the worst years of the violence, a fact that filmmaker Carolina del Mar Fernandez suggests is attributable to the level of social organization and cohesion found within the town and its inhabitants. While the worst of the conflict is hopefully a thing of the past in the region, the communities of the region are still threatened by the presence of illegal armed groups. In 2021, Palenquero cultural leader and lawyer Fredman Herazo Padilla was shot dead while visiting Afro-Colombian communities elsewhere in the Caribbean region. Fredman’s case is just one among the over 1,500 cases of activists, social leaders and human rights defenders murdered in the country since the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC, 105 of whom were dedicated representatives of Afro-Colombian communities (Indepaz). For those intent on controlling territory and land, the collective land rights Afro-Colombian communities are entitled to through the 1991 constitution are seen as something to be resisted at all costs.

Message on a mural paying tribute to cultural representative Fredman Herazo Padilla, murdered in 2021: "Fredman lives!"

Despite all the challenges that exist in terms of achieving the fulfillment of their rights, and the historic and current dangers faced by Afro-Colombian communities throughout the country due to armed conflict and presence of numerous illegal armed groups, Afro-Colombian communities continue to defend themselves and assert their voice across all levels of society and the state. The long and lasting legacy of resistance which exemplifies San Basilio de Palenque is seen as a reference point for Afro-Colombian communities throughout Colombian territory. The tenacious spirit of Benkos Biohó and the Cimarrones who claimed their freedom and fiercely defended it is still visible today in the shape of the Cimarron Guard, an unarmed community defense organization which maintains harmony in the community in addition to instilling and promoting the key cultural values of Palenque. The Cimarron Guard are a visible presence throughout the weekend of the festival, and they comply with many of responsibilities which the National Police have throughout other parts of the country. They are a visible representation of the autonomy ethnic communities such as San Basilio de Palenque are entitled to in the Colombian context. The model of the guard has been an inspiration to other Afro-Colombian communities with similar initiatives spreading to departments such as Cauca and Chocó. This sense of solidarity across dispersed communities is another clear theme over the weekend of the festival. On the stage, traditional dance and music from Palenque and the Caribbean region is complemented by performances from visiting artists from the Pacific coast of Colombia.

Cha Dorina Hernandez is a former ethno-educator who became the first Palenquera woman to be elected to the Colombian congress. Photo courtesy of El País.

Whilst culture is clearly front and centre across the days of the festival, political representation is also evident. On the Saturday of the festival, the first Palenquera woman to be elected to the Colombian congress, Cha Dorina Hernandez, hosted a meeting with representatives of Afro-Colombian communities from different regions of the country in her family home close to the main square. With the sounds of the festival booming out in the background, the topic of discussion was concerned with establishing shared perspectives and positions ahead of talks related to the National Development Plan. In Palenque, it seems impossible to discern culture from politics. When discussing the youthful energy brought to Palenque culture by the folkloric rap group Kombilesa Mi, filmmaker Carolina del Mar Fernandez pointed out that frontman Afroneto has been a part of the town council for the past four years. Amidst the revelry as the festival came to a conclusion on the Sunday night, the link between culture and politics was to the forefront as Cha Dorina and other figures of note took to the main stage to announce that Palenque would soon be awarded a special municipal status. Political representative Kairen Gutierrez would later elaborate that the significance of this lay in the fact that it would allow the town to enjoy greater autonomy and to generate “...the development that we want”.

Kairen Gutierrez with Colombian vice-president Francía Marquez. Photo courtesy of Kairen Gutierrez.

Reflecting on the festival and all its display of culture, identity, pride and politics, it was hard not to be moved by the fact that Colombia itself was in a period of profound change. The festival came just two months after the first progressive government was elected in the country, with Francía Marquez becoming the first Afro-Colombian to hold the office of vice-president. Kairen Gutierrez has known the vice-president since their days working together via Procesos de Comunidades Negras, and she was certain of the significance of this juncture in history: “...(this moment shows), with Dorina in the congress, and Francia as vice-president, that we can hold other offices, like a mayor, or a councilor, in all of the spaces where decisions and discussions occur”. Six months later, in May of 2023, Francia Marquez led a diplomatic mission to South Africa, Ethiopia and Kenya in an effort to build closer political, economic, educational and cultural links between Colombia and their counterparts in Africa. It was a visit which made huge sense given the potential for South-South collaboration and the demographic, social and cultural connections between the countries. Among the representatives who travelled with the vice-president were Cha Dorina Hernandez and Kombilesa Mi frontman Afroneto, proud representatives of San Basilio de Palenque, the first free town of the Americas, and the pulsing heart of Africa in Colombia.

Article written by Conor Keogh

Additional audiovisual support from Angie Galofre, Catalina Barraza & Natalia Cueto.

Guidance on Palenquero language by Cristina de la Hoz, http://www.kribi.com.co/

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References

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