February 11. 2026

[Content Warning: The quoted Wikipedia segment recounts an incident of extreme violence against a notable Black figure in Colombian history.]

Cartagena was the only major trip in Colombia we took outside of Bogotá, and our visit to Palenque, about an hour and a half outside of Cartagena was by far the most interesting part of that trip. Standing in front of the sign on the left photo was a multilingual Polish woman.We had a really interesting discussion on languages and Linguistics. I mentioned that I had read somewhere that Polish is one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn. She said, “Oh yes, you shouldn’t bother learning Polish; it’s not really useful outside of Poland.”

Palenque de San Basilio was one of many walled communities called palenques. Enslaved Africans founded hundreds of palenques across Latin American and the Caribbean as refuges after escaping slavery in the 16th and 17th centuries. Only San Basilio has survived to the present day. In 2005, UNESCO listed it as a place of Intangible Cultural Heritage, or a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Among the reasons include its unique religious rituals, medical practices, music, and its language, Palenquero—the only creole language in Latin America with a lexical Spanish basis and grammatical characteristics of Bantu languages.

The pictures above show our tour group disembarking into the town plaza. The lower right picture show our guide wearing a t-shirt Michael and I really wanted to purchase for a friend, but he said it was not available. In English, it reads “For as long as I am Black I am historic, I do not need a month, I exist for a lifetime.” The word “Kutú” in the mural behind him means “power” or “strength” in Palenquero.

The most prominent feature of square, aside from the church, is the monument to Benkos Biohó. The plaque reads

[The] second half of the 16th century in the Biohó region, a region of the Bijagós Islands in Portuguese Guinea (present-day Guinea-Bissau): Benkos Biohó, also known as Domingo Biohó, who led a rebellion of runaway slaves in Granada in the 17th century. Becoming THE GREATEST HERO (FIRST FREE TOWN of America) SAN BASILIO DE PALENQUE.
Founder of Palenque in 1603
Assassinated on March 16, 1621 in Cartagena de Indias
Ma Kankamaná Community Council of Palenque
Bolívar Governorate
2019

From Wikipedia:

Biohó was born into a royal family in Guinea Bissau. He was of Mandinka origin. He was seized by the Portuguese slave trader, Pedro Gomes Reinel, sold to businessman Juan Palacios, and later, after transportation to what is now Colombia in South America, sold again to the Spaniard Alonso del Campo in 1596, in Cartagena de Indias. He made his first escape when the boat that was transporting him down the Magdalena River sank. He was recaptured but escaped again in 1599 into the marshy lands southeast of Cartagena. He organized an army that came to dominate all of the Montes de Maríaregion. He also formed an intelligence network and used the information collected to help organize more escapes and to guide the runaway slaves into the liberated territory, known as settlement.He used the title “king of Arcabuco“.

On 18 July 1605, the Governor of Cartagena, Gerónimo de Suazo y Casasola, unable to defeat the Maroons, offered a peace treaty to Biohó, recognising the autonomy of the Matuna Bioho Palenque and accepting his entrance into the city armed and dressed in Spanish fashion, while the palenque promised to stop receiving more runaway slaves, cease their aid in escape attempts, and stop addressing Biohó as “king”.
 
This treaty was violated by the Spaniards in 1619 when they captured Biohó as he was walking carelessly into the city. He was hanged and quartered on 16 March 1621. Governor García Girón, who ordered the execution, argued bitterly that “it was dangerous the extent to which Biohó was respected in the population” and that “his lies and enchantment would drive the nations of Guinea away from the city.”

The murder of Bióho resonates even today in Colombia, as it created a lasting narrative governments making promises and then committing treachery. He also remains a symbol of resistance, because the people of Palenque refused to surrender, even after his murder, forcing Spain to eventually sign a new treaty in 1691, making it the first free village of formerly enslaved people in the Americas.

When we tried to take pictures of the statue and plaque, the women wearing red, yellow and blue in the two lower pictures rushed in to pose in front. We asked our guide if we were supposed to tip them. He told us, “Here we do not call them tips. We call it support.”

Part of the tour was this young man giving us a Palanquero language lesson. He told us that Palanquero was a mixture of Kikongo (one of the 440-680 Bantu languages), Spanish and a little Portuguese. He tried to get us to speak simple sentences in Palanquero, but most of the people on the tour were older, and he was a little frustrated by how slow we were. The multilingual Polish woman did the best.

On the next stop we learned something about Palenque’s musical history. Several groups from Palenque have become famous throughout Colombia. Other tour groups came in and out, and the small room became stifling. The person who talked to us got a pretty good rhythm band going on about 15 different instruments he handed out to visitors.

Palenque also has a reputation for famous herbalists. I said had a bad back and he gave me some plants to crush and rub on it. Turned out to be arnica.

We went to an old-style Palenque house, in which everything was handmade, including walls constructed of wood and cow manure.

Then we went to a threshing shed. They were out of wheat to thresh, but they taught us some of the common threshing songs sung in Palenque.

We had a little lesson in hair braiding as resistance. Sometimes women would braid escape maps into their hair. Here’s an instagram reel that explains a little more about it.

So after we left Palenque, were we interested in the colonial history of Cartagena? Not really. We walked around some, and I took a picture of this monument from the fight for Colombia’s independence from Spain. Translation follows. Maybe in colonial histories there are no good guys, but the people who burn lepers alive in their homes are definitely the bad guys.

TRIBUTE FROM THE PEOPLE OF CARTAGENA DE INDIAS TO THEIR UNKNOWN MARTYRS
EXECUTED IN 1816 AS A RESULT OF THE 1815 PACIFICATION AT THE CONVENT AND PLAZA DE LA MERCED.
JUAN BAUTISTA MARIN.
FRANCISCO CASTRO.
JOSE LIBERATO PRETELT.
JUAN JOSE DE LA PENA.
SANTOS LUENAR.
DOMINGO PUMAR.
PEDRO MORENO.
LIBERATO RODRÍGUEZ
JOSÉ MANUEL CALDERÓN
JOSÉ VILLAPOLL.
JOSE ACEDO.
BENANCIO ALVAREZ.
PEDRO MARTÍNEZ ORANCAS.
FRANCISCO MENDOZA
CLEMENTE CARRIAZO
JOSÉ MARÍA SOSA.
TIBURCIO FLORES.
DOMINGO VICTORIA.
PEDRO ANTONIO GARCÍA.
EDUARDO ARASO.
MANUEL MARTINEZ.
DIEGO ORTIZ:

THROUGH THEM WE PAY HOMAGE
*TO THE FOUR HUNDRED SACRIFICED ON THE SHORES OF THE SEA IN BOCACHICA, IN DECEMBER 1815
*TO THE HUNDREDS OF SOLDIERS BEHEADED IN THE BAY OF CARTAGENA, IN DECEMBER 1815
*TO THE UNFORTUNATE LEPERS WHO, IN CONSIDERABLE NUMBERS, WERE IN THE CAÑO DE LORO LEPER HOUSE AND WERE BURNED ALIVE

TO ALL OF THEM, WE, THE PEOPLE OF CARTAGENA, OWE OUR FREEDOM