San Basilio de Palenque

Spaniards introduced kidnapped African slaves in South America through the Magdalena River Valley. Its mouth is close to the important port of Cartagena de Indias where ships full of Africans arrived. Some Africans escaped and set up Palenque de San Basilio, a town close to Cartagena. They tried to free all African slaves arriving at Cartagena and were quite successful. Therefore, the Spanish Crown issued a Royal Decree (1691), guaranteeing freedom to the Palenque de San Basilio Africans if they stopped welcoming New escapees.

The village of Palenque de San Basilio has a population of about 3,500 inhabitants and is located in the foothills of the Montes de María, southeast of the regional capital, Cartagena.[2] The word "palenque" means "walled city" and the Palenque de San Basilio is only one of many walled communities that were founded by escaped slaves as a refuge in the seventeenth century.[2] Of the many palenques of escaped slaves that existed previously San Basilio is the only one that survives.[2] Many of the oral and musical traditions have roots in Palenque's African past.[2] Africans were dispatched to Spanish America under the asiento system.[3]

The village of San Basilio is inhabited mainly by Afro-Colombians which are direct descendants of African slaves brought by the Europeans during the Colonization of the Americas and have preserved their ancestral traditions and have developed also their own language; Palenquero. In 2005 the Palenque de San Basilio village was proclaimed Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.

In the village of Palenque de San Basilio most of its inhabitants are black and still preserve customs and language from their African ancestors. In recent years people of indigenous ancestry have settled at the borders of Palenque, being displaced earlier by the Colombian civil war. The village was established by Benkos Bioho sometime in the 16th century.

One of the first anthropological studies of the inhabitants of Palenque de San Basilio was published by anthropologist Nina de Friedemann and photographer Richard Cross in 1979 entitled Ma Ngombe: guerreros y ganaderos en Palenque.[4]

Statue of Benkos Biohó in the main square of Palenque

A Spanish-based creole language known as Palenquero originates in this community.[5] The New York Times reported on October 18, 2007 that the language spoken in Palenquero is thought to be the only Spanish-based creole language spoken in Latin America. Being a creole language, its grammar differs substantially from Spanish making the language unintelligible to Spanish speakers.[6] Palenquero was influenced by the Kikongo language of Congo and Angola, and also by Portuguese, the language of the slave traders who brought African slaves to South America in the 17th century.[6] Exact information on the different roots of Palenquero is still lacking, and there are different theories of its origin. Today fewer than half of the community's 3,000 residents still speak Palenquero.[6]

A linguist born in Palenquero is compiling a lexicon for the language and others are assembling a dictionary of Palenquero.[6] The defenders of Palenquero continue working to keep the language alive.[6]

• Benkos Biohó
• Antonio Cervantes
• Evaristo Márquez
• Ricardo Cardona
• Prudencio Cardona

• Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity
• UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists

• UNESCO: The Cultural Space of Palenque de San Basilio
• (in Spanish) Colombian Ministry of Culture: San Basilio de Palenque, immaterial patrimony of Colombia
• CNN video
• NYTIMES:A Language, Not Quite Spanish, With African Echoes

• Palenque Through the Eyes of My Heart: My First Trip by Vivian Liberman