Cartagena has been one of the most important cities in Colombia since its founding in the 16th century and, at certain times, competed with Bogota for political power. A city, founded by Spanish conquerors, that endured the harassment of privateers and pirates. Their attacks made it to build a walled city. Its fortified structure gives the current identity to this coastal city and acts as a magnet for international tourism. This book also talks about the bloody price that Cartagena had to pay during the war of independence for its strategic location and its desire to emancipate from Spainish Empire.
Following the 1808 French invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, an unprecedented political crisis threw the Spanish Monarchy into turmoil. On the Caribbean coast of modern-day Colombia, the important port town of Cartagena rejected Spanish authority, finally declaring independence in 1811. With new leadership that included free people of color, Cartagena welcomed merchants, revolutionaries, and adventurers from Venezuela, the Antilles, the United States, and Europe. Most importantly, independent Cartagena opened its doors to privateers of color from the French Caribbean. Hired mercenaries of the sea, privateers defended Cartagena's claim to sovereignty, attacking Spanish ships and seizing Spanish property, especially near Cuba, and establishing vibrant maritime connections with Haiti. Most of Cartagena's privateers were people of color and descendants of slaves who benefited from the relative freedom and flexibility of life at sea, but also faced kidnapping, enslavement, and brutality. Many came from Haiti and Guadeloupe; some had been directly involved in the Haitian Revolution. While their manpower proved crucial in the early Anti-Spanish struggles, Afro-Caribbean privateers were also perceived as a threat, suspected of holding questionable loyalties, disorderly tendencies, and too strong a commitment to political and social privileges for people of color. Based on handwritten and printed sources in Spanish, English, and French, this book tells the story of Cartagena's multinational and multicultural seafarers, revealing the Trans-Atlantic and maritime dimensions of South American independence.
Jesuit priest Alonso de Sandoval's important 1627 missionary history, the only existing published document that deals with Africans in the Americas at such an early date, describes a means to salvation for Jesuits and Africans alike in the New World. Margaret Olsen's fascinating examination of the treatise creates a vivid picture of the Jesuit "slaves of Christ" as well as the Christianization of Africans brought to Cartagena de Indias, the primary port of entry of slaves bound for the colonies at the time. Sandoval, who was critical of the slave trade in early Spanish America, was interested in African welfare and hoped to incorporate Africans as full participants in the Catholic Church. Olsen places Sandoval's work in a context of Jesuit self-promotion in the New World. She discusses his portrayal of Africanness and blackness in geographical, philosophical, and doctrinal terms and shows him to be a social innovator. While arguing for the power and the glory of the Jesuit mission, Sandoval redefined blackness, describing it as a source of redemption, and challenged the dominant attitudes that relegated Afro-Latin Americans to a position of inferiority and barbarism. Sandoval's text, De instauranda Aethiopum salute, engages classical as well as modern writing regarding evangelization, the institution of slavery, and the burgeoning slave trade of the 17th century. It belongs to a tradition of innovative missionary endeavors by the members of his order. In one of the most creative aspects of Olsen's analysis, she shows how Sandoval's writing allows African voices to speak through the text--expressing their own understanding of Christianity and colonization--and to resist classification even by Sandoval himself. As such, her treatment of the text provides a theoretical basis for understanding the speech of marginalized peoples embedded in historiographic sources.
Moon Travel Guides: Make Your Escape Colonial architecture and ancient ruins, romantic plazas and golden beaches: Colombia's Caribbean coastline offers relaxation and adventure in equal measure. Dive right in with Moon Cartagena & Colombia's Caribbean Coast. Easy-to-use itineraries, with week-long trip suggestions tailored for adventurers, nature-lovers, beach bums, history buffs, and more Honest advice from local expat Andrew Dier on his adopted home country Activities and unique ideas for every traveler: Take a tour of Cartagena's historic central district and admire the vivid bougainvillea cascading from the balconies of colonial mansions. Dance to the sounds of salsa and champeta, or walk along the Old City's fortifications at sunset. Hike lush, forested mountains and watch for flashes of colorful feathers. Climb over a thousand stone steps through the cloud forest to an ancient lost city. Visit organic coffee and cocoa farms or relax in a beachside cabaña at an ecofriendly hotel. Recommendations on outdoor recreation, including the best beaches for diving, snorkeling, and kitesurfing Suggestions for social impact tourism, from staying in a community guesthouse to visiting wildlife preserves Strategic tips for making the multiday trek to Ciudad Perdida, the ruins of the ancient Tayrona civilization Full-color photos and detailed maps and directions for exploring on your own Background information on the landscape, history, government, and culture, including a handy Spanish phrasebook Essential insight for travelers on health and safety, recreation, transportation, and accommodations, packaged in a book light enough to fit in your beach bag With Moon Cartagena & Colombia's Caribbean Coast's practical tips, myriad activities, and local insight, you can plan your trip your way. Gotta see more of this beautiful country? Check out Moon Colombia. Expanding your trip? Try Moon Peru.
This work resituates the Spanish Caribbean as an extension of the Luso-African Atlantic world from the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, when the union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns facilitated a surge in the transatlantic slave trade. After the catastrophic decline of Amerindian populations on the islands, two major African provenance zones, first Upper Guinea and then Angola, contributed forced migrant populations with distinct experiences to the Caribbean. They played a dynamic role in the social formation of early Spanish colonial society in the fortified port cities of Cartagena de Indias, Havana, Santo Domingo, and Panama City and their semirural hinterlands. David Wheat is the first scholar to establish this early phase of the "Africanization" of the Spanish Caribbean two centuries before the rise of large-scale sugar plantations. With African migrants and their descendants comprising demographic majorities in core areas of Spanish settlement, Luso-Africans, Afro-Iberians, Latinized Africans, and free people of color acted more as colonists or settlers than as plantation slaves. These ethnically mixed and economically diversified societies constituted a region of overlapping Iberian and African worlds, while they made possible Spain's colonization of the Caribbean.
In 1979, Nam Le's family left Vietnam for Australia, an experience that inspires the first and last stories in The Boat. In between, however, Le's imagination lays claim to the world. The Boat takes us from a tourist in Tehran to a teenage hit man in Colombia; from an ageing New York artist to a boy coming of age in a small Victorian fishing tow...
In this pioneering study of slavery in colonial Ecuador and southern Colombia--Spain's Kingdom of Quito--Sherwin Bryant argues that the most fundamental dimension of slavery was governance and the extension of imperial power. Bryant shows that enslaved black captives were foundational to sixteenth-century royal claims on the Americas and elemental to the process of Spanish colonization. Following enslaved Africans from their arrival at the Caribbean port of Cartagena through their journey to Quito, Bryant explores how they lived during their captivity, formed kinships and communal affinities, and pressed for justice within a slave-based Catholic sovereign community. In Cartagena, officials branded African captives with the royal insignia and gave them a Catholic baptism, marking slaves as projections of royal authority and majesty. By licensing and governing Quito's slave trade, the crown claimed sovereignty over slavery, new territories, natural resources, and markets. By adjudicating slavery, royal authorities claimed to govern not only slaves but other colonial subjects as well. Expanding the diaspora paradigm beyond the Atlantic, Bryant's history of the Afro-Andes in the early modern world suggests new answers to the question, what is a slave?
The Church in Colonial Latin America is a collection of essays that include classic articles and pieces based on more modern research. Containing essays that explore the Catholic Church's active social and political influence, this volume provides the background necessary for students to grasp the importance of the Catholic Church in Latin America. This text also presents a comprehensive, analytic, and descriptive history of the Church and its development during the colonial period. From the evangelization of the New World by Spanish missionaries to the active influence of the Catholic Church on Latin American culture, this book offers a complete picture of the Church in colonial Latin America. The Church in Colonial Latin America is ideal for courses in the colonial period in Latin American history, as well as courses in religion, church history, and missionary history.
